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Pretty cool, thanks for the link.

The part I found interesting was the very last sentence of the document, which mentions that the weapon would have a 90 lb recoil force in the forward direction when fired.

First off, I'm trying to figure out what causes that recoil. Secondly, not being any sort of gun afficionado, I'm wondering how a 90lb recoil force compares with the recoil force of a traditional gunpowder weapon. I also wonder how much of that force can be dissipated with some sort of "a recoil alleviation/mitigation system," as they put it.

PigLick

Shaded_Helios wrote:
I think it must have something to do with the rapid heating of the gas within the laser chamber or whatever it's called. Dunno, really.

Yah, that's the main thing I was thinking of. In fact, it is starting make sense- the gas comes from the rear of the weapon and as it passes through that supersonic nozzle, it's accelerated up to Mach 5+ towards the front, so I agine the recoil is the result of that supoersonic gas "hitting" the front end of the chamber.

I'm not sure how much a 90lbs recoil force would be in comparison to other modern weapons, but I've seen a few programs on television showcasing new weapons with some pretty effective recoil suppression systems. 20 years from now, I doubt recoil will be much of a problem.

Yah, I'm sure they can come up with something nifty. Espceially with this thing, which seems to have some power to spare.

I also wonder how much they'll be able to keep the weight down. It's already a bit heavier than a standard M16, and in that last section the company "estimates significant weapon weight increases as the system is developed for field use." I'm not sure if that includes the recoil supporession system or not, though. Again though, further materials technology and engineering and such may be able to cut down on this quite a bit within the next few decades.

I just want to see prototype being fired.

PigLick

Ben Quash wrote:To think that SW style Blasters might become reallity will be a boost to all you SW nuts...errrr I mean fans.

They won't be true SW style blasters until they make the appropriate sounds, and shoot whatever it is they shoot at *far* less than anything approaching relativistic speeds, though.

PigLick

Ben Quash wrote:To think that SW style Blasters might become reallity will be a boost to all you SW nuts...errrr I mean fans.

Yes, yes it will

I am still asking my self though, just how lethal can a 10.6 micrometer laser beam be?

Depends on how much energy is going into the beam, if it is in the Kw range it will probably be the equivlant of SW weaponry, Mw range though.......now your getting into Mobile suit gundam.

What happens if you get hit by it?

Well, one of two things can happen.
One: you get hit and it leaves a clean hole straight through which in the long run is bad.
two: the energy in the beam becomes divided by an objects mass and spreads, causing damage simular to the way Rifts Lasers are discribed except the hole will be bigger in the back then the front (Or is it the other way around?).

The multiple shot burst mode might jack some one up if enough of the beams hit

One thing about lasers is that they emit in pulses (I'n not really sure on that but I believe they do) and not only have one beam but thousands of bolts within that beam, thus dispite the beam size the damage will still be enormous.

my two cents, for whatever they are worth to you.

Bestarium wrote:

To think that SW style Blasters might become reallity will be a boost to all you SW nuts...errrr I mean fans.

They won't be true SW style blasters until they make the appropriate sounds, and shoot whatever it is they shoot at *far* less than anything approaching relativistic speeds, though.

Not to mention they'd have to decrease the accuracy of it so that it doesn't hit anything over 10 meters away.

It could be worse , we could get Star Trek's killer remote controls.

Septicrazor wrote:The weapon might weigh more than the current M-16 or M-4, but when you figure in the combat load of 240 bullets or 7 30round clips that the average soldier is issued the ammoless laser rifle has them beat in weight hands down.

I did think about the ammo weight and yah, overall it will still weigh quite a bit less less. I'd think you still have to take the total weapon weight into consideration, though, because the soldiers have to lift these things up level to aim them, it won't just be extra weight distributed in various places across their body. Dependgin on the weight distribution of the weapon, even a few pounds difference in gun weight could add a lot of extra fatigue

I am still asking my self though, just how lethal can a 10.6 micrometer laser beam be?

10.6 micrometers is the wavelength of the light, not the diameter of the beam. The diameter of the beam is 1.3mm, which is still pretty small, but a lot larger than 10.6 micrometers. I certainly wouldn't want a 1.3mm hole burned straight through me, and that's assuming that's all it does. That much energy delivered to such a small area in such a short amount of time could have some pretty nasty repurcussions to human tissue.

PigLick

that thing's got death by infection written all over it.

I'm just thinking that if it burns a 1.3 mm hole in you, that means that it's not clean for one thing, it's a hole that's been burned through you, and we all know how easy burnt flesh gets infected. Now imagine infections inside your body. Don't know how effective it'd be for a standard infantryman's rifle...but this thing would be a wicked sniper rifle.

Bestarium wrote:Wow I just checked out some recoil figures to see how high 90lbs stacks up...

A 500 grain .458 Magnum comes out just under 70lbs of recoil.

Now this laser will do 90lbs of recoil...in the opposite direction in the span of .35 seconds? Couldn't that potentially dislocate somethig? Theres no way a human being could fire that on a burst setting...unless they had *gasp* power armor.

Maybe they'll come up with something better in the next 16-21 years.

Prolly use a type of gyro-mount, more likely than power armour, though body armour would also prevent injury to the user.

Septicrazor wrote:I am still asking my self though, just how lethal can a 10.6 micrometer laser beam be? What happens if you get hit by it?

Well, the article said that it hit with 1900 thermalwatts per blast, and according to my conversion website 1900 watt = 1,401.3681336 foot pound-force/second. That's enough to punch a hole through some of even the heaviest of body armors and to clean through a human body, no problem. Now exactly what would happen then, I'm not 100% sure, but that can't be healthy for a person.

