Cyborgs and Exoskeletons

tlb wrote:

quite possibly a cat wrote:I don't think there is any indication anything except for the wedges and spider drive is "reactionless" though. Even those are actually pushing on the hyperwall. True reactionless engines break the concept of energy.

Isn't the mass driver reactionless? The weight of the missiles in a pod exceed the pod's weight; but they are accelerated up to speed before they can get wedges up, not the pod. I thought the pulser used a variant of that.

On Bsailisk Station wrote:Kilgore's pulse rifle surged back, its recoil almost imperceptible through his armor as its small, powerful grav coil spat a stream of four-millimeter darts down-range.

Fireflair wrote:I'd have to find the exact reference, but when Honor is getting the new arm she has an internal thought process about cybernetics. It's been mentioned once or twice in this thread but most everyone seemed to ignore it, there is a star system where cybernetics is not just common, but the norm, with whole sections of the body replaced, up to and including the entire body. Cybernetics are common for people who do not respond to regeneration in many places in the Honor-verse, and the common method is to make them look as human as possible.

Ashes of Victory wrote:Honor had learned to adjust for the fact that the artificial nerves in her face simply did not report sensory data the same way live ones did. At the moment, she felt nothing at all on her left cheek. Had her implants been working properly, however, she would have "felt" the pressure of the growing sea breeze quite differently on the two sides of her face . . . and even after so many years, the sensations from the left side would have felt artificial. Which was fair enough, since that was precisely what they would have been. She sometimes wondered if it would have been easier to adjust if they'd had to replace the nerves in both cheeks, but she had no intention of experimenting to find out.
That artificiality was the main reason so many star nations, including the Star Kingdom, had no extensive market in bio enhancement. Some nations did, of course. The rogue bio-modifiers of Mesa came to mind almost automatically, but her mother's native Beowulf had also supported a lucrative enhancement market. In one way, Honor could understand the temptation, for there had been features to the eye the Peeps had burned out that she missed sorely, like the low-light vision and telescopic and microscopic functions. But even there, what she saw had never seemed quite as alive—as "real"—as what the unenhanced vision of her right eye had reported. It was something that probably could never be fully described to anyone who hadn't experienced it directly. For that matter, she supposed it might well be purely psychological, although it was reported with near total unanimity by everyone who'd received similar implants. The closest she'd ever been able to come to defining the difference even for herself was to think of what she saw through her left eye as a very, very good, three-dimensional flat screen presentation. Again, she'd often wondered whether or not replacing both eyes, so that she no longer had the "distraction" of her natural eye's input, would have ameliorated the problem in time. And, again, she had no intention of ever finding out.
But there were people who'd made the opposite choice. Indeed, in some of humanity's far-flung cultures, like Sharpton, where the cyborg was a sort of cultural icon, it was as routine for an individual to replace limbs and eyes with artificial improvements as it was for someone on Manticore to have her teeth cleaned and straightened. Or her ears pierced, for that matter. Personally, Honor couldn't imagine doing such a thing. In fact, the very thought made her uncomfortable—probably because she'd spent so much of her life in space. After so many years in an artificial exterior environment, she felt no temptation whatsoever to turn her own body into an artificial interior environment, whatever advantages over mere flesh and blood it might have brought with it.
Although the Star Kingdom didn't practice that sort of casual enhancement, it wasn't out of any horror of "cyborgian monstrosities." Honor had met a few people, mostly from places in the Solarian League, whose enhancement had been so obvious and extreme as to make her feel actively ill at ease, but those were exceptions. Most people who had themselves enhanced went to some lengths to make the enhancements appear as much like natural (albeit as perfectly developed natural) limbs, as possible, and the same held true for the minority of people who couldn't regenerate.

quite possibly a cat wrote:I don't think there is any indication anything except for the wedges and spider drive is "reactionless" though. Even those are actually pushing on the hyperwall. True reactionless engines break the concept of energy.

tlb wrote:Isn't the mass driver reactionless? The weight of the missiles in a pod exceed the pod's weight; but they are accelerated up to speed before they can get wedges up, not the pod. I thought the pulser used a variant of that.

Jonathan_S wrote:It does seem like the the "new lightweight mass-drivers BuShips had perfected" have less recoil that they "should". I'm assuming those are actually using grav fields to fire the missiles... And at least while actively being towed by a ship the ship's tractor might handle recoil forces; since they seem to be able to apply lateral forces, not simply drag things directly behind the emitter. But system defense pods or normal pods used in a detached free-floating role don't seem to have issues kicking their missiles out far and fast enough to achieve separation necessary for drive startup.
But grav drivers (at least those small enough to be handheld) do still seem to have some recoil. In OBS there is a quote, when the Fearless's Marines are facing the wave of attacking Medusans, showing that pulse rifles have some recoil

On Bsailisk Station wrote:Kilgore's pulse rifle surged back, its recoil almost imperceptible through his armor as its small, powerful grav coil spat a stream of four-millimeter darts down-range.

