All of these weapon designs can use simple radiative cooling effectively in space to cool down, letting their long, exposed barrels radiate away all their excess heat. That would likely be more expensive than what it’s worth, however.Ī final concern is cooling. Note: Recoilless railguns or recoilless coilguns have never been attempted, but they are hypothetically possible, if you wish to eject the rails or the coils. Recoilless rifles have the issue that they need an exit pathway for the exhaust gases, which is tricky to make work in a large spacecraft, especially if the weapon is turreted.

Recoil stresses can also damage the weapon, and must be accounted for. This is one limitation alluded to in a previous post ( Origin Stories).Īnother consideration is recoil, which all weapons must have, lest they violate conservation of momentum. This means these weapons are Cantilever Beams, or beams supported at one end, and as such, they will vibrate upon firing, causing inaccuracy and possibly shattering the weapon if the stress is too great. Ganymede in the background.īefore we contrast our three weapons, let’s start with commonalities.Īll three weapon designs end up being tubular shaped, and accelerate their projectiles down that tube. These are all accounted for in Children of a Dead Earth. Ammunition mass, cost, volume, and volatility. However, there are a multitude of other considerations as well. There are also Linear Induction Motors used (railguns are technically a specialization of Linear Motors), which do not see major use aside from electromagnetic catapulting.Īt their core, projectile weapons are concerned with two things: how big of a projectile it can launch, and how fast it can launched.

The big three projectile launchers used most are Conventional Guns, Railguns, and Coilguns. The occasional ricochet is also physically based.

What it’s like on the receiving end of a drone projectile barrage. And finally, lasers dominate short range, but also see use for mid range precision damage. Projectile weapons tend to dominate mid range combat, when capital ships or drones are tens or hundreds of kilometers away. The general idea was that missiles and drones dominate long range combat since given enough delta-v, they can go anywhere a capital ship can go. In the prior post, Misconceptions about Space Warfare, combat was roughly explored.

Dead space designing the weapons