Discussion: Projectile weapons in space

[pyro-manic]

Rheinmetall have produced a recoilless 30mm autocannon: http://www.rheinmetall-detec.com/index.php?fid=1506&lang=3&pdb=1

This kind of weapon would be worth considering.

[Hobbes]

A recoilless gun would help, but it'd be hard to design the system so that the force balance is exactly zero: you'd have to have a barrel which is completely open to the rear, which means you lose most of the propulsive force on your bullet.

[Rafael]

I've been thinking about this for a while, and reading what you've been saying. The risks of having spent, stray rounds is too high, at least in orbit. In open space the risk of impact would be statistically diminished.

Now, I found this concept: Plasma guns. We talk and talk and talk about plasma guns but the following concept, form the book Warstrider, by William H. Keith, exposes a gun in these terms ".....Squad Support Plasma Guns, SSPGs, fire slivers of cobalt, vaporized, stripped of electrons, and ejected by an intense magfield as finger-sized bolts of plasma, hot as the core of a sun....."

The concept then calls for a slug of matter in the "fourth state". Accelerated to high speeds, as stated by another forum member, would assure a projectile packing a lot of punch, enough to deal with most hypothetical armors, and with enough temperature, prior to impact to achieve, IMO, improved behind-armor effects.

I believe the beauty of the system resides in the above underlined term: "vaporized". A slug of real hot gas, in that fluid state, could wreak havoc against and inside a target. What's better, then, it's that I assume that a plasma slug will have a limited range, that is, until it cools down, electromagnetically stabilizes itself, and then dissociates in a high speed, expanding cloud of gas.

That would take care of spent, stray rounds. What's more, range would be dependent on the acceleration imparted to the slug. The more G's, the farther it would fly, before it dissociates.

Of course this is all taking into account that I will use EM-Guns in every mount, as I stated from the beginning.

Any opinions?

Rafa

[pyro-manic]

There was something I saw somewhere recently (Secret Projects forum I think) about a type of weapon called a Casana-Howitzer - basically a nuclear shaped-charge warhead that projected the bomb's energy into a focussed beam. Rather nasty...

[jcf]

A standard gas-jet type recoilless weapon would move your ship slightly in the direction of your target, the more you fire - the closer you get.
The compensating weight type would add more dangerous debris to your zero gravity battlefield.

Jon

[Rafael]

Of course, I'm talking here of very advanced EM-guns, ones that can accelerate masses to a fraction of C . At near relativistic speeds, any evasive maneuver would have to be taken very, very quickly.

And recoil would be managed by the ship's flight control system.
Rafa

[MihoshiK]

I've been thinking about this for a while, and reading what you've been saying. The risks of having spent, stray rounds is too high, at least in orbit. In open space the risk of impact would be statistically diminished.

Now, I found this concept: Plasma guns. We talk and talk and talk about plasma guns but the following concept, form the book Warstrider, by William H. Keith, exposes a gun in these terms ".....Squad Support Plasma Guns, SSPGs, fire slivers of cobalt, vaporized, stripped of electrons, and ejected by an intense magfield as finger-sized bolts of plasma, hot as the core of a sun....."

The concept then calls for a slug of matter in the "fourth state". Accelerated to high speeds, as stated by another forum member, would assure a projectile packing a lot of punch, enough to deal with most hypothetical armors, and with enough temperature, prior to impact to achieve, IMO, improved behind-armor effects.

I believe the beauty of the system resides in the above underlined term: "vaporized". A slug of real hot gas, in that fluid state, could wreak havoc against and inside a target. What's better, then, it's that I assume that a plasma slug will have a limited range, that is, until it cools down, electromagnetically stabilizes itself, and then dissociates in a high speed, expanding cloud of gas.

That would take care of spent, stray rounds. What's more, range would be dependent on the acceleration imparted to the slug. The more G's, the farther it would fly, before it dissociates.

Of course this is all taking into account that I will use EM-Guns in every mount, as I stated from the beginning.

Any opinions?

Rafa

Don't bother. Plasma is, in essence, a REALLY hot gas. Which means that it will want to expand REALLY fast, especially in a vacuum. Sure, if you can fire it fast enough, it'll get to it's destination before dispersing much. But we're talking about a speed measured in percentages of C (lightspeed) here. IOW, it's NOT low or semi-realistic SciFi if you're using plasma cannons. Of course you can use lasers or particle beams, which are rather more grounded in reality than plasma cannons. For any kind of near future story your best bet would be lasers for point defense,  railguns for short to medium range engagements, and missiles for long range engagements.
And don't forget. Anything which costs energy to use, will generate HEAT. You WILL have to get rid of it. Which is one of the reasons why stealth in space is such a ridiculous concept...
Seriously, read the Atomic Rockets site. It answers all of your questions in detail, and with easy maths as well.

Edit:

Ah, Rafe, just saw your post. Yeah, your EM guns would be seriously advanced for a plasma weapon to be viable. But then again, if you can use EM guns to fire plasma at those speeds, why bother. You can use them to fire slivers of steel at the same speed, and they would turn into plasma at the moment of contact between projectile and armor, because of the immense amount of energy in em. Plasma weapons are something which sounds really cool, but really is a dead end. At those speeds, you're not getting much gain from your plasma being sun-hot.

[MihoshiK]

There was something I saw somewhere recently (Secret Projects forum I think) about a type of weapon called a Casana-Howitzer - basically a nuclear shaped-charge warhead that projected the bomb's energy into a focussed beam. Rather nasty...

I was part of that discussion. The Casana-Howitser is most likely a weaponisation of the Orion drive pulse bombs. It would not be a very focussed blast, but it WOULD channel a significant amount of a bombs energy into a dense and fast moving cigar shaped cloud of plasma. Dangerous to almost anything up to? (IOW, it's still classified. No real info in public domain)

[Rafael]

Ah, Rafe, just saw your post. Yeah, your EM guns would be seriously advanced for a plasma weapon to be viable. But then again, if you can use EM guns to fire plasma at those speeds, why bother. You can use them to fire slivers of steel at the same speed, and they would turn into plasma at the moment of contact between projectile and armor, because of the immense amount of energy in em. Plasma weapons are something which sounds really cool, but really is a dead end. At those speeds, you're not getting much gain from your plasma being sun-hot.

Yea, I'm suddenly aware that I'm thinking in circles, here So, back to square one. I like more that last suggestion of yours. Energy will not be an issue, since my ship will have something like a zero-point quantum energy tap and will have a gravitic drive.

The weapons suite I am putting in are:
- Rail/EM guns: 2-4 mounts of small caliber (up to 40-76 mm) and 1-2 forward firing spinal/belly-mounts for capital ship engagement and/or orbital bombardment (up to 203 mm)

- Lasers. Definitely, lasers. Both for close-in work to complement the EM guns, and a big, honking ball turret.

- Missiles. Who can live without them?

- Countermeasures will include chaff, flares, EM/EW, and  reflective anti-laser aerosols.

Oh! I forgot, current tech has been used to develop rail gun explosive projectiles:




Rafa