To my understanding some of the biggest problems for shooting guns in space are in no particular order:
>recoil
>heating of the gun when firing
>lubrication
>ergonomics of shouldering and aiming a rifle in a space suit.
Now I did some basic napkin math (I cut a lot of corners) for how much a basic AR-15 would heat up assuming the heat isn't dissipated by convection or conduction due to being fired in a vacuum, and assuming radiating is so slow it is negligible. I came up with a roughly 70 degrees Celsius rise in temperature from firing one full magazine (30 rounds), so you can see how it can add up quite fast if you get into prolonged combat.
Basically my idea for solving the issue of over heating and recoil is to mount a pressurized canister containing 1 kg of liquid ammonia under the barrel/as near as possible to the chamber, and a Cold Gas Thruster nozzles somewhere near the barrel end, pointing backwards/slightly to the side. Then come up with a way to link a mechanical valve to the gas operating system of the AR, so that as you fire the gun, and the bolt cycles, it briefly opens the valve and some of the pressurized ammonia is vented through heat pipes on the surface of the barrel, and out from the thrusters at the same time as the gun fires the actual boolet.
The point of using ammonia specifically, is that since it is in a liquid state when pressurized, it has to go through a phase change from liquid to gas within the tank, so it would basically suck heat out from its surrounding system to allow the liquid to vaporize. Just like the liquid gas bottle in your gas grill.
The number I came up with is that with 1kg bottle of pressurized liquid ammonia, you could "suck out" roughly 1372 Kilojoules of heat energy away from the gun just by venting the bottle and letting the liquid ammonia vaporize. Assuming roughly 60% of the energy from firing a gun is lost to heat, that means you could counteract the heating from firing approximately 460 rounds with one container of liquid ammonia. I think that would be kinda cool.
Now I'm not an engineer, so I have no idea how to actually calculate the amount of thrust you could get out of 1kg of pressurized ammonia, and how to adjust it to compensate for the recoil, but maybe some enterprising anon could come up with guesstimate for the amount of thrust you could get from 1kg of pressurized liquid ammonia.
pls DELET, is secret information
Not claiming to be a math genius or anything, but it seems like there are some issues with your assumptions here.
You seem to have assumed that all the energy not spent on accelerating the projectile ends up in the gun. It doesn't - the gas is still very hot by the time it leaves the gun. But its also the worst possible case and makes the math easy, so understandable
3000 j/g for the powder is also a little low for a SCHV. It should be closer to 3700-3900
Using the weight of the whole gun will dramatically lower the actual relevant temperature increase which is to the barrel (realistically the temperature of the section about 5" forward of the bolt face where the barrel gets hottest but you don't need to be that specific). The barrel will conduct heat to the rest of the rifle, but not fast enough to make using the mass of the whole rifle realistic. HBAR barrel weight is like 950g-ish?
You might also find pic related interesting - it was obviously done in atmosphere, but it shows the temperature gain over time firing cyclic (with mag changes every 30 rnds) until rupture. The first mag seems to get you up to ~160C at the hottest part of the barrel.
>But its also the worst possible case and makes the math easy, so understandable
I made the assumption for the worst case yeah. I tried to calculate the absolute minimum number of shots that the cooling effect would compensate for. The mass of the part of the gun that heats up doesn't really affect these calculations. If it is just the barrel (1kg~) instead of the entire gun (3kg~) that heats up, it just means that single shot will heat it up 6,9 degrees instead of 2,3 degrees, but single blast of the coolant will also reduce the temperature by the same amount since there is less mass to cool down.
The 540 rounds in your pic is actually fairly close to what I got for the number of rounds that 1kg coolant would be good for. Neat.
Cold welding could be somewhat of an issue that might need investigating. Metals tend to stick together in a vacuum when compressed, since there's no oxygen in space to form an oxide layer like here on Earth. It turns out bare metal naturally wants to stick to itself. We might need to take this into consideration when designing things like firearm bolt assemblies that are often under compression
a bit of oil or just dirt can fix this issue
or using two different types of metal
Lubricants are tricky in space, since they just boil off or freeze solid.
Could it be attached and stored in a translucent tube with a cheap blender motor to stir it and even out the internal temperature? Also could you add your favorite color of Kool Aide powder to change the color and make it look cool and outer spacey?
