Grrl Power #165 – How to pop the wheels on a tank
AKA Coilgun, Gauss Gun, Scram Cannon (sort of), Kinetic Bombarder. I think we’ve mostly settled on “railgun” as the common name for the things, though I sort of have a soft spot for Gauss Gun. Really big one would still be called mass drivers I assume. Deciding on where the railgun/mass driver demarcation is the next debate I suppose.
Drawing debris is tedious. I probably should have drawn more crap flying out of the tank, but I need to figure out how to do that without making that take up the bulk of the time I spend on the page.
I just found this comic over the weekend and thought it was really funny. It’s called Superbitch. I’ll let you guess what it’s about. I’ll just say the titular character and Maxima would probably get along… for a little while anyway.
Update: Looks like linking to Superbitch took down their site (oops) but it’s sorted out and they’re back online if you didn’t get a chance to read it yesterday.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
I feel obligated to point out that shooting satelites out of orbit is a terrible plan if you want to be able to keep other satelites in orbit. At least in one piece.
Yeah, somebody needs to go see “Gravity.”
Gravity’s premise was innately false so it’s horrible to base this on that. Satellites are kept on different orbits and actually have their own maneuvering thrusters to avoid debris. Debris itself is either drawn into earth or flung away from earth after a few passes so unless she was planning to shoot ALL of the satellites, there was no way she could do what that movie depicted.
Also, the weapon she is using is closer to a gauss gun than a rail gun. While they work the same in principal, the fact that this shoots a ball and the ball does not appear to contact the magnets itself, it is not a rail gun. Yes, that’s uber nitpicking, but just saying :D
On the rail versus gauss gun, its less ammo differentiation and more method. A gauss gun is basicly a super-duper electromagnet coil which you put the ammo in the back of, and flicker off when it leaves. A railgun is a lot like maglev trains (indeed the rail part of it is pretty much the same) except made for launching bullets as opposed to moving trains. Both are HIGHLY unlikely to use ball ammo but could. And really we can’t tell if its a ball shape or a needle shape, just that the perpendicular to motion cross-section is circular.
The differences between a coil gun and a rail gun are less in the shape of the projectile, and more in the composition and method of propulsion. A coil gun works like an inside-out maglev, with magnetic coils pulling a ferromagnetic projectile through the middle. If the projectile is not magnetic, the gun doesn’t work. The more coils you have, the faster you can get the projectile to go.
In the case of the rail gun, you have two electrically conductive rails, and a conductive projectile touching the rails. When you run current through the rails, a magnetic field is generated, and because (very simply put) the fields of the rails oppose each other, they force the projectile out the end of the rails that’s not connected to the power supply. In this case, the projectile (or the sabot carrying the projectile) does not need to be magnetic, it just needs to conduct electricity.
The advantage of a rail gun is that it can propel an object to higher speeds than a coil gun. The advantage of the coil gun is that the projectile does not physically contact the coils, so they don’t wear like a rail gun’s rails will.
I think what everyone here forgot to mention is that both rail guns and coil guns are forms of Gauss guns, gauss being the name of the magnetic field used to accelerate the bullet regardless of origin. Calling all magnetic acceleration weapons rail guns is a media thing because they constantly underestimate people and don’t think they could grasp more than one name for a thing.
While this discussion is right about everything else, I feel the need to point out that “gauss gun” & variants thereof are just alternative pop-culture terms for what is in real life generally referred to as a “coilgun”. I have never heard “gauss weapon” applied to railguns. The term actually comes from Carl Friedrich Gauss.
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/news/orbital_debris.html
Actually, chain reaction collisions are a concern.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
Although I do know that geosynchronous satellites orbit much much further away from the surface than the space stations do, like 30,000 miles or something. I don’t know where non-geosynchronous satellites orbit. You’re probably right though, that most satellite debris wouldn’t endanger the shuttle or space stations due to differing orbits, but there is a LOT of crap up there now.
The force of the bullet hitting the satellite would push it out of orbit probably, too. I’d do the maths to calculate what would be enough force to actually push them into escape trajectory, but that’d require too much effort, so I’m just putting the possibility out there, lol.
Supporting your line of argument is Dabbler’s statement that she designed it to “shoot satellitesout of orbit”. Not “blow them to bits” or “shoot them down”. So the whole satellite and likely most of any debris generated would all be propelled into escape velocity. If her gun works as planned, anyhow.
Keep in mind that atmospheric friction (and gravity) would slow the projectile quite a bit before it would reach satellite orbit height, so it would have more of a pushing impact than a “Tunnel right through” like it does to the tank at a range of 100 yards or so.
there is also the issue of the composition of the bullet, most space debris (manmade and stones) gets burned to nothing long before touching the earth and adding speed to the bullet (in comparsion to the debris) is not helping that problem either. so what could this bullet be made of? If it is too light it would be slowed down extremely, so its safe to assume it’s heavy, plus it has a extremely high vaporizing temperature (don’t know the correct englich term) and most probably it liquidates (i’m almost 100% sure that word doesn’t really mean what the context hopefully makes it sound like) at a high temperature too, if it becomes a liquid before leaving for outer space and gets solid before hitting the sattelite it could be nice, because the time and area of impact is increased, but still… WHAT is this bullet made of???
Unmeltium.
So Tungsten.
Seriously, that stuff’s awesome.
Tungsten would work but it would need something ferrous either inside or as a sabot.
Chances are that anything that still had enough punch to destroy the satellite when it reached it would also have enough push to throw it out of orbit and leave it drifting away from the planet. Even low orbit satellites are in some form of synchronous orbit and adding outward velocity will throw them beyond it.
Awesome job Dave, really enjoying things so far. I must say that of all the superpowers shown or implied for Dabbler, i am not sure any compare to the superpower to shoot down a satellite using a small handheld rifle. Actually being able to shoulder aim and shoot what is effectively a car or bus sized object going over 30,000km/h at a distance of 160 to 2,000km away, now that needs to be listed on her superpower sheet :)
How many points to buy that or was that part of a pool power?
If the thing has enough v left to put enough dv into the sattelite to shoot it into escape velocity (around 9 kilomoters per second multiplied by the mass difference between the bullet and the sattelite) it’ll go straight through the sattelite. It *might* be possible to bring one down with an unpowered projectile, if the low side of the arbit is close enough to the upper atmosphere, but she probably means ‘blast it to pieces’.
Oh, this would definitely be a VPP thing, considering Dabbler does ‘lots of other stuff’.
