With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

[Sockmonkey]

The bullet could have a lead jacket around an iron core or something. You have to have the iron if it's a coilgun and not a railgun.
The place for all your sci-fi weapon needs.
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[TheEyes]

A) the point was simplicity

B) I'm pretty sure superconductors aren't necessary

C) the gun explicitly has a battery as well as capacitators.

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There are three problems with coilguns that prevent them from being used IRL:

1) The discharge problem. Batteries can't discharge energy as quickly as a gunpowder explosion. To get around this, you need capacitors, but that doesn't really solve the problem because now you have to have the battery slowly charge the capacitor, which discharges the energy into the bullet, severely slowing your rate of fire.

2) The weight problem. Compared to gunpowder, batteries and capacitors are super-heavy, meaning you won't be able to carry the energy to fire off nearly as many shots with your coilgun as you could if you just used a conventional firearm.

1-2 Addendum) Should you manage to solve these two issues, which will require a revolution in material and likely chemical engineering, because you'd need to invent a whole new class of chemical that can store and discharge this amount of energy this quickly, well, it just so happens that these are exactly the issues that are plaguing electric car range capacity. So it brings the question: if you have all this brand spanking new tech to make a coilgun charge-discharge cycle practical, why aren't you instead making a trillion dollars and a Nobel Prize revolutionizing the electric car market?

3) The heat problem. Suddenly discharging the amount of electrical energy you'd need to get a chunk of metal up to bullet speed using magnetic coils will heat up the magnetic coils enough to melt them. To prevent this, you need to replace the metal in those coils with a room temperature superconductor, something that's considered one of the Holy Grails of Industry because it would eliminate losses from transmission lines, allow for safe and effective magnetic levitation, allow computer designers to create small, three-dimensional microchips without having to worry about cooling nearly as much, etc.

 

[frommerman]

While it's not possible to remove recoil under modern physics, it is possible to minimize its effects on the shooter. If, for instance, the whole barrel is isolated on springs from the main rifle body, then most of the equal and opposite reaction force will go into moving the barrel backward, transferring only some of it to the shooter. In fact, this is how machine guns work. They redirect the kinetic energy of the recoil into the mechanism which ejects the spent round and chambers the new one.

 

[HearthBorn]

There are three problems with coilguns that prevent them from being used IRL:

1) The discharge problem. Batteries can't discharge energy as quickly as a gunpowder explosion. To get around this, you need capacitors, but that doesn't really solve the problem because now you have to have the battery slowly charge the capacitor, which discharges the energy into the bullet, severely slowing your rate of fire.

2) The weight problem. Compared to gunpowder, batteries and capacitors are super-heavy, meaning you won't be able to carry the energy to fire off nearly as many shots with your coilgun as you could if you just used a conventional firearm.

1-2 Addendum) Should you manage to solve these two issues, which will require a revolution in material and likely chemical engineering, because you'd need to invent a whole new class of chemical that can store and discharge this amount of energy this quickly, well, it just so happens that these are exactly the issues that are plaguing electric car range capacity. So it brings the question: if you have all this brand spanking new tech to make a coilgun charge-discharge cycle practical, why aren't you instead making a trillion dollars and a Nobel Prize revolutionizing the electric car market?

3) The heat problem. Suddenly discharging the amount of electrical energy you'd need to get a chunk of metal up to bullet speed using magnetic coils will heat up the magnetic coils enough to melt them. To prevent this, you need to replace the metal in those coils with a room temperature superconductor, something that's considered one of the Holy Grails of Industry because it would eliminate losses from transmission lines, allow for safe and effective magnetic levitation, allow computer designers to create small, three-dimensional microchips without having to worry about cooling nearly as much, etc.

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Of course, for this story, all of these are effectively solved. I'm pretty sure 1 and 2 are covered by the 'magic battery' in the latest post, and one of the metals the Amazons have is a room temperature superconductor.

 

[Prince Charon]

Of course, for this story, all of these are effectively solved. I'm pretty sure 1 and 2 are covered by the 'magic battery' in the latest post, and one of the metals the Amazons have is a room temperature superconductor.

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Probably. Also, given the bullshit-tech that appears in the comics, they probably had everything needed to make that coilgun back in the 1930s, and just needed to put it together (it's just in RL that we really don't).

