Bill Pragnell wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> (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.)
> 
> That's pretty cool. Relativistic weapons would only really be as useful 
> as nukes - to cause almost-total destruction.

I've seen that too - drop stuff from orbit. These were basically 
anti-armor weapons. Attacking buildings and planes and satellites (from 
ground) and tanks and stuff like that. They felt bad when they got 
attacked indoors and had to shoot at the attacker with a bunch of 
unarmored enemy support troops about, because they all got smeared to 
red goo. :-)

Fun books.

> You'd have to design any such gun to be recoilless somehow. 

Generally by firing something out the back at a similar momentum. Kind 
of like the open back on a shoulder-launched rocket/bazooka thing.

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

Post a reply to this message