Pulsar Ballistics

TFLYTSNBN wrote:The most common personal small arm employed in the Honorverse is the Pulsar. Weber gives the impression that this is a gravity driven projectile weapon with very high velocity. I'll comment on this later, but what are everyone's thoughts on probable calibers, projectile masses and velocities?

Given the fact that the velocities of modern projectile weapons are about 1 kilometer per second and the speed of sound in most human tissues is 1,500 meters per second, what would be different about the effects of projectiles at 2-4 kilometres per second?

tlb wrote:House of Steel gives the Marine grav pulse rifle as 4x37mm (which I take as being the diameter and length of the projectile) and I assume this is a Spitzer point with a boat-tail shape. The speed of even the pistol is stated to be hyper-velocity, so somewhere over 3000 meters per second (about 9 times the speed of sound). This reminds me most of the anti-tank penetrator of the sabot round.

I recall that Maxxq commented at one time about the tri-barrel and maybe more; so I will see of I can dredge that up.

Here is the thread I remembered:
Heavy Tri-barrels

I expect that the size of the pistol round might be more like 2x16mm with less velocity because of the smaller impeller size.

M7 Pulser
The M7 Pulse Pistol is the Navy designation for the civilian MT P339 pulse pistol, supplied under contract. Both the 12-coil and 9-coil versions are issued, the 9-coil version designated as the M9. The darts (3x24mm) are loaded into a 78-round, three column
magazine, flanked on either side by power cells. The feed system pushes each dart in-line with the barrel, allowing the feed coil to strip it off and propel it forward into the coil system. There is no barrel per-se, as any object between the grav coils and the dart would be subject to the same gravitational forces as the dart itself. The coils themselves impart a spin on the dart as it travels down the barrel.

Unlike some systems with a variable-state capacitor system, the M7 uses a separate capacitor for each grav coil. The added complexity of the system increases cycle times slightly, but does allow for variable barrel length models with a minimum of re-engineering. As soon as the dart trips the timing circuit forward of the coil, the power cell begins to recharge the capacitor for that cell. The thumb selector has standard settings for safe, semi-automatic and three round burst.

The back half of the frame consists of the power system. The M7 uses a non-removable power cell combined with cells in the magazines themselves. Between the two systems the weapon has enough power for just under 200 rounds of fire, as each subsystem serves as a backup for the other. Under the power cell is the slide, which can be pulled back to manually check the chamber and physically disconnect the power cell from the grav coil system, thus rendering the weapon intrinsically safe. On the left side of the frame, just forward of the fire selector is the magazine readout, also a variable light display system, accurate to approximately 5 rounds. Below that is the thumb button magazine release.

"What's he want?"
"A Kettridge Model A-3."
That was an awfully small gun. Easy to hide and deadly enough, if you were a good shot. But most people wanted something quite a bit more powerful, especially mercs.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:The most common personal small arm employed in the Honorverse is the Pulsar. Weber gives the impression that this is a gravity driven projectile weapon with very high velocity. I'll comment on this later, but what are everyone's thoughts on probable calibers, projectile masses and velocities?

Given the fact that the velocities of modern projectile weapons are about 1 kilometer per second and the speed of sound in most human tissues is 1,500 meters per second, what would be different about the effects of projectiles at 2-4 kilometres per second?

Daryl wrote:The interesting point for me is that having a rapid firing hand gun with similar muzzle energy to a 50 cal, would indicate yet some more tricky Honorverse physics to handle the recoil. A heavy semi auto Barret is a shoulder buster, how would you control a light pistol?

Daryl wrote:The interesting point for me is that having a rapid firing hand gun with similar muzzle energy to a 50 cal, would indicate yet some more tricky Honorverse physics to handle the recoil. A heavy semi auto Barret is a shoulder buster, how would you control a light pistol?

cthia wrote:I don't think that would be tricky physics at all. Just physics.

It is called a fuzzler. Here in the Sol system we have silencers which we can install on our weapons. Some tongues refer to it as a muzzler.

To deal with the incessant kick of a gun in the Honorverse, an equal and opposite force is sent along the outside of the gun, thus cancelling each other out. A force muzzler. Hence, fuzzler. The opposite force hits a plate which disperses the energy. It is an ingenious mechanism perfectly "synchronizing" Newton's third law.