Presuming it’s for damage, and not for the pseudo-telekinetic ‘shove stuff out of orbit’ thing that gets into specific wording and assumes Dabbler is extremely precise with her word usage (which assumption I wouldn’t suggest), and building in HERO 5e:
SMG-Sized Railgun: Killing Attack – Ranged 6d6, No Range Modifier (+1/2), Increased Maximum Range (140,625″; +3/4), Armor Piercing (x2; +1) (292 Active Points); OAF (-1), Extra Time (Full Phase, Delayed Phase, -3/4), Concentration (0 DCV; -1/2), 2 clips of 6 Charges (-1/2), Beam (-1/4): Real Cost: 73
plus
Scope: +30 versus Range Modifier for Sight Group (45 Active Points); OAF (-1), Concentration, Must Concentrate throughout use of Constant Power (0 DCV; -1), Extra Time (Full Phase, Only to Activate, Delayed Phase, -1/2), Linked (SMG-Sized Railgun; -1/2): Real Cost: 11
That’s gonna be a really big VPP …
Haha…very nice. At the very least one of the more impressive powers in the arsenal. Excellent use of the VPP.
…is that done in FRed or 6th?…
That’d be in FREd. 6e is similar, but not exactly the same. For all the people talking about recoil/kickback, though, this is Dabbler – which means she probably uses a magic dimensional shunt to handle the recoil.
The fact that her jacket and hair are blown straight back would imply some type of muzzle break, possibly magical since I’m assuming she’s not using expanding gasses for propulsion…
Well, that’s what she designed it for. Doesn’t mean she can hit them. :) Her mathematical abilities let her do all the calculations in her head for how far to lead things traveling at relativistic speeds, account for atmospheric drag and all that. She’s just not that steady of a shot. That’s not to say she doesn’t have a motorized tracking base that she can slot the gun into…
Hehe fair enough. I love how this sort of thing brings out the physicist in everyone. Maxima and Halo flying everyone is on board with, but a shoulder fired rail gun to shoot satellites!?!! Everyone is like….Nooooo! A projectile like that would merely create orbital debris! You would have to account for the…
Either way, it’s a funny page. Keep up the good work man, and thanks again for getting us setup on comic rocket.
Robotic arm ?
Geosync is just a hair past 26k miles.
While it’s absolutely true there’s a lot of crap in orbit – particularly the lower altitudes, all things are relative. For instance, solids are a LOT more dense than gases, but even in the most heavy metals, there is a ton more open space than actual material, at the atomic level. Similarly, our highly congested and debris-filled orbits are so open that your actual likelihood of accidentally hitting something of substance (i.e. more than a dozen molecules in size), while maneuvering out there, is incredibly low.
The Debris can take years to go away and anything the mass of a paint chip is dangerous due to the velocities involved.
Does it really need to be pointed out that she is probably aiming for ones that are already falling out of orbit? And that the railbow is probably going to either send it out of orbit or vapourise it?
Does it really need to be pointed out that anything that can shoot things “out of orbit” will create pieces that have orbits … and will cross the original orbit again, and again, and again? Which we already know is terrible both in LEO (how often now did the ISS have problems along these lines?) and in GEO (which iis already crowded)?
See, also, https://bit.ly/1aCIsfA
Oh well then, guess we need to stop putting those spy satelites in orbit then, or the bodies of dead cloned presidents
The dead presidential clones provide the pork futures to keep it in orbit. Well, a parody comic would put it that way anyway.
Geosynchronous orbit is not crowded in any sense you would notice while out there. The limiting factor in use of geosynchronous orbit is that we can only aim our directional antennas so precisely and focus them so narrowly. Satellites one degree apart are separated by nearly 450 miles.
I don’t have directional antennas.
*wiggles ears*
Of course if she creates one with a wider area. Instead of punching through the satellite, punch it away from earth entirely. Let some random alien spacecraft ram into it and call intergalactic towing
…Or wait until the satellite has been traveling out in space long enough to encounter a Klingon Battle Cruiser, who would vaporize it for target practice…
Wait! Now where have I actually *seen* that?…
?
\ _
O o
u
—-
In the less disappointing of the two Star Trek movies that never happened.
She never said how well the idea worked in practice.
She might have “sticky” bullets for that thing. Maybe?
If it is a weaponized satellite and you are part of a civilization with the tech to effectively clean up space debris, then shooting satellites can sometimes be a GREAT idea.
I feel obligated to point out that our moon is a satellite in astronomy terms.
Also what in the hell kinda drivers and power supply is that thing using? I gave up on railguns for frictionless propulsion within the first few minutes of looking at them. The present prototype is a helix to even out the spin and I had estimated that I’d need a length of at least a football field to create enuf propulsion to break atmo and that’s assuming I use neodymium drivers. Mind you if i knew the power to propulsion ratios or math past fourth grade (stupid moronic ‘education system’ I could refine it further…….
Super-science and technomagic. We would not even understand the basic scientific principles behind it, let alone be able to number crunch it. At the very least we would need fourth grade Succubus education, to follow the theory.
Technically the Earth actually also orbits the Moon, at the same time as it is orbiting the Earth. Hence making ours a twin-planet system, rather than a planet and moon system.
Source: QI. Blame the elves if that is wrong.
haha, Monty Python Reference, how lovely :D
Also, I am really liking Achilles, I wish to see more of him being a carefree annoyance, also, can we perhaps see Halo using Achilles like a Morningstar attached to her Pseudopod Tentacle? (Perhaps sending Stalwart flying? or at least like, knocking him over?)
Lucero del Alba or “morningstar” is a terrible weapon that is delightfully dangerous for everyone around and the bearer. So I must approve that scene. [The real mining of that fucking weapon is “Lucifer”. And I understand why it has such a nambe]
PD: I must admit that is pleasant to see a superhero drawer that understands the law of physic that say: If you are invulnerable and you receive a POWERFULL impact, you’ll have a knockback. The only thing that I can complain about it is that with a projectile capable of provoking planet-orbit damage, would probably throw Achilles over that hill.
But hey, right now, this is my favorite super webcomic. Well done.
You do know that Lucifer is often referred to as “The Morning Star”, right? That’s what he was before he got pissed off at all the attention the monkeys were getting from his Father
As Torrenal points out below, Les has only just started his flight, how far he goes we might find out next week
Hey, I’m Spanish. For me, always Lucifer. In any case, a Morningstar is a beautiful and terrifying weapon
Yes, yes it is, only someone who knows what they are doing should be allowed to use one, and even then never in close proximity to allies
Lucifer is “The Light Bringer” – when God said “Let there be light”, who did you THINK he was talking to? The big G was giving the orders, but Lucifer is the one who actually flipped the switch (so to speak)
Also of note: The Morning Star is actually Venus.
Love hurts.
Now I get why they always say that women are from Venus.
Funny thing: Lucifer is the Morning Star, but Archangel Michael is the Evening Star.
And since Venus is both the Morning and Evening Star, does that mean Michael = Lucifer?
No, Michael used to be a certain individual who used to go by the name of Jesus
Michael = Adam
Jehovah = Jesus
Lucifer is and always has been Lucifer.
its not too late for that to happen we never saw him land yet
He reminds me of the nac mac feegle. “Don’t worry, I’m fine, I landed on my head.”
