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gauss guns

So basically, a very low-powered, kinda useless version of a Rail gun?

I can't see any firing results, damage reports, etc to prove the effectiveness of this device.
 
Railguns are fascinating, with the promise of very high velocity indeed, especially in vacuum. Odd we don't see more of em' in scifi literature.
The only instance I can recall is Gibson, in one of his cyberpunk trilogy jobs. (Neuromancer?)
 
Bikewer said:
Railguns are fascinating, with the promise of very high velocity indeed, especially in vacuum. Odd we don't see more of em' in scifi literature.
The only instance I can recall is Gibson, in one of his cyberpunk trilogy jobs. (Neuromancer?)
Click to expand...

Couple of people (including Heinlein, I think) suggest them for launching cargo into space from mountains.

I think the problem is that to get very high velocities, the forces involved tend to bend the gun. We need stronger steels.
 
Or longer guns so that the accel at any point can be kept low.
Unfortunately you do see "railguns" in Sci-Fi a lot - they just seem to have effects similar to ray guns, ie flash of light, some cool optical effect from muzzle to target, and absolutely no recoil whatsoever.
 
Just a couple of years ago, on one of those military tech-shows on Discover, they showed some research being done with a smaller-scale gun.
The thing fired scaled-down projectiles similar to the "Sabot" round used in the M1A1, enclosed in an aluminum block which fell away after firing.
The projectile was about 8-9" long, and perhaps .50 in diameter.

According to the show, they were exceeding 20,000 fps at this research stage....I have no idea what they're doing now.
 
Agammamon said:
Or longer guns so that the accel at any point can be kept low.
Unfortunately you do see "railguns" in Sci-Fi a lot - they just seem to have effects similar to ray guns, ie flash of light, some cool optical effect from muzzle to target, and absolutely no recoil whatsoever.
Click to expand...

I presume you mean that in science fiction they have no recoil, as in reality Newton's laws or action and reaction still apply.
 
I read some cool pulp sci-fi novels, the Heritage Trilogy I think it was called that had the bad guys firing this huge railgun from tens of thousands of km from the space station it was targeting. It took the bad guys like a week to slow themselves down from the acceleration caused by the recoil.
 
It would be possible to create a gun with no recoil, as long as it pitched something out the back with equal momentum. A blast of air would be ideal. Don't stand behind me while I'm firing.

Speaking of crappy movie physics, remember the guns in the movie _Eraser_? Again, no recoil.
 
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