My theory about guns in Firefly
POSTED BY: Ringwraith
UPDATED: Thursday, January 2, 2003 01:21
VIEWED: 41138
PAGE 13 of 15
Quote:Precisely what law(s) of physics are you referring to?
Originally posted by xenobob:
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.
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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:
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.
You would never have beams of light or pulses coming out of the weapon to give your position away to the enemy... You only get a visible beam if the beam scatters and that is precisely what you design a laser NOT to do. In actual fact, guns give away your position (With muzzle flash and report) more than a laser would, but then we're getting back to the whole thing I said before about anti-laser aerosol vapour and pulse ionisation tazers. Such a tazer, which seems to be what was used in arial, wouldn't need more than a fraction of the power used by a killing laser, as it doesn't have to even burn a person, just ionise the air.
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:Quote:
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.
You would never have beams of light or pulses coming out of the weapon to give your position away to the enemy... You only get a visible beam if the beam scatters and that is precisely what you design a laser NOT to do. In actual fact, guns give away your position (With muzzle flash and report) more than a laser would, but then we're getting back to the whole thing I said before about anti-laser aerosol vapour and pulse ionisation tazers. Such a tazer, which seems to be what was used in arial, wouldn't need more than a fraction of the power used by a killing laser, as it doesn't have to even burn a person, just ionise the air.
Exactly. a real laser wouldn't be anything like like they're usually depicted in sci-fi TV/movies. (For that matter, the way convential guns are depicted by Hollywood is highly unrealistic as well.) Regardless, even a realistic laser is unlikely ever to become a hand weapon, even in the future, which I think we're all agreed on? I haven't read everything on this thread.
Sonic guns or tazers? Well honestly I'm really in over my head here, so maybe I should just shut up and let the experts talk about this stuff.
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Quote:
Exactly. a real laser wouldn't be anything like like they're usually depicted in sci-fi TV/movies. (For that matter, the way convential guns are depicted by Hollywood is highly unrealistic as well.) Regardless, even a realistic laser is unlikely ever to become a hand weapon, even in the future, which I think we're all agreed on? I haven't read everything on this thread.
Yes, I think we're all concurring on the impossibility of laser pistols as man-killers... Or at least the impossibility of them burning through a man. Hollywood is more concerned with appearances than with substance.
With real guns, there's the whole problem with guns firing fifty bullets from a ten round magazine and the guns sounding wrong or punching through walls when they sould bounce off... Or vice versa.
Quote:
Sonic guns or tazers? Well honestly I'm really in over my head here, so maybe I should just shut up and let the experts talk about this stuff.
I'm not sure about Sonic Guns... I know sound can be lethal, entering the bell chamber of St. Paul's cathedral when a peal is being rung is certain death, and quite a horrible death at that. There's a murder mystery called the 'Nine Tailors' that features a men being killed by a sonic bombardment... The trouble is that to create such a sound requires several tons of church-bells... I'm not sure if, like the lasers, it would be possible to create a sonic disruption wave in a portable system.
I know the tazers are possible... One's alreay been built by the American team working on non-lethal weaponry... The only problem is it would require the shrinking of the laser emitter and that *Would* be scientifically feasable.
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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I personally think railguns show a lot of promise.
Not in hand weapons, of course, because they are also pretty energy hungry, but would be great for big, capital ships in space.
Projectile weapons are good as ship-to-ship weapons because, due to lack of any friction whatsoever, they have unlimited range, move much faster than in an atmosphere, and they're probably going to blow through a ship's hull no matter how much armor they have. An armor peircing round of depleted uranium the size of a volkswagen, going a dozen kilometers a second, is going to cause some serious damage. And it's not that far fetched, the Department of Defense built their own railgun to test the idea, a 5 MegAmp beast that shoots a 5kg projectile at over 4 Kilometers a second(!). And it works.
Now that's some serious firepower.
Here's some more info about lasers for ya:
Weapons-grade, extremely high energy lasers are really easy to see, as they zap any air molecules between them and the target. It looks sorta like a linear lightning bolt. But, since they don't need to be there for more than a moment to kill things, and they go the speed of light, it would probably be only a quick flash. And they are totally invisibile in a vacuum.
The size of the optics necessary to properly point and focus a laser beam depends on the frequency of the laser and the range to the target.
This means that reallistically, a hand-held laser weapon would look more like a big flashlight or a searchlight than a gunpowder weapon. A Vehicle- or ship-mounted weapon is likely to have optics many yards across.
They are incredibly accurate, as they go only in a straight line at the speed of light. How convenient. They would be great for point-defense weapon systems on large ships, to destroy fighters and missiles.
They can dump enough energy into an object to make it actually explode.