NASA already developed powdered lubricant
I thought the army developed MoS2 for the Middle East.
But it’s not getting cold, the ammonia is just reducing the heat. The gun will still be just as hot as a gun fired on earth.
"cold welding" just refers to joining metal without heat and it often happens unintentionally in space. In a firearm cold welding would be an unintentional side-effect of having compressed metalic parts in a vacuum.
cold welding doesn't have to be cold
Solid Lubricants, people. Graphite if you're on a budget and Molybdenum Disulfide (MoS2) if you've got some cash.
Normally we don't use graphite because it attracts water but that's not really an issue in space.
I think i might have a good one
Warhammer has some awesome lore but the designs are fugly and dumb. I'm not surprised why british people wouldn't know anything about guns but they could have picked up a book or something. And don't get me started on the bellbottom marine armor. Looks like they added a bellbottom to the fricking magazine here.
You can definitely use a cold gas thruster to cancel out the recoil though I dont understand why you would want it to be ammonia. Also as you use up the gas it lowers it temperature although not enough to absorb all the heat. To remove the heat you would need radiators and they would have to be quite big. There are lubricants developed for vacuum although with a gun in a vacuum you could have cold welding issues.
>though I dont understand why you would want it to be ammonia. Also as you use up the gas it lowers it temperature although not enough to absorb all the heat. To remove the heat you would need radiators and they would have to be quite big.
No no. That is the point of using ammonia, because it has to change phase from liquid to gas when you vent it from the bottle. Just the act of changing phase requires quite a lot of energy, even if the actual temperature of the ammonium doesn't change during the phase transition. For 1 kg of ammonia this required energy is about 1,3 Megajoules, and this energy has to come from somewhere, so it sucks out the heat energy from the surrounding system.
1,3 Megajoules is the equivalent of the waste heat energy from firing 460 rounds.
>lubrication
dry/powder lubricants already exist
>cold welding
develope several new alloys that do not want to cold weld with the other alloys, then make parts so that same-alloy parts do not touch each other allowing you to potentially use the same alloys several times in the gun
Why not just have a mechanical crossbow? miniture motors that can draw the strings back as well as work with an auto-loading system to load the bolts
Then again, are we anticipating combat in vacuum or inside of atmosphere but in zero g?
Vacuum, and mostly in zero g.
What is the intended/desired result? Would a bolt that pierces the enemy's suit suffice as opposed to just blowing a fist sized chunk through their body?
Sure we could probably just use .22lr and get away with it, but I imagined people would think they are wimpy compared to actual rifle calibers.
That would be like complaining that you got killed by an off meta weapon in a shooting game. Their opinion, like their oxygen and their life, would be discarded.
If we use a smaller caliber we can get a lot more mileage out from the coolant/propellant tank actually. Though .22lr might not have the penetration to punch through moderately armored space suits, and it lacks the velocity for long range combat.
Zero g vacuum is the ideal environment for spicy cartridges loaded with small diameter bullets, as you don't have to worry about bullet drop or air resistance.
Because they're very temperature sensitive too, and a couple of shots won't melt a rifle but will kill the idiot trying to use a fancy crossbow in modern warfare.
Why use ammonia instead of water? The enthalpy is higher, and the boiling point is nicer. You don't need a traditional refrigerant for this.
Icing problems, I think. If you over cool the gun the ice will form blockages that are tricky to sort out. If you forget the coolant packs in a shady space it'll freeze up and then refuse to come out of the nozzle.
Fair point. -77C melting point has its advantages. Thanks for explaining.
>Why use ammonia instead of water?
Ammonia is one of the commonly used Cold Gas Thruster propellants. It also has the necessary property of being stored in liquid state, so we can benefit from the required energy for the phase change as you vent it.
Good thread op, interesting idea.
I'm with
Though. Why not demin water? The phase change energy of water is very high and it could plausible save space by feeding from your in-suit canteen. Evaporation will be easy in vacuum. I guess maybe ice chunks clogging shit up would be a problem if it isn't maintained or it leaks but that's the only downside I can think of.