Septicrazor wrote:My bad on the diameter of the beam. The idea that it might be able to be a sustainable beam that could cut through things at a distance is wicked. Though I think that could actually be to dangerous of a weapon to give to infantrymen...hehe. With a powerfull enough beam, colateral damage could be imense. All I can think is, that if they have had plans for this for five years and its not due till the 2020's then think of the refinements they could have come up with by then. I could realy see vehicle mounted energy weapons showing up in the next 10-15 years.

SR

Glad I served already...I'd hate to be in the military with a bunch of sustained laser beams sweeping over the field and slicing every mama-jama in pieces ala Resident Evil.

Battlefield cleanup would be atrocious too...just get a giant vacuum or pooper scooper to collect the chunks, then mail it home Glad-Lok style

They already have munitions for "regular" weapons that can explode in mid air without hitting the target. This means you can hit someone hiding behind a wall or around a corner just by firing next to them.

I think improved conventional munitions will be here long before energy weapons show up on the battlefield.

Yeah as to no knock down power, light is what exactly? That's right kids millions of tiny particles called Photons. In spite of everything we "Know" about lasers being energy weapons.
While living in Russia I got to attend an experiment at a university where they were demonstrating a laser's effect on certain objects. The most interesting to me was a coin that was placed in a clamp in the lalser's path. Yeah the laser chewed through it in no time flat, but the neat part was that the coin was bent, like something hot had pushed through it. I know it should have just melted the coin, but I saw it with my own eyes, the metal was stretched.
Yes I understand that the metals used in coins are very soft, but they are still somewhat more resiliant than the Human body. My little piece on that anyway.

NoJack wrote:Yeah as to no knock down power, light is what exactly? That's right kids millions of tiny particles called Photons. In spite of everything we "Know" about lasers being energy weapons.
While living in Russia I got to attend an experiment at a university where they were demonstrating a laser's effect on certain objects. The most interesting to me was a coin that was placed in a clamp in the lalser's path. Yeah the laser chewed through it in no time flat, but the neat part was that the coin was bent, like something hot had pushed through it. I know it should have just melted the coin, but I saw it with my own eyes, the metal was stretched.
Yes I understand that the metals used in coins are very soft, but they are still somewhat more resiliant than the Human body. My little piece on that anyway.

That sounds like something that would result more from expansion of the metal due to the heat than the laser bending the coin with any sort of force being applied.

PigLick

As to the weapon's lethality...

A laser does it's damage due to heat transfer. The energy transferred to the target is what will kill the target. That and the hydrostatic shock of the body's cells explosively vapourising.

As for the 90lb recoil...that may be at full auto.

If you can't move anything by shining light on it... then where do Solar sail theories come from? or launch lasers?

NoJack wrote:If you can't move anything by shining light on it... then where do Solar sail theories come from? or launch lasers?

It's not that light *can't* move something, it's that the force it exerts is so tiny, it's not *going* to move anything when you're under the effects of gravity and in an atmosphere.

Solar sails (theoretically) work because they are *huge*, and are in the vacuum of space. Even the tiny amount of pressure being exerted on them is enough that, eventually, they can get moving at decent speeds.

Launch lasers work on a completely different principle. The laser itself is not causing the propulsion, it simply superheats the air on the bottom of the "rocket." Since the air is being very rapdily superheated, it also expands very rapidly. This rapid expansion is focused downward, which pushes the rocket upward.

PigLick

Photons don't have mass but they do carry momentum, and while they don't carry allot (about 3 lbs worth of force hits the earth each day) the more concentrated beam of a laser can impart a fairly impressive amount of momentum. There was talk a while ago of using plane based lasers to shove around scud launchers.

Kyo wrote:Photons don't have mass but they do carry momentum, and while they don't carry allot (about 3 lbs worth of force hits the earth each day) the more concentrated beam of a laser can impart a fairly impressive amount of momentum. There was talk a while ago of using plane based lasers to shove around scud launchers.

Don't know where you get that ... it takes a star size light source to impart any measurable momentum... and that if the target is wide enough...

trying to use a laser to move anything would be like asking a 2 year old to move a beached whale by pushing it with a straw.

Svartalf wrote:

Kyo wrote:Photons don't have mass but they do carry momentum, and while they don't carry allot (about 3 lbs worth of force hits the earth each day) the more concentrated beam of a laser can impart a fairly impressive amount of momentum. There was talk a while ago of using plane based lasers to shove around scud launchers.

Don't know where you get that ... it takes a star size light source to impart any measurable momentum... and that if the target is wide enough...

trying to use a laser to move anything would be like asking a 2 year old to move a beached whale by pushing it with a straw.

Yep. I was looking into this yesterday, and found a NASA page about solar sails that said pressure exerted on a 1 km square solar sail that weighs about 2 lbs total would, at a distance of 1 AU (astronomical unit, or the average distance from earth to sun- about 93 million miles) from the sun, experience a force of about 2 lbs (9 N).

PigLick

Well then damn you discovery channel. Last bastion of truth and now I have to doubt it as well . The program talked about shoving around the launcher itself (big truck type thing) even had computer graphics (I have no idea why the terrorists mounted the weapon on the roof of a building, or how the hell they got it up there). Future weaponry or some such show, all hypothetical. Had a nifty ass working rail gun on there too, blew through a whole lot of steel plates. The laser however was not even on the drawing board.