Wait, isn’t a ‘swan dive’ when you are going to die? Or at least fake a dive like they teach you in professional football training school
“Belly Flop!” or “Cannonball!” would have been funner :D
No, ‘swan dive’ is an actual style of dive.
Yeah, when you are about to die
“Swan song” is when you’re about to die. “Swan Dive” is an actual diving move where you have your arms stretched out until just before hitting the water, just like an actual swan.
Hmmm, okay, always figured they were kinda connected
Well, they are not. Never have been.
Huh? Thought it was pelicans who held their wings out until they reached the water
Anyone have pictures?
Greg Louganis performing a swan dive, a.k.a. “swallow dive” in Great Britain and certain other countries. Since he is still living, that would argue against your interpretation.
However, I was unable to find a vid of swans and/or pelicans diving.
Thank you, not sure why got them mixed up :(
I think maybe you’re thinking of a ‘swan song’… which would be a really funny/odd name for a weapon.
Swan Song meat substitute tv. dinner… wait, no, that’s ‘Swanson’s’….
Swan Song would have to be a music-based weapon, wooo, talk about gratuitous Violins!
*giggles*
*barrage of missiles from the ORBPS strikes Hypono’s city.*
ORBPS? Orbital Railgun Ballistic Positioning System?
He meant OABPC, or Orbital Anti-Bad Pun Canon, have no idea what an ORBPS is
Earlier version: Orbital Relativistic Bad-Pun Cannon
*Satellite I mean. There’s been many upgrades.
Don’t remember that one, thought it was always the OABPC. So the ORBPS was prior to the hiring of the WolfCo Maintainance Union?
First was the RAPBC (shoulder mounted) than the ICRABPM (Intencontinental) than the ORBPS, the OABPC. and Currently I’m using the OABPC-L (Orbital anti-bad pun cannon-Lunar)
Swan Song – a paragon of manliness
no, wait, that’s also Swanson…
I think that’s Samson
As a piece of music, it would mean “killing me softly with your song”…
Great song that, well, the original anyway
Swan song —- A +5 vorpal bagpipe of blasting….
He he.
In reference to you saying you wanted to draw more debris coming off the tank, I liked it the way it was. It showed just how much force that shot had. It could punch a hole through a tank lengthwise without shredding it. That impressed me more than if it had ripped it apart on the way through and lent credence to Dabbler’s concern about hitting something on the far side of a hill.
Well, Achilles is on an upward track as of the last scene with him. He might just clear the hill, but consider:
1) the round went through a tank first.
2) he out masses the round quite probably by over 200 fold. Assuming it was going Mach 200, that still leaves Achilles at subsonic speeds. I doubt mach 200 is a likely figure, so I count us lucky if Achilles hits 100mph.
3) compared to the round he is a sail in the air.
I could see him leaving a mark where he lands, but not much of one, and short of the hill.
You worry about the hill being insufficient backstop if the round is like a needle. Long and pointy and all full of piercing damage. Or you worry about the hill if you want a flashy backstop of an invulnerable man, and dabbler may be a bit showy.
The problem is that tunneling through without a lot of extra damage is totally unrealistic.
Here’s a bullet hitting a watermelon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZtetqBt4v0
That’s maybe 1/1000th the force that Dabbler’s shot is hitting with. The shock force of the impact would turn a huge section of the tank into splinters, and turn them into ballistic objects. There’s simply no way that it would be creating some neat and tidy little hole. Even at the range that the tank is from the audience (and that the shot was going away from them), they would still be in mortal danger from fragments.
A watermelon is a brittle pod filled with fluid, a tank is many small, hard components linked together. Striking a watermelon with a bullet causes sudden pressure in the fluid it contains, shattering its brittle rind. The tan’s components do not propagate the shock of the impact nearly as much (if they did, it wouldn’t provide much protection to its occupants), so more of the overall force is applied to parts directly in the bullet’s path, rather than the tank as a whole. A tank would not explode likethat melon unless you put explosives in it.
High velocity impacts cause even very hard substances to act like liquids do to the extreme heat generated. Thus a certain amount of high energy splatter results.
That would apply to solid objects. A Tank has hollow sections throughout. The metal would be liquified imediately on contact with such energy transference and not allow deforming as the integrity of the metal collapses quicker that it can transfer the kinetic energy.
So no mellon explosion and most liquid metal would end up inside the tank so only a small splatter on exit from the last layer of metal. possably some suction pulling out more behind it as it exits.
A hollow space doesn’t matter. Plus, she didn’t really hit one, since the shot traveled along the treadbase, and didn’t go into the main compartment. Whatever was hit would splinter and shatter. Any exterior portion of the tank is going to have a sizable amount of armor mass, and that is going to get completely wrecked by her shot.
With the speed and force of Dabbler’s shot, air itself takes on the transmitted qualities of the water in a watermelon. You ever see a high speed video of a bomb going off? That ghostly shimmer that radiates out is the air being compressed by the force of the blast. The effect of Dabbler’s shot would be little different. In fact, we have to assume that the gun Dabbler uses has some kind of technological or magical protections for the user. If it didn’t, firing it would be lethal to the user as the shockwave coming out of the barrel would have enough force to pulp your bones.
Also bear in mind that Dabbler’s ammunition need not be conventional. Just as rifling a barrel and other innovations, such as cartridges and armour piercing ammo, changed warfare, so might the variations that super-tech can come up with to change the game. Perhaps using materials with weird quantum effects that we are only just beginning to explore. Her gun may have ammo loads or settings, using techniques we have not thought of yet, which optimise “punch through”, “disintegrate/shrapnel” or “knock-back intact”.
Oh, and one other aspect about Dabbler. Her gun may be enchanted to prevent ricochets and shrapnel from harming friendlies. But not things it is pointed at directly. Hence her Achilles safety precaution.
If you are insisting on using a watermelon as comparison tool, then the better projectile would be either an arrow or a bolt
Sure, an arrow or bolt traveling at 10,000 fps. The result is the same. Dabbler’s shot VASTLY overpowers any armor value the tank provides against a conventional weapon. Same as the bullet vs the watermelon.
Again it depends on the size and shape of the round. Because of the diameter of a normal bullet, it’s going to cause a hydrostatic shock wave going through the watermelon. I can say it makes a huge difference with caliber of the projectile.
I shot a plastic gallon milk jug, filled with water with the cap on, with both a .40 caliber round and .32 caliber round. The .32 just punched a small hole through the jug while the .40 punched it wide open. The other thing that comes into play is the density of the material. A melon is mostly water, so the shockwave traveling through the melon is going to cause a huge pressure differential as it goes through it.
Good example, but kinda blurry, is this video: https://youtu.be/G2jEfXDr4xw
It’s a guy shooting at what looks like 1/2″ steel plate. No massive debris flying out the back side when they shoot it.