What would be the best ammo for a space gun? Air resistance isn't a factor in vacuum and you only need small punctures in a suit to ensure a kill. What about high velocity micro tungsten shotgun rounds or something like that?
Ammonia has the highest Isp of already used Cold Gas Thruster propellants that is stored in liquid state. Water would probably just freeze.
>you only need small punctures in a suit to ensure a kill.
You could replace guns with poison darts here on earth and ensure a kill, the trick is killing them before they can kill you back.
Also keep in mind if you have special anti-spacesuit guns and ammunition, its pretty likely they have special combat spacesuits with things like self-sealing layers.
Well u need to account for recoil shooting you backwards, maybe like a gyro jet or recoiled rifle system could work. Or just deal with the recoil with a jet packs on the users.
My space gun would be a rocket with a big net that just flys your opponent into the cold recesses of space
if i understand op right he wants the ammonia to work like a cold gas thruster blowing in the opposite direction of the bullet
Ahh yes, I think we will see a greater reliance on melee weapons in space, thus we will see a resurgence of older battle tactics but redesigned for space, such a testudo cube.
Thus I propose the redesigned pike square, the pike Möbius strip. As it has only one side you cannot flank it and is therefore almost invulnerable.
Why stop at melle weapons? If you can even make the lowest profit around the moon, you'll be able to throw rocks at insane velocities. The sling and mangonel will be king.
You'd run into thrust-counter thrust issues. Because slings and catapults include rotating bits they'll tend to make the user spin in the other direction. This makes aiming complicated.
For lubrication, an aplication of liquid helium may work.
It being a noble gas meaning unreactive and a liquid at space temps.
To Solve the problem of shouldering and aiming a rifle we can look to the movie aliens for the m56 smart gun, pic related.
With a gimble arm that solves the problem of shouldering to an extent and solves the problem of losing the weapon if it is dropped.
And to solve the aiming bit just use a small version of those aim assisters on the guns of flying fortresses (forgot the name).
Why can't you just redirect gas from the gas system in the opposite direction?
You wouldn't need as much pressure in a vacuum
Also treating the gun and astronaut as a single weapons platform would be a better approach
The exhaust gas from the cartridge is hot and can contain particulate matter. I'd rather aim that away from the operator.
they are wearing a spacesuit
>Why can't you just redirect gas from the gas system in the opposite direction?
You can, that's what a muzzlebrake does.
But you can't do it enough to offset all the recoil.
There are two components to recoil. One is the rocket-like effect of the hot gases shooting out the muzzle. The other is the equal-and-opposite reaction from accellerating the bullet down the barrel. A muzzlebrake, re-directing gas, etc, can only affect the first part, and that is minuscule compared to the second.
You could use the gas to accelerate a larger captive mass or have a secondary reactive charge within the ammunition itself that fires at the same time
>You could use the gas to accelerate a larger captive mass
You could, but that doesn't magically conjure up energy out of nowhere. It doesn't solve the problem.
The secondary charge could absolutely work.
The only way to properly counteract recoil in zero g is to expel sufficient mass with sufficient velocity in the opposite direction. You can't use captive mass counterweight.
>https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2017/11/01/russian-assault-rifle-concept-vibratory-recoil-absorption-mechanism/
This mechanism should be good about absorbing the recoil of the bullet. Putting the action in a spring mechanism that bounces back and forth with and against the force of recoil preventing it from properly transmitting to the shooter.
Combine that with a heavy muzzle break or a balanced recoil mechanism that work to either use the gas pressure to pull the gun forwards, or balance off the gas pressure forwards and rewards, and you should be able to get the recoil of fire down to almost nil.
It is still not going to work in zero g without a thruster system that fires at the same time with your gun, but in the opposite direction.
>
4 grams accelerating at 950,000m/s^2 is equivalent to 1kg accelerating at 3800m/s^2
or accelerating a 1kg mass to 60/ms (134mph/200ft/s) over a distance of 0.5m (20 inches)
And then you have a mass of 1kg going 60m/s in the opposite direction that you need to either cut loose or get accelerated yourself in that direction.
Captive mass simply doesn't work for counteracting gun recoil in space, unless the gun is attached to an object weighing several tons.