In HOTQ Captain Yu, while using a counter-grav collar to work his way down a lift shaft needed to anchor himself against recoil before firing his pulser (pistol).

However HAE it implies that a pistol type pulser has significantly less recoil than a Colt .45, despite having ~ 1/7th the muzzle velocity.

In Shadow of Freedom the much heavier anti-tank launcher used a stabilizing pressor beam to offset the launch recoil. I don't know if smaller weapons like rifles and pistols also cheat like that, or if their grav coils just inherently cheat Newton.

tlb wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:In HOTQ Captain Yu, while using a counter-grav collar to work his way down a lift shaft needed to anchor himself against recoil before firing his pulser (pistol).

However HAE it implies that a pistol type pulser has significantly less recoil than a Colt .45, despite having ~ 1/7th the muzzle velocity.

Thank you for the textev. While Captain Yu might have grabbed support for a steadier aim, I can accept that the mass driver has some recoil. Consider the effect using a flechette gun would have on an unarmored person if the recoil were not diminished.

PS. You are saying the Colt .45 has 1/7th the muzzle velocity, right?

Jonathan_S wrote:As for Yu the two actual quotes are:
"Something moved in the dimness, and his free hand locked on a rung to anchor him against the recoil as he raised his pulser"

"Yu rolled on his side in midair, holding his pulser in a two-handed grip as he flashed across the open lift doors. A Masadan soldier saw him and opened his mouth to shout a warning, but the captain squeezed his trigger, and two other pulsers whined as the three of them sent a tornado of darts down the passage.
There was no time to pick targets, but those darts were no less deadly for being unaimed. They clawed down the Masadans who’d lurked in ambush, and Yu stuck out a foot. His toes hooked under one of the ladder rungs before the recoil of his pulser could push him away from it"

tlb wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:As for Yu the two actual quotes are:
"Something moved in the dimness, and his free hand locked on a rung to anchor him against the recoil as he raised his pulser"

"Yu rolled on his side in midair, holding his pulser in a two-handed grip as he flashed across the open lift doors. A Masadan soldier saw him and opened his mouth to shout a warning, but the captain squeezed his trigger, and two other pulsers whined as the three of them sent a tornado of darts down the passage.
There was no time to pick targets, but those darts were no less deadly for being unaimed. They clawed down the Masadans who’d lurked in ambush, and Yu stuck out a foot. His toes hooked under one of the ladder rungs before the recoil of his pulser could push him away from it"

Again, thanks for the quote. This might cure me of making a reply before checking the text, but I am afraid that is unlikely: reactions are much faster than thought.

Joat42 wrote:Maybe the recoil from a pulser on full auto is more akin to a pushing actions ie. the recoils comes so fast they flow together.

My experience with assault guns on full auto is that novices tend to be surprised and doesn't compensate for the recoil and the gun quickly points upwards (or even smacking them in the face). If you are familiar with the weapon you know how to compensate for the recoil and I don't see why Yu wouldn't have the experience and reflexes to compensate for his use of the pulser. After all - they certainly knew well that the Masadans weren't to be trusted and most likely the Haven crew trained for any eventuality.

tlb wrote:Certainly that is true: in our world people have died because someone lost control of an automatic weapon.
But the question is more about whether there is something in the mass driver mechanism that reduces recoil to a level far below what our understanding of the physics would suggest.

WLBjork wrote:Recoil, recoil, recoil.

Strictly, I think quite a lot of the time we are talking about perceptible recoil, rather than the energy from the principle that "for each and every action there is an equal and opposite reaction".

There are various ways to reduce perceptible recoil in a 'chemburner', as can be (apparently) demonstrated by weapons such as the AA-12 and Vector SMG at the most extreme end of the spectrum.

Yet the equal and opposite reaction of firing a projectile using a railgun is to force the rails providing the electromagnetic field apart.

Moving up to the pulse weapons used by Honorverse forces, there seem to be more of a coilgun, with coils in the barrels providing the gravetic fields that accelerate the projectile up the barrel. In this case, surely the equal and opposite reaction would be to attempt to force the coils to expand equally, so perhaps the is no (or very little) perceptible recoil.