>From Mark F. Cook
> Sorry, but I have to side with Adrian. Speaking as an experienced hunter
> and rabid firearms enthusiast, I can guarantee you that a 4mm supersonic
> gauss needle makes a very noticable noise and a subsonic needle might not
> even go through a thick leather jacket.
> ...
> While the magnetic acceleration process of the gauss weapon may be ABSOLUTELY
> silent (and I have my doubts about this also), anyone within several hundred
> meters of the weapon will be treated to the staccato crack of gauss needles
> punching holes in the air.
OK, well, nothing like the voice of experience to blow a theory!
You're right - I hadn't thought it all through properly ...
I'm still siding with the idea that the acceleration/launching
process should be silent though ... The only noise I can think
of would be charging capacitors, and with a bit of TL application
I would have thought that that could be easily cured ...
So what about sculpting the needles so that the air-flow around
then is radically different - ie it generates sound of a frequency
that is too high for the ears to pick up ? Obviously horribly
expensive to produce, but would it work ? Subsonic only, I expect ...
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Jim Cheetham, ISD Kingston Polytechnic.
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