My theory about guns in Firefly
POSTED BY: Ringwraith
UPDATED: Thursday, January 2, 2003 01:21
VIEWED: 41138
PAGE 12 of 15
[q]
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. [/q]
I saw it on a rerun of Tomorrows World a few years ago... It was a rerun of stuff that had happened in the past century and we're only talking small rocks being shattered here, but still. They had one of the presenters standing in the desert in the US taking pot-shots at pebbles on the gound and there were little puffs of smole going up as the things fractured.
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:Oh, that makes more sense. Yeah, you can do that with a laser. The sudden increase in temperature causes water in porous rocks to expand rapidly and crack the rock, especially if that laser is tuned to the resonance frequencies of water. I'm sure it appeared much more powerful then it really was, but it doesn’t take a particularly powerful laser to do that.
Originally posted by Mark:
I saw it on a rerun of Tomorrows World a few years ago... It was a rerun of stuff that had happened in the past century and we're only talking small rocks being shattered here, but still. They had one of the presenters standing in the desert in the US taking pot-shots at pebbles on the gound and there were little puffs of smole going up as the things fractured.
There are some pretty powerful lasers which will come into use pretty soon as military weapons. But they won't do the kinds of things that people seem to think they will. An example of a lasers use on the battlefield is targeting income artillery shells and exploding them before they impact. This, as you can imagine, is particularly useful. But also you see that it doesn't require the kinds of destructive power that sci-fi has come to associate with lasers. All it must do is punch through the skin of the artillery shell and excite the explosive. We always assume that lasers are more destructive then they really are, which is why there seems to be so many pro-laser weapon people in the sci-fi realm, but the reality is that lasers simply are not that destructive. That's not to say that a laser can't deliver a extraordinary amount of power, but when that energy is localized in a thin beam it's destructive power is diminished. When it comes to killing people or destroying buildings, it's far more efficient to drop a bomb on the target then to surgically slice it into little pieces. A laser principle advantage over a missile or bullet is when surgical accuracy is paramount over destructiveness, as in targeting incoming artillery shells.
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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:
Originally posted by Thegn:Quote:Oh, that makes more sense. Yeah, you can do that with a laser. The sudden increase in temperature causes water in porous rocks to expand rapidly and crack the rock, especially if that laser is tuned to the resonance frequencies of water. I'm sure it appeared much more powerful then it really was, but it doesn’t take a particularly powerful laser to do that.
Originally posted by Mark:
I saw it on a rerun of Tomorrows World a few years ago... It was a rerun of stuff that had happened in the past century and we're only talking small rocks being shattered here, but still. They had one of the presenters standing in the desert in the US taking pot-shots at pebbles on the gound and there were little puffs of smole going up as the things fractured.
There are some pretty powerful lasers which will come into use pretty soon as military weapons. But they won't do the kinds of things that people seem to think they will. An example of a lasers use on the battlefield is targeting income artillery shells and exploding them before they impact. This, as you can imagine, is particularly useful. But also you see that it doesn't require the kinds of destructive power that sci-fi has come to associate with lasers. All it must do is punch through the skin of the artillery shell and excite the explosive. We always assume that lasers are more destructive then they really are, which is why there seems to be so many pro-laser weapon people in the sci-fi realm, but the reality is that lasers simply are not that destructive. That's not to say that a laser can't deliver a extraordinary amount of power, but when that energy is localized in a thin beam it's destructive power is diminished. When it comes to killing people or destroying buildings, it's far more efficient to drop a bomb on the target then to surgically slice it into little pieces. A laser principle advantage over a missile or bullet is when surgical accuracy is paramount over destructiveness, as in targeting incoming artillery shells.
I think you're probably right about the fracturing of rocks and stuff... It would take a hell of a lot of laser energy to burn through a person in combat, more that could reasonably be produced by a hand unit... If lasers do turn up in combat, they're going to be like artillery pieces. Mounted on vehicles or carriages with massive power supplies, used either for taking out enemy armour or slicing through ranks of infantry like a scythe... Or in the anti-aircraft/anti-ballistic field.
Hang on a tick... If you listen closely in 'Serenity' you hear a mention to 'Air-Tanks' being used in the battle of Serenity Valley. Assuming they mean some kind of Hover-Tank, that would be a perfect carriage/weapon combination for heavy lasers. No recoil to damage the Tank, and a transport for a big generator.
