Swords

[Tobias]

Originally posted by kafka47:
While Lucas can be accused of many things, I wouldn't call him a Space Fantasy writer.

I agree.
Space, obviously.
Fantasy, maybe.
Writer? Lemme out-of-context-quote Harrison Ford: “You can write this shit, George, but you can’t say it.”
Episode 3 finally proved it to me: George Lucas couldn't write a decent dialogue if his life depended on it, and unlike the original cast, Christiansen&co. didn't have that curious mixture of innocence and irony to make even the corniest lines seem somehow appropriate.

Regards,

Tobias

 

[stofsk]

Yeah, but who the hell watches Star Wars for the dialogue?

 

[Tobias]

I watch Star Wars to be entertained. Getting a toothache from bad dialogue is anti-entertaining.

Regards,

Tobias

 

[vegascat]

Damascus steel, Japanese folding, and European pattern welding all resulted in very similar properties of sword steel. Modern steel is the result of 2000 years of alchemy, trial and error, and science. 2000 more years of metallurgical science should produce somewhat better blades that a knight, Viking, or Samurai would have dreamed of.

Cast swords had a tendency to bend or shatter, depending on the percentage of carbon and other impurities. Indian smiths mixed impurities in iron foundries very carefully then folded the metal blanks to get the desired hardness and flexibility. Japanese smiths folded their metal repeatedly and added impurities by recipe. Northern Europe smiths used bundles of wire, woven in patters welded together to get what they wanted. The goal of all these smiths was to make a weapon shape with a soft flexible core and the hardest possible edge capable of holding an edge. A basic effect of multiple micro thin layers is to allow the core to take shocks generating only micro cracks as the blade flexes prevent a full blade shatter. Eventually, the micro cracks will result in metal fatigue and a broken blade. Modern metal foundry techniques allow spring steel or even ceramic blades. Given time and economic pressure, other materials will be used to create new shapes and techniques of blade use. Think of the combat effectiveness of a diamond hard, micro thin edge on a 5 meter long flexible whip. Take care not to decapitate yourself while practicing. If you are the GM and give that lethal toy to PCs to mutilate themselves with, then take a look at Niven’s Ringworld series and his treatment of monofilament line.

Happy slashing.

 

[Uncle Bob]

True Damascus (wootz, pulad) is very different from pattern welding as used by European or Japanese smiths, and gave higher quality steel with better control and much less effort. It looks like pattern welding, but that is a surface pattern of impurities.

European and Japanese ironworks produced similar products, small "blooms" of spongy iron. These were pounded into oblong "sticks" of iron to compact them and drive off the inclusions. Then the smith's art lay in selecting the right combination of pieces with high and low carbon, and pieces from different regions with trace alloys. Then pound flat, fold, and repeat over and over ...

AFAIK no sword has been cast since iron replaced bronze c 800 BC. And micro cracks are indeed how metal fatigue starts in aluminum, but it has little to do with steel, certainly nothing to do with shock absorbtion. And I wonder how European smiths got those wires ... I think you are thinking of the "false damascus" invented in the 19th century.

We do need to think more outside the box on melee weapons. I think Alexei Panshin's The Star Well had some neat window dressing. Just think, electric "stun guns" and Tasers hadn't been invented when Traveller came out. OTOH, a Roman spatha was not much different from a Napoleonic broadsword 1800 years later. And the murders in Ruanda were done with knives and machetes the Myceneans would have recognized (ok, in bronze. But the Hittites had iron right next door.)

But I don't think a 5 m whip is a good idea in close quarters, especially in a ship. My first contact with the combat applicactions of mono-molecular filaments was in the early 1960s story, "Thin Edge" by Jonathon Blake Mackenzie (a pseudanim, I think). And swordforum.com used to have an article about titanium blades where they explained that the strength to weight ratio was good, the density was so low the sword would have to be bigger, which screws with the edge geometry. It ain't an easy compromise.

And what are Vilani traditional weapons?

 

[knirirr]

Originally posted by Uncle Bob:

And what are Vilani traditional weapons?

A very interesting question. They will presumably have come to the same conclusions as every other branch of humanati about how to injure and kill in melee, but the precise forms of their weapons would be dictated by fashion. Perhaps they may consider the spear more honourable than the sword - who knows?

 

[leadhead]

I doubt swords would replace recoiless firearms like gauss weapons or lasers but between TL10 (when space expansion really takes off) and TL12 (when gauss weapons become available) a foil would be a rather useful zero-g zero-atmosphere weapon.

Conventional firearms would play havoc in zero-g due to their recoil and lasers don't really become general issue until TL11. Of course, by this time the foil (or cutlass) would aquire a tradition, which is good and sufficient reason to continue training with it.

When I was in the US Army, I received bayonet training. As a point of fact, the US Army hasn't actually USED bayonets on the battlefield since 1918. The reason we still train with bayonets is to build esprit d'corp and out of a sense of tradition... hell, they still teach fencing at WestPoint and we haven't used sabers in combat since 1875. Same reasons...

