My theory about guns in Firefly
POSTED BY: Ringwraith
UPDATED: Thursday, January 2, 2003 01:21
VIEWED: 41138
PAGE 11 of 15
Well thank you very much Hobbes... Usually when I post in a forum like this, the very next message is one saying "You're so totally wrong because XYZ"... It's just nice to be agreed with.
I haven't seen safe yet. I download the episodes from my vantage point here in the Uk and so I don't get to see the shows for quite a while... I've got Shindig downloading as we speak.
But Re: the whining from the guns you can hear in some of the earlier episodes, if that's what you mean you can hear in Safe... A whine in electronics usually means a sympathetic vibration in a transformer coil/EM Coil caused by a high-frequency signal. It's why some older household appliances whine a little when turned on.... Now that would be a bad thing in a military rifle... After all, with a regular gun, you can cock the action almost silently, or do it a long way from target... A gun with a whining coil in it would have to be done on the spot, would radiate a detectable signal and would produce a uniform (Same every time the gun's cocked) sound pattern before firing, making it vulnerable to being picked up by enemy listening posts.
There are designs for electrical impulse guns... An Australian guy has built one that can fire at a top speed of 1,000,000 rounds per minute (Although it only has a few hundred in the magazine) but those things are Very difficult to reload at any speed.
To my mind, a whine from a gun means one of two things... Either a switched mode power supply or the breech replaced by a type of Solenoid that uses an EM pulse to throw the bullet. Such a design would obviate the need for brass and propellant, would still produce a big bang as you fired, would be above our tech level but maybe below the level of 2458... It would also partially agree with my "lower tech" hypothesis as the bullets could be anything metallic... Not even having to be ferrous as everyone knows who's seen The Spy Who Loved Me. Although it would still require a whole bunch of those high precision components... Although maybe less than a laser.
Regarding laser-weapons... I see Joss has decreed that they do exist, but have just not shown up yet. Well that agrees with the whole "not developed during the war for good reasons" thing. But I wonder what kind of lasers they will be? Killing beams of rose-tinted death? Or simply a part of a larger whole? Perhaps Joss could be talking about a path-ionization Tazer. It's a weapon the military is working on right now... It uses a laser pulse to ionize a path in the air to the target and then it modulates an electrical current down the path. It gives the weapon a Stun/Kill option, but the gun has no real armour penetration value and could easily be flummoxed by copper-weave body armour. We could build one today, but we can't make the laser small enough. The module required is table-top sized.
This is one model of gun that would be of no use in Vacuum or in explosive atmospheres... I am very surprised we haven't seen more use of non-lethal weapons by the Alliance... At the moment such research is going strong, so how come the big "A" has decided to stick with guns? Why aren't we seeing more bowel-relaxer guns, or stick-foam sprays, fast acting tranquilliser darts or trained bacteria?
Oh well, I'm sure Joss will explain all in good time.
Oh, by the way Hobbes... If you've read 1633 (And I presume 1632) Have you read any of David Weber's Honor Harrington series? If not then you absolutely MUST!!!! Think of it as Firefly with a budget of millions and a lot more warships.
Twelve spheres of unendurable brightness spalled the velvety blackness of space.
The silence on Lester Tourville's flag bridge was absolute
And then the spell was broken as Shannon Foraker looked up from her console from where she had just sent a seemingly innocent command to the main computers of State Security's finest Superdreadnoughts.
"Oops." She said.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Mark:
...replaced by a type of Solenoid that uses an EM pulse to throw the bullet. Although it would still require a whole bunch of those high precision components... Although maybe less than a laser.
This is one model of gun that would be of no use in Vacuum or in explosive atmospheres... I am very surprised we haven't seen more use of non-lethal weapons by the Alliance... At the moment such research is going strong, so how come the big "A" has decided to stick with guns? Why aren't we seeing more bowel-relaxer guns, or stick-foam sprays, fast acting tranquilliser darts or trained bacteria?
Oh, by the way Hobbes... If you've read 1633 (And I presume 1632) Have you read any of David Weber's Honor Harrington series? If not then you absolutely MUST!!!! Think of it as Firefly with a budget of millions and a lot more warships.
Alright, a billion points to respond to...
