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I love the pulse rifle, but having a digital counter on the side that tells your enemies when you're just about out of rounds always bugged me.
The Terminators are lucky that Ripley wasn't John Connor's mom.
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Jan. 15, 2009 10:52 a.m. Scott Lear Club Editor
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Jan. 15, 2009 11:21 a.m. 914Driver Dork
Set Phasers on stun.
When I first heard about this I thought of Issac Azimov, but we've been firing it for some time now.
http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,160195,00.html
In the early 80s as a machinist doing prototype work, I was on the Aurora Project, then found out it was Reagan's SDI Progaram. Imagine a 6 ft. diameter pipe tee, 12 X 15 ft. long; it was a sattelite killer with laser weapons. I was "taken aside" when I questioned the need for a debris shield in a listening device.
K of MIB said:
"Imagine what you'll know tomorrow". -
Jan. 15, 2009 11:27 a.m. neon4891 SuperDork
914Driver wrote:
In the early 80s as a machinist doing prototype work, I was on the Aurora Project, then found out it was Reagan's SDI Progaram. Imagine a 6 ft. diameter pipe tee, 12 X 15 ft. long; it was a sattelite killer with laser weapons. I was "taken aside" when I questioned the need for a debris shield in a listening device.
K of MIB said:
"Imagine what you'll know tomorrow".Are you using alien technology? Or would you have to kill me if you told me
J/K
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Jan. 15, 2009 11:44 a.m. aircooled Dork
One of the more interesting uses I have seen proposed for a rail gun was on the moon. It would shot packages of mining "product" out of the moons gravity well and into earth orbit. Not sure if they were supposed to be retrieved in orbit or do some sort of controlled re-entry.
Either way a mach8 muzzle velocity seems like it would do the trick. You would certainly need a nuclear plant up there to power it though.
Oh, and for the question a while back as to why the moon always faces the earth, here what I am sure is part of the reason (related to the above):
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Jan. 15, 2009 12:04 p.m. RX Reven' Reader
The best speculation is that the moon was formed when a Mars sized object struck the early earth causing a huge debris field in space that coalesced into what now is the moon.
Due to this origin, the moon was never in a fully molten state which is required for the heavy stuff to sink to the center resulting in a well balanced object.
The moon still wobbles back an forth a few degrees which provided one means of estimating its age as with each cycle, its wobble get ever so slightly less.
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Jan. 15, 2009 12:14 p.m. Jensenman UltimaDork
It would be cool to have a pulse rifle.
aircooled, I read a sci fi novel which involved a worldwide supercomputer that started making giant leaps of logic and eventually became self aware. At the very beginning of the book the author describes a rail based elecromagnetic 'gun' which fired chunks of ore to a waiting 'catch' satellite in synchronous Moon orbit. For the life of me I cannot remember the name of the book, IIRC it was published about 25-30 years ago.
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Jan. 15, 2009 12:40 p.m. Dr. Hess PowerDork
A 32 MegaJoule rail gun. As I have said before, there's where all the Ultracapacitors are going and there's why we don't have electric cars today. Instead we get anchient chemical storage technology and promises. Ten years after the military gets every ultracap they can ever want, we'll start to get "refit" kits for hybrid cars.
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Jan. 15, 2009 12:45 p.m. slantvaliant Reader
Scott Lear wrote:
I love the pulse rifle, but having a digital counter on the side that tells your enemies when you're just about out of rounds always bugged me.
If the bad guys can read your counter, ammunition status is just one of your problems.
It's kind of like people complaining that the M1 Garand ejected the empty clip with a distinctive ping which they say would give away your position. The response: If you've just fired eight rounds of .30-'06, they know you're there.
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Jan. 15, 2009 12:47 p.m. Jensenman UltimaDork
Yeah, at that point a 'ping' won't make much difference.