Here’s another good example. A Mach 10 Rail gun shooting a projectile that looks to be about 4″ square through cinderblock wall. About the same amount of debris as from the tank. At those speeds though, it’s probably would turn metal into plasma.
https://youtu.be/wa_vuX5_oAk
Pro safety tip for someone pointing the Mach 10 rail gun at you. Duck before they fire!
Okay I’m sorry if I annoy anyone with this but if achilles is invincible and won’t have to worry about breaking bones or tearing muscles he wouldn’t be just 50% stronger then a normal human ,he would be roughly 6-8 times stronger then a normal person with similar muscle density not to mention he could practically use 100% of his muscle strength indefinitely since won’t literally rip em of his bones or be poisoned by milk acid build up normaly without adrenaline or other factors that increase output you only use up to about 10% of your muscles potential strength.. Not to mention with practice in his running sprint technique he could easily outrun usain bolt. So even if that doesn’t really improve his reflexes he would still be several times stronger then a normal person and could run ridiculously fast. right? And yes I’m aware I repeated myself a bit there.I really don’t think if his musculature would profit like that from his invincibility he’d be only a bit stronger.
consider the idea of one person on the planet having physics affect them at E = mc3 (rather than E = mc2)
consider the idea of one person on the planet having physics affect them at E = mc3 (rather than E = mc2) or would they be affecting physics?
It would be wildly affecting physics. The units no longer line up. E=mc^2 is the total energy of a system, based on its mass, or the total mass of a system, based on the total energy. If you multiply in another 300 000 km/s, then the extra m/s just do not make sense to get the energy units. The unit of energy is Joules defined as J=Nm=kg m^2/s^2. Notice that the units work out to mass times a speed. To talk about the total energy of a system, then the speed must be the speed of light, often represented as c (at least in this formula).
It’s quite common for the limitations of a super-hero to be more a function of their own imagination than a reflection of their true capacity. He doesn’t think of himself as being Super Strong, so he isn’t.
so he doesn’t realise that his muscles, could output several times his current peceived strength because he doesn’t realise the inborn inhibitions for the musculature would have no meaming to him? so it’s pretty much a negative placebo effect?
Pretty much. I mean, you can’t just say one day “Hey muscles! You can’t be Damaged! Ignore everything evolution has engraved into you about using your full strength!” With training, maybe… but somebody still needs to think of it.
Actually, if his muscles can’t be damaged, then he should be really, really small and kinda weak. Please see my comment below as to why.
He is invulnerable to all forms of damage(at least as far as we know). That doesn’t mean that lactic acid wouldn’t build up and limit the effectiveness of his muscles until it has a chance to dissipate. It also doesn’t preclude the raw amount of energy he would need to go to the extremes of say thirty or forty percent. He simply doesn’t have to worry about any short or long term damage from using and abusing his muscles. He does however have to deal with any and all internal systems that would affect the muscles in one way or another. So he wouldn’t have any “next morning pains” from doing a heavy workout since he wouldnt have any microscopic tears from pushing his muscles too far as an example since that is damaging the body.
There is also the matter of physical conditioning and training. He looks to be in excellent shape, and “fifty percent stronger than a normal human” can be a rather vague term. If Dave is referring to the absolute human capacity(ie while on adrenaline) that is still a rather massive amount of power at his disposal. Also, how does he define “Normal”?
And of course, rules are always meant to be broken for cinematic purposes, so that while he can normally only do 150% of human capacity, push comes to shove he may be able to quintuple that for short periods of time.
Just food for thought as to why he’s not about “seven hundred percent stronger than a normal human”.
Muscle contraction is dependent on the amount of “signal to contract” being sent to them. For instance if you have a degenerate nerve issue, you can’t contract your muscles as hard as someone who can send a clear signal to them. Achilles doesn’t have supercharged nerves, so he can’t supercontract his muscles. Though that makes me wonder if someone like Stalwart, who doesn’t have the cellular TK like Max, would be able to shock people if he had an open wound. Hmm.
ehehehe ^^’ I keep forgetting about that part because I’m hypersensitive and I used to injure my muscles and tendons all the time and still do sometimes from using too much force >_< so I couldn't really understand why he isn't full force all the time since he doesn't have that issue. XD I'm pretty jealous though :/ I have to be carefull not to overdo with simple gymnastics and that guy won't hurt himself no matter what T_T
The way the human nervous system works doesn’t create a current flow. When the first cell in the chain gets a signal, it undergoes a chemical reaction that ends up releasing an electron. That electron hits the next cell in the chain, is absorbed, and kicks off the chemical reaction that produces the next electron. It’s much slower and less efficient than electrons traveling down a wire.
So no zapping unless Stalwart’s biology is significantly different from that of a human being.
Nerves do not release electrons, the release neurotransmitters, a chemical, that attaches to the next nerve in line. Each nerve sends a ‘signal’ by rapidly swapping ions in a chain reaction down the whole nerve, changing the internal charge of the nerve. Electricity can cause a nerve to react because an electron has essentially the same effect as the ions , but your body is not producing electricity to run your nervous system. It’s really only a minor difference but it does mean that its nigh impossible to zap someone with your nerves.
He probably can hit harder and (briefly) lift more than a non-powered person of the same general musculature. But considering the capabilities of other members of the team, that’s a degree of enhanced effective strength which wouldn’t really register.
Well, if Stalwart is shown as really tough and strong, many people may find it shocking if he gets injured. As for going into shock, that would only affect the person injured, in this case, Stalwart. If you are referring to electrical shock, that would not happen, unless Stalwart is in contact with Jiggawatt or another live wire.
What? An untrained human can use 40-60% of their muscle power, a trained one can use around 90%.
for a short time , what you train to get most out of your muscles is efficiency, so that the most of the strentgh you use has the intendet effect a good example of inefficient movement is punching with your thumb in the fist, you only hurt yourself. Carrying something with your back instead of diverting the workload to your legs is another good example.
just for the record:
– a coil/gauss gun(or mass driver) fires a ferromagnetic or magnetic slug
– a rail-gun fires a (at least partially) conductive slug
(to create a conduit from one of the rails to the other)
a rail-gun has the advantage of constant acceleration but often struggles with the wear on the rails.
as the rails are the contact points between the slug and the rails sparks and friction eating up the rails.
whereas a coil gun has a short moment (or for the first stage a short distance) in which it can impart energy to the slug (per coil, triggering multiple coils in sequence can be a bit tricky to get(and keep getting) right).
so the 2 have little overlap in function except both use electromagnetism to accelerate a projectile.
the main part that is the same is that both often use a large capacitor bank to store energy for a quick large release.
I was about to say basically the same thing- and would like to add that unless their world is a couple years behind us in terms of understanding electromagnetism, both coilguns (also named Gauss guns) and railguns exist and function, but due to some limitations to current technology aren’t usually considered viable for serious combat (things such as… running out of electricity and leaving you with a handful of now useless bullets, or having to replace the rails every couple of shots… or overheating due to turning the air around the projectile into plasma-ohwaitthatlastpartisactuallykindofawesome).
