Re: Gauss weapons

Thomas.Barclay wrote:

>Oerjan suggests a ceramic coating for a gauss flechette. Seems like a
>wise idea - easier penetration through the atmosphere I'd imagine. 

At least easier penetration through the atmosphere beyond the point
where a normal metal flechette would have started melting <g>

>How about some sort of "molecularly aligned" metal or something like
>synthetic diamond (maybe a diamond tip)? I dunno, just crazy talk. 

"Molecularly aligned" metal sounds like a magnet to me :-/
 
>As for spinning the round, couldn't you just have the field produced
as >the round was accelerated be a spiral and thus induce a spiral
motion >in the round? It might be creeping elegance, solution wise, but
it should >be possible. 

As long as you don't twist the flechette, or cause it to tumble
in-bore... It sounds as if it'll use a lot more energy just to create
and maintain the field than it can impart to the flechette, though.

>What about a grav railgun (these are what I assume KV ground troops
>use!)? Use the same grav control you use to give you intertial dampers
>to spin a projectile and launch it.

You don't need to spin it at all in this case. The reason to try to
spin the flechette was to avoid having a bulb at the rear end (to make
it fit better into the barrel), but if it just falls straight "down"
the barrel that bulb is no problem as long as the center of gravity of
the flechette is well forward.

OK, you probably *could* use a rapidly-varying artificial gravity field
to spin the flechette up, but that's pretty much like buying a
brand-new Cray because your Casio fx-82 pocket calculator has used up
its battery...

Regards,

Oerjan Ohlson
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
- Hen3ry