 

[Ngamer11]

I was a little surprised Paul would include average weaponry in his uplift programs. After he mentioned how guns do nothing against really big threats, I was a little less surprised. Seeing these peeks at all the advancements Paul is helping bring to Earth is always nice. Even if it is inconsequential, like Paul's takeover of Cadbury, it is one thing more that Paul is improving to the best of his abilities and as best as the environment will allow. This really lets me see that he really is trying to 'him' the world as much as he can, and in the least disruptive way, or at least peaceful way that will leave the least amount of outrage, possible.

 

[BR549]

If trade is his main interest then alienating the local authorities by going full vigilante despite being a complete foreigner seems ill advised. Even of he genuinely is better at nation building than any local, this is not a smart way of convincing anyone of that fact.

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Trade was his interest.

Then he stepped through the portal, found a world such that crossing over with Warhammer 40K makes it more bright and cheerful, and it personally offended him on both his 'Paul' and 'Lord Protector' levels that he decided to get down to work.

Sinestro would be so proud


(Again, given the world, this is not necessarily a bad thing. It only starts pinging on the Renegade scale if and when the emergency has been resolved and the man on the white horse - or with the yellow ring, as it were - decides he needs to keep going.)

 

[ChiChi]

"Careful, Christopher, you're knuckles are dragging."

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your

also I agree with the others about there would still be recoil maybe the recoil is attenuated somewhat but it'd still be there

 

[Mr Zoat]

Corrections:
...raided by the FBI, the NSA, the CIA...
"Careful, Christopher, your knuckles are dragging."
Something seems off here. Missing word perhaps? Or is he interrupting himself?

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Thank you, corrected.

How does it disable the action-reaction part of physics? Because real life railguns definitely have recoil.

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˙pooƃ ooʇ sɔᴉsʎɥd ʇ,uop I

 

[Huttj509]

Ok, so as near as I can find the mass of gunpowder in a 9mm is about 10% of the mass of the bullet itself. Very roughly. VERY. It varies. It very varies.

Thus it seems that a decent approximation for how much the recoil due to the gas vs the recoil due to the bullet itself would be 10%, Again, very roughly.

 

[The Vale]

So he said he was aiming to make a simpler easier to maintain gun but I'm seeing 2 forms of expendables in battery and projectile (this is the equivalent of powder and shot loading separately - how antiquated) electronic circuitry (dial for force, regulating discharge and recharge of capacitors) coils (which need to be calibrated for precision timing).

So you've taken a device which is entirely mechanical and can be maintained just about anywhere into something that needs a degree in electrical engineering and a clean room to maintain and repair.

Think he failed his goals there.

 

[Chaoswind]

"Since there's no recoil, you don't really need to brace in the same way, which takes a bit of getting used to.

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Recoil is a reaction to the momentum imparted to the ammunition, if the weapon is firing mass in the shooting range then it has recoil, you would need meta materials violating basic physics for recoil to not be a factor in such a process and since the point is that this weapon is meant to be Simple then I see no way for that to be true.

If the weapon not having recoil is very important for the update, then you have to use lasers (pulse lasers are more useful at lower energy capacity) or very low mass particle accelerators.

If the design has to be simple, then it HAS to produce recoil Mr Zoat

Also I question how the maintenance of these components is going to be easier than the purely mechanical AK-47... I guess if all the parts can easily be replaced with ones bought in a store then there is no maintenance beyond the process of replacing these parts, but that means that as soon as the parts stop being produced the weapon becomes mostly useless for the layman.

 

[Khornelius]

My inner Texan is wanting a double-barrel shotgun version of the Cobra gun. I'm with Chris, this sounds amazing, it also reminds me of Mass Effect. My favorite gun was always the Graal Spike thrower. I could shoot my enemies and chop them to bits at the same time.

 

[nobodez]

Cobra

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This is either a reference to one of my favorite and formative superhero fiction shared universes, or it's an incredible coincidence, but I'm going to assume that this glorious weapon is a reference to Whateley Academy.

 

[Mr Zoat]

This is either a reference to one of my favorite and formative superhero fiction shared universes, or it's an incredible coincidence, but I'm going to assume that this glorious weapon is a reference to Whateley Academy.

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It's named because of the sound it makes when charged. I've never read anything from Whateley Academy.