So nailgun/railgun tech yes? We're working on it now, the Army has some test units I belive.
Well now would you expect the KGB or Gespato to use nonlethal weapons? That's the image the Alliance is projecting so I'm not really suprised by the lack of nonlethal weapons. Unless of course they need someone alive, maybe then we will see some tranks/foam sprays/whatever.
As regards the lasers they better not be visible outside the atmosphere :)
As for David Weber I do belive I've read every book he has (with the last four or five Honors in hardcover) and wait for more :)
You read In Death Ground (and Crusade, and the first one)? I really would like more books in that series (the sequel to IDG was too one-sided to enjoy).
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May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May you be in heaven an hour before
The Devil knows you’re dead.
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Hobbes:
I've read almost every DW book except for On Death Ground and The Shiva Option... I didn't much care for all those books he wrote with Steve White... Although they did give me a new appreciation for the song 'Mr. Zoot Suit'.
That's a point... Are we going to see powered combat armour in Firefly? I doubt it, but it'd be cool.
The Gestapo using non-lethal weapons? Sure! You can't torture information out of a corpse... Plus there's the whole problem of firing a projectile weapon inside a space-vehicle. The crew of the Carrion-nest were killed when Jayne's rounds punched through their window... Wouldn't it be more sensible to use non-lethal or at least non-penetrating weapons in a place where a stray round could kill you all?
Regarding the nailgun/railgun arrangement... it's not quite the same technique... Nailguns tend to use compressed air to drive a nail, whereas a railgun contains two... Well... Rails. A surge of energy is put into the rails which throws an arm forward through a magnetic field. In this case, the gun is simply a small cluster of core-aligned superconductor coils. Current railguns (Which I've known people to build in their garages) have the rails extending the length of the barrel. This would have to be much more compact.
Oh, by the way... I've figured out why Jayne's Vera needed air around her to fire... Assuming that the propellant contained fixed oxygen to enable it to fire, the other problem would be the pressure differential. A regularly firing rifle would have the presure of air outside the breech to counter the inner pressure, whereas in a vacuum you have a much higher differential and it's probable the gun would explode if firing in space.
Which I'm sure wouldn't be nice.
Twelve spheres of unendurable brightness spalled the velvety blackness of space.
The silence on Lester Tourville's flag bridge was absolute
And then the spell was broken as Shannon Foraker looked up from her console from where she had just sent a seemingly innocent command to the main computers of State Security's finest Superdreadnoughts.
"Oops." She said.
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My $0.02
Personal energy weapons are impossible simply because there is no way to pack sufficient energy into a small enough space without a matter/anti-matter reaction. (For the only reasonable SF alternative see David Drake's Hammer's Slammers.) A gun has the benefit that a single well-aimed bullet is just as lethal as an entire 30 round magazine.
Although the original VO referred to moons, that would cause signficant barriers to trade due to different orbital periods. Can you imagine trade in an environment where the travel time changes continuously? Inter-stellar travel means the intra-stellar distances are insignificant.
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Quote:
Originally posted by EricBall:
My $0.02
Personal energy weapons are impossible simply because there is no way to pack sufficient energy into a small enough space without a matter/anti-matter reaction. (For the only reasonable SF alternative see David Drake's Hammer's Slammers.) A gun has the benefit that a single well-aimed bullet is just as lethal as an entire 30 round magazine.
The Military has been experimenting with back-pack lasers since the 60s and 70s and they've produced some nice models that can shatter rocks at several dozen meters from a backpack sized power cell. Whether a portable energy weapon is possible or not depends on the type of weapon and how you want to carry it off. After all, Tazers are energy weapons and they work. Joe Haldeman came up with a sensible idea to make the problem of portable power packs. Just stuff them into the holster and connect the two with wires. With the power problem, could it be solved with a superconducting capacitor and a much smaller power source and just giving it a longer recharge time?
I still stand by what I said about no-one using them even if they were available, other than in space.
As for bullets and precision? One bullet that hits is worth more than a thousand that miss. But how do you ensure the bullet hits? The idea of smart-bullets is all well and good, but the typical slug can only self-aim by a little over a long range, and to make a smart bullet effective for tracking a target and major evasion, you need essentially small missiles, too big for a hand gun.