I think though, that if lasers are going to be used anywhere then it'll be in ship-to-ship engagements in vacuum. The range is whatever the collimation is good for, they're light-speed weapons (So there's no warning before a hit) and there's plenty of room for generators and lasing tubes aboard one of those Dortmunder-class Cruisers.
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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In the Safe episode, aka The Gunfight at the Slapdash Corrall, the Lawmen seemed to be armed with large revolvers, including at lease one .44 Magnum S&W and an old M1916 Colt .45. Jayne was armed with that Hopkins and Allen heavily modified revolver with the gas cylinder. The prop department was running out of large revolvers and gave Jaynes Taurus revolvers to the lawmen, perhaps? The two cattle buyers; in the fight the boss had a small cap and ball revolver, his sideman a nickle plated S&W model 10, which looked small in that crowd.
And Mal had his strange pistol, which he has yet to fire. I wait anxiously.
In the River warming scene at the end, Zoe had a full size Winchester 94, lever action and Mal a pump action Winchester Defender. A low price riot shotgun. Whatever Jayne had at the end, it used a Laser illuminator and had a relatively small barrel for a shotgun.
In Ariel we finally see some advanced weaponry. Some sort of sonic assassination device and a stungun type weapon.
Jeff
Who finds these details facinating.
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I liked the stungun. It wasn't all raygun, it was just a distruptaion of the surronding air.
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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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Regarding Mal's curious side-arm... He HAS in fact fired it... In the feature-length pilot he actually fires it a lot. Once to kill a fed in one of those nice standoff breakers that Joss likes and introduced us to in 'Fray' and multiple times in the gunfight at Sniper Gorge. It seems to work Ok for a non-standard weapon, I'm just wondering where the magazine goes.
As for this stun-gun from Ariel - Which I haven't seen yet BTW, as I haven't been able to find a download site - could it be an example of the 'Path Ionization Tazer' I mentioned earlier in this thread? I'd love to be proven right!
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.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:That gun actually reminds me of the old single-shot breach-loading 44 calibre that were used around the Civil War period.
Originally posted by Mark:
Regarding Mal's curious side-arm... He HAS in fact fired it... In the feature-length pilot he actually fires it a lot. Once to kill a fed in one of those nice standoff breakers that Joss likes and introduced us to in 'Fray' and multiple times in the gunfight at Sniper Gorge. It seems to work Ok for a non-standard weapon, I'm just wondering where the magazine goes.
Quote:It certainly appeared to function in that regard.
Originally posted by Mark:
As for this stun-gun from Ariel - Which I haven't seen yet BTW, as I haven't been able to find a download site - could it be an example of the 'Path Ionization Tazer' I mentioned earlier in this thread? I'd love to be proven right!
-----------
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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I'm pretty certain that weapon (and the blue-hands angents' weapons) are sonic based. It certainly seems that way.
WHY HANDHELD LASER WEAPONS WILL NEVER EXIST
Ok, here's the deal. Lasers require a massive amount of energy to work.
DUE TO THE LAWS OF PHYSICS, we will never find ANYTHING with an energy density high enough to sustain an energy weapon for more than a few shots.
Handheld, laser sidearms are totally out of the question, and a laser rifle would get about 10 shots, max, with a 120 lb. powercell strapped to your back.
It just won't work. Deal with it.
As for the use of guns 500 years in the future, if it can be built cheaply, mass produced, costs nothing, works, and kills people, chances are other people are going to use it to, you guessed it, kill people they don't like.
It's not as much a question of what's technologically advanced, but what's physically possible.
There's so many misconceptions when it comes to energy weapons these days it ain't even funny.
Oh wait, it is.
Ha ha.
Thank you for your time.
And, for the record, I favor swords (yes, swords) over guns when it comes to personal defense. And how long have those been around?
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Sorry about the double post. This thread is huge.
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Quote:
Originally posted by xenobob:
I'm pretty certain that weapon (and the blue-hands angents' weapons) are sonic based. It certainly seems that way.
That was my impression as well.
Agree about lasers too. People were seriously predicting through much of the 20th century that one day we would all have flying cars. Today the idea is laughable. Despite the fact that the military has been investigating the technology since at least the 1960s, a hand-held laser type personal weapon will surely prove to be just as impractical, if not impossible. Furthermore, even if they did finally come up with one someday, it will be NOTHING like what we've seen in science fiction. For one thing, bright beams of light or pulses of energy shooting out of your weapon toward your target may look way cool on a TV show or in a video game, but on a real battlefield it would be an EXTREME LIABILITY. Soldiers generally tend not to want to give away their position to the enemy.
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