If this belongs more in OSF, then please move it, but I figured asking in SLAM would give a more scientific answer to my question.
Ian Douglas' Heritige and Legacy books have been pretty good IMO of giving a realistic look at how warfare will be in the next hundred years or so. However a few things have come up in his most recent book that's got my head scratching, and that was his plasma weapons:
The PG-90 was a full-automatic squad-support plasma weapon, 1.2 meters long and massing 10.3 kilograms, while the battery and charger unit massed another 14.1 kilos. It took centimeter-long bolts of a ferrous-lead-mercury alloy and used a powerful surge of electromagnetic energy to both accelerate it and convert it into a thumb-sized packet of white-hot plasma. The weapon had a cyclic rate of about four hundred rounds per minute, though in a vacuum, even with the radiator vanes installed, the practical rate of fire was reduced to about 150 rounds per minute, and with frequent barrel changes to avoid overheating.
The PG-90 can be fired standing up unassisted with relatively good accuracy, and "plasma weapons" are also found on his space warships (obviously being much larger). Would what Douglas described be a 'true' plasma weapon? Would it be described as something else? And would it be possible/practical?
'Ai! ai!' wailed Legolas. 'A Balrog! A Balrog is come!'
Gimli stared with wide eyes. 'Durin's Bane!' he cried, and letting his axe fall he covered his face.
'A Balrog,' muttered Gandalf. 'Now I understand.' He faltered and leaned heavily on his staff. 'What an evil fortune! And I am already weary.'
- J.R.R Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
This appears to be essentially a railgun that, in addition to accellerating the projectile, heats it well past the point of vaporization. If I understand the concept correctly, today's railguns with that kind of power are the size of semi trailers, though they don't heat the projectile significantly. The weapon would still be very short range. To keep the recoil from being insane, you'd have to limit the velocity of the projectile to that of modern firearms. Now consider that you're essentially launching a moving explosion.
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I would assume they have some way to protect the rails from being similarly heated, and protect the barrel from being coated in ferrous-lead-mercury alloy
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this sort of explosion would expand fast enough that you must make the projectile supersonic, or else you'd just be blowing yourself up.
Any job worth doing with a laser is worth doing with many, many lasers. -Khrima
There's just no arguing with some people once they've made their minds up about something, and I accept that. That's why I kill them. -Othar Avatar credit
You know, firing a projectile so fast it vaporises sound like simple ablation to me. Wouldn't they just end up with a projectile with a plasma bow wave like a reentering spaceship? There's no mechanism to contain the plasma, and while they say 'convert to white hot plasma', it's going to be constantly experiencing drag and expanding. Weapon = the suck.
It took centimeter-long bolts of a ferrous-lead-mercury alloy and used a powerful surge of electromagnetic energy to both accelerate it and convert it into a thumb-sized packet of white-hot plasma.
There's plenty of technodetail, but not much conceptual substance. Imagine trying to shoot a 'thumb-sized packet' of steam. There's simply no confinement described. Congratulations, you've invented a new kind of spectacularly inefficient jackhammer plasma torch. No plasma bolts for you! I would interpret this weapon as being a bizarre kind of pulsed particle-beam weapon.
Alan Bolte wrote:Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this sort of explosion would expand fast enough that you must make the projectile supersonic, or else you'd just be blowing yourself up.
Then if you want to damage a target at a distance, you need the 'packet' to be going significantly faster than most of it's constituent particles, just to stay together. But since the damaging energy is now coming more from the forward velocity than the heat content of the 'packet', it's more of a particle beam than a cliche slow-flying plasma bolt.
Robert Gilruth to Max Faget on the Apollo program: “Max, we’re going to go back there one day, and when we do, they’re going to find out how tough it is.”
The only way you're getting this weapon to work is if you just heat the projectile to near molten temperatures, which may aid in penetration and splash damge (though depending on velocity, it may get to that temp. anyway), or if you just have a particle beam.
Plasma weapons DO NOT WORK. Unless you find a magical containment field for the blob, the only way is to either have something near plasma like a semi-molten blob, or to use lightspeed particle beams that form their own containment (like a Hellbore).
What about some sort of artillery round that generates the plasma moments before impact? Ofcourse that'd be a pretty complex artillery round. But damnit, plasma just sounds too cool to not be a plausible weapon!
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missile site, McDonald's, whatever.' - Crichton
Yeah, I was kinda wondering if maybe he was thinking of melting instead.
I must admit though, it would be a pretty devastating point-blank weapon. Kinda like firing HE shells at full auto and having them explode right in front of you, except with much less recoil. You'd need some damn good earplugs though, and some crazy sunglasses.
