bullet/shell oxidizer question

That’s an old machine gun stuck to the side of a space station-not one of the Istrebitel Sputniks that was orbited. A little bit of a difference

A 23mm cannon is not a machinegun in any sense. The fact that it wasn’t a custom designed weapon just shows it was just a test.

That’s an old machine gun stuck to the side of a space station-not one of the Istrebitel Sputniks that was orbited. A little bit of a difference 😉

I’m not sure if any of the Istrebitel Sputniks had actual cannons as we think of them.

Yep. A quick Google produced:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/spaceguns/

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071407960/102-7972030-8326515?v=glance&n=283155 (fourth review)

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

I’d think keeping all the components from freezing would be a bigger concern in space?

Both heat and cold are the problem. For more than half its orbit of Earth an object will be in direct sunlight that is not filtered by our atmosphere. Temperatures can get very hot and there is no air to efficiently radiate that energy away quickly. In the shadow of the Earth temperatures plummet and of course you don’t have the option of spinning the item to minimise the hot and cold period. (When in sunlight half the object will still be in shade so spinning it balances the heat and cold to get a more even temperature. In the shadow of the Earth you are just all cold.) Of course satellites have power supplies and electronics that also need temperature control so such things are already dealt with in the design of the system anyway.

You’d need some sort of attitude control system obviously, unless you went the laser or railgun route.

You’d need altitude control anyway… and a means to get close to targets and to aim at them. Projectiles travelling as slow as normal cannon take long periods of time to traverse the large distances of space to manouvering for a closer shot makes a lot of sense to reduce reaction options.
A Laser would exert some force on the satellite to, while a rail gun would exert forces comparable or greater to a normal cannon. Very light projectiles travelling at enormous velocities have comparable recoil to guns that fire heavier projectiles at lower velocities.

The only space based weapons I have heard of that the soviets were supposed to have developed were metre long space missiles. They were described with many doubts in the west… an item that small wasn’t considered capable of the job. Of course that ignored that it could have been fired like a torpedo from a launcher so the only thing needed on the projectile missile would be a seeker of some sort, a warhead (perhaps of a claymore type shotgun blast type), and of course side mounted thrusters to manouver into the targets proximity. A Dragon anti tank missile could perform the role quite efficiently with a few modifications.

The Russians actually fielded some ‘killer’ satellites in orbit, armed with automatic cannon.

I’m not sure if any of the Istrebitel Sputniks had actual cannons as we think of them. I think a good deal of them were kinetic kill vehicles intended to ram another satellite to achieve a kill. I do know that their most interesting project, Polius Skif, used a laser. Or, it would have, had the test article not vaporised after a failed orbital correction maneuver. I’ve got some stuff on this around somewhere, I’ll dig it up this weekend. Need it for a Space Warfare class anyway 😀

think there are two main problems when firing a gun in space/orbit:
1 – overheating of all components
2 – recoil, which is esp bad if you want to maintain your orbit

1-I’d think keeping all the components from freezing would be a bigger concern in space? 😀

2-You’d need some sort of attitude control system obviously, unless you went the laser or railgun route. Also, if you were in a situation where you needed to kill multiple satellites, I’d imagine that you wouldn’t be too concerned about how long your killer satellites were hanging around. Besides, in that scenario it’s a lot more convenient to just EMP kill them anyway I’d think.

or is an oxidizing substance included in the propellant powder?

about 4/5ths by weight of propellents and explosives is consumed generating large amounts of oxygen for the fuel to “burn”. Without oxygen a bomb wouldn’t go off in space, but on Earth a bomb of any decent size would not work well if it didn’t create its own oxygen as it would smother itself. Guns fire underwater and explosives also work underwater as well. I noticed many reporters asking the “experts” about whether the impact of Shoemaker Levy would set Jupiter on fire or not. Jupiter has large amounts of Hydrogen and methane in its makeup but not enough oxygen for combustion as we know it. Of course the flashes of the impacts were from the enormous energy of the impact superheating the material involved and had nothing to do with combustion as such.

1 – overheating of all components

That is a problem for everything in orbit.. the extremes of temperature can be dealt with.

Recoil includes the energy if the projectile and the energy of the powder gasses acting like a thruster rocket. Two obvious solutions spring to mind… the high velocity ejection of the shell casing plus rearward venting of propellent gasses to counter the recoil of the projectile, or the simplist… two identical guns firing in opposite directions at the same time. Of course intelligent use of the weapon could mean that the gun firing could actually be used to propell the system around in space so a target would be fired at at an exact point from a particular direction to move the system to another position to engage another target from a better postion than if it were a completely stationary system.

I think there are two main problems when firing a gun in space/orbit:
1 – overheating of all components
2 – recoil, which is esp bad if you want to maintain your orbit

There’s no reason from a purley mechanical point of view why a gun couldn’t fire in space, although conventional aiming techniques would be somewhat problematic because with no gravity there would be no bullet drop, which is allowed for when sighting a gun on Earth. Hence the projectile would just travel for ever in a straight line……………

That depends on how close it is to a body exerting a gravitational pull. There is certainly a gravitational pull in Earth orbit, which is why it is necessary to to orbit the Earth at high speed to counteract it. If a satellite stopped dead, it would fall rapidly back to Earth.

TW

Modern cartridge propellant not ‘basically gunpowder’ at all. Gunpowder went out of use as a propellant in the second half of the 19th Century, following the invention of Nitroglycerine and Nitorcelluslose. Most modern propellants are based on one or both of these substances. Both contain their own oxidisers and don’t use atmospheric oxygen to burn.

There’s no reason from a purley mechanical point of view why a gun couldn’t fire in space, although conventional aiming techniques would be somewhat problematic because with no gravity there would be no bullet drop, which is allowed for when sighting a gun on Earth. Hence the projectile would just travel for ever in a straight line……………

eodda

The Russians actually fielded some ‘killer’ satellites in orbit, armed with automatic cannon.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

Here’s an answer for you. How can there be sufficient amount of air go into the casing of a bullet round? If not convinced. Where’s the fresh air for the next round when it’s filled with the burnt gas from the previous round?