'You see, Vera? You dress yourself up...'
POSTED BY: cljohnston108
UPDATED: Tuesday, November 7, 2006 11:14
VIEWED: 4948
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Quote:
Originally posted by VerseExplorer:
It's a great post.
Hey! Thanks!
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Here's another possibility (for a fanwank -- I'm sure Joss's explanation is the "real" one): Vera can be fired in a vacuum, but there's something dangerous about it so she has an interlock to prevent it.
There's certainly nothing about the ammunition that would prevent its working in vacuum. Shells are sealed, they don't use outside air. This assumes that Vera's ammo works like present-day ammo, but that's reasonable.
So, what would be dangerous about it? I can think of several possibilities:
- Maybe the ejector mechanism (which provides the automatic and semi-automatic action) is designed to work with ambient air pressure, so Vera's likely to jam or misfire in vacuum. That would be less of a problem when you're only firing a few rounds, so it was okay to override the interlock the way they did. Besides, for the first round or two the suit would still have pressure.
- Maybe it's not an issue of being able to fire, but some other feature of the weapon that requires air, such as the scope. The interlock prevents you from firing it with the scope malfunctioning or miscalibrated, and so hitting something you weren't aiming at.
- Maybe Alliance laws forbid civilians firing projectile weapons in space, and the interlock is designed to enforce that. A current-day equivalent would be trigger locks.
- Maybe the real issue isn't air pressure at all, but that when you're in vacuum you may also be in free fall. It would be pretty tricky to fire any weapon under such conditions because of the recoil, but Vera would be far worse than most. (Of course, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to make your interlock sense air pressure when you should be measuring gravity, but oh well...)
Another very low-probability explanation is that Vera doesn't use conventional ammunition but some sort of ramjet-like scheme to propel the bullets. It's hard to imagine why anyone would design a firearm like that, though.
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I'm pointin' right at it!
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Maybe in 500 years they finally worked the kinks out of that GyroJet concept! 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrojet
http://world.guns.ru/handguns/hg172-e.htm
The Cause of Gyrojet Inaccuracy
http://www.deathwind.com/cause.htm
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DonCoat, you sound like someone who would know something about fire-arms. I'm saying this because I didn't understand a damn thing about what you just said.
But maybe you can answer some questions I've been chewing on.
In "Objects in Space" Simon gets shot at *very* short range by a gun which seems to be big enough to propel a bullet straight through him.
I tried to rationalise this by positing that the bullet might be of a reasonable soft material, which would "spread out" (sorry, not the technical description) on impact, but that would mean it would cause much more damage inside Simon's leg, and the bullet would most likely not be extracted in one piece. I also argued that maybe the bullet had a smaller charge, to prevent it from going through bodies (like the small Deringers used by gamblers in the 'ole west), but it didn't make sense for a bounty hunter to have such a lightly charged weapon.
I also think that the weapon used by Dobson in the pilot was too small to cause the damage that it did to Kaylee.
What do you think? And remember...think captain dummy talk.
Burn the land and boil the sea...
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I'm not even going to pretend that I have enough science knowledge to add anything intelligent to this discussion. I'm just posting to say YOU'RE A MYTHBUSTERS FAN!!! I'm a mythbusters fan too! I LOVE that show!!
*cough* Leaving now...
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Canter,
Short answer: Duhh, I dunno!
Long answer: maybe Jubal had a weapon designed for use aboard spaceships. You wouldn't want something powerful enough to penetrate the hull, which is generally a Bad Thing. So if you knew you were going to be doing your bounty hunting in some dodgy places, you'd go with something just big enough to drop your target but not big enough to make holes where you don't want 'em. This is also useful if the bounty requires a live capture rather than "dead or alive". Edited to add: an expert marksman like Early might choose lower-power ammunition anyway, because he knows he can put the shot exactly where he wants to disable his quarry without risking excessive damage.
Now, of course, that's just the opposite of the case with Dobson. We do know that he's not the brightest bulb in the Alliance string, so maybe he just went for the most powerful gun he could conceal.
In either case, you should keep in mind that a given gun can fire ammunition with different amounts of oomph. So you can't always go by the look of the gun. A bigger weapon like Vera *can* fire more powerful rounds, but it doesn't *have* to do so all the time. Unless it's Jayne firing it. (Some people load their own ammunition -- that is, take the casing, put in the powder, add the shot or bullet, and crimp it together. If you do this you can select exactly how powerful to make it -- though there are minimum and maximum loads for a given gun and ammo type.)
Also, as you pointed out, different kinds of bullets have different effects once they enter the body. Maybe Dobson was firing nasty dum-dum type rounds designed to make a mess inside.
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I'm pointin' right at it!
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If Jayne hadn't said she needed oxygen around her to fire, you could make a good case that she needed warmth, and that , as Book said, " it's cold outside."
Lubricants, even greases,can freeze at the superlow temperatures like in deep space vacuum, and metal parts can expand and contract at unpredictable rates, causing mechanical jamming.
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I actually read something about this, that Joss and them asked a gun guy if that type of gun would need oxygen, and he said yes, but then after they shot the episode they found out that it didn't really.
So yeah, it was actually a mistake on their part.
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Love keeps her in the air when she outta fall down, tells you she's hurting before she keels. Makes her a home.
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As Earlys round hit in the thigh and was only a small calibre (judging by the bullet extracted by Zoe possibly a 9x19) it will generally remain intact and not pass totally through the leg. Also the bullet would nominally be lead and flatten slightly so in reality the wound should have been more severe than that shown. Most pistol rounds (especially 9mm) are designed to stop fully in people and remain whole rather than penetrating totally through a person or breaking apart once penetrated.
In the case of the 'Serenity' episode as it was a stomach wound caused by the fed (probably using a 9x19 again) the permanent and temporary cavities caused in the stomach area would lead to more complications than for a simple leg wound and hence more dangerous.
I hope this helps!
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I couldn't find where I posted this information before, so I'll repeat what I can remember.
1.) As mentioned above, any lubrication in the gun would either have the liquid portion boil off due to the nonexistant ambient pressure or become too viscous due to the temperature drop that they wouldn't be operable.
2.) If the gun was gas-operated, chances are the difference in ambient pressure would make multiple shots impossible.
3.) Since space is a vacuum, there is no method of heat transfer (other than radiation) that could cool the barrel and other gun parts. Firing multiple shots could damage/destroy the gun.
4.) If the gun was fired from the suit, the oxygen would not leave the suit fast enough to render the gun inoperable. Even with the large difference in pressures inside and outside the suit, the orifice in the mask was small enough to prevent the outflow of oxygen long enough for firing as shown in the episode. I could do the math, but I don't feel like it...besides, Browncoats are generally trusting people.
What I noticed about the sequence was that Jayne must be an excellent shot, firing from the hip and hitting that energy point. It makes sense though, since he once hit a man in the neck from 500 yards with a bent scope...or so he says.
Hope that clears up some of the questions...
EDIT: In regards to jaynewannabe's post, it's correct that smaller ammo is not meant to exit. The French have a handgun called the FiveseveN that has 5.7 mm rounds (hence the name) that are so small, they're meant to tumble inside the victim, creating an irregularly shaped wound. Point of interest, the FN is what is used in BSG (post season 1) as the standard sidearm.
Some ammo is also designed to fragment on impact or mushroom, as you may have heard of hollow points. These are against the Geneva Convention for military use (but then again the US military still uses white phosphorus last I heard, so...).
I really don't know that much about firearms, so if anyone here was in the military or has any other corrections, let me know.
"All I got is a red guitar, three chords, and the truth...the rest is up to you"
--Bono
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