Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin
They're generally unable to survive in vacuum unaided too.
As to operating heat unless the barrel of the gauss weapon was hot enough to burn any unprotected hands that touched it it is already generating less waste heat.
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Why would the barrel, which is poly carbonate, get that hot? There are no hot expanding gases to contain, essentially negligible friction.
The capacitors on the other hand, I imagine they get rather hot.
The maximum temperature for the PC barrel is 100C, which is rather lower than "to hot to touch" for gun, but it's also 10kg of gun, compared to something like a 2.25kg. I'm almost certain that if you had a 20kg .22 short rifle, it would not overheat terribly fast.
Water is about 4kg a gallon, a Vickers .303 had about a gallon of water in it's jacket and boiled it off after about 2 minutes of sustained fire(450rpm). If you wanted to use water cooling(for some reason), it shouldn't add that much weight to a 5.56 gun, in comparison to a 10kg gun with the capability of a .22short.