Centrifugal weapon could deliver stealth firepower

New Scientist ^ | 5/11/05 | Will Knight

[Rakkasan1]

bang!

[Red Badger]

No bang, just whoosh!...........

[wideminded]

A former co-worker of mine who is a brilliant engineer described a similar idea to me a number of times. I guess he should have gone for a patent.

[Mr. Jeeves]

Well, the ammunition is cheap. ;)

[nuffsenuff]

That's pretty effing cool.

[freebilly]

"Anything that seems so far beyond anything else is worth a moment's thought before you completely gulp it down," he told New Scientist. "It is way out on the side of the scale that deals with high levels of imagination.

The history of the 20th Century is the history of the implausible made real. The history of the 21st Century will be the history of the impossible made real....

[marblehead17]

It's all ball bearings these days. Ping

[Sonny M]

I'm always intrigued by new defence projects, this would be nice for our boys to use in the WOT.

[Steely Tom]

This idea was described in Popular Science about 42 years ago. They even had plans for a prototype you could build.

I remember because my father got me a stack of Pop. Science from a friend of his at work, when I was in about third grade. This particular project stands out in my memory.

(steely)

[Imaverygooddriver]

Do the ball bearings vomit when released?

[thackney]

Eaker has a new project.

Someone be sure to get pictures...

[garyhope]

Hillary and the leftists are not going to like this.

[avg_freeper]

The video at the site says there's no recoil. That must mean that mass leaves in at least two directions. If the recoil is very small then there is very little mass projected, the exit velocity is small, the weapon mass is great, or some combination of the above.

Nothing in the centrifugal concept would allow them to violate f=ma.

[white trash redneck]

I followed the link to the original source, but couldn't play the video.

;-(

Does this mean that in California, all ball bearings will require a serial number?

[willgolfforfood]

Sounds like one of those machines that "pitches" baseballs in a batting cage with two spinning discs slinging the ball towards the batter. Just scaled down for ball bearings, and then industrialized for the military.

[nidan]

If you go to military.com for 5/10/05 you can see a picture of the weapon and a good article.

[SlowBoat407]

geez, that's into a range around 15 kHz! Not so much a whoosh as a ring!

[MeanWestTexan]

Shooting a round ball, I would think it would not be overly accurrate or have much of a range in the atmospher.

Think round shot vs. rifle shot.

Be handy spaceship-to-spaceship weapon, though --- handy to destroy satelites.