The most meaningful contributions Dabbler could make in their ‘invention’ would just be improvements on what we already have: more durable rails (in the case of the railgun), better batteries/smaller generators (note that ‘better’ means that the batteries would need to have both a larger capacity, and would have to be able to discharge faster in order to charge up the capacitors quickly), capacitors that can hold a larger charge without fusing, and, I suppose, superconductive wiring.
Oh yeah, and you’d probably need a computer of some kind to make a coilgun operate at peak efficiency because, like robin said, there’s a very small amount of time when each coil is actually accelerating the projectile, and it gets harder to time the faster you get the bullet going.
The fact she says “magnetic” slingshot would lend itself to being a mass driver/gauss gun/coilgun.
Railguns use electromotive force. emf is denoted by the symbol ε
It uses Fleming’s left-hand rule. The projectile is in constant contact with the conductors as it travels through the barrel.
Coilguns use electromagnetic force. It is just denoted by an F.
It uses Lentz’s Law which is the right-hand rule. The projectile must be kept insulated from the conductors as it passes through the magnets.
RG uses no magnetism. Since Dabbler is educated enough to build the thing, and also mentions magnetism, it must use magnetism… so I figure it has to be a coilgun.
If you could miniaturise the tech enough (So that the magnets could be a millimiter thick and closely spaced, and have it at a high enough precision in the timing of said magnets,) a pistol could accelerate any ferrous container to ridiculously incalculable speeds. The only concern would be the sonic boom.
I apologize in advance if this has been answered before, but how does Achilles cut his hair? And before you say, “Dabbler gave him a pair of sheers,” well, what did he cut his hair with before? Or did he have hair spilling down the hallways before he met Dabbler?
And if Dabbler has something that can cut him, doesn’t that mean she has something that can kill him?
And speaking of killing him, does he still have the same bodily needs as anyone else? Is he like Bruce Willis in Unbreakable, where he’ll still die if someone tries to drown him? (Spoiler alert!)
And I believe that if his muscles are never strained or tear that he’d actually be skinny as a beanstalk. The reason muscles get big is because we damage them by pushing them to their limits. Then the body repairs the trauma, which adds mass to them. At least I believe that’s how it works. So really he should be a twig.
…
Which I wouldn’t mind seeing. A small guy who got beat up a lot in school, but never had a bruise on him would be an interesting story. Ooh! And he could’ve had an abusive parent who would try to beat his younger sibling and he’d stand up for them and take it for them… But I digress!
Please let me know if I’m off base about any of my inquiries, and keep up with a fine comic ^_^;
Possible Explanation: His hairs and nails are dead tissue and are only covered by his “invulnerability field” to a certain length. That could also explain why the pellet zoo-boinged off his chest without ripping his shirt.
Or something like that. Maybe?
On your Achilles being able to be drowned (And possibly other methods) thing, in the character page it reads “Achilles can’t be poisoned, suffocated, starved, irradiated, crushed, cut, pierced, burned, frozen or injured by any method yet discovered.” I believe drowned would roll in with suffocated, seeing as both cause a lack of air. Also his hairstyle is invincible too. I guess it just stopped growing.
Ah, I missed that bit. Thanks.
And to everyone else I really appreciate your responses. Helps me appreciate the story O:-)
it looks like he got his invincibility (or it went active whatever the cause) preserved him in that state from back then in the 80’s when he was in his twentys ,hence his jock physique
Supers tend to have the anatomy of an idealized human. For men, this includes heavily muscled bodies. Thus, Achilles has a muscular body. However, working out should have no effect on him. Neither should lazing around on the couch all day. He is stuck with his exact physique for as long as he lives.
Dave has insinuated before that Achilles didn’t come into his powers until the mid-80s (which explains the mullet and clothing choices, and sense of humor), so it would stand to reason that he built up his musculature until that point, then simply hasn’t changed since. Ditto for his hair – so the answer to your question would be that he doesn’t cut his hair – it simply stays the same length. Always. Frozen in time. Never eating or sleeping or growing or aging… Probably never really learning either. It makes me wonder how he doesn’t have permanent short-term amnesia (a-la Memento) since he would never undergo the chemical changes involved in storing memories
If his invulnerability prevented all chemical reactions then he would be immobile. Unable to metabolise food to provide energy for his muscles to work. Likewise he could not even think. So it is reasonable to assume that biological processes vital to life, including the ability to lay down memories, remain functional.
I think achielles power is more like ‘Unchangeable’ rather than ‘invunerable’ considering both his hair and general style stuck in mid 80’s. So anything foreign to his body does not have an effectbe it a missile or a chemical.
..my two cents-Dabbler’s weapon generates its acceleration via the three rings in front of the business end. each ring would multiply the initial ‘soft’ pulse say x500 or so per ring…
I admit I love this comic. It makes me laugh, and is fun.
Thanks!
I think I might have a new favorite webcomic.
And thank you!
I just have to do it, and don’t care if I wasn’t first:
Ni!
I love the way Sidney tries to keep her feet in the Time Out box in the last panel. She wants to be good, but can’t hold the geek/nerd/fangirl in!
Electromagnetic Railgun or Gauss Rifle when using solid shot. >.> Goddess help us when they develop Gauss Shotguns…Smoothbore versions using hoops rather then rails…
I think by that point we’ll have energy based projectile weapons.
Or Mass Effect wepons (like the games)
I just noticed that Syd is sitting in a ‘time out’ box.
I giggled.
So, commenting on this without reading the previous two pages of comments, as I kinda want to get to sleep – as far as I’m aware, they stop being railguns and become Mass Drivers when they projectile they’re launching is a solid mass that deals it’s damage based solely on it’s impact, as opposed to Railguns and Guass Cannons which can fire explosive shells, ie Mass Drivers would likely make a better space-based weapon because there’s A) little friction to slow them down and B) Enough fired at one target (say a heavily armored space station) can push that station around because almost all of the kinetic energy is transferred to the target. Imagine the ship firing at this station is armed with roughly 20 Mass Drivers that fire what is essentially a one-hundred ton musket ball every 20 seconds. Even if all those rounds simply bounce off the target, you’re going to eventually push that station away from your ship. In theory, you could build a Mass Driver large enough to fling asteroids at each other or at a planet.
Mass Drivers have been tapped as a way to actually move asteroids (or ships) into a more advantageous orbit for metals extraction. Refine the metal and use the slag as reaction mass.
Achilles… He could survive a drop from orbit…
And the hole he would make in the ground would be no bigger than one of his jumps out of an aircraft without a parachute. Or any other terminal velocity fall.
Umm, did Maxi’s choker flip colours again? It is supposed to be lighter on the bottom, isn’t it?
Okay, someone must’ve said this already but – two things: 1. Arianna’s face on cast page looks creepy XD
2. Are you telling me that Achilles doesn’t have anchoring power? Or is he just messing around? What good is he as invincible wall, if it can be knocked off his feet?
