Re: Water Cooled Vickers Guns....

Tomb, what the hell.

I suggest that Water cooled barrels in the context of Power armor 
could be a viable solution because of the following:

The need for sustained fire vs high volume bursts.

The need for minimal difficult to acquire consumables off of high 
tech worlds where super concentrated buckeyball cooling fluid isn't 
really available.

The need for enhancing barrel length in excess of what you get with 
air cooled weapons in any materials science context.

The possibility that you'd actually have to go up against waves of 
attackers (I'll bet planners didn't expect Human Waves in Korea) 
especially in far away, out of the way places where you can't get 
your high-tech buckeyball lined barrels in mass quantities to replace.

The fact that water is universal, troops need it, IC engines need it, 
it's easy to make, it's easy to find unless you're on Dune and 
generally available where humans are. Water purification is fairly 
easy. Rather than needed some superduper glycol based coolant, use 
water with a bit of anti-freeze added.

I'm not talking about a Vickers (1) with the bloody tripod strapped 
on to some PA troopers arm. I'm talking about a sleek barrel with a 
small, armored jacket or even set of tubes running down it's length 
that would have a return and supply line running to the back mounted 
Power and environmental unit on the PA. Run the cooling circuits in 
parallel, one air circulator slightly larger for the increased 
airflow.

Your barrels will last much longer if they stay a lower temperature. 
You won't have to change barrels nearly as often and given realistic 
supply lines, you'll be able to source a more basic type of ammo from 
a variety of sources vs relying on your super supply chain all the 
way back to high tech worlds where they make your super buckey-ball 
materials.

With any super high rate of fire concept (multiple barrels) you're 
going to still have to replace those barrels after sustained fire use 
(air does not conduct heat nearly as well as water, even if your 
barrels are spinning around) and you're going to run out of ammo long 
before. A lower, more sustained rate with better barrel cooling seems 
the way to go for me. Suppose that doctrine use two different methods 
at the same time (Horrors! two different ideas in concurrent 
use...Can you say FW190 and BF109????!!?).

1. From a primitive world standpoint, one very well could run up 
against local troops with such weapons based on the previously 
mentioned local technology limits. Supply of such weapons would be 
simple as would the technology needed to support such weapons. A 
water cooled weapon doesn't have all that much more parts than an air 
cooled weapon and it's likely to have lower temperature ranges given 
certain conditions.
-- 
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Ryan Gill	       rmgill@SPAMmindspring.com
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'60 Daimler Ferret '42 Daimler Dingo '42 Humber MkIV (1/2)
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