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 Sci-fi tech, need info 
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Chibi-Czar
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I canna' do it captain! The toilets 've back up inta' the warp drive! The plungers keep annihilating with that An-Ti matter streams! If I keep trying to give ye' more powa, we're eitha' gonna be a fireball in two minutes, or verry stinky all the way back to Starbase 632!

"What about the drano Smitty, the DRANO!"

"Aye... the Dran-O.... Well, we kinder' ran outta the stuff when ye' had me replace the warheads in the Futon Torpedos with the stuff... Remember? When we were attaked by them Lawyerons? It was ther only thing to breech ther' shieldz."

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Sun Feb 27, 2005 1:09 am
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Code:
From :  Jon Kilgannon - MoS 
Sent :  February 27, 2005 2:59:29 PM
To :  'James Reinsch ' <jamesreinsch@hotmail.com>
Subject :  RE: Help! Science debate (railguns).



James,

If you like, you can post the text of this email to your message board.

Posters Daemon and AdmiralTigerClaw have things pretty much correct.  Unless
one postulates a system which deals with recoil, a railgun of the
blow-up-a-tank variety will shatter every bone in the gun wielder's arm.

No change in the geometry of the rails will change this; vectors to the side
will cancel one another out, and every newton of force with which the
railgun slug is propelled out the front will cause an equal and opposite
newton of force to be transmitted back into the gunman's hand, minus
whatever force is ameliorated by the recoil mechanism. 

In "A Miracle of Science," Benjamin's railgun gets around this by merely
being a very controllable and precise handgun which operates near the
maximum recoil which someone of Benjamin's size can handle.

To specifically answer Twyst's questions from the first post:  The speed and
power of the slug will determine the recoil.  More powerful shots create
more powerful recoil.  The most straightforward thing to do is to presume
that the gun kicks like a mule (i.e. like a very large modern handgun) and
that it does somewhat more damage to a human target than a large modern
handgun.  The gun itself will probably make a snap as the capacitors
discharge, and the slug will make a sonic boom as it travels through the
air, which will sound like a crack.

The best thing to do, overall, is to decide first what effect you as the
writer want the weapon to have.  Then work from there.  If, for example, you
want a railgun that can shoot through tanks, then assume the gun has some
amazing recoil-abatement technology that keeps the gun from harming its
user.  It could, for instance, transfer the momentum of the recoil into heat
(changing directed motion into random heat is one of the myriad forms of
entropy) and then fire superheated air out away from the firer through vents
beside the muzzle.  Call it an entropy recoil system and never think about
it again.  (This presumes that the story isn't about the gun itself, in
which case the gun needs to be thought about more carefully.) 

In general, science fiction is better when its background stays in the
background.  If it's not necessary to explain something, don't.  We don't
get into an automobile and then turn to our passenger to explain the
functioning of the internal combustion engine - and authors writing about
the modern day don't explain it, either.  If it's necessary or interesting
you can allow the reader to infer the workings of an automobile engine by
referring to, say, the sound the motor makes or the odor of its exhaust.
Likewise, how a fictional railgun works is best inferred from its results.

--
Jon Kilgannon


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Sun Feb 27, 2005 11:24 pm
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Chibi-Czar
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That helps a ton, thanks.

FINAL DESIGN

The 2 handguns (whatever RockmanX decides to name them) are a bit bigger than a desert eagle. They hold 12 round clips, and use railgun technology to fire aluminum/ceramic mesh bullets. They have 2 burst jets on either side that fire when the gun is fired to help reduce recoil. However, due to the power of the guns, the recoil is still intense and few can fire the guns without doing a "will smith with the noisy cricket from MIB through the wall" thing.
The guns also have a targeting lense that lets their owner see as if he were inside the barrel with bunch of nifty extra figures, like aprox. penetration, velocity correction for moving targets, and of course, long range scope with crosshairs. This system feeds directly into his brain via nano-fibers that connect to a computer nestled in his visual cortex.

There, now everyone can stop arguing.

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Tue Mar 01, 2005 6:24 pm
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Chibi-Czar
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Who exactly is Jon Kilgannon?

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Tue Mar 01, 2005 6:37 pm
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the dude i kept saying i'd email.


Tue Mar 01, 2005 10:17 pm
Chibi-Czar
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And here I thought you actually e-mailed a physicist.

