Yes, it could. However, you will get more energy losses that way than if you could have a straight track -- plus you'll have the G-forces of the turn around the track in addition to the acceleration, so it could make payload design rather complicated. You'd have to run actual numbers to find out whether or not that's an insurmountable problem; I'm no structural engineer, so I can't help out with that.<br /><br />You will still have to cope with atmospheric losses, of course.<br /><br />I think the best use of a railgun would be an extension of the erstwhile HARP program. (Not to be confused with HAARP, which is completely different.) HARP, the High Altitude Research Program, was a Canadian study into cheaper satellite launch technologies run by the late Gerard Bull. How he came to be the *late* Gerard Bull is a conspiracy story in itself, involving both the Mossad and Saddam Hussein. But the interesting part for now is his time on HARP, decades ago.<br /><br />The idea was to take a very small rocket, far too small to put a payload into orbit, encase it in a sabot*, and fire it out of a cannon. The additional boost from the cannon would greatly increase the rocket's speed, allowing it to acheive a much higher altitude. HARP used Canadian military surplus artillery pieces for their cannons and small Martlett missiles as the projectile. The ultimate objective was to scale it up with bigger missiles and bigger guns until they could acheive orbit. Much to Bull's chagrin, however, the Budget Monster ate the program. His long quest for funding eventually lead him to Iraq, where it evolved into work on the Babylon Gun, an enormous weapon similar to the Nazi's V-3. But he died in mysterious circumstances (probably an assasination) and following the Persian Gulf War, the United Nations seized the gun.<br /><br />* sabot, pronounced "SAY-bow" in English but "sah-BOW" in French, comes from the French word for a type of wooden shoe. It's coincidentally the root of "sabotag <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em> -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>