Weather gets in their way. All lasers have limited ranges in an atmosphere.
Smoke and fog will block them, and rain or snow will degrade them.
Some frequencies of light cannot penetrate atmospheres at all.
The best frequencies seem to be Infrared or blue-green visible light for laser weapons.
The only hand-held laser weapon I can really see being used would be a single-shot, high-power sniper rifle type weapon; a sniper could use a series of simple mirrors to take out a target while being totally concealed. But then again, a reflective surface is a great defense against lasers. But it also makes it really damn hard to hide.
And this Tazer you speak of is also called an
electrolaser, it shoots a low-power laser beam to ionize the air, then follows it with an electrical charge that follows the path of the laser to the target. Yes, they're building them today, and it is a great idea.
Unfortunately, they are pretty limited by humidity or rain, as the electric bolt tends to jump off the laser beam to other paths of low resistance. They do not work in space, as there's no air to ionize, instead they simply arc randomly to some nearby metal object.
The best part is that they have stun and kill settings, a low powered blast will most likely stun the target, while a full-powered one will probably stop their heart, and, well, kill them.
Neat, huh?
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Quote:
Originally posted by xenobob:
I personally think railguns show a lot of promise.This means that reallistically, a hand-held laser weapon would look more like a big flashlight.
There is a non-lethal weapon with pulsing laser that looks like a very large 12-cell flashlight. It works in tests and disorients people when shined in their face.
Quote:
They can dump enough energy into an object to make it actually explode.
The US Army has a Hummer mounted laser system for destroying exposed ordnance by laser burning. So it weights about a ton. It works by buring the explosive shell in such a way that it doesn't explode immediately, and by the time it does the structure of the explosive is so disruptive it is ineffective.
Jeff
Who didn't bookmark the website dammnit.
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Wrong! In aliens they used a modified M16 or something modern (not the thompson). That's why the magazine is wide enough to look like it holds rifle bullets.
Otherwise your comments are totally supported here, the case made the gun look so much cooler and futuristic.
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And by the by, this debate is pretty long so far so I didn't really read it all, but I noticed at least SOMEONE was able to realize that the guns DON'T make regular gun noises! Not only in Jaynestown, but in the ambush in our Mrs. Reynolds and also, I believe, in the pilot (Serenity, not Train Job), the guns not only made a high pitched whine when primed, like a laser or something powering up, but when fired they made a distinctly sci-fi future weapon sound. This is pretty much every time I've heard a gun fired in the show.
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Those of you who honestly can't hear it, I find this hard to believe. I was watching Our Mrs. Reynolds and it was so weird and out of place that it was plain as day. The guns are somehow futuristic.
And to add to this debate, I imagine Joss may have ahd a hand in throwing the gunnies for a loop with the oddity of a normally functioning modern weapon in the future that also happens to make SPACE SOUNDS.
Now, if you want a future explanation (besides the absurdly wonderful "the makers of the show are screwing with you"), try this - the show prides itself on its good amount of realism (silence in space, mostly, also the lack of aliens). Now, why don't the guns use some fantastic new kinetic tech, but are fashioned like old guns in sort of a retro thing, like how everyone loves samurai swords now, even though I doubt most people use them for self defense? Future gun, retro look.
And the outrageous explanations on why old guns are here are just pointless. They're future guns. Listen to the space sounds!
PS Railguns ro>
Quote:
Originally posted by Enderspawn:
Wrong! In aliens they used a modified M16 or something modern (not the thompson). That's why the magazine is wide enough to look like it holds rifle bullets.
Otherwise your comments are totally supported here, the case made the gun look so much cooler and futuristic.
Umm, what exactly do you mean by "that's why the magazine to look like it holds rifle bullets"?
Besides, the M41 was supposed to fire caseless ammunition anyway.
The Pulse rifle magazine was just a regular 20 round thompson magazine with a peice of resin on the end.
Have you ever actually looked at the Pulse rifle?
The only gun to use M-16 parts in the entire movie was the flamethrower. The carrying handle was taken from an M-16, and the very back of the flamethrower was the receiver of an M-16.
But the pulse rifle was definitely an M1A1 Thompson SMG, with a Remington 870 shotgun (in a SPAS-12 Cage) below it.
They even have kits where you can take an airsoft thompson and turn it into a replica pulse rifle.
Here are some pics to prove it:
[img]
Shot of the Pulse rifle I found on the web.
[img]
Shot of the thompson I found on the web. Notice the similarities.
[img]
Badly altered version of the above Thompson pic.
[img]
[img]
The pulse rifle in the movie.
It's pretty obvious that the pulse rifle was a Thompson. Deal with it.
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WHoops! I meant the OTHER movie with pulse rifles...looks like I dropped the ball there.
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