A torpedo being launched from an US Navy ship, just refused to go into the water. As soon as this happens everybody starts laughing. I wonder where do they go from here? Do they poke it with a stick, or what?

A gauss gun, works by sequentially accelerating a projectile to a desired speed by using either magnets or coils. The first video is a small demonstration of the principle behind the whole thing, by using magnets. The following videos are weapons which were homemade, and as you can see work remarkably well. So well in fact, that the US Navy will implement such weapons on its ships by 2020, after they succesfully tested an 8 Megajoule prototype.