The Expanse book series goes into this a bit. They also use special plastic/polymer recoilless ammo specifically to avoid penetrating structures/walls since missing and puncturing a station wall could be catastrophic for everyone on board, and also in space, bullets will just continue indefinitely and could potentially strike something.
here you go
moronic. And yes I know about the pasta. Still moronic.
Maybe we should focus on the purporse of such firearm first. Are we talking space combat or just meteorite plinking?
In case of combat we need to incorporate two new factors - life support durability and momentum gain from being hit.
1) For space combat wounding might be lower priority as compromising the individual's life support system (such as space suit, oxygen tanks etc.) would be sufficient to render them combat ineffective. Fast, fracturing rounds creating large openings in such systems would be prefered in this scenario.
2) We can safely assume that with rise of space combat, space armor would be the next thing. Having no fixed point in space however can be disorienting, so even if you could withstand an ipmact of a bullet, momentum transfered can throw you off enough to hinder your combat effectivity. For this scenario slow and heavy projectiles seem to be better.
AR in space just doesn't sound right.
My other question is - can absence of atmospheric pressure cause significant loss of barrel/chamber durability? Gases would also expand more rapidly necesitating changes in gas systems.
>My other question is - can absence of atmospheric pressure cause significant loss of barrel/chamber durability? Gases would also expand more rapidly necesitating changes in gas systems.
You probably need to turn your gas port way down, but I don't think it would cause significantly more wear to the barrel. If anything firing a gun in vacuum will increase barrel life, as corrosive gasses are immediately vented out after the bullet.
>You probably need to turn your gas port way down
14.5psi difference on ~55000psi rifle round = frickall in a big ship, no need to mess with gas port sizing.
>so even if you could withstand an ipmact of a bullet, momentum transfered can throw you off enough to hinder your combat effectivity
Momentum transfer from even a shotgun slug is in the order of 3" per second in microgravity, so no. Not really disorienting.
I mean, yeah aside from getting slapped with a shotgun slug, that impact won't feel good regardless, but Hollywood "getting launched across a room" has been beaten to death debunked every day for decades.
I think anon meant rotational momentum.
There's a post about that in project rho: atomic rockets, subsection slugthrowers (iirc) and its still not a real problem that can't be dealt with anchoring, or thruster systems like are already in use for space walks. Cause let's be real here, in microgravity, youre either anchored or you have a mobility device.
You are correct for microgravity, but what about places like the Moon? Getting hit in your armor with heavy boolets in low gravity could pose a problem for balance.
>getting hit
Stumbling or falling over is probably the least of your worries. If you get hit in an armored are, again the momentum transfer is extremely low, even if the energy transfer is high. Space combat should favor high speed, low mass. With no air and minimal gravity (moon, orbit, etc) youre likely to want high speed to decrease bullet flight time. It could be easily possible to make shots out kilometers or even more with stabilized thermal optics. You could shoot semi auto fire at (ahead of) a few pixels in your screen, and wait seconds to minutes before any indication of effect.
Expecting normal earth combat situations in space is a little silly, its probable that you'd be facing situations where your thermal optics register long strings of fire towards your position, and your destination, and a few places in between. You'd have to choose evasive vectors based on a few pixel's worth of info. Most of the math might even be done by computerized systems, showing you expected trajectories.
It might be less call of duty, and more touhou in your visor.
>shooting
Training and stance are probably the way to go here. I suspect you'd be in a very crouched position.
>Japanese arcade games were the most accurate at predicting the future of warfare in space
What a time to be alive.
A good example of this is Forever War. Ship to ship space combat is 100% automated. Your only job is to stay calm in a coffin filled with water (equalized density means acceleration simply affects the coffin and the water pressure. NASA got to over 30Gs of sustained acceleration with a rudimentary setup with no I'll effects) and wait until you either see the other ship destroyed and/or a list of your repair duties pile up as the ship is damaged, or you die. The ship handles everything as no human reaction is fast or precise enough, or coordinated enough to do all that while synchronized with erratic high G evasive maneuvers.
Space is fake and gay
So a few things about a lack of atmosphere that might matter. Since there is no air pressure we should see the explosive be more effective, which should generate more muzzle velocity - and maybe some gas system issues. Because of a lack of atmosphere we should see muzzle velocity be the same as terminal velocity at any given range.