He is invulnerabubble, not imoverabubble (you can move him, if he lets you, you just can’t hurt him)
If you mean the cast page at the very tippy-top of the page, they change each time the page refreshes (and the 6th one is more random than the other 5 to include Peggy, Jiggabyte & Gwen, and maybe another but definately at least those 4 share that spot)
What do you mean Ari looks creepy? Leon and Math both out-creep Ari (specially Leon)
Heh, hadn’t realised the cast page had been updated (nice to see ‘Super’ Hiro, `Wart and Jiggi added)
Jiggi’s hair is black? o_O
A notable appearance for Hiro could be where he charmed the press (including at least 2 males :D)
Did ya have to use Les’ new look for the castpage? ;(
Arianna is fixated on money and gets kicks out of revenue-earning promotions. She is creepy. The art reflects that. In the cast list picture she is trying to hide it, but the creepy oozes through.
Actually, I was wondering this myself. The projectile shouldn’t have been redirected unless it was an unstoppable force colliding with an irresistible object. Achilles isn’t irresistible, though, because he got knocked back. The projectile should’ve traveled with him when he flew backwards.
It was redirected, after it hit it lost it’s own momentum and fell to the ground, the projectile’s former momentum went on to send Les flying
… Seems legit ¯\(°_o)/¯
*immovable object.
While someone on Youtube made a point that they cannot exist (like unstoppable force) it does make sense and even made it into Superman animated movie.
As for Ari, that smile is killing me. It’s like this smile came from some hellish beast, because you can tolerate either her face or her smile in that picture. I don’t mean that it doesn’t fit but *shudder*
I built my first gauss gun back in ’89 when I was studying impact engineering. It was fun to play with, but could not reach sufficiently high velocities. Light-gas gun and shaped charges gave much better results.
Gauss gun and mass-driver are projectile weapons which use elecromagnetic accelerator to launch their projectiles.
Rail-accelerator and coil-accelerator are elecromagnetic porjectile accelerators used in gauss guns of mass-drivers.
Gauss gun: accelerator affects the projectile directly.
Mass-driver: accelerator affects a sabot which carries the projectile or sub-projectiles. The sabot may be single-use (is ejected with the projectile) or captive (remains within the weapon).
Rail accelerator: projectile is placed between two conductive rails. The projectile is elecrically isolated, but has a conductive cross-bolt, which connects both rails. When projectile has been accelerated to maximum velocity and leaves the rails, elecric arc may cause muzzle flash.
Coil accelerator: projectile is accelerated by a series of electro-magnets, which are switched on or off depending on the location of the projectile. In tractor accelerator the electro-magnets are pulling the ferromagnetic projectile towards the muzle, and magnets are switched off when the projeltile is passing the magnet. In pressor accelerator the electro-magnets are repulsing permanent-magnet projectile, and the magnets are switched on after the projectile gas passed them.
Dabbler might be using a gauss-gun with tractor-type coil accelerator.
Or possibly a really powerful sling with a magnet in it.
I thought I’d point out one thing.
Rail guns _destroy the rails_. The way they work is to send a pulse of energy _down_ the rails that drags the projectile along (There are some cool videos on Youtube of some military grade tests)
You can use a ball, or a cylinder. Generally they use an arrow shaped projectile that’s encased in a ‘sabot’ (shoe) that comes off immediately after leaving the rails. (They fly better. Just like muskets weren’t as accurate as rifles, balls aren’t as accurate as arrows)
Almost every other type of accellerator uses magnetic currents to suspend the projectile, which significantly increases power usage, while also increasing lifespan of the object. Railguns are cheap. You’d want to rotate the rails slightly between shots, but you’d still have to change the rails out every few shots.
Considering her background, she’s almost certainly using a inductive linear particle accellerator, aka ‘coil gun’, ‘gauss gun’, or ‘mass driver’. The only real difference between those is in how the projectile is carried. (A railgun would be a ‘conductive linear particle accellerator’. Yes, the names sound more like what goes on at CERN, but they work the same way – just on bigger particles)
Somehow, seeing someone take a railgun like its nothing does more to impress me towards their invulnerability than anything else XD
Just thought about something.
What if Achilles was actually the very same dude who fought at Troy?
Also, since he stopped aging AND is invulnerable, that would put him in a similar shitty position the Immortals from Highlander, Vandal Savage, Captain Jack Harkness (him being the Face of Boe yet to be determined) and the odd incarnation of Superman.
So, he’d survive the end of the world severla times over; would also be interesting to see Achilles at the end of the universe, both possibilities.
Let’s be frank, being really that kind of immortal is just about the worst ever superpower you can have.
To cite Doctor Who:
Rose: I thought you and me were—well, I obviously got it wrong. I’ve been to the year 5 billion, right, but this… Now, this is really seeing the future. You just leave us behind. Is that what you’re gonna do to me?
The Doctor: No. Not to you.
Rose: But Sarah Jane. You were that close to her once, and now you never even mention her. Why not?
The Doctor: I don’t age. I regenerate. But humans decay; you wither and you die. Imagine watching that happen to someone that you— [breaks off]
Rose: What, Doctor?
The Doctor: You can spend the rest of your life with me, but I can’t spend the rest of mine with you. I have to live on. Alone. That’s the curse of the Time Lords.
Yeah, very few consider that when they wish for Immortality (another typical ‘catch’ is that they continue to age normally, they just can’t die, so they end up a broken withered husk {if they are lucky})
Immortality is unbearable. Unless in the company of other immortals.
For the vast majority of humanity, I would agree with you…
There are a notable few that would probably fare okay, though. They would probably see their “short”-term interactions as being similar to how you and I view our relationship with our pets – enjoying the moment while it’s there, all the while knowing deep down that heartache is just on the horizon…
Also, there are (very few) “natural hermits” that really do have no desire for enduring relationships. They tend to be difficult to be around, but often surprisingly insightful
Once we get the warm-ups out of the way with the lesser powered team members, we get to move on the heavyweights to really impress the news media in the stands. We seem to have shredded our current target and need a new one. For Maxima, I think we would have to put her up against something like the proposed WWII German ‘Landkreuzer’ tank design that never made it past the drawing board. It was supposed to be over 100 feet long and weigh over 4 million pounds, with foot thick armor and equipped with a 10 inch naval gun. Let’s see Stalwart try to kick THAT over.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1000_Ratte
https://www.technewsdaily.com/images/i/000/006/125/original/secret-3rdreich-landkreuzer-110721-02.jpg
Prototype for BunBun maybe?
I hope there is a nice big charred shirt hole for us on the next page ~_^.
Why not just have the shirt shredded by being dragged across a ton of sand at a high velocity?
Anyhow, I’m sure that Dabbler is just messing with Maxima as is her wont. Her gun might work on principles completely unknown to our physicists and explaining it to the inhabitants of this plane could result in a rather messy comparison.
