Futuristic Assault Rifle

artificial gravity

In normal, mainstream science fiction, ala Star Trek, artificial gravity is explained via use of "artificial gravity generators" which create streams of graviton particles to make gravity, apparently without making a planet-sized gravity well to go with it.

However, this is just sci-fi. Of all the forces in the universe, gravity is the least understood by science. We don't know if graviton particles even exist. You can't see gravity, and the only way to measure it is to measure the acceleration of objects being affected by it. Gravity, and how it works, is still a complete mystery to science today. It seems despite all of our achievements, God is still smarter than us.

Anyway, I choose the more realistic route. If you want gravity in space, you build a spaceship or space station with a rotating section, or rotate the whole thing. Here's how it works.

Imagine a giant (empty) soup can, floating in space. Now, spin it (along the long axis, like it was rolling on the floor). Now, if you were standing on the inside of the can, centrifigal (sp?) force would pull you towards the walls of the can, perpindicular to the rotational axis. THis is ONLY true if you were moving WITH the side of the can. If you floating in the middle, and it was moving around you, you would feel no force, because you wouldn't be moving. All you have to do is make the can big enough so that it doesn't need more than 2 or 3 rpm to cause objects to accelerate at 9.8 meters per second squared, and boom! For all intensive purposes, you have gravity. There are some catches, though. For instance, if you were in a big space station, hopped into a really fast car, and drove against the rotation, you would, in effect, be cancelling out the centrifuge, and the faster you went, the less you'd weigh. If you maganged to move as fast in one direction as the floor was rotating in the other, you'd be weightless. On the other hand, if you drove in the same direction as the rotation, you'd get heavier, the faster you went.

You think this would effect bullet trajectory? I mean, the bullet WOULD still have the same mass, it just would have, actually, longer range, firing against the rotation, and shorter range, firing with it. Interesting!

A very good website on this subject, created by a very knowledgable fellow with whom I've corresponded more than once, can be found HERE

In space, with the right materials and funding, you could build a very large soup can. Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill, who originally came up with the idea for the space station I just described, estimated that with the technology available in the 80's, we could've built a soup can almost twenty miles long, with a diameter of four miles. On the inside of said can, you put a few hundred feet of topsoil, plant vegetation, and trees, and have transparent sections in the hull and large mirrors outside to reflect in sunlight. Plus, with nearly four miles of atmosphere in the middle, there'd be a somewhat blue "sky", clouds, and natural rainfall. Wiggy, huh? LOL


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Plug

While the subject is up, I may as well say that anyone who would like to read my story need only email or PM me, and I'll email it to you. It's 160K or so Microsoft Word file, down to about 40K when I put it in a .zip file. It's about 20 typewritten pages long, as well (single space, size 10 font). It's still a work in progress. I mean, I've finished the story, but I'm not done editing it.

Some other bits of my writing can be found HERE. I write stories for Planet AvP to practice my writing, and help develop my prose. Also, the little tidbits of RKBA I toss in get spread to the legions of gamers that read our stories. :D
 
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As far as the soup can goes that is all very true. Rotating mass would probably be the easiest of the differant options for artificial gravity. The force however is centripital (not trying to be a turd but if it matters for refferance) centrifical force is the 'theoretical' force that one feels and cetripital force is the actual force aplied on the object.
 
Well darn.. all my near future stories featured near starving humans with sledgehammers and rusty shotguns with corroded ammo fighting giant cockroaches for control of the smoldering ruins of our once perfect society. but then hey, I LIKE the apes movies.

You could go "caseless' explain that the rifles have internal 'dampers" to counteract the force of the bullet.. use electromagnetes or something. i think we are indeed moving towards composite materials, ceramic barrels, projectiles etc and HIGH velocitys.

In an episode of "soldiers" some historian pointed out that since the age of firearms began the average foot soldiers battle dress hasn't changed much, ie helmet, clothes and a weapon, maybe a leather or frag vest. Nations are SLOW to change, note we still have m-16/m4's and we STILL issue pump shotguns.

In a zero g environment you really NEED a knife fight/hth combat scene.. guns are fine but in zero g everything is in spite of physics.. think about it. your average "trooper" should be packing a serious monoblade or 'hatchet' for the close in stuff, simply because you NEVER EVER want to penetrate the hull of a space ship. After all if the projectiles are moving fast enough to defeat a level 4 vest, they are moving fast enough to damage a stapship. Sawed off shotguns and cutlasses?? yah.. space pirates!
 
Pirates

Actually, in my mental universe notes for this story's setting, I've made note that the shotgun is the favored weapon for clearing spaceships. While a combat starship or huge space habitat 20 miles long is perfectly safe to fire a rifle in, a small space station or hydrogen-tanker is NOT. And even if the bulkhead is armored and a rifle won't overpenetrate, there's still the very serious problem of ricochets.

You might see the introduction of Pirates in later stories as well. I'm sure one or two of them will be weilding a cutlass. Actually, in skilled hands, a sword is a superb close-quarters-battle weapon, come to think of it.
 
DOWN WITH BEAM WEAPONS!

You're on the right track sticking with powder and bullet, caseless or not. Beam weapons a la "Star Trek" or "Star Wars" are an astonishingly silly idea. Lasers might be used to blind snipers, but to make one equal the power of a standard rifle would require a vast amount of energy. And all that energy is very easy to block (even with dust or snow) and very easy to trace back to the shooter. Moreover, why would you ever *need* an amazingly expensive laser gun just to do what a $150 rifle will do already? Bullets just kill people so well. The 405 grain "particles" out of an ancient .45-70 still kill just as well now as they did back in 1873, and dead is dead. If you have more steel to get through, just get a bigger bullet. If you have armor to get through, use depleted uranium shells. The only problem I can see with standard weapons is the recoil in zero-g. Presumably, though, anyone in a gun fight in space is going to have some rockets on his back for control. It's a lot easier to control stability that way than to try to strap on some massive laser power generator. You could also have compensators on space tanks to reduce the recoil. Space tanks. I like that.

