Orchid XP v7 wrote:
>> If you want a realistic treatment, read "A Boy And His Tank."  Anyone 
>> outside the armored vehicles within about 300 meters was toast.
> 
> I read somewhere that if you were to fire a "bullet" at near-light 
> speeds, it would be more like bein irradiated with "lead radiation" than 
> being hit by a solid object...

Well, in an atmosphere, it would be like being hit by an explosion, as 
you pile up all the air in front of it. Plus, don't forget all that nice 
gamma-burst radiation. (The railguns in the story actually had to fire 
for a few thousand rounds to punch a hole in the atmosphere so the 
needles wouldn't just vaporize.)

> But anyway, even without relativity, the recoil would be absurd.

Yep. If it can go thru a concrete wall coming out the front, the stock 
can certainly break your shoulder. I mean, the big guns on a battle ship 
will roll the ship in the water, and there's a serious problem with 
modern tanks getting rolled over if they're traveling fast when they 
fire a shell a couple miles, even if it's only a sabot.

> Well... technically a railgun (not to be confused with a coilgun) fires 
> projectiles using electrical propolsion. There's nothing in the 
> definition about how fast. ;-)

True. But to get the electrical propultion to work, the projectile needs 
to be pretty small, which means it needs to go pretty fast. Otherwise 
it's more of a thrower than a firearm. :-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     Remember the good old days, when we
     used to complain about cryptography
     being export-restricted?

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