We can't be sure how their energy weapons work, but I still say the 'ol fashioned bullets are the best bet.
Quote:
Although the original VO referred to moons, that would cause signficant barriers to trade due to different orbital periods. Can you imagine trade in an environment where the travel time changes continuously? Inter-stellar travel means the intra-stellar distances are insignificant.
I think there might have been a slightly off interpretation of the original voice-over... It says we found a new earth and hundreds of new planets were terraformed... It doesn't actually say they were in the same system. Trouble is, Serenity would have to travel at 30,000 times the speed of light to get anywhere in a reaonable amount of time... Add this to the fact that in 450 years we have been able to use up the Earth, shift the population to another GALAXY!!! Terraform a bunch of new worlds and fight a Civil war. I think either the colony mission was made in cryo and took a hell of a long time that isn't figured in, or they found a wormhole.
Which still doesn't explain inter-stellar travel for Serenity. But never mind, trust in Joss.
Twelve spheres of unendurable brightness spalled the velvety blackness of space.
The silence on Lester Tourville's flag bridge was absolute
And then the spell was broken as Shannon Foraker looked up from her console from where she had just sent a seemingly innocent command to the main computers of State Security's finest Superdreadnoughts.
"Oops." She said.
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Quote:I don't know where you got this, but to the best of my knowledge it is incorrect. The Lockheed Backpack Laser program was cancelled because it could not produce usable results. Had it been able to shatters rocks from several dozen meters I believe it would have certainly continued. I don't know of any other development on backpack laser weaponry.
Originally posted by Mark:
The Military has been experimenting with back-pack lasers since the 60s and 70s and they've produced some nice models that can shatter rocks at several dozen meters from a backpack sized power cell.
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In the Dark Ages, Romano-Celtic Britannia was over-run by Viking-like cultures collectively called the Anglo-Saxons. They were led by warlords called Drytinns, and the greatest warriors among them were the Thegns.
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Quote:I don't think it is reasonable to assume that the orbital periods of moons would interfere with inter-planetary trade. In interplanetary travel a straight line is never the 'fastest' way to get from one planet/moon to another. The trajectories are always circular or at least curved. The orbital periods of moons would not affect the distances the way you seem to be saying it would. I realize this description of interplanetary travel is somewhat vague and nebulous, but baring going into a lot of orbital mechanics you're just going to have to trust me.
Originally posted by EricBall:
Although the original VO referred to moons, that would cause signficant barriers to trade due to different orbital periods. Can you imagine trade in an environment where the travel time changes continuously? Inter-stellar travel means the intra-stellar distances are insignificant.
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In the Dark Ages, Romano-Celtic Britannia was over-run by Viking-like cultures collectively called the Anglo-Saxons. They were led by warlords called Drytinns, and the greatest warriors among them were the Thegns.
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How wouldn't orbital mechanics impact the time/distance relationship between moons/planets? Simply speaking, there are going to be times where Mars is on the other side of the Sun from Earth; which has got to impact travel times, especially if you keep acceleration within reasonable boundaries.
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Quote:That's right. Orbital periods will impact the travel distances between planets, because of the enormous orbital radii of the planets around the sun. But what you seemed to be talking about was travel distances between moons. The orbital radii of moons around a planet are not particularly large compared to solar orbital radii. If you were talking about solar radii of planets that would be a different story, but I still don't think it will prevent interplanetary trade. There was trade between Colonial America and Britain, and often that trade was restricted to certain times of the year, because the Atlantic may have been too perilous during particularly stormy seasons. Yet trade still flourished.
Originally posted by EricBall:
How wouldn't orbital mechanics impact the time/distance relationship between moons/planets? Simply speaking, there are going to be times where Mars is on the other side of the Sun from Earth; which has got to impact travel times, especially if you keep acceleration within reasonable boundaries.
Anyway, this is why I thought you were talking about moons:
Quote:Sorry if I misunderstood what you meant.
Originally posted by EricBall:
Although the original VO referred to moons, that would cause signficant barriers to trade due to different orbital periods.
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In the Dark Ages, Romano-Celtic Britannia was over-run by Viking-like cultures collectively called the Anglo-Saxons. They were led by warlords called Drytinns, and the greatest warriors among them were the Thegns.
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