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Post by scottwashburn on Apr 8, 2016 12:02:56 GMT
As I understand it, the British Coil Gun is some sort of electromagnetic 'rail gun' which fires projectiles at high velocity using electromagnets. Working on my second GMW book I was planning on mentioning it, but then I started thinking about it in detail and I'm sort of wondering how to deal with it.
I understand that Ernie wanted the British to have some advanced technology due to their study of Martian machines captured in the first invasion. But he didn't want to just give the British heat rays. Okay, so rail guns. Fair enough, except where do the British get the idea? The Martians themselves don't use them so it's not like they are copying them. In the real world the first mention of the idea comes from a Frenchman in 1918 and the first practical design comes from Germany in 1944.
So I'm puzzling over coil guns...
The only thing I can think of is the Martian black dust launcher. In the original Wells novel the Martins launch their black dust weapon using what the narrator describes as a rocket. But maybe it wasn't a rocket, but some sort of rail gun launcher. Yeah, that might be the way to go with this. |
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Post by loyalist on Apr 8, 2016 12:50:36 GMT
Now that you've pointed it out there doesn't seem to be a direct connection between the coil gun and Martian technology other than using special metal alloys for the projectile. (Maybe Ernie got that part of the concept from depleted uranium or tungsten AT rounds.)
Given the short range of the Black Dust canisters I think using rail gun technology to fire them would be overkill. I assumed they were propelled by compressed gas (possibly just compressed air) and that the cylindrical tank-like part of the launcher held the propellant gas.
Maybe you could explain the coil gun as a non-Martian concept that was envisioned before 1918 (in the real world) but couldn't be built due to technological limitations - kind of like Da Vinci's idea for a helicopter. British research on captured machines from the first invasion resulted in highly advanced magnet and capacitor technology that made a working coil gun possible. I'm assuming that electrical contrivance on the trail of the coil gun is supposed to represent a large capacitor that generates the pulse of energy to fire the gun.
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Post by spectre07 on Apr 8, 2016 13:55:14 GMT
Scott, Coil guns aren't railguns. Coil guns use coiled wire to create a electro magnets to imply momentum. Railguns use parallel rails to do the same. The first example of a coil gun was patented in 1904 much earlier than the Railguns. As for the Martians I can only hypothesize that the Martian metal has a high amount of magnetic properties that a inventive British government scientist saw in a lab and decided to use. (i could be wrong on this but I seem to remember Martian metal being I used to coat coilgun ammo) Sorry so choppy phone typing is not my gotta  ? |
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Post by scottwashburn on Apr 8, 2016 15:32:46 GMT
Wow, I didn't know that coil guns were not rail guns! A quick search reveals that as you said the idea was patented by Norwegian scientist Kristian Birkeland in 1904. So that gives me something to work with! Thanks!
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Post by spectre07 on Apr 8, 2016 21:16:21 GMT
No problem at all!
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