Hmm, maybe Vera would have worked without the suit?

POSTED BY: jake7
UPDATED: Tuesday, February 5, 2008 07:59
VIEWED: 6481
PAGE 3 of 4

PREV PAGE 1 2 3 4 NEXT PAGE

DONCOAT

Friday, February 1, 2008 12:47 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Insomniac:
Mal was the one who called for the suit but I think he might of done that to be on the safe side.

What? And ruin his very fine space suit for no apparent reason?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I'm pointin' right at it!

TRAVELER

Friday, February 1, 2008 1:33 AM

I have heard of ammunition made without a casing. The propelant was solid and required no brass case to contain it. Therefore there would be no oxygen. No oxygen. No Bang.

But my real concern is how did Jayne aim Vera through the spacesuit. He was not looking down the sight and he was attempting to hit a very distinct target. Not sending random rounds hoping to hit something. Also after the firing the first round the face shield was blown apart and allowed the oxygen to escape and yet Jayne continued to fire several more rounds.

If Joss had watched the series "Men into Space" that was produced in the early 60's he would have seen the episode where a convention revolver was fired on the moon. So even 40 years ago they knew a firearm would work in space. Or they guessed it would.

http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=28764731
Traveler

VETERAN

Friday, February 1, 2008 3:10 AM

The way I remember it is that Jayne said that Vera could only be fired in atmosphere and he didn't have a gun case. They decided to ad lib and use a suit in place of the case.

I wonder if Vera needs atmosphere because she's gas operated. If there's no atmosphere there's not enough pressure to activate the mechanisim which ejects the spent cartridge and pushes the new one into the chamber. Without atmo Vera would only be able of firing one shot before jamming.

DAVESHAYNE

Friday, February 1, 2008 4:10 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Veteran:
I wonder if Vera needs atmosphere because she's gas operated.

Unlikely. The gas that operates the cycle in a gas operated weapon is bled off from the propellant gasses in the barrel. No external gas source required.

Though as I said there may be some new tech reason for Vera needing air to fire there really isn't one just considering how firearms are constructed in this very early part of the third millennium CE.

David

'Geeks can't admit that anything worthwhile was invented before 1981. Soon, "making cocoa" will be called "milk hacking."' - Lore Sjoberg

DAVESHAYNE

Friday, February 1, 2008 4:16 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by traveler:
I have heard of ammunition made without a casing. The propelant was solid and required no brass case to contain it. Therefore there would be no oxygen. No oxygen. No Bang.

No the oxygen is part of the propellant mixture in caseless rounds as well. What a caseless round does is use a propellant that is solid instead of the loose powder that more conventional ammunition uses thereby sidestepping the need for a cylinder of brass to hold things together.

David

'Geeks can't admit that anything worthwhile was invented before 1981. Soon, "making cocoa" will be called "milk hacking."' - Lore Sjoberg

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Friday, February 1, 2008 4:58 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by traveler:
I have heard of ammunition made without a casing. The propelant was solid and required no brass case to contain it. Therefore there would be no oxygen. No oxygen. No Bang.

That’s extremely unlikely. Propellants can’t rely on ambient oxygen to burn. There’s just not enough in the barrel. Black powder is a good example. All the oxygen that it needs is contained in the potassium nitrate. The same is true of modern caseless propellants.

I guess we can assume Jayne’s not a weapons scientist, since he obviously got the oxygen thing wrong. Lubrication freezing and outgassing and barrel contraction due to extreme temperature variations could likely cause problem for modern firearms in space, but in the timeframe of a typical gunfight, none of these things is certain to be a showstopper.

Quote:
Originally posted by traveler:
But my real concern is how did Jayne aim Vera through the spacesuit. He was not looking down the sight and he was attempting to hit a very distinct target. Not sending random rounds hoping to hit something. Also after the firing the first round the face shield was blown apart and allowed the oxygen to escape and yet Jayne continued to fire several more rounds.

This is actually the more pressing concern. Most scifi space operas tend to dismiss the kinds of velocities and ranges involved in space travel. The truth is that given any thing remotely conceivable as a realistic scenario, Serenity was probably traveling so fast that it would have come upon the target and passed it before Jayne could have pulled the trigger, much less fire from the hip. That’s not to discount the scenario in which a person uses a firearm to destroy a target in space from a fast moving platform, but it would need to be aimed long before the target was visible beyond a point of light, and there would likely be a delay of minutes before the bullet impacted the target.

Quote:
Originally posted by traveler:
If Joss had watched the series "Men into Space" that was produced in the early 60's he would have seen the episode where a convention revolver was fired on the moon. So even 40 years ago they knew a firearm would work in space. Or they guessed it would.

Or they didn’t bother to reason it at all, and just went with what looked good.

Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

-- Cicero

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Friday, February 1, 2008 5:03 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Veteran:
I wonder if Vera needs atmosphere because she's gas operated. If there's no atmosphere there's not enough pressure to activate the mechanisim which ejects the spent cartridge and pushes the new one into the chamber. Without atmo Vera would only be able of firing one shot before jamming.

That’s a possibly. Pneumatic ejection may rely on a standard pressure to operate, I’m not sure, but after the first shot, the pressure would dissipate rapidly, so at most you could only get two shots offs.

Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

-- Cicero

FREEBROWNCOAT

Friday, February 1, 2008 5:18 AM

All in all, it looked GOOD! Tech out too much sometimes but it interesting to think it out. ANd where else but with a bunch of Browncoats to think things through. Gotta love it.

"I once hit a man in the neck at five hundred yards with a bent scope. Don't that count upstairs?"

TRAVELER

Saturday, February 2, 2008 12:48 AM

Hello Finn mac Cumhal;

As you said "Most space operas tend to dismis this".

I get used to these scifi shows ignoring this fact. They seem to forget that the spaceship is traveling at extreme velocities, in shows like Star Trek it is more than the speed of light, and yet when they pass or approach another vessel it is as if they are only going fifty miles per hour.

So you are correct that Jayne would never have the time to aim at or even see the target before Serenity would have passed through the web.
But the writers must have a story and so the physical laws must bend to satisfy the adventure.

Still Firefly felt more real than other shows I've watched. The absense of sound was the first thing I noticed that differed from past space shows I've watched. So Joss and his crew made some attempts to keep it real.

http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=28764731
Traveler

RIVERFLAN

Saturday, February 2, 2008 2:10 AM

And there's always the possibility that YoSaffBridge had slowed the ship down so the guys could position the net in exactly the right position.

I'm not going to even offer a theory about Vera, bacuase I barely know how to aim one, I certainly don't know how to point! But I do think Jayne has to be a weapons specialist- he's a mercenary, and he has to know what his weapons will and will not do. So, my theory is that Vera was just a specail futuristic weapon that wasn't designed for space, and Jayne just didn't have the termonology, or he was trying to dumb down the termonology into Captian dunny talk

PREV PAGE 1 2 3 4 NEXT PAGE