You know, I read some comics and the comments are a running gag-train (Like in paranatural) And some I read and all it’s about is “MORE MORE MORE” But I read the comics on here and feel like I just entered science class. Educational comments. My brain grew.
One thing about Achilles I just am waiting to see: Max seeing him angling in on a star struck Suzy News and using a ‘light beam shot’ to get his attention that taps his ear and sheds sparks and fire works around like a halo. When he turns to look she could finger beckon and say “HEEL!”
And why is anyone worrying about what the target is for the ‘heavy weights’. First Achilles smacks his face with the tank, then he takes a shot that goes through the tank long ways. “Now everyone pay attention to our new target, Achilles. Okay Amorphous, Pull!”
“but i love my people!”
“but they are my people!
“I am their sovereign!
“I love them…
I’ve only just browsed these comments, but so far, I’ve not seen anyone mention recoil. Some commenters suggest it may fire relativistic projectiles. If so, they would burn up before leaving the atmosphere, no matter what they were made of. Secondly, they would impart a massive recoil (Newtons Laws, remember). Even if the projectile wasn’t relativistic, if it could hit something in orbit, then the recoil would take Dibblers shoulder off, and drive what’s left into the ground a few metres.
I believe you have overlooked the first rule of superhero-ness. “with great power comes great disregard for the laws of physics.” Isaac Newton probably rolled over in his grave the first time Superman leaped into the air…and stayed there. Sometimes it is necessary to make the story work, and sometimes it is just lazy writing. When it gets too outrageous they sometimes ‘retcon’ in an explanation to quell the angry mobs of readers with torches and pitchforks storming the publishing office.
One of my favorite comments is from the creator of Futurama when he addressed his writers. “Never let science stand in the way of a good joke.’
When you combine science & fiction together, they work well together…Up to a point. You will always put on one if you increase the level of the other. In other words, if you put too much science in your fiction, then you lose the advantages of fiction to tell a wild story.
What happens in Futurama though is the opposite…They put too much fiction in with their science & Prof. Farnsworth winds up saying things like, “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.”
Actually, recoil has been brought up (and shot down) a few times: there is no ‘recoil’ because Dabbles is using a railgun-crossbow hybrid, and there is no recoil with a crossbow (nor a regular bow)
I think you misunderstand basic and advanced physics there Guesticus.
1) there is no such thing as a railgun/crossbow hybrid, the whole point of electromagnetically accelerated projectile launches is that the electric field does the moving of the slug there is no traditional stored energy -> kinetic energy (say from bending a flexible piece of wood, in the [cross]bow).
2) the bullet is leaving the whole gun + dabbler at more velocity than it started with, therefore from newtonian physics the “reaction” on the gun+dabbler mass is recoil.
That all being said “magic”, just have her telekinetically cancel out the recoil, as long as the gun could withstand it.
You also don’t have a laser/crossbow hybrid either… oh wait, you do in Star Wars
Oh geez. Let’s correct some assumptions here. ‘Recoil’ is an energy transfer. With a linear particle accelerator, much of the energy for forward motion is transferred NOT through kinetic means, but through transformational means. That’s part one. (This doesn’t mean no recoil. It means the energy is applied differently)
Part two is that with an explosive projectile, the energy transfer of the combustible is done (mostly) immediately after ignition. Confined by the chamber, the force of the expanding gases escapes primarily through shoving the plug out of the bottle (the bullet down the barrel). As soon as the bullet _starts_ moving, the reverse pressure on the mass holding the weapon is reduced drastically. A electromagnetically propelled projectile has a constant forward motion applied until it leaves the motive device. The chemically powered projectile has a constantly reducing motion applied until it leaves the barrel.
Part three. Recoil force is determined by mass. The more mass of the ‘gun’ vs the projectile, the less recoil effect. Anchor yourself to the area surrounding you (magic, tractor beams, bolts, sandbags, what have you), and the effect can be made negligable. Small woman shooting a 1911A – stagger back. Large man shooting the same weapon, hand rises slightly.
For those interested, here’s a link to a paper on Recoil in Electromagnetic Railguns presented at UT Austin in 1986.
https://www.utexas.edu/research/cem/IEEE/PR%2052%20Weldon%20Publications.pdf
Notice the the recoil is _not_ directly back, but is applied in an interesting manner because of Lorenz forces. With much better technology, and a lot of power available, it should be possible to absorb the recoil force, or redirect it. With enough energy, almost anything is possible. Our problem is not being able to have enough energy in a small enough form. She’s an alien, n’est ce pas?
And there is a difference between ‘recoil’ and ‘kick-back’
there IS recoil with a bow or a crossbow, it happens when the stave and string vibrate, I once saw a test of a homemade crossbow that was not clamped securely, it jumped upwards and to the rear scaring the bejeebers out of the guy who made it.
reaction is inevitable, if you throw a ball eastward, your body moves westward, not enough to consciously notice but it is there… fire a 70lb longbow and you can feel it drive your arm back, not a whole lot, because arrows don’t mass all that much, but it is observable.
Fine, but if there is recoil, it is going in the opposite direction then a typical slug-thrower (because the string is pushing the arrow/bolt away from you and you have to pull back your arm to stop the bow from following the arrow/bolt)
When you fire a bow, the string pushes the arrow forwards. The string stops moving, the arrow does not. When the arrow leaves physical contact with the string, it pushes backwards with a force equal to, and in the opposite direction from, the direction the arrow went. It is the same with a crossbow.
When you fire your typical 21st century slug-thrower, a percussion cap ignites the gunpowder, which burns up in a big hurry, creating a cloud of gas that -pushes- the bullet down the barrel -away- from you. The bullet goes zipping off, and the gun recoils.
The arrow pushes back? Wait, what? o_O
It has to do with Newton’s Laws. The Arrow is a body at rest until acted on by the bow which pushes the arrow thus the reaction which pushes the bow. You can’t see it but the arrow actually compresses very slightly and then decompresses. Thus the Arrow does push the bow. Ask any bowman if there is a pushback. This is why if the arrow isn’t perfectly perpendicular to the force the string will slap your arm.
Newton’s Third Law Of Motion: When one body exerts a force on a second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction to that of the first body.
It can be hard to wrap your mind around at first, but it can be proven mathematically. When you have two objects, and one pushes the other, they both move. They move in opposite directions, and their speed of travel will be based on how much they weigh.
This is why when you try and jump, you push -down- in order to move -up-. In terms of the laws of physics, you are pushing the Earth down, and it pushes you up. Since the Earth out-weighs you, it doesn’t move much and you do.
So yes, you shoot an arrow, the arrow pushes back. That’s what recoil is.
So imagine what is happening with Dabbler’s gun. It pushes that “bullet” forward with so much power that it goes right through a tank, hits Achilles, and sends him flying. The bullet pushes the gun backwards just as hard. It should have sent Dabbler flying. She’s got some way of keeping that from happening.