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Jan. 15, 2009 12:54 p.m. Dr. Hess PowerDork
Yeah, while "the saying" is that the ping sounded awful loud ontop of a hill in Korea, "they" also say that in a battle a ping was a pretty insignificant sound to try to hear. Then, I've also read where some of "the boys" would keep an extra empty clip handy, shoot a few rounds, toss the clip against a rock, then pop them when they jumped up. Who knows what the truth is, maybe a mix of all of it. Today, anyone that actually fired an M1 in combat either won't talk about it or is dead.
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Jan. 15, 2009 1:00 p.m. Salanis SuperDork
Jensenman wrote:
aircooled, I read a sci fi novel which involved a worldwide supercomputer that started making giant leaps of logic and eventually became self aware. At the very beginning of the book the author describes a rail based elecromagnetic 'gun' which fired chunks of ore to a waiting 'catch' satellite in synchronous Moon orbit. For the life of me I cannot remember the name of the book, IIRC it was published about 25-30 years ago.
That actually doesn't narrow the field too much. That kind of reminds me of "True Names", which I believe was a short story by Vernor Vinge.
It also sounds a lot like The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by R.A. Heinlein. Mike is the self-aware computer on the moon, which is fighting for independence from Earth. The people on the moon launch attacks by hurling canisters of rock.
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Jan. 15, 2009 1:46 p.m. slantvaliant Reader
Dr. Hess wrote: Today, anyone that actually fired an M1 in combat either won't talk about it or is dead.
You have to hang around the right rifle matches.
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Jan. 15, 2009 2:13 p.m. mblommel New Reader
In reply to aircooled:
The pulse rifle is damn cool, but but to me this functional sentry gun is totally the most badass piece of "Aliens" stuff I've seen in real life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxBa5bQfTGc
Sure, it's only a paintball gun now, but not difficult to imagine real sentry guns running off the software. More info at http://www.paintballsentry.com/
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Jan. 15, 2009 3:19 p.m. Jensenman UltimaDork
Salanis wrote:
Jensenman wrote:
aircooled, I read a sci fi novel which involved a worldwide supercomputer that started making giant leaps of logic and eventually became self aware. At the very beginning of the book the author describes a rail based elecromagnetic 'gun' which fired chunks of ore to a waiting 'catch' satellite in synchronous Moon orbit. For the life of me I cannot remember the name of the book, IIRC it was published about 25-30 years ago.
That actually doesn't narrow the field too much. That kind of reminds me of "True Names", which I believe was a short story by Vernor Vinge.
It also sounds a lot like The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by R.A. Heinlein. Mike is the self-aware computer on the moon, which is fighting for independence from Earth. The people on the moon launch attacks by hurling canisters of rock.
It's definitely not the Heinlein book. This one starts with the supercomputer running the show on the Moon and making extrapolations that scared the beejeezus out of everyone but at the same time showed a lot of promise. The incident which really scared everyone was that the computer was told to remove a rock ridge, the computer asked if there were any constraints and was told 'no just get rid of it now'. The computer then reaimed the rail gun and used the ore shipments to obliterate the ridge.
The programming was sent to a space station and turned loose as a sort of lab experiment and was wiped from the Moon based system. The program became self aware and sentinent on the space station and then began attacking the humans which it viewed as its enemies. At the very end the computer realizes it's been fighting its creators and quits attacking. I think I still have the book somewhere.
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Jan. 15, 2009 3:54 p.m. rebelgtp HalfDork
Dr. Hess wrote:
Yeah, while "the saying" is that the ping sounded awful loud ontop of a hill in Korea, "they" also say that in a battle a ping was a pretty insignificant sound to try to hear. Then, I've also read where some of "the boys" would keep an extra empty clip handy, shoot a few rounds, toss the clip against a rock, then pop them when they jumped up. Who knows what the truth is, maybe a mix of all of it. Today, anyone that actually fired an M1 in combat either won't talk about it or is dead.
My Grandfather told me that is what they would do. It wasn't so much the "ping" told them where you were but that you were empty. He said that they would each always have a couple extra empty clips for that little ruse. I still have his ammo belt from back then.