I would think that this would suggest that a lighter smaller round could have the same effect as a larger more powerful (more powder) round here on earth.
Aerodynamics would change as well I would think. Here we can't really shoot a needle on earth, but in space you could I would think. So we might see hyper fast needles rather than more conventional bullets.
See
Time to dig out .220 Swift from the closet for that sweet sweet 4,666 fps.
Literally weapons from Mass Effect 1.
Wouldn't laser weapons make more sense unironically?
As soon as we have portable batteries that can power powerful enough lasers.
The same problem as with firearms. The principle is exactly the same. When you fire an arrow, you are pushed in the opposite direction with an equal amount of force.
Not until they figure out how to cram enough energy density into shit so its actually useful. Until then, lasers will be very useful as dazzlers. Zap it at something/someone to overload eyes, thermal optics, cameras, while you perforate them with regular things.
>mass effect
Sounds good let me know when you figure out how to handwave away physics
>crossbows/bows
Orders of magnitude too slow, but no issues conceptually or recoil-wise. We covered that recoil thing like three times in this very thread.
>220 swift
Honestly it would be the return of SPIW ACR type rifles, but designed for more accuracy in mind (free float barrel, precision sabot), no fins, and a very slow rifling twist, like 1 in 50, just fast enough to keep the pointy end forward. Basically, something similar to an AR15 firing 20 grain tungsten carbide needles at 5500~ft/s or more with extended peak pressure powder (think hornady superformance).
How would a cross bow or bow and arrow react in space inertia?
russian weapon is good space weapon already.
no coolink needed, has ablative heat shied by pressing solders hand to barrel.
is fool proof.
I doubt infantry inna vacuum is a very likely scenario. my thought is that station or ship mounted cannons are gonna be the way of space combat. Imagine auto cannons with liquid cooling and frickhuge radiators
>my thought is that station or ship mounted cannons are gonna be the way of space combat.
But that's wrong, you fricking moron. We already have reached the point in air-to-air combat where guns are basically useless because of guided missiles and phased array radar. Bullets can't correct in flight, guided missiles can.
Space combat will only ever be between craft, and it will only ever involve guided missiles and lasers. Dumping 5 tons of unguided ammo at a target means hauling around 5 tons of unguided ammo to get into a position where you can use it. If you're going to carry that much payload you would be better served by carrying missiles and a laser turret.
>We already have reached the point in air-to-air combat where guns are basically useless because of guided missiles and phased array radar. Bullets can't correct in flight, guided missiles can.
I'd argue that in the emptiness of space missiles would not be very useful because there is no curvature of the Earth to to conceal them from radar detection. You can't keep spamming slow moving (compared to artillery shells) missiles because they will be intercepted by any sufficiently advanced AA system. What you need are extremely high velocity guns and shells with some rudimentary radar/heat seeker/whatever and some thrusters to correct the flight path.
lasers
Another thing we might see a lot of is man-launched "claymore" type grenades. Under the barrel of your rifle, you could have a 40mm+ grenade launcher that links to your optics. If certain range/target conditions are met, the slow moving grenade could be launched.
The idea is to get the grenade far enough from the user as to not damage him when the grenade detonates, say at a set distance of 50 meters from the user. The grenade would be loaded with a pineapple-like sectioned shape charge, designed to fire a narrow cone of precisely formed shrapnel at many km/s. Like 2 degree cone of 50 EFP projos at ~8km/s. This could provide accurate, short delay-to-target fragmentation effect within a certain range. Larger caliber recoilless carl-gustav style launchers could be very effective, providing extremely dealdly, high speed EFP in a conical pattern that is extremely hard to evade.
>The idea is to get the grenade far enough from the user as to not damage him
The US Army came up with a simpler version for Lunar Combat (pic related)
>force of recoil preventing it from properly transmitting to the shooter.
If nothing physically leaves the system, it always inevitably transfers to the shooter. Always. You can delay it, or change the rate at which it transfers, which is great for your shoulder and for when you're standing on something, but won't help you in 0g - you'll still end up moving backwards at the same rate as you would without the BARS.
