I do not think I am getting much fiction writing done tonight. A doctor’s appointment threw off my schedule and here in the early evening I am utterly knackered. So In a few I will go veg in front of the television and stream something mindless.
Given that I am going to be about 500 words short of my target today I will write a bit on a subject recently brought to my mind. On Sunday my sweetie-wife and I watched the MST3K version of Moon Zero Two. For those who do not know this is a 1969/1970 Hammer production billed as the first space western. Before you go getting vision of Firefly stuck in your head it was nothing like that show. I had very vague memories of seeing this movie when I was younger. Actually it is not terrible and gets more science right than many sf films today.
One of the things the film depicts is the use of pistols. gunpowder firearms, in the vacuum of space. Contrary to what Joss Whedon would have you believe in the Firefly’s episode “Our Mrs. Reynolds” firearms do not require atmosphere for combustion; the oxidizer is packed in the with charge in the cartridge. Think about it, that bullet and cartridge are sealed together there is no avenue for the atmosphere to participate in the charge combusting.
So, if the cartridge will fire, are there any real issues with pistol packing spacemen? There are.
First off there is a serious issue with heat. Guns get hot and here on Earth a handgun relies on the air to carry away the heat by convection. Even then it is possible to fire the weapon so fast that the metal overheats, expands and jams. (This was apparently a factor in the British Army’s defeat at the Battle of Islandlwana.) A gun fired in the vacuum of space will have few options of dumping its heat. There will be no atmosphere for convection, the spaceman is unlikely to volunteer to do it through conduction and that leave just radiation which works best once the metal starts glowing. of course by then jamming will be only one of many problems.
Another issue is lubrication. Guns use a variety of lubricants that allow the moving and sliding parts to smoothly work. Unless you select lubricants for a vacuum setting I think it is likely you are going to find that they may freeze is in shadow or boil away if directly exposed. Either way it bears ill for the proper operation of your gun.
The last significant factor in my opinion is one determined by setting. If you are in a gravity field, say the moon’s, you’ll need to adjust your sighting to compensate for the change in gravity, but that’s merely technique. However, if you are in free space, floating free you have a new problem. No, not that the gun will kick you around like a jet pack, the force from a tiny slug going very fast is still going to be much less than what is required to move a person. No, I think the trouble will come from off-balanced forces. It is unlikely that the vector of the shot will pass cleanly through the marksman’s center of mass and that means the marksman is likely to start tumbling.
None of these issues are insurmountable. Perhaps vacuum rated guns could be designed with gasses to carry away the heat, and finding the right lubricants is an engineering issues I will wager has already been solved. The off-center force is most easily solved with small jets on the pressure-suit that would be slaved to the gun and fired to produced a counter-force with each round shot.
Well, that’s my essay for the night.
Soviet Almaz military space station test fired its 23mm automatic cannon in space.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a18187/here-is-the-soviet-unions-secret-space-cannon/
There seems to be some confusion in the text of article of the actual caliber of the cannon. At one point it describes it as 14.5mm, in others as 23mm.
Using military jet fighter or bomber machine-guns or cannons for space combat missions makes a great deal of sense. The environment such weapons must be able to operate in are not greatly different from the space environment. The air at 50,000 feet is so cold and thin that as far as a cannon is concerned it might as well be in space.
The F-86 Sabre Jet used in Korean War combat was armed with six Browning M-3 .50 caliber heavy machine-guns. Early models of the B-52 bomber used four of the same weapons in a tail mount directed by a tail gunner. These were significantly modified weapons from the common M-2 WWII variant, lighter and with a very high rate of fire around 1,000 rpm each. What tweaking the USAF must have done to get reliable operation from these weapons at 50,000 feet altitude I do not know.