Can a gauss rifle make a body explode?

[Visions of Khas]

I read this about a year ago, but I think DU rounds are also self-sharpening; they fragment into smaller splinters when penetrating a hard material. Guess this exacerbates the pyrophoric effects drakolobo mentioned.

I think most rounds these days are starting to steer clear of depleted uranium and leaning more towards tungsten alloy stuff. But I can easily visualize DU being the standard in the StarCraft universe, where fusion is more or less a daily phenomenon. Terrans are gonna play dirty, so why not recycle nuclear waste?

What I do have a problem with is 8mm rounds. That seems way too small. I mean, you have these massive powersuits carrying around these mini-Howitzers -- and they only fire 8mm rounds? I'd think they'd be a higher caliber.

EDIT

Also, THIS exists. The Science of StarCraft.

[drakolobo]

I think most rounds these days are starting to steer clear of depleted uranium and leaning more towards tungsten alloy stuff. But I can easily
What I do have a problem with is 8mm rounds. That seems way too small. I mean, you have these massive powersuits carrying around these mini-Howitzers -- and they only fire 8mm rounds? I'd think they'd be a higher caliber.

EDIT

Also, THIS exists. The Science of StarCraft.

logistics, with gauss technology allows munitions are smaller size and less cost with a similar effect of higher caliber bullets.
seems that the c-14 can also use larger munitions. in the rescue of General Warfield caps were to be seen that caliber ammunition 50 (12mm)
actually if you think that terran marines wear a suit of environmental protection. has high radioactive decontamination technology, as well as medical, use of DU does not seem dangerous

[solidsamurai]

logistics, with gauss technology allows munitions are smaller size and less cost with a similar effect of higher caliber bullets.
seems that the c-14 can also use larger munitions. in the rescue of General Warfield caps were to be seen that caliber ammunition 50 (12mm)
actually if you think that terran marines wear a suit of environmental protection. has high radioactive decontamination technology, as well as medical, use of DU does not seem dangerous

Yeah, that's pretty much it.

The c-14 is one of the most standardized weapons in the entire sector (short of a colonist hunting rifle, probably), meaning it can be configured in pretty much any way you like (so you can scale up the calibers and maybe even shoot multiple calibers in the same load - something you can't do with most weapons in existence right now). It's also incredibly reliable.

caps were to be seen that caliber ammunition 50 (12mm)

Proper term is casings. Also, 12.5mm (a caliber is an inch and an inch is 25mm).

I read this about a year ago, but I think DU rounds are also self-sharpening; they fragment into smaller splinters when penetrating a hard material. Guess this exacerbates the pyrophoric effects drakolobo mentioned.

Fire streaks would probably use a little bit of DU in the tips for this. Which makes them more penetrating than the U-238s, which use a DU core.

Urban Slamz; simply dubbed with the name Urban Slamz written colorfully on the side of the .50 cal casing, this round is a real beauty of a war lord's enigma. Simple scientific observation would tell you that, contained within a velvetty coating of neo-steel, some kind of vespene cocktail is holed up in a riff raff surrounding the bullet core, which is impossible to observe without some precision equipment. However, it behaves differently each time it is fired - sometimes snap freezing targets, other times setting a line of enemies on fire, and still other times exploding in a nuclear shock wave that stuns everyone. Be careful out there.

Good for turning your foes into green goo.

[drakolobo]

Proper term is casings. Also, 12.5mm (a caliber is an inch and an inch is 25mm).
.

ja already knew, I wanted to mention just in millimeter closed, to be more precise is 12.7 mm, one inch equals to 25.4 mm

[Quirel]

I read this about a year ago, but I think DU rounds are also self-sharpening; they fragment into smaller splinters when penetrating a hard material. Guess this exacerbates the pyrophoric effects drakolobo mentioned.

That's about right. There's a reason why armies are so unwilling to give up their depleted uranium rounds.

What I do have a problem with is 8mm rounds. That seems way too small. I mean, you have these massive powersuits carrying around these mini-Howitzers -- and they only fire 8mm rounds? I'd think they'd be a higher caliber.

Lessee here... 8mm is about rifle-caliber range, large enough to do a body some harm, and that's when it's only traveling at sonic ranges.

I guess there's a tradeoff between how large your ammunition is and how many rounds you can carry. With 8mm bullets sans propellant, a lone Marine could probably carry enough ammunition to last a week in a police action. Against the Zerg, I'm not sure that a Zergling could stand up to all that much damage, especially if the right ammunition is being used. When you need more gun, well, the Dominion probably has bigger gun.

Now that they have heavy power armor with automatic grenade launchers, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a version of the Marauder suit that has mounted 14.5mm machine guns.

[phazonjunkie]

I guess there's a tradeoff between how large your ammunition is and how many rounds you can carry.

There's also power requirements to factor in too. The larger/more massive your projectile is, the more energy required to accelerate it to hypersonic velocities.

whatever power supply you're using has to be man-portable (likely gauss rifles contain a fuel cell of some kind). That I guess would naturally limit the kind of ammo you can have.

[Visions of Khas]

Someone mentioned the size of the round casings as being too large for 8mm rounds.

Now, I know this applies to railguns but I don't know about coilguns. But a railgun round, with current technology, requires some sort of armature to bridge the gap between the round itself and the two rails. There's a variety of armature that, when charged by the rails, becomes a sheath of plasma that can conduct the electromagnetic charge just as well as a metal armature.

Perhaps these larger casings contain not only the round, but also this armature, resulting in this increased size? Or it could simply be that the C-14s used on Char were just using larger rounds period.

[kazu0201]

Marine imba

[l33telboi]

In regards to the article already linked to, it's quite dated by now. Especially considering that I wrote it before Starcraft II came out and it doesn't have any information from the game.

Currently the evidence seems to point to the gauss rifles being hybrid weapons, i.e. they use both chemical propellant and electromagnetic force to propel the slug.

Reading through that article, I just realized the author neglected to take into consideration calculations related to depleted uranium rounds, U-238, which are used today. (Nasty things.)

It's not an oversight. I quite intentionally left them out. I was trying to gauge how powerful the rounds were at a reasonable minimum, and since DU is an ammo upgrade, I went with steel and iron rounds instead (which are mentioned in the novels and indicated to be the standard rounds).

I didn't understand this. Is the 18.02 in kilograms moving at 1700 m/s? Or is just kg per m/s (whatever in the name of science that means).

The "kg*m/s" bit is the SI unit for momentum. Basically, an object with a mass of 0.0106 kg and a velocity of 1700 m/s will have a momentum of 18.02 kg*m/s.

[solidsamurai]

There's also power requirements to factor in too. The larger/more massive your projectile is, the more energy required to accelerate it to hypersonic velocities.

Larger bullets have more propellant. So I'm sure in-game terms it's easy to demand the same power requirement (from the coils) for every bullet.

Basically, an object with a mass of 0.0106 kg and a velocity of 1700 m/s will have a momentum of 18.02 kg*m/s.

So is that the pressure exerted at what point? For penetration, they usually measure in Psi (or foot lbs.), don't they?.