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I think a safe-to-transport, easily portable power supply of greater capacity than an infantryman's ballistic ammo complemet is sort of a prerequisite to even discuss the matter.

I think the Space Marines have it right. Slug throwers for personal weapons and energy weapons for tanks and startships.

Even if we do come up with this ultimate battery, you'd probably do better to have some sort of magnetic rail gun suing it than a laser.

I'm in agreement there. A good old solid chunk of mass moving at high velocity is fairly dependable.

Agreed.

If it ain't broke, why fix it?

Sorry... Texan.

Sounds pretty heavy in favor of good ol ballistics...so then the question for the future is: Railguns or bolters?

If I understand the concept of bolters correctly, I'd say they'd be both more useful in space, and easier to create with our level of technology.

They already exist, or did. Look up Gyrojet.

I understand the flaws with the weapon where ammo related rather then a flaw with the weapon itself. Other then that RAP rounds exist for any number of man portable AT weapons.

There's also the problem that a gyrojet round takes time to get up to speed making it relatively useless at close range. The bolter gets around this by getting it moving with an explosive charge.

Aye, it functions very much like a modern RAP round.

Right - it's got a typical primer, then the RA motor. IDK if modern RL gyrojets function exactly the same way, though - as they were primarily designed for underwater use, I'm not sure how useful a rifle primer would be.

Mikey wrote:Right - it's got a typical primer, then the RA motor. IDK if modern RL gyrojets function exactly the same way, though - as they were primarily designed for underwater use, I'm not sure how useful a rifle primer would be.

Hmm? No, it's got to have a primer and a charge in there for it to work. If it was just the primer igniting the rocket it would have the same problem as the gyrojet. And the artwork for bolters almost always has what looks like a conventional cartridge case.

A conventional firearm will indeed fire underwater though. As the cartridge contains both oxidizer and propellant in one, in an airtight case it works fine. The rounds though will rapidly run out of steam thanks to the rounds not being hydrodynamic.

The Russians have a rifle with special round specifically for underwater use.

Cpl Kendall wrote:Hmm? No, it's got to have a primer and a charge in there for it to work. If it was just the primer igniting the rocket it would have the same problem as the gyrojet. And the artwork for bolters almost always has what looks like a conventional cartridge case.

Conceded. You're right about the artwork, and in any case bolt rounds have been shown to strike hard enough to detonate even at close range.

Cpl Kendall wrote:A conventional firearm will indeed fire underwater though. As the cartridge contains both oxidizer and propellant in one, in an airtight case it works fine. The rounds though will rapidly run out of steam thanks to the rounds not being hydrodynamic.

Indeed. That's why modern gyrojets haven't been adopted by the SEALs - their performance wasn't far enough above standard rounds to bother.

I played in an RPG with a rail-gun gyrojet, the rail-gun gave it a high initial velocity and the gyrojet gave a high terminal velocity.