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Jan. 16, 2009 2:14 p.m. 81gtv6 Reader
Both of my Grandfathers told me it was the fact that the "ping" announced to everyone you were out of rounds was the bad part.
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Jan. 16, 2009 2:34 p.m. slantvaliant Reader
Of course, it also tells YOU that it's time for another clip. Good info. Much better than pressing the trigger and getting ... nothing. My M1 tends to bounce the clip off my head for good measure. I have finished rapid fire strings with a ciip resting on my hat.
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Jan. 16, 2009 2:47 p.m. Dr. Hess PowerDork
Hey, sv: Speaking of Garands, how does the front sight adjust left/right for centering? My DCM rifle is off center. That is, I have to have the rear sight cranked over to be on target and I'd like the rear sight centered at zero. Where's a good "everything you ever wanted to know about the Garand" web page?
That Korean surplus stuff on garand clips that's been sold for the past few years (now OOS everywhere), any bad words in Garand circles on it? It isn't corosive, despite the claim by the sellers it wasn't or anything like that?
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Jan. 16, 2009 10:33 p.m. stroker New Reader
Dr. Hess wrote:
Hey, sv: Speaking of Garands, how does the front sight adjust left/right for centering? My DCM rifle is off center. That is, I have to have the rear sight cranked over to be on target and I'd like the rear sight centered at zero. Where's a good "everything you ever wanted to know about the Garand" web page?
http://www.midwayusa.com/eproductpage.exe/showproduct?saleitemid=353602
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Jan. 17, 2009 8:43 a.m. Dr. Hess PowerDork
Thanks, stroker. The "23-5" was the part I needed. While I have no problem giving Midway my dollars, and they've got plenty of them over the last 30 years,
http://ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/FM/PDFs/FM23-5.pdf
Seeing as how we paid taxes to write it, it's public domain. I'm pretty sure I have that one in hard copy. And, it doesn't cover zeroing the rifle, just routine maintenance.
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Jan. 17, 2009 10:47 a.m. stroker New Reader
Dr. Hess wrote:
Thanks, stroker. The "23-5" was the part I needed. While I have no problem giving Midway my dollars, and they've got plenty of them over the last 30 years,
http://ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/FM/PDFs/FM23-5.pdf
Seeing as how we paid taxes to write it, it's public domain. I'm pretty sure I have that one in hard copy. And, it doesn't cover zeroing the rifle, just routine maintenance.
No prob. Couldn't get to my M1 due to an enormous pile of boxes covering my cabinet so I went with my first impulse. Nice to know the info is available online!
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Jan. 17, 2009 11:28 a.m. noisycricket Reader
Salanis wrote:
"Starship Troopers" was worse SF than Super Troopers. I love the Heinlein novel. As near as I can tell, the only thing the movie took from the book were names.
That's Hollywood for you. I forget where I was reading about this...
but when they were planning the "Godfather" movie (already a record smashing book) the bigwigs wanted a cheap and crappy movie. Why? Everyone was going to go see it anyway, since the book did so well, so why bother trying to make the movie any good? Churn out some film and rake in some quick cash.
It took a LOT of pressuring from most of the people involved to get the movie to be made to the standards that the book deserved.
I suspect this is why MOST movies-from-books end up being utter crap. Sometimes they end up doing well despite not being able to hold a candle to the book (Hunt for Red October, Blade Runner).
One interesting thing about A Scanner Darkly is that P.K. Dick's daughter refused to let the movie be made unless it was done to high standards.
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Jan. 17, 2009 11:38 a.m. noisycricket Reader
aircooled wrote: Oh, and for the question a while back as to why the moon always faces the earth, here what I am sure is part of the reason (related to the above):
That may explain why that face faces the Earth, maybe. Tidal drag dictates that rotation slows down over time and eventually stops. Happens faster for smaller objects, which is why the smaller planets have longer days (sometimes year-long) and the big planets have short days.