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Tue Mar 01, 2005 10:24 pm
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Well, he seems to be completely comfortable making his assertions. Perhaps you should ask Mr. Kilganon what his qualifications are.

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Wed Mar 02, 2005 12:10 am
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if i recall correctly he was an astronomy or astrophysics student who switched to computer science or somesuch. i'll go crawling across webpages when i'm sitting at a good computer.

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Wed Mar 02, 2005 12:47 am
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Chibi-Czar
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Daemon wrote:
Well, he seems to be completely comfortable making his assertions. Perhaps you should ask Mr. Kilganon what his qualifications are.

And I'm completely comfortable making my assumptions, too. So what?

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Wed Mar 02, 2005 8:14 am
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We know you're not a physicist, though. Follow through on the rest of that post.

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Wed Mar 02, 2005 10:41 am
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How about I just email my dad, who happened to make it all the way through U.S. Navy Nuclear Power School (Which has a thirty percent dropout rate in the first few weeks.) and just confirm everything with him. Will that be enough 'Qualifications' for you people???

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Wed Mar 02, 2005 1:24 pm
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Keep in mind that Nuclear Power School is generally akin to a Power-Engineering style of degree. It's very good on practical uses, pressures, tools, limitations, etc... but not so much in theoretical technology.

While he may be able to field-strip a Nuclear Sub, I don't think Railguns are an option in the course load. :P Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

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Wed Mar 02, 2005 2:19 pm
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Chibi-Czar
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Fuck me. If your dad's a nuclear physicist, why the hell didn't you just ask HIM?

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Wed Mar 02, 2005 3:59 pm
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Toze... Why should I ask about something I know already? It's freakin' high school phyisics for gods sake!

As for nuclear power... I see nothing 'theoretical' about making a magnet gun. There's nothing theoretical about making a series of electromagnets turn on in off in such a way as to make them pull an object through a tube. I could build it myself. (But by no means will it have the power to fling a nail at nine-hundred meters per second.) Considering Nuclear power's whole, NUCLEAR part, a generally high end of knowledge behind nuclear physics is a requirement. A child may be able to run a nuclear power plant, but I hire a nuclear physisist out of principle. After all, rail guns work on simple electromagnetics. It's not a case of quantum mechanics you know.

We can EASILY make effective railguns. But tell me... where do you POWER them? I don't think duracell makes batteries THAT strong.

If you guys are going to argue about something as simple as this, then you really need to take a refresher high school physics course.

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Thu Mar 03, 2005 12:17 am
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Railguns don't work by turning electromagnets on and of. They wok by running a charge through to rails with the connection at the projectile. What you're thinking of is a coilgun. This fundamental lack of understanding leads me to believe you don't know what you're talking about.

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It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.
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Thu Mar 03, 2005 7:52 am
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Chibi-Czar
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admiraltigerclaw wrote:
If you guys are going to argue about something as simple as this, then you really need to take a refresher high school physics course.


...

atc, in a crowd of people that have undergraduate degrees in various fields, I think you should put a sock in it. Claiming that others need to take refresher HS courses is mind-blowingly insulting as well as breathtakingly arrogant. If it was coming from a physics grad, fine, it might be correct, but from you? No, coming from someone who quotes himself, it inspires teeth-grating rage and the desire to flame you until your crispy giblets ensure you never post here again.

But I won't flame you. Oh no. I'll just state once again that you should
shut
up.

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Thu Mar 03, 2005 10:05 am
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Technically, it is high school physics for me because we dealt with this briefly in HS physics class. I assumed everyone had until this came up.

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Thu Mar 03, 2005 10:32 am
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S1L3NT_C0Y0T3 wrote:
Railguns don't work by turning electromagnets on and of. They wok by running a charge through to rails with the connection at the projectile. What you're thinking of is a coilgun. This fundamental lack of understanding leads me to believe you don't know what you're talking about.


It's all induction man. All induction.
That's electronics. A course I happened to have during my satcom training.

*Smacks Toze with a white glove.*

Would you like cheese with that whine sir? I got the base concept mixed up... but the question is still a HS question. I could be a college graduate with a PHD, but it doesn't mean a lick of anything if it was computer science.

What's your major? Would you like me to show your how to build a satcom assembly from the ground up? How about a lecture why you need to keep a waveguide positively pressurized? Oh oh! I know! I'll draw you a diagram on the concept of a multiplexor!

I'll put a sock in my mouth when you pull your foot out of yours.

