Wed Dec 26, 2007 7:41 pm
Warning, this post may make no sense. I am not drunk, just rather tired, and my trains of thought seem to be to failing me as I'm typi
Maxus, for now, you are right, it does remain a concept.
I personally want to go quite a bit further into the field of conventional gauss guns (or coilguns if you prefer. It's more correct, but gauss sounds cooler) because a decent gauss gun is easily within the reach of a spudder who's prepared to invest a little effort.
If you'll believe it, although people think of gauss guns as pretty wimpy, a completely self contained coilgun with a similar KE and a significantly higher ROF than an average airgun is within the reach of anyone who can demonstrate a modicum of skill at soldering. I'm planning to go and prove that, and make plans and diagrams at the same time so that others can follow.
That's all before I will start to work with plasma based prototypes, which are going to need some pretty serious thought, and as you yourself said (with a slight change on my part) are "quite impossible for many spudders to create".
I'm both pretty smart and a reasonable builder (not by any means to demean anyone else's intelligence and/or building skills), and even having conceived (at least in part) the idea, but were a zany millionaire to wander in right now and after explaining what he (or she, mustn't forget gender equality) were doing in my house, were to offer me as much money as I needed to try to create a working prototype, I'd still want at least a concentrated week or two over the drawing board and researching before I picked up any tools.
I know the idea isn't completely fleshed out, because I threw this idea out into the forum rather early in my thought process, but we are in the theory section after all, so it's appropriate.
However, it is still an idea that can be thought over for a while, and something may eventually come of it. Maybe it might inspire another idea that has greater merits than mine.
Still, it is not entirely impossible that the idea could possibly be worked on with my university, although I rather doubt it would be right now, it might be able to see the light of day at some date in the not too distant future, but I may want to come up with a different explanation, rather than "I want to make potatoes go very fast".
@DYI: I quite agree. Spudding can only go so far on current materials without launchers stretching limits so much they become dangerous, or becoming so large they are impractical, unless you start machining everything.
I'm perfectly happy to be running around building launchers with more pressure, better valves, and other such refinements, but I do recognise that won't go much further. You can't realistically use more than a few thousand psi, and most people can never go outside a few hundred. Spudding hasn't really gone that far since the hybrid, with a couple of small exceptions like the piston hybrid.
I haven't yet got any full plans for any single one part, but I will put together some stuff over the coming weeks, if I find the time.
@_Fnord: Interesting ideas... I hadn't thought about the conduction idea, but... I definitely will now, thanks.
And, I think that for a small design, the cap bank could possibly be semi-mobile, I still need to work out to what extent.
"Bolted to table" size banks contain more energy, and if something could potentially go completely wrong, which is not that unlikely with experimental stuff like this, that isn't going to be a good thing.
It's always worth following the three hazard locale commandments:
- Minimal presence: Only have as many people around any potential hazard (referred to as Y) as you have to have. If someone's there for no reason, they should be directed elsewhere.
- Minimal quantity: Don't use more than you need. If you only need X amount of hazard Y, get only X amount of Y, that way if it goes wrong, the results will be less severe.
- Minimal time: Only have Y around for as long as you need it. If you need Y in an hour, don't arrange for it to be around until then, then you have less time in which things can go wrong.
@rp181: Yes, I saw that (read those forums, don't post that often). 24kJ is a lot of energy - bear in mind energies as low as 16J can be fatal to many people. As I said above, using more energy than you absolutely need isn't advisable.
Does that thing kinda look like a big cat to you?