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Originally Posted by BHabarow
Yeah, from what I was reading, It's not a matter of handheld rail guns being impossible/too expensive to build and power, but the fact that firing somthing at that velocity would have some crazy recoil.. lack of arms and whatnot. Even somthing shoulder mounted would be suicidal to fire, no?
I thought this conversation would bring up somthing about 'needle guns'.. there's bound to be more than a few sci-fi junkies out there who would know what I mean. Same concept, only rather than firing somthing spherical it involves tiny metal.. well.. 'needles' that would vaporise on impact? Just wondering if there was any research into this sort of thing. It seems a lot cheaper/easier/lighter than what they're building at the moment.
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The round fired by a rail gun looks more like a missile than a bullet. A rail gun can't fire something spherical because the aerodynamics would make it impossible to aim. As for a hand held weapon firing a projectile that resembles a needle more than a bullet, they have already been made. They're called flechets and the use of them has been made illegal for a good reason. They tend to "fish-hook" when they hit a person, meaning that they have been known to enter a person's thigh and exit through their arm.
Also, making the "needle" vaporize on impact would be much harder than a projectile with a much larger cross-section, the needle would penetrate, not vaporize.