Any job worth doing with a laser is worth doing with many, many lasers. -Khrima
There's just no arguing with some people once they've made their minds up about something, and I accept that. That's why I kill them. -Othar Avatar credit
outcast wrote:What about some sort of artillery round that generates the plasma moments before impact? Ofcourse that'd be a pretty complex artillery round. But damnit, plasma just sounds too cool to not be a plausible weapon!
Alan Bolte wrote:Yeah, I was kinda wondering if maybe he was thinking of melting instead.
I must admit though, it would be a pretty devastating point-blank weapon. Kinda like firing HE shells at full auto and having them explode right in front of you, except with much less recoil. You'd need some damn good earplugs though, and some crazy sunglasses.
So if it just turned the rounds molten instead of plasma, it would be more possible/practical?
The Marines firing these things wear enclosed armor with polarizing lenses, so sound and light wouldn't be a problem. There's no official range given, and we only see them being used in a confined tunnel system, so that could just be how they work.
'Ai! ai!' wailed Legolas. 'A Balrog! A Balrog is come!'
Gimli stared with wide eyes. 'Durin's Bane!' he cried, and letting his axe fall he covered his face.
'A Balrog,' muttered Gandalf. 'Now I understand.' He faltered and leaned heavily on his staff. 'What an evil fortune! And I am already weary.'
- J.R.R Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
Admiral Valdemar wrote:Plasma weapons DO NOT WORK. Unless you find a magical containment field for the blob,
Agreed. And if one did manage to find a magical containment for the blob, the enemy could use the same type of containment as a defensive measure around the target.
Balrog wrote:
So if it just turned the rounds molten instead of plasma, it would be more possible/practical?
Why not just use a shaped charge? It not only gives you molten metal, it focuses and accelerates it into a tight stream so that said molten metal can actually accomplish something unique to justify its existance.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
There's also incendiary rounds which achieve far more than a plasma bolt of sufficient density would. Such bullets can be fired from handguns with no modification, and can act as tracers for fire and use white phosphorus that will burn even when drenched. Having a round enter your body and then release that stuff to cook you from the inside out would be far more useful.
Admiral Valdemar wrote:There's also incendiary rounds which achieve far more than a plasma bolt of sufficient density would. Such bullets can be fired from handguns with no modification, and can act as tracers for fire and use white phosphorus that will burn even when drenched. Having a round enter your body and then release that stuff to cook you from the inside out would be far more useful.
A tracer and an incendiary are two different things to be clear, both in terms of placement inside the bullet/shell and the compounds used. While tracers can start fires, they aren’t very good at it.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
Alan Bolte wrote:I must admit though, it would be a pretty devastating point-blank weapon. Kinda like firing HE shells at full auto and having them explode right in front of you, except with much less recoil. You'd need some damn good earplugs though, and some crazy sunglasses.
I don't think i understand what you're saying.
---
Anyway, the other day i thought of a nice real-life comparison: blank cartridges. There's your 'packet' of superheated incandescent gas accelerating down a tube. Visualise big muzzle flashes and that's all you'd get. In space it'd dissipate much faster. Even if you could use a magic containment field and avoid all other problems, you'd still basically just be trying to bottle flame and push it onto targets. As opposed to slamming it with a projectile.
Robert Gilruth to Max Faget on the Apollo program: “Max, we’re going to go back there one day, and when we do, they’re going to find out how tough it is.”
Could you not have a bullet with a warhead that would make some kind of plasma-based explosion?
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Winston Blake wrote: I don't think i understand what you're saying.
Er, the explosion would be traveling away from you fast enough that you wouldn't be engulfed.
Any job worth doing with a laser is worth doing with many, many lasers. -Khrima
There's just no arguing with some people once they've made their minds up about something, and I accept that. That's why I kill them. -Othar Avatar credit
Shroom Man 777 wrote:Could you not have a bullet with a warhead that would make some kind of plasma-based explosion?
Probably. What advantage that would give you that would justify the complexity and cost, I don’t know. Really anyone goes thinking up ways to use plasma as a weapon, they should think up what the plasma is suppose to accomplish when it hits!
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
I don't know, Covenant plasma weapons seem to work pretty well...
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Yes, very well against uberwank 25th century super armor that is incapable of protecting against small-caliber pistol rounds and very low-velocity hits with the rather light pistol itself...
Kind of, I don't think there is a single military flame-thrower that reaches temperatures high enough for the burning gas to be considered plasma. However, the BattleTech universe has realistic plasma weapons called flamers. Unfortunately it also has the standard shiny bolt type of plasma weapon.
Kind of, I don't think there is a single military flame-thrower that reaches temperatures high enough for the burning gas to be considered plasma. However, the BattleTech universe has realistic plasma weapons called flamers. Unfortunately it also has the standard shiny bolt type of plasma weapon.
Hmm, aren't "particle projection cannons" particle beam cannons? Or are you referring to some other plasma weapon? Haven't been into BattleTech for a few years now, at least.
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