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Thu Mar 03, 2005 11:35 am
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Chibi-Czar
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Here you go kiddies. Now you can make your own railgun and come up with your own conclusion.

http://www.scitoys.com/scitoys/scitoys/ ... ilgun.html

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Thu Mar 03, 2005 11:41 am
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Chibi-Czar
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admiraltigerclaw wrote:
*Smacks Toze with a white glove.*

Would you like cheese with that whine sir? I got the base concept mixed up... but the question is still a HS question. I could be a college graduate with a PHD, but it doesn't mean a lick of anything if it was computer science.

What's your major?
...

I'll put a sock in my mouth when you pull your foot out of yours.


Okay, NOW I feel like flaming. atc, your cock is not in fact bigger than mine. Niether is your education, or your car, or anything else you might substitute for a cock-size-fight. Your net.smacking me with a "white glove" concerns me as much as a pair of fetid dingo's kidneys.

Here's the reason why people keep asking for education; because fuckheads talk a lot of bullshit. The net is full of loudmouthed morons (not necessarily you, though that last post isn't impressing me overmuch) who spout loudly about many and sundry topics- about which they know nothing. People who have a degree, especially a technical or scientific degree, have inescapably been doused with mathematics and probably physics. I, for example, have an undergrad in computer information systems- which requires not much math, but I have a number of courses under my belt. Binky has an undergrad in programming, and has a whackload of math/physics courses. You, on the other hand, have a dad who knows cool stuff. This means, on any given day, that Binky or even I know more about any random science topic than you do. A degree or a diploma may expose you to enough science to talk about railguns, but degree > diploma, and sources > degree.

My NEW major is historical theology, now that you ask. Totally unrelated to scientific fields, so I don't feel it gives me the right to comment- you'll notice I restricted myself mostly to asking for academic sources from D/SC. OTOH, my new major is for graduate studies, which means that my academic cock is 3 to 5 times bigger than yours at least, and frankly at least 2 times bigger than the rest of the board's population, with the exception of Doyle on account of life experience, and anyone else who's taken graduate-level education. This doesn't allow me to make declarations about what's right or wrong about railguns... but it does allow me to point out that you're being a wanker, since a major part of MA education is the identification and use of valid sources/authorities, which happens to be your current gripe.

So. My foot, as it turns out, is not in my mouth, but rather planted firmly up your ass. Now, as I was saying, shut up.

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Thu Mar 03, 2005 1:21 pm
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*Wipes eye with finger and inspects it.*

Oh look, no tears.

Do you see any sadness in these eyes? I do have the military SATCOM course under my belt, which happens to be an even match for a college telecommunications degree. I wonder what I spent doing for six hours a day for five days a week for six months straight.... Electronics and electromagnetism just happen to be an extremely important part of SATCOM. Would you like a nice lecture on digital communication sub-systems? How about a nice indulging lesson in signal anallysis? How about principles of upconverters? Wait, too tough for you... we'll have to stick with series circuts. Here's a lesson, wrap a wire around a metal rod and power it up! LOOK! An electro magnet! WOOHOO!!!


Now get your cock comments and take them somewhere else before I castrate you with an HPA. This is a public forum after all, you shouldn't be letting it all hang out like that. Next time you open your meat curtains, say something more intelligent. Your flames can be put out with a damp paper towel.

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Thu Mar 03, 2005 2:51 pm
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*Comes back from work... finds nothing new.*
And here I expected either an Ultra-Counter-Flame LVL 15 Uber Return Strike, or someone else to jump this by now.

*Runs off to check messages.*

I'll let it lie.

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Fri Mar 04, 2005 12:21 am
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No, see, I'm ignoring you on account of you fail at the internet.

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Fri Mar 04, 2005 12:48 am
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So you want to go at it again do you? Come on, It's 1:30 in the morning. I'm back from work, tired, and at my most irritable and insane. This is the time of night where I stop holding back because I'm just too tired to give a rats ass anymore. Come over here so I can riverdance in a gundam all over you! You want a piece, now's the time! The gloves are off, I'm giving the crowbar a few test swings and I've got 911 ready for you on speed-dial.

C'mere! I won't hurt you... (But my crowbar will! :twisted: )

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Fri Mar 04, 2005 1:43 am
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Sorry, kid.

He's right.

You're wrong.

End of discussion.

Go lie down.

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Fri Mar 04, 2005 1:54 am
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