 

[nobodez]

It's named because of the sound it makes when charged. I've never read anything from Whateley Academy.

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Darn, well, still, it's a good name, and I guess it makes sense to name a coilgun/gauss pistol/linear accelerator "Cobra" for that reason alone.

 

[rdfox]

It's not much worse for them than any other culture of the time actually. You have to remember that as near as we can tell from records they likely were originally Greek, being descendants of survivors of Troy... at least if you discount the official origin story where the founders were raised by wolves and the people just sort of happened without a decent explanation because mythology?



Yes there is still recoil but a lot of modern firearm recoil is due to the explosion and the movement of the internal mechanism's. If you remove that then it becomes a lot easier to keep on target unless the round itself is big enough to cause a wake.

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While it's not possible to remove recoil under modern physics, it is possible to minimize its effects on the shooter. If, for instance, the whole barrel is isolated on springs from the main rifle body, then most of the equal and opposite reaction force will go into moving the barrel backward, transferring only some of it to the shooter. In fact, this is how machine guns work. They redirect the kinetic energy of the recoil into the mechanism which ejects the spent round and chambers the new one.

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Not only that, but any automatic or semi-automatic (self-loading but one round per pull of the trigger) firearm gets significantly reduced recoil from the internal mechanism. Recoil-operated guns, like frommerman described, use clockwork mechanisms to directly convert recoil momentum into useful work (opening the bolt, ejecting the spent casing, chambering the next round, and closing the bolt again). Blowback-operated guns (typically only used for handguns because it rather limits the power of the ammo that you can use) use a somewhat similar technique without the reciprocating barrel, instead using the gas pressure in the chamber to force the bolt to open and springs to carry out the rest of it. Gas-operated guns like the AK (and, honestly, most automatic rifles) actually tap some of the combustion gasses out of the barrel once the bullet is beyond a certain point in it and uses them to operate the mechanism. All of these take some of the energy that would otherwise go into recoil and put it into instead cycling the action, meaning that there is significantly less felt recoil.

Even more important than actual recoil (the weapon moving back in keeping with m1v1 + m2v2 == mivi momentum conservation), though, is muzzle rise, which comes from the lever effect of recoil pressing back into the shooter's support (palm for handguns, shoulder for long guns) with the center of pressure above the point of support. This is essentially impossible to prevent in handguns (think about the arrangement that would be needed to have the barrel effectively in line with the shooter's palm, and what that would do when the slide comes back to load the next round), and the need for effective sights makes it very difficult to do in long guns, because of the need to have the sights line up with the shooter's eye while he has the gun shouldered. You gain some benefit from the shooter basically leaning his head to the side to press his cheek into the gun's stock and line his eye up with the sights, but his eye line will still be a few inches above his shoulder; the most common solution to this is to put "rise" into the stock where there's something of an upward bend (or downward curve) to the stock, with the barrel lined up above the top of the buttplate on the stock. The AR-15 family of rifles (including the M16) has unusually low muzzle rise for their chambering because Eugene Stoner instead designed the rifle to have no rise on the stock (because he put the spring that closes the bolt inside the stock); to compensate for this, you end up with the famous "high-rise" sights that stick several inches up above the barrel and actually use the carrying handle as the rear sights. Muzzle rise is important because it actually pushes the aimpoint off the target, while recoil just feels like a kick into your shoulder/palm. (One standing joke about the old M14 rifle was due to it having heavy muzzle rise in full-automatic fire; the claim was that in full-auto, the first round would hit, the second round would miss high, the third round would miss higher, and after that, you're getting into anti-aircraft fire.)

The sights also provide a good reason for preferring a longer gun in most situations--the longer barrel doesn't provide that much more velocity or accuracy directly from ballistic effects (and, indeed, too long a barrel can actually reduce velocity if it's so long that the combustion gases have time to fully expand to ambient atmospheric pressure before the bullet leaves the barrel); the accuracy benefit comes from having a longer distance between front and rear sights, and thus a narrower range of eye positions relative to the barrel that provide proper sight alignment. In other words, with a longer barrel, you have to get your eye closer to perfect alignment with the barrel and sights to be able to draw a bead on your target, and thus, you have less range for error in your aiming, so your shots will land closer to your point of aim (assuming, of course, the sights are aligned properly).

