Space Marine, page 3

In response to the recoil question I have a few things to say.

Recoil and zero gravity: In order to over come the recoil of a rifle fired in space you would not have to overcome the fps of a bullet, but rather the relative force of the recoil (aka footpounds of backwards pressure) which is a direct relation to the mass of the projectile and the speed at which it leaves the barrel. this is well within the abilities of a chemical thruster even a relativelly small one. In the sci fi stories I have read the two most workable solutions for recoil (with realistic technology) are as follows.
1. onboard (on the weapon) gas vents for recoil cancellation: Basically either waste gases from firing the projectile or a seperate canister are ejected directly backwards from the firing point of the shell creating a cancellation effect. In this system a pull of the trigger automatically triggers the firing of the bullet and the cancellation thrust. normally the extra gas cartridges are integral to the clip so you wouldn't run out of canceller before you ran out of ammo.
2. integrated space suit propulsor/weapon interface: In this solution you still use gas or rocket propulsion to cancel the inertial effects of rounds being fired but the cancellation comes from your suits propulsor jets not the rifle. This is a much trickier but ultimatelly doable solution, especially in light of some of the progress coming out of the land warrior program. the important thing to keep in mind when talking about zero g recoil cancellation is you need to generate the cancellation thrust on exactly the opposite vector as the outgoing projectile.
To do this you would need:
1. A multi axes thrust pack probably with a minimum of 4 to 6 nozzles.
2. A sensor on the rifle capable of feeding the suit computer it's position at the time of firing in relation to the suit, which could probably be tied into an onboard cam to allow a HUD direct feed to allow around the corner and only weapon exposed shooting.
3. A sufficiently powerful onboard computer to control the thrust pack automatically based on vectors fed to it by the rifle, again with this kind of computing power why not add a camera style sight to the weapons as I think we all agree a space marine would need a heads up display anyway to survive space combat and the hazards of debris etc.
4. An uplink of some sort between weapon systems and the integral suit computer. This one might seem like a no brainer as many of you instantly think "well we have bluetooth and other wireless tech". But to my jaded and exceedingly paranoid mind I think the role information warfare is going to play in the future makes that a bad choice. It leaves you open to jamming of your wireless freq's which could be very nasty if you didn't know it was coming and were in the process of hosing fire down a hallway. If you use video sights it leaves you open also to a transmission intercept that could localize your people's positions allowing precision responses from the enemy in force allocation and/or allow them to see what you are about to fire on so they could avoid being there when the hammer drops. That is not even taking into account the potential for "spoofing" your data feed to your internal computer causing the thrusters to over, under, or sideways compensate your shoots. Or even worse to make you not "see" the ambush waiting around the next corner because your point man acting on SOP just popped his sight around the corner for a peek before signalling an all clear or the opposite making you "see" ambushes where there aren't to either herd you into a kill zone or force you to expend munitions and/or mission critical time. So in that respect my bet would be with a flexible non fiberoptic (fiber breaks too easy) data wire along the lines of USB 2.0 or firewire to be put inside a standard weapon retention lanyard thereby guaranteeing positive data flow and no weapon loss. I mean imagine how embarassing it would be to butter finger your weapon and accidentally send it into a terminal reentry path and having to explain to your quartermaster why your insanelly expensive rifle became nothing more than a shooting star for ling ling the chinese farm girl to wish on

SO yeah this insanelly long post is done, I have other ideas though that I will share in the near future. Unless of course I forget about this thread or get distracted by shiny stuff.