_Fnord wrote:Just a random thought, can you imagine what the guns will be like 20 years from now? I mean, 10 years ago how many hybrids do you think there were?
I can just see forum discussions in 20 years.
"Your auto combustion only does mach 2? Wow, what a noob..."
There were no hybrids 10 years back. DR only produced the first (known) hybrid about 3 or 4 years back now, IIRC.
In 20 years, plastics technology will have considerably improved, so that it will be possible to use higher pressures in a pneumatic, but combustion tech will remain limited by the same factors that affect them today. A huge amount of the power loss in a combustion comes from heat loss, which is difficult to curb.
However, hybrids may well be running into double figures of mix numbers on a regular basis, and DDT will just be another common effect.
Auto combustions would indeed be commonplace - I wouldn't be surprised to see the first few in the next year.
Automatic hybrids would logically follow, but that would obviously take rather longer. (Unless of course the first auto combustion was also the first auto hybrid, which isn't that unlikely)
Of course, battery technology and compressor tech may well allow fully portable pneumatics that top-up automatically via a miniature compressor and battery pack.
The rising limits of technology will only really aid the most experienced builders, as there will always be someone who made a simple spudgun that runs on a spray can, forgot to use primer, and used DWV (if of course, those things are still in existence)
The base end of spudding won't move, but the heights of the hobby would have gone towards the heavens.
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