As far as penetrating the hull, keep in mind that any invaders will likely be in suits and will WANT to put as many holes in the hull as possible, probably from the outside. Why not just put a bunch of holes through the place with a sniper rifle? The defenders, stuck with short-range shotgun shells designed to underpenetrate, will be at a serious disadvantage if they even get a chance to shoot back at all.
 
WHAT?! You guys are going crazy with all this specualation. My head my well explode (though it is very fun. Too bad more people haven't caught onto this thread). Somebody explain in more detail: why would you want melee weapons? WHY?! When have they ever been used in the last 50 years? In Korea, Vietnam and other places some people where known to run around with katana blades. Has anyone heard of chilling tales of the blade carrying soldier killing thousands with his trusty sword in hand, all who oppose him falling dead having been stricken down from the unmatchable force that is the sword? NO! Hell no! That's silly. Maybe someone got poked really bad once, but really. Don't be rediculous. You can lift a blade just as easy as a rifle. The differance is you don't have to charge across the room and you can make this action 700 times a minutes. Try that with a butter knife - good luck - now a large melee weapon. Anyone see a problem with that? Melee = very cool eye candy. Good for a book, i'll admit. So, maybe put it in. But is it really feasable ESPECIALLY in a futuristic space environment? Maybe I'm being dumb. this is my oppinion...there was something else...
 
Shotgun: cool. Good idea. I like the Pancor Jackhammer. Anything like that being considered? Very cool shogun. Bullpup style, fully automatic, somewhere around 50-100 rounds (somebody correct me on this). How about that? Good if you want to take the ship. But why not penetrate the hull? How thin is this hull anyways? Are we talking small stuff or like an armored frieghter? I would think anything in space would be heavily armored to resist those tiny pieces of junk wizzing around. If a bullet goes through it it shouldn't be in space.
And, Lasers are kick-ass. They are in thier infancy now but mark my words: They WILL be in regular combat use very soon. In the next world war you will see these mounted on almost every vehicle in the armed service. They are already being used to blast bilistic missile out of the sky mounted on a converted 747. They can hit targets with pinpoint accuracy from long range - even in the atmosphere - and get smaller all the time. If a blast of light lasting .005 seconds is tracable then what is a bullet traveling at 3000 - hell 5000 fps?
Who wants to put money on this? If only there was a way I'd be a rich man in my retirement.
They do require a vast amount of energy and this is energy we have, my friend. No problem. In 200 years think how effeicient these will be. The 'power generator' by then would be small. I bet you could laod a charge much like a clip, expend it, remove it, then pop in a new one. The energy can be blocked but so can a bullet. Everything has a cause and effect, bullets included. The laser would be very expensive. But a sniper rifle is more expensive than a BB gun because it's BETTER. A laser would be better than a rifle (in some or most cases, not all). Everything comes at a cost. You pay for what you get (mostly).
Space tanks: good.
 
Melting Bullets ROCK

Hey, Nightcrawler...I think you should get the specs on those melting bullets from the Original Mall Ninja, Pretty Boy :D

Seriously, though, folks. I've read the story and it's really good, especially the technical/weapons aspect.

Other than that, most of this sci-fi science stuff just goes right over my head (I do believe I have after-burner marks up there).
 
In the year 2183 the Military will use Gundam Mobile Suits:D
And yes i have been looking at Cartoon Networke for to long.
 
nanotech?

Eh...I dunno...there's really no need to mention in the story as it's written, and I'm afraid doing so would open up a whole technological can of worms that I'm not informed enough about to get right....
 
I touch on a few possibilities for nanotechnology in some of my stuff. It's hard to envision a mature nanotechnological society though, because it would be so incredibly different from almost anything we can imagine.
 
Future infantry weapons

Well, projectile weapons are probably alwasy going to be the weapon of choice, because , no pun intended, you'll always get more bang for the buck out of them. Beam weapons are too inefficient for standard infantry to carry. Particle beam weapons may eventually find limited use as either crew served of vehicle mounted weaponry, but the amount of damage they inflict, compared to the amount of energy required would always make them less efficient by comparison to a projectile.

Railguns on the other hand, may eventually become effective man portable weapons. They'd make for hellacious artillery too, which is where we're most likely to see them first. It's going to be a long time before we see a good gauss powered hunting rifle with a 20,000 fps muzzle velocity though : ) That would make a heck of a varmint rifle.

Caseless ammo should theoretcally start becoming the ammo of choice, because onece they get manufacturing faculities for it built, it'll be a lot less resouce intensive than brass cased ammo. The arms themselves would be considerably more efficient, although we have yet to see much from the HK G-11 project. As I understand it, it's been slowed by funding and politics.
 
actually...

As far as I know, the G11 has been cancelled. I think it was a questionable idea, anyway. I mean, the projectiles were so small, the idea was to hit the same badguy with three rounds, hence the very high cyclic rate of the burst fire mode. I wonder if caseless ammo works when wet. What about if you step on a loose round? Does the propellant crumble like a stale cookie?
 
The G11 was cancelled for financial reasons: the unification of Germany left the country with a lot of new expenses, and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc made military research a non-priority.
The design is sound, the problem was with the formula for the powder...it left too much residue in the chamber which led to cook-off.
 
I like the idea of caseless ammo. but if the combat zone is raw vacum space and starships, I'd prefer something with a big bore
launching multiple projectile rounds. Say a shotgun-type weapon shooting flechettes...capable of puncturing a space suit, but not a ships hull.:cool:
 
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