 

[far-trader]

Just a point or two

Gauss weapons are not actually recoiless* and in some Traveller versions lasers are in wide use from TL8 and TL9. On the whole though I agree with the arms training for traditional and esprit d'corp reasons through all TLs. Oh, and even a simple thrust with a foil is probably not that easy in zero-gee without training and would be quite different from the same attack in gravity

* Despite what some rules say. Low recoil perhaps, compensated to a degree no doubt, but not of themselves recoiless. Heck, even a laser weapon is not truly recoiless, it's just that the recoil of the light emmitted is so very low as to be near zero

 

[stofsk]

I'd like to know how a weapon that supposedly propels metal slugs at supersonic speeds could be called 'recoiless' in the same sentence.

Even lasers have recoil, but not a lot.

 

[Anthony]

Actually, a conventional firearm would be reasonably controllable in zero G. Zero G doesn't actually increase the recoil of a weapon (an M-16 will give a typical human a backwards velocity of 5-10 cm/sec depending on mass), it just makes recovering harder, so if a weapon won't knock you off your feet when you fire it, it's not going to really throw you around in zero G either.

Using a sword in zero G would be much more difficult -- traditional thrust moves rely on your ability to step forward into the foe (not practical in zero G), and traditional swing moves rely on a firm stance. To get a bit more of a concept, try doing sword moves while balancing on one leg on wet ice.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

My favorite use of monomolecular is as an anti-boarding device. Small tracks in the passageway bulkheads carry wires up out of the floor when the anti-hijack goes into effect. Set approximately 3 feet apart, they pretty well guarantee some dismembered boarders (and exploding Zhodani if you allow them to teleport into the same space as a solid object) before the boarders break out the FGMPs and fry all your delicate wires.

 

[Tobias]

Originally posted by Anthony:
Actually, a conventional firearm would be reasonably controllable in zero G. Zero G doesn't actually increase the recoil of a weapon (an M-16 will give a typical human a backwards velocity of 5-10 cm/sec depending on mass), it just makes recovering harder, so if a weapon won't knock you off your feet when you fire it, it's not going to really throw you around in zero G either.

I'm unsure how you arrived at those numbers.
Actio = Reactio
KE=1/2*m*V^2
The "muzzle energy" for an M-16 is about 1600 Joules. Which, if put into the formula above, leaves us with an imparted velocity of 5.66m/sec for a 100-kg human, discounting air resistance.
1600 = 1/2*100*x^2 [ kg*(m^2/sec^2) = kg*x^2 ]
32 = x^2 [ (m^2/sec^2) = x^2 ]
5.66 = x [ m/sec = x ]
Does that sound right?

Regards,

Tobias

 

[veltyen]

Momentum is also preserved.

Since the gun-bullet-person system is effectively at rest then the momentum needs to equal zero after the fact.

So bullet mass*velocity is matched by the backward (person+gun) mass*velocity after the event.

4 gram at 1000 m/s (approximate for a M-16 bullet) translates to 80 kg at 0.05 m/s. Even a maxed out BMG (or larger) custom round (100g at 2000m/s) is not going to impart that much momentum to the firer, somewhere around 2.5 m/s for an 80 kg (person+weapon) and that is the extreme case.

Remember that the energy also gets converted to sound, heat and light. Momentum is a more coherent rule in this case.

 

[Tobias]

Originally posted by veltyen:
Remember that the energy also gets converted to sound, heat and light.

No, in this case only the kinetic energy is relevant. I mean, it is the same if you do not use explosives. A gauss rifle or even a thrown weapon also has recoil.

The energy has to go somewhere, doesn't it?

Regards,

Tobias

 

[Uncle Bob]

Energy does not cause recoil. A laser has enormous energy, miniscule recoil. Energy has to be conserved, but it doesn't have to be symmetrical. "Equal and opposite reaction" applies to momentum.

Momentum is what matters in recoil. Read a book.

OTOH, the Gauss rifle does kick. IIRC, like an AK(4 g @ 1500 m/s ~= 8 g + 1.5 g propellant @ 730 m/s)

 

[SanDragon]

Debate all you want, guys.

I'm not going to try to poke someone in zero-g, because if I miss, I'm flying off into the wild, black yonder.

And my M-16 had enough recoil at semi-auto to have me not want to fire one in zero-g either.

Give me a laser pistol, or a bulkhead to brace against and an autopistol.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

"As a point of fact, the US Army hasn't actually USED bayonets on the battlefield since 1918."

The British Army has, in the Falklands and I think the Gulf, too. They can be devastating - having a speck in the distance throwing lead at you is one thing, but having some screaming psycopath try to disembowel you is something else entirely.

Recoil in 0-g isn't the only problem. Unless you fire from your c-of-g it'll cause you to tumble. 0-g combat requires totally different techniques.

 

[Tobias]

Originally posted by Uncle Bob:
Energy does not cause recoil. A laser has enormous energy, miniscule recoil.

Photons have no mass in the same way as matter has, so that isn't really a helpful thought.
But after I slept over it, I realized that impulse is important, not energy, so my original consideration was off. Still, I'm wondering where the energy is going.

Regards,

Tobias

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Andrew, you are right - the Brits actually fixed bayonets fairly recently in the south of Iraq. It broke the ambush, too.

And, yeah, recoil in general isn't the problem - recoil that doesn't go through the Center of Mass is the problem. 0-g folks would have a fairly strong stomach, but I'm thinking puking-in-your-helmet-spin would result from a regular shoulder-firing.

 

[Zparkz]

I would expect that soldiers that use slug throwers in 0g uses some kind of recoil arm connected to the chest by a harness, thus transfering the much of the recoil to the center of mass.