I can see how the coilgun/railgun could well be mechanically far less complex than the AK. The AK is a gas-operated rifle that uses gas tapped off the barrel near the muzzle to power a clockwork mechanism that unlocks the bolt, slides it back, and ejects the spent cartridge, then relies on a spring to push the bolt back forward and strip the next round off the top of the magazine (held in place by a spring in the magazine and then guided in by the shape of the feed ramp and the shape of the round), ram it into the chamber, and then lock the bolt. The coil/rail gun version wouldn't need a bolt (locking or not) to close the breech, or any complex mechanism to feed the next round into the chamber; without chemical propellant, the magnets could throw the slug and then a simple spring in the magazine could push the next one up into position for firing, replacing a couple of dozen moving parts with just one. It would be electronically vastly more complex, but from a mechanical standpoint, it would become simplicity itself...

 

[PDV]

"If you make an item available for sale to sensible people, you inevitably make it available for sale to less sensible people. It's easier to get a gun in this country than a car."

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It is my civic duty to point out that America has had more violent crime per capita than the UK since the 1600s, and the ratio has been pretty stable (IIRC it's 3:1). And that the UK gun ban had no detectable effect on the murder rate, nor did the Australian gun buyback.

 

[Gantradies]

a little late, but....i guess it depends on genre- low/no-magic Fantasy would probably be Temeraire, Military Scifi... currently "The lost Fleet" as a whole, not book specific- nonfiction would be "a short history of nearly everything"

... i..used to have a huge softspot for the P.E.R.N books as a kid-it was almost a shock seeing dragons being depicted as heroic (endlessly fighting the thread), companionable,beautiful creatures dancing and shimmering in the light- but with the slaughterhouse the first post Anne book turned into...

might want to focus on mechanical reliability/simplicity over recoil, zoat-several years of following forgotten weapons has left this Aussie with a feel that reducing recoil without downsizing the projectile usually means exponential increases in internal complexity

given this is a hacked together prototype (albeit one done by folks who know their stuff regarding firearms,and seemingly electromagnetics), maybe emphasize the ease of service of the majority of the components-and reduced/minimal wear/fouling issues (potentially having the most complicated components the caps/battery?)-and the low/minimal cost of ammunition..

a potential aim could be for a rugged general-purpose rifle (military service or hunting/survival in a colonial-err, as in "newly settled, previously uninhabited land", not "shooting the locals for their land" colonial >.<, low-magic environment) that doesnt need more then a soldering iron and a reasonable toolkit to maintain without needing parts machined/stamped, with most of the complexity going into the (long-lived,hardened) power packs

 

[Gilhelmi]

"Bah! Still a fuckin' British faggot."

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As a proud, Conceal Carry permit holding, American; I would politely ask this be changed to "asshole" or something less 'homophobic'. I know 'faggot' does not have as bad of reputation as a hate word in Britain. But it is fairly offensive in America.

We gun owners already get an unfair bad rap. We don't need more bad press.

Christopher grins. "Space guns? Oh hell yeah!"

"If you want to get raided by the FBI, the NSA, the CIA, the ATF and the NRO all at the same time then go right ahead."

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It would be COMPLETELY legal just so long as he has the proper import permits......... I doubt that Congress has gotten around to updating the gun laws to ban plasma or laser based weapons yet.

Just saying, he would win the lawsuit if they raided him........ assuming he had the proper import permits. Guns are legal, and Alien Guns are still Guns.

M'erica, Duck YA.

 

[rkyeun]

Oh, and the bullet is probably still made of lead, not iron. Iron is too hard for a bullet, unless you're trying to make an armor piercing round; bullets are made of soft metal both to be easier on range back-splashes, reduce shrapnel flying around in an enclosed gun range, and, in practice, to be more lethal when hitting soft tissues.

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Bullet has to be iron. Lead isn't magnetic. Other issues can be alleviated with bullet geometry.

Unless you're firing a second bullet out of the back of the gun, or violating physics in some other fashion, there very much is recoil. Did OL also invent an inertial dampener for his hobby weapon?

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Inertial dampeners already exist in this case. The advantage of an electric weapon is much the same as an electric car: regenerative breaking. You can convert the recoil back into useful work by having it generate energy. The barrel floats on the magnetic field, and the recoil drives it backwards through the coil, where the coil becomes a generator and slows the barrel before it hits the housing.

