I came across a cool video of the Navy's Mach 8 Railgun. That's right. Mach 8. The railgun uses 33Mj; the aim is to get it to 64Mj. The previous record (by the same lab) was 2 years ago at 10.64Mj. There are still a few issues to work out, namely power consumption and heat dissipation. A railgun has no moving parts and simply uses electromagnetic energy to shoot a projectile. They can also be powered by the ship's batteries. The Navy is expecting to deploy these to ships by 2020 or 2025.
The other video I came across is one explaining all aspects of the launch of a space shuttle (what the engineers look for, etc.). The video is 45 minutes long, but it is extremely informative and well worth it to watch.