RE: Low Tech Scenarios

On 20 May 98, at 12:46, , Owen Glover wrote:
> Er to be a little more accurate; as the powder burns it produces an
> expanding gas. This forces the projectile out the barrel. The
> action/reaction is the projectile going in one direction against the
> mass of the rifle in the other. In your rail gun you may or may not
need a
> fully enclosed barrel. Therefore, expanding gas is not an issue?
Expanding gas is not an issue in a rail/gauss weapon full stop. You
might get a 
shockwave passing down the barrel if the round goes supersonic before it
exits but 
that's not going to be changed by a non-solid barrel.
Newton's Laws of Motion would suggest that regardless of the method for 
accelerating a projectile there will always be some form of recoil - for
every action 
there is an equal and opposite reaction. The difference may be in the
way that recoil 
is handled. As I  understand it, the actual 'feel' of a weapon's recoil
is defined partly 
by what the weapons moving parts do when the round is fired - the cycle
of the 
breech as it were. With a Gauss/rail weapon there's no cycle really
necessary - 
you could have an open slot at the back end that you pour the rounds
into. If this is 
the case, the recoil will be a force directly back down the length of
the barrel, which 
for an infantry rifle is a pretty perfect scenario if you have to have
recoil. 

			TTFN
				Jon
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