That trick is actually more impressive than the gun itself is. In the Real World™ they can build a gun that will shoot through a tank. It will be a pretty large gun, but still we understand the principle. What kept her from going flying? Nothing we know of in the Real World™ could have done that.
technically, the string is ‘pulling’ the arrow, not pushing; but i digress.
I’m also a ventriloquist, and am talking out of my hat.
*giggle*
I wonder if a time out mat will be standard equipment when ever Sydney is around.
I can’t help but think of the sf/x of the gun from half life
Way off topic but Dave B. I think it would be nice if the pics at the top of the page had links to the comic they came from. Nostalgia is a heck of a thing and searching the archives is getting more difficult every week.
Problem is, they change every time you refresh the page, and not all of the images used were featured in the comic
Actually, as far as I can tell they only change once a week, when the actual comic updates. They are then consistent for that week. Not that it matters – you can attach a link to a pic, so that clicking it takes you to a particular place (in this instance, the source page of the pic). Attach the link in the files where you store the pics, so they automatically load together.
Easy Peasy. In theory.
In practice, while I’m sure it can be done, I have no clue how to set up the programming to “make it so”, and I imagine Dave has umpteen other more urgent things to do with his time.
What I think would be more immediately useful, is to make each comic page into a link to the “next” page.
Basically turning each comic into a Gigantic, easy to click, next page button.
I fins
What I think would be more immediately useful, is to make each comic page into a link to the “next” page.
i.e. Basically turning each comic into a Gigantic, easy to click, next page button.
I find archive trawls on comics that use it much easier…
I have enabled that now!
Anytime you change page or refresh the screen (F5) the pictures change. So everybody will be seeing different selections.
That would be nice, but the code that drives that is just a 3-4 line php file that looks in a folder and grabs an image at random. If it knew which page those images came from, the file would instead have to look at a database that associated a given image with a page URL. Not impossible of course, but much more work to maintain.
Quick question, what is Achilles shirt made of? if that weapon has the power to punch through a hill a mile a way wouldn’t that have obliterated his clothes? or at the very least knocked him out of the majority of them? what I can’t understand is if the amount of force behind the projectile was enough to knock him back and not get blown through the hill.
I’m sure this will be explained later, just pointing it out now.
He has only just started his reverse-facing flight path to the mountains
personally, railgun equals weapon, mass driver equals propulsion.
imagine a vehicle that used railgun OR mass driver tech in order to propel itself… every action has an equal and opposite reaction, after all
I thought I might just throw in to DaveB that he wouldn’t need to detail much damage to the tank at all.
The railgun appears to be overpenetrating (a situation where the kinetic speed of a shell is so high hat it isn’t stopped by the tank).
This causes minimal damage to crew and vehicle.
((Due to the fact that it enters and exits in a straight line based on where it entered)).
What kills crews and tanks is actually something that manages to penetrate and fails to exit.
With lumps of metal (read Railgun!) it would be extra important not to overpenetrate as a slower shell might cause a rebound off the rear (akin to ‘tumbling’ a bullet). When you have a lump of iron ricocheting off the interior of a tank you end up with a lot of dead crew.
Other dangers to tanks include:
Shot traps (Where slanted armor design actually encourages shells to land). Most of the time a safe/defensive matter, but in rare cases a killer. Some variants of the Tiger 2 had rounded gun mantles which might bounce shells off the curved underside and into the head of the driver below.
Spalling (Where sufficient kinetic energy has been passed on to the tank, so again not overpenetration but more likely with slower, high mass HE shells). – Where the interior armor (effectively) splinters, causing metal shards to splatter around the interior.
tl:dr – For the destruction of a tank (ignoring accurate fire), you’d be better off with a weapon that wasn’t /quite/ so good at shooting through.
Or a railgun with tank-sized shells.
not a railgun. railguns are very specific. but it does sound cooler, so go ahead and call it a railgun.
If it’s based on magentism (or basically anything else that follows laws of physics), she shouldn’t be able to fire something that accelerates a projectile that fast. It sent Achilles flying after going clean through a tank, so it should have exerted enough force on Dabbler to send her flying, and unless she used magic to protect herself or is ridiculously tough, probably broken her arms if not more as well.
Then clearly her weapon includes super-science recoilless technology.
Compare your argument to a gunpowder-era artillery officer saying that a particular shot is impossible because of the recoil involved. With the hindsight we have of seeing ‘reconciles’ modern artillery, which improves accuracy, by offsetting the problems caused by recoil, we can do things that were, without that, impossible.
Dabbler will have something built into that gun which resolves the issue. Probably by means neither of us can anticipate. It could be things as exotic as diverting the recoil into another dimension, or a a miracle material which soaks up the recoil, like a giant sponge, using some quantum trick that we do not have in our feeble Terran technology.
Plus Dabbler does not specify the means used, other than by analogy. Given that we use ‘slingshot’ in various ways, including (highly pertinent for a weapon designed to shoot into space) making use of planetary bodies gravity to ‘slingshot’ a vehicle to a new trajectory.
As such the magnetic fields she is utilising to achieve this need not be built into the weapon, as Maxima, Sydney and yourself seem to think. Even the author’s blog can be read as referring to their assumptions, rather than stipulating the method.
The weapon could actually be using the Earth’s own magnetic fields to ‘slingshot’ the projectile. In which case there would be no recoil at all, against the gun or Dabbler!
All such ‘equal and opposite reaction’ would be exerted against the Earth’s magnetic field and, any knock-on-effect that may be involved on the things that it interacts with (including Dabbler, but no more than anyone or anything else).
Such a weapon would be practically useless in deep space and of limited use on planets (such as Mars) with a week or non-existent magnetic field.
But it would work fine against satellites in Earth orbit. Which is what it is designed to do.
Props for the Monty Python reference.
I want to scold past Borg for not pointing out that rail guns and coil guns are entirely different things. Conflating them is like conflating a cannon with a block of C-4; they both use explosions to damage things, and that’s the extent of their similarities.
A rail gun works by running a large current through a conductive projectile (or sometimes a conductive gaseous propellant) via two rails that run the length of, or entirely constitute, the barrel. This generates a magnetic field which interacts with the current to push the projectile. Basically, if you run current through a loop of wire it will produce an outwards force on the loop, so you make a loop of wire that can expand by having one piece of it go away at alarming speeds.
A coil gun works by accelerating a (permanent, electro-, or ferro-) magnetic projectile with a series of electromagnets (the coils) that are activated in synchronization with the movement of the projectiles. It’s more complex to build since you need to get the synchronization right, but it does not require contact with the projectile and thus doesn’t run into erosion problems like a rail gun.
So, does this mean Achilles has some sort of inertia dampening or density control powers on top of being aggravatingly invincible? Since he only seems blown a few dozen feet back rather than clear into the mountain a mile away.