The discharge problem. Batteries can't discharge energy as quickly as a gunpowder explosion. To get around this, you need capacitors, but that doesn't really solve the problem because now you have to have the battery slowly charge the capacitor, which discharges the energy into the bullet, severely slowing your rate of fire.

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Imagine if you had a bank of many small capacitors and batteries that had diodes between them such that depending on if they're charging or discharging they act as if they're in series or in parallel.

 

[Mr Zoat]

As a proud, Conceal Carry permit holding, American; I would politely ask this be changed to "asshole" or something less 'homophobic'. I know 'faggot' does not have as bad of reputation as a hate word in Britain. But it is fairly offensive in America.

We gun owners already get an unfair bad rap. We don't need more bad press.

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Okay, I'll change it, but can you come up with something more creative than 'asshole'?

It would be COMPLETELY legal just so long as he has the proper import permits......... I doubt that Congress has gotten around to updating the gun laws to ban plasma or laser based weapons yet.

Just saying, he would win the lawsuit if they raided him........ assuming he had the proper import permits. Guns are legal, and Alien Guns are still Guns.

M'erica, Duck YA.

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No he wouldn't, because he wouldn't be able to afford the five plus years of court action it would take. Also, there aren't any permits that would allow weapons to be imported from other planets.

 

[Vaermina]

It sounds like Zoat got Coilguns and Lasers mixed up.

 

[Darko]

Okay, I'll change it, but can you come up with something more creative than 'asshole'?.

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Well a somewhat insulting thing to call him would be 'pussy'.

It is an insult against his masculinity, but I don't know if it's more creative than 'asshole'.

Still I doubt Christopher knows all that many creative words.

 

[Khettien]

Okay, I'll change it, but can you come up with something more creative than 'asshole'?

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Wanker?

Edit: Or, alternately, Poof. (I think that's the right word? Supposed to mean the same as faggot, but slightly more obscure. I don't know, I'm not an obscenity vocabulary!)

Suck my Second Amendment, Alphabet Men!

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I'm slightly shocked this if the first time I've read that combination of words. That's so...American. And I say that as one.

 

[Mr Zoat]

Wanker?

Edit: Or, alternately, Poof. (I think that's the right word? Supposed to mean the same as faggot, but slightly more obscure. I don't know, I'm not an obscenity vocabulary!)

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Christopher is American. I don't think they/you use the word 'poof'.

 

[Nervaqus987]

3) The heat problem. Suddenly discharging the amount of electrical energy you'd need to get a chunk of metal up to bullet speed using magnetic coils will heat up the magnetic coils enough to melt them. To prevent this, you need to replace the metal in those coils with a room temperature superconductor, something that's considered one of the Holy Grails of Industry because it would eliminate losses from transmission lines, allow for safe and effective magnetic levitation, allow computer designers to create small, three-dimensional microchips without having to worry about cooling nearly as much, etc.

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He has room temperature superconductors from the Jovium he got from the Amazons.

Also, thermal superconductors which are whole different Holy Grail.

 

[Gilhelmi]

Okay, I'll change it, but can you come up with something more creative than 'asshole'?

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I like Darko's suggestion of "pussy" and agree with his assesment.

No he wouldn't, because he wouldn't be able to afford the five plus years of court action it would take. Also, there aren't any permits that would allow weapons to be imported from other planets.

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Another three letters that you should never underestimate N.R.A. (National Rifle Association).

They do a bit of legal work fighting for our Second Amendment rights. (also, like me, they would salivate at the thought of Alien guns).

 

[Khettien]

Christopher is American. I don't think they/you use the word 'poof'.

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Among our/themselves, no. But..maybe I'm just used to a higher class of rednecks, (Huntsville, AL! Where the rednecks have rocket science degrees, and you should be afraid!) but we'd/they'd totally use an insult from a 'foreigner's' country of origin as an affectation, which this whole conversation reads as.

 

[Mr Zoat]

I like Darko's suggestion of "pussy" and agree with his assessment.

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Pussy it is, then.

Another three letters that you should never underestimate N.R.A. (National Rifle Association).

They do a bit of legal work fighting for our Second Amendment rights. (also, like me, they would salivate at the thought of Alien guns).

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If they couldn't stop armour piercing bullets getting banned I doubt they could prevent positron beams getting banned.