Landships II

Rectalgia · Legend

Gauss (Coil) guns and rail guns

kieffer · Commander in Chief

Mr. Foster was rather concerned about the nuisance of the noise and smoke caused by conventional gunpowder weapons. In the Jahrbuch der Erfindungen 1908 (The Yearbook of Inventions) where his patent is mentioned (politely thoug a bit sceptical) some comments were made about the horror of modern warfare:
"if modern experts on warfare today will be right, the next war will be fought with weapons that don't have much relation to the past...instead clashes on the open battle field massive armies will be dug in 'to the shoulder', laying there for weeks, their attacks will be supported by heavy artillery. The way the enemy has to go will be obstructed by masses of barbed wire..."
Further comments are about the use of motorised transport and armoured cars, about mobility, about civilian car owners who will happily hand over their transport to the armed forces, etc. And all that was written in 1908. In the same book a patent for an artificial hand...

Rectalgia · Legend

Hi Kieffer,

It is the concept that is important - once it is imagined, technology will find a way. Some of those old inventions were perfect as they were, but technology developed differently to favour other approaches instead (by no means did the best approach always win this survival game). We have mentioned colour photography before. There were many approaches, some are said to have given results unrivalled to this day - but the technology to make them affordable and portable didn't come along (yet). "They were ahead of their time," you hear/see it expressed so many times

Even the fakes, like those x-ray glasses they used to sell to puerile young men from magazine advertisements - the idea was the thing, those are possible now with terahertz radiation like they use in airports. I'm assuming those old ones were fakes, but how would I know?. Perhaps some member knows for sure?

"T rays", tHz, sub-millimetre - the neglected frequency band between infrared and microwave. New technology, still a bit difficult to generate on demand and to "see" it maybe but it is developing very rapidly - and it has been there in nature all along, there are all sorts of sources of it (you just rip a strip of mylar adhesive tape off a sheet of perspex and you get a burst of illumination in the tHz range I seem to recall reading - it doesn't need all the electronics presently used).

And the Gauss gun, Mr Foster's idea - we have phototransistors to use for "contactless" switches now (very, very fast), and solid-state relays (also very, very fast) able to handle large inductive loads. The projectile is anyway supported by the magnetic field, air resistance should be the only serious limiting factor. There remains a "timing" problem I'm thinking now, the magnetic pulses need to get progressively shorter for acceleration through successive coils, but if no other way then the design of the coils can be varied, stage after stage for a specific muzzle velocity. Then there is the problem of low efficiency. There is only about 2% efficiency in the conversion of the power to kinetic energy in the projectile in those hand-built single coil types on YouTube. Maybe 4-5% is the best efficiency that can be achieved.

The rail gun development (parallel electromagnets and current carried transversely through the projectile - the true 'linear motor') may be better because there is no "timing problem", velocities can be completely varied and efficiency should be higher - but there is a contact problem due to the need to conduct current through the projectile as it moves. One would think it would be possible to solve the contact problem with current induction through the projectile but apparently not. Anyway, that would make for an expensive "bullet" if it were possible.

So far both coil and rail remain propositions for very high velocities and, perhaps, HV in combination with very large masses - that is for parameters in ranges/values which are even less practical by other means of propulsion.

But sadly, no matter which way it is cut, it does not seem the "electric gun" could be a feasible weapon in Mr. Foster's day. Smokeless powders and efficient flash-hiders had to suffice instead, in the case of small arms. And in the matter of noise - the elimination of the muzzle blast from propellant gasses would certainly be a great improvement but any projectile that displaces air at supersonic velocities will make a lot of it. However there is a partial solution ...