Think of it this way - it pushes on the spring, but the spring pushes on the back of the rifle and the rifle still pushes on you. Even if it transfers the momentum piecemeal as it goes back and forth, it still ends up in the same place because momentum is conserved in a sealed system.
>hyper fast needles
>ACR
Why? One of its key benefits is irrelevant because everybody has perfectly flat shooting rifles now, and it still has terrible transitional and terminal ballistics. Sure it can penetrate armor
>Graphite
Doesn't lubricate in a vacuum. MoS does though.
>Sure it can penetrate armor
but it does frick all beyond it and doesn't do enough to void the suit either*
>The US Army came up with a simpler version for Lunar Combat (pic related
The idea with grenade launched systems is range and rate of fire. How many of those weird sticks can you have versus 40mm grenade based systems?
>One of its key benefits is irrelevant because everybody has perfectly flat shooting rifles now, and it still has terrible transitional and terminal ballistics. Sure it can penetrate armor
Because thats ideal for space combat? Highest speed possible is ideal because lower time to target. You might be trying to shoot at someone 15km away. An extra 500 meters per second of muzzle velocity is worth a lot in that case. You only need to perforate the suit, not have terminal ballistics in flesh.
>How many of those weird sticks can you have versus 40mm grenade based systems
Tbh i was just showing a neat historical take on the same idea for space combat, not seriously suggesting it as an alternative. Probably should have made that more clear.
>You might be trying to shoot at someone 15km away
No you won't, because if your aim is off by 1/100th of a degree, you miss the target by 2.6m. You're not hitting shit with small arms at that range. And thats before moving targets. Hell, spaceborne infantry combat is already exceedingly unlikely.
>You only need to perforate the suit, not have terminal ballistics in flesh.
Except even current suits would take a long time to vent from a 1.6mm hole poked in it, even assuming the hole doesn't rapidly get sealed with blood, fibers, skin, etc as happened to the 3mm hole Jay Apt experienced on STS-37. Its not just emptying the volume, its emptying the tanks as well. They might die in 40 minutes, but that doesn't stop them killing you in the mean time. Add in self sealing systems, compartmentalization, mechanical counterpressure designs, the operator taping up the hole, or whatever else a dedicated combat space suit would have and it just gets worse. You still need terminal effectiveness.
>suits take a long time to vent
Obviously a combat space suit won't have these issues but the current non-combat designs are very much susceptible to small holes killing the user. They certainly do not need to empty the tanks in these suits either, the operator isn't dying from lack of oxygen or pressure but the cold of decompression.
>the current non-combat designs are very much susceptible to small holes killing the user.
The EMU is rated to survive a clean 4mm hole for 30 minutes with just the SOP.
>cold of decompression.
What? Are you moronic? No. Absolutely not. For one, the vast majority of the expansion happens outside of the suit, and two you'd be well and truly hypoxic and dead before the remaining air got cold enough to harm you eventually, let alone actually harm you.
I've read a lot of dumb things in /k/ space threads, but this is a first.
Solid lubricants exist. Perhaps slots can be made to hold interchangable blocks of a graphite based material. This would have issues in terms of it being brittle.
They used wax for this problem in Artemis. Hot piece of barrel is sealed of wax that melts and machine stops during when have no more cold. Connect of radiator too cool wax. In book it says take longer for cooling than charge of batteries.
They also used wax IRL on the lunar rovers, which is likely where he got the idea.
The only way to get excellent terminal ballistics is by dumping huge quantities of gas which in turn means very limited shots and heavy tanks, even with CF tanks and COPVs.
I tried to do some more math for how much thrust you could get from the ammonia you vent to cool down after each shot, and unless I fricked up something major, you could theoretically change the velocity of an object weighing 200 kg (gun+shooter+space suit) by 1,8 m/s if you expelled 2,14 grams of ammonia at flow rate of 0,0286 kg/s, over an impulse of 0,075 seconds (clearance time for single bullet at 800 rpm).
That should actually be more than enough to counteract the change in the shooters velocity caused by the recoil of single shot, which is (0,0036 kg * 1015 m/s) / 200 kg = 0,01827 m/s.
