Nate wrote:
> Mmmmmm, gauss rifles. *drool* That would be so perfect for a sniper. No report, no muzzle flash to give away your position, next to no recoil. Not even a heat signature from a hot barrel to give it away. I want one!
>
That doesn't add up, physically speaking. Assuming you're talking about
a hypersonic railgun/coilgun, it would have a report in the form of the
bullet's sonic boom. Granted, that makes it hard to localize for a
human ear, but there is currently in service at least one sniper
detection/location device that uses a set of microphones to track the
path of a supersonic slug -- which is to say, hard for a human ear, easy
for a computer. There would certainly be recoil. If you're
accelerating a physical object, there's no way to escape the equal and
opposite force. The heat signature would depend entirely on the
efficiency of the magnets and such used to fire. This device has to
deliver an enormous amount of energy to the slug very quickly to
accelerate it from zero to hypersonic in the space of a meter or so;
that means its efficiency will be pretty lousy, and the magnets will
heat up quite a bit with each shot. In an honest-to-god sniper rifle,
it would probably need a supply of cryogenic coolant to keep the magnets
superconductive and get rid of the waste heat from each shot. With
modern technology, gunpowder -- chemical energy in any form, that is --
is the most efficient and compact way to store energy. Assuming
"sufficiently advanced" technology like room-temp superconductors and
arbitrarily compact energy storage, you can get away with more.
Finally, keep in mind that a "needle gun" will tend to punch through an
unarmored body without doing much damage. A heavy subsonic lead bullet
is far more effective at killing an unarmored target than a small, fast
round with equal kinetic energy. A small, fast penetrator is effective
at passing through armor without delivering its energy, but it's equally
good at passing through the target without doing so either.
Alternatives:
-You could use a charged needle. If you just used the needle to deliver
a powerful electrical jolt, a small explosive charge, or some other
unpleasant payload, you don't care what it does after it hits. You're
relying on the payload to do the damage. (Poison isn't a good choice,
because it'll tend to burn off from atmospheric friction and the needle
would tend to sear its own wound.)
-You could use something akin to a modern API round. It's a regular
bullet made of soft metal with a hard penetrator in the center. Against
flesh, it works like a regular bullet. Against armor, the soft metal
stops and the penetrator continues on through, after heating up to
ungodly temperature from the friction of having the lead coat stripped
off. It won't hurt an armored target as much as the bullet would an
unarmored one, but they'll know they've been kissed, so to speak.
-Taking a page from modern antiarmor weapons, you could equip the bullet
with a tandem warhead. Imagine a bullet shaped like a milk bottle. The
body of the bottle is your regular bullet, which is a hollow-point or
fragmenting design intended to deliver maximum energy in minimum
distance. Normally that would be useless againt the simplest body
armor, but the neck and tip of the bottle contain a small charge -- it
could be akin to a HEAT explosive, or a tiny one-shot laser generator,
or whatever. When the tip of the round strikes, it fires its payload,
which clears a path for the next three inches or so. If they have body
armor on, the rest of the bullet passes through this cleared channel and
hits the guy inside. If they don't, well, the bullet hits them a little
deeper than usual.
--
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"Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day,
but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest
of his life."
-- (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)
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Received on Wed Nov 04 2009 - 14:39:55 CST