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The Gyrojet, technology from the future for today... except it was 1960's.
On looks alone, you might suspect the gyrojet is a prop from some ambitious space action movie.
However; the Gyrojet was in reality one of the only real attempts to make an actual space weapon.
Instead of firing bullets, the Gyrojet fired rocket powered projectiles! To varying success I must add.
While conceptually It was an engineering and ballistics marvel, it just wasn't practical enough to capture any government contracts.
Less than 2,000 were ever made, so they are now prized collectors items, with the ammo costing around $800 a round with no guarantee to actually function.
The Gyrojet MK2 is a property of MBAssociates.
All words and art in this post are solely my own.
For more information, look up "Gyrojet".
If you have any suggestions for what you'd like to see next, feel free to let me know!
Lovles ^w^<3
On looks alone, you might suspect the gyrojet is a prop from some ambitious space action movie.
However; the Gyrojet was in reality one of the only real attempts to make an actual space weapon.
Instead of firing bullets, the Gyrojet fired rocket powered projectiles! To varying success I must add.
While conceptually It was an engineering and ballistics marvel, it just wasn't practical enough to capture any government contracts.
Less than 2,000 were ever made, so they are now prized collectors items, with the ammo costing around $800 a round with no guarantee to actually function.
The Gyrojet MK2 is a property of MBAssociates.
All words and art in this post are solely my own.
For more information, look up "Gyrojet".
If you have any suggestions for what you'd like to see next, feel free to let me know!
Lovles ^w^<3
Category Story / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 2217 x 1662px
File Size 2.43 MB
Listed in Folders
what made these weapons unique is that they were ineffective up close due to low muzzle velocity but became more dangerous as they continued to accelerate and reach their optimum range. in space, distance isn't much of an issue because of no atmospheric drag.
i had no idea that they were designed for exoatmospheric combat, but it makes sense. regular ammunition will fire in a vaccuum too, as the cartidge is self-contained, but most handguns rely on gravity to clear spent casings and slide back into place (which is why holding a gun "gangsta" is bad). i also imagine that the pressure differential might be bad on the barrel.
we'll probably never see the day of astronauts shooting cosmonauts on the moon, but railguns and coilguns are becoming very effective as the technology improves. there's already a coilgun rifle on the market that's as powerful as a .22 and it's legally considered an "air gun" like a BB gun too. still, the mach 8 tungsten sabots are for ship-mounted cannons currently. i heard that the navy scrapped those plans in the early 2020s but the army took over in the mid 2020s.
i had no idea that they were designed for exoatmospheric combat, but it makes sense. regular ammunition will fire in a vaccuum too, as the cartidge is self-contained, but most handguns rely on gravity to clear spent casings and slide back into place (which is why holding a gun "gangsta" is bad). i also imagine that the pressure differential might be bad on the barrel.
we'll probably never see the day of astronauts shooting cosmonauts on the moon, but railguns and coilguns are becoming very effective as the technology improves. there's already a coilgun rifle on the market that's as powerful as a .22 and it's legally considered an "air gun" like a BB gun too. still, the mach 8 tungsten sabots are for ship-mounted cannons currently. i heard that the navy scrapped those plans in the early 2020s but the army took over in the mid 2020s.
Well, we were in the space race. We did all sorts of stuff anticipating that we'd have space as a more accessible front. That and we were in the middle of the cold war.
Something even more ambitious than the Gyrojet was the "Star wars" program. When we were trying to figure out a way to shoot missiles out of the sky with lasers. It's probably good we decided not to go through with it, because it wouldn't have worked.
This was the same period in time when people thought if you couldn't see a nuke go off it wouldn't hurt you, or that covering yourself with a blanket would protect you from radiation.
Science is silly. Merp merp :3
Something even more ambitious than the Gyrojet was the "Star wars" program. When we were trying to figure out a way to shoot missiles out of the sky with lasers. It's probably good we decided not to go through with it, because it wouldn't have worked.
This was the same period in time when people thought if you couldn't see a nuke go off it wouldn't hurt you, or that covering yourself with a blanket would protect you from radiation.
Science is silly. Merp merp :3
there was also a project colliquolly called "rods from god" (i think it was officially named Thor). it would have worked by dropping telephone pole sized tungsten rods from low earth orbit that would be strong enough to crack bunkers open just by gravity alone. because it didn't involve firearms or warheads, it got around treaties about weaponizing space. although, international treaties are so frequently ignored or loopholed that i don't even understand why we write or sign them in the first place (i think we should colonize antarctica as a testbed for space habitation and the legality of that is still affected by cold war agreements)
the project was killed of course due to cost. tungsten is both very heavy and pretty expensive (i was looking at some thousand dollar tungsten dumbells for weight training because it's nearly twice as dense as lead. apparently they use it in tank armor as tungsten carbide, a metal-ceramic also used in fancy construction tools. closest real thing to astartes armor). materials science is awesome!
oh, about your statement about using lasers to shoot down missiles: there is something called a "laser broom" meant to nudge space debris from old satelites down from orbit. i don't know if one exists yet, but we are VERY close to kessler syndrome: a hypothetical event where a satelite bumps into another satelite and everything spreads out. it would only take a couple days to start but it would make space travel impossible until we invent energy shields or we take everything down. all of the world's satelites are in a narrow highway belt around the earth so collision gets more and more likely the more junk elon puts up there.
the project was killed of course due to cost. tungsten is both very heavy and pretty expensive (i was looking at some thousand dollar tungsten dumbells for weight training because it's nearly twice as dense as lead. apparently they use it in tank armor as tungsten carbide, a metal-ceramic also used in fancy construction tools. closest real thing to astartes armor). materials science is awesome!
oh, about your statement about using lasers to shoot down missiles: there is something called a "laser broom" meant to nudge space debris from old satelites down from orbit. i don't know if one exists yet, but we are VERY close to kessler syndrome: a hypothetical event where a satelite bumps into another satelite and everything spreads out. it would only take a couple days to start but it would make space travel impossible until we invent energy shields or we take everything down. all of the world's satelites are in a narrow highway belt around the earth so collision gets more and more likely the more junk elon puts up there.
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