You could probably completely eliminate muzzle climb as well by angling the nozzles correctly. Hell, you'd have to aim vents directly to the sides to vent excess ammonia so it won't accelerate you in some direction.
laser gun using copper cooling cartridges that are expelled once they reach a certain temperature.
>heating of the gun when firing
It's -100farenheight in space
>lubrication
It's -100farenheight in space
>ergonomics of shouldering and aiming a rifle in a space suit.
That's the easiest problem to solve. There are camera aiming reticles you can mount on guns. USA outlawed them when they first started poping up 3 years ago.
There is almost nothing correct in this whole post.
Space is also essentially a giant vacuum flask. Near perfect thermal insulation with only black body radiation to remove heat. This invalidates atmosphere based radiator designs
We went over this the last time we had a space thread.
recoilles rifle with compressed gas casing
expanding gas will cool down barrel, case venting front and back through nozzle
laser pointer for aiming, lasers in space work well
you won't see beam but you will see dot even far away
Just use a .22
Almost no recoil so it won't send you flying backwards when you are floating. Won't blow big holes in the ship/station.
Also does frick all to the target.
Literally just vacuum lubricants and temperature tolerance. Heat is only an issue if you fire more than two magazines.
Recoil is compensated by a muzzle brake and the spacesuit thrusters.
The rest of the issues are nonissues.
Why? Why not just use a laser attached to a battery pack? Either solid state or chemical, whichever runs better under space conditions.
If a youtuber can hack together a laser that burns shit, why not slap together a rifle-style laser with a targeting pod hooked to your helmet? There is no atmosphere to dissipate the laser energy, so the target will collect the full blast. Plus no recoil and you have as many shots as your battery holds. No reloading. No hassle. Hell, it can auto-target if you motorize it and slap a camera with software on it (even better for disorientation in space).
The only reason ground based lasers have to be super high wattage is due to atmospheric dissipation. You just need to poke a hole in a dude's spacesuit to kill his ass. Laser will do that just fine, and if it needs more power, just leave it on till you see venting.
Two problems. First, lasers have even more heat management problems than guns. They've been described as furnaces that generate coherent light as a byproduct.
Second, lasers are terrible at penetration. It's a bit like trying to cut through stuff with a blowtorch. Yes, you can do it but it's going to take a while.
>Why? Why not just use a laser attached to a battery pack?
Because portable batteries that can store enough energy to power a combat worthy laser are still science fiction.
Air gun
Shit power and capacity. Might as well just carry a rifle and use it sparingly, you'll still end up with better performance and endurance.
this
>abundant "powder" (i.e. compressed air) available
>excellent terminal ballistics with sufficiently large slugs and carbon-fiber bottles
>can be tuned or limited to lower power to reduce risk of overpenetration
worrying about recoil in space is unrealistic when you remember you're usually either anchored, or tethered and/or using jumpjets of some sort.
Good if you need to improvise a weapon out of spare parts. However, I'd expect more from a purpose built weapon.
>Let's design a space gun
Mount them to vehicles, what are the chances of zero g combat in spacesuits?
lazer disco gun that kill the epilectics
space is really fricking big with no cover, a sniper would be a CQC weapon in the vaccum of space, lazers could maybe work if they dont become too weak after a few tens of thousands of kilometers but it would not be ideal, rad guns would also not work due to the EVA suite, a rocket gun seams pretty good like a guided girojet
In ships, SMG, Shotguns, HMGs
This is where gyrojets become king. Kneel before the solution that's already been designed
The real solution is just using regular guns because shooting people in space with small arms wouldn't happen often enough to be worth devoting money into fixing its problems. That money would go into the spaceship they ride on to get to the place to shoot people.
Gyrojet accuracy is 17 MoA.
Yeah with 1970s technology. You could probably 3d print a more reliable jet than they were making back then, let alone the other manufacturing tech we have.
Or we could just shoot normal bullets with far greater accuracy.
That would require further development and testing which means
>solution that's already been designed
Is patently false. Even then, we have no idea what the actual accuracy is going to be.
Brainlet question: would a standard firearm (assuming it fired) produce a muzzle flash in a vacuum?
As in light? Absolutely yes.
Some, but not as much as it would in atmosphere. Some of the flash is made by unburnt powder catching fire as it leaves the muzzle. That's how flash hiders work.