The Guns of Brooklyn

Two floors above the crowds and traffic of Jay Street in Brooklyn, New York, Zivan Zabar and his graduate students are tinkering with their first coilgun, trying to get it to work. We haven’t fired it for a while, Zabar says apologetically. After a few more adjustments, though, the gun is ready. A three-ounce soda-can-size aluminum projectile shoots out of the upright, 16-inch-high plastic tube, flies a few feet, and flops into the hands of one of the students. In 20 years or so, says Zabar, a scaled-up version of his gun may be lofting satellites into orbit.