Are Gauss Guns railguns OR coilguns?

[Strategos' Risk]

I've seen shredders from GURPS Alpha Centauri described as Gauss weapons, a nomencalture which I assume originates from GURPS Ultra-Tech. (And I assume the answer I'll be getting is "yes.")

Funnily enough, it sounds like Gauss guns are an entirely different separate thing from both: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauss_gun

[Varyon]

Most likely coilguns - those are the ones most frequently called Gauss guns in fiction. Railguns are probably going to ultimately not really work, due to the prodigious amounts of friction and subsequent waste heat involved in accelerating them, while I believe coilguns can actually be designed to have the projectile "float" in the barrel, avoiding most of the friction (there will still be some from air resistance, although that also goes away if using it in a vacuum).

[Strategos' Risk]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Railguns are probably going to ultimately not really work, due to the prodigious amounts of friction and subsequent waste heat involved in accelerating them,

Lemme guess, the Gauss “gun” I linked to would not be able to be weaponized, as it also requires surface contact via the nonmagnetic track?

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Strategos' Risk

Lemme guess, the Gauss “gun” I linked to would not be able to be weaponized, as it also requires surface contact via the nonmagnetic track?

Oh, railguns can be weaponized, but they'd lose a lot of energy to friction and burn through barrels very quickly. To my understanding, coilguns are superior in most ways, although I think they require much more precision (the coils need to turn on and off at just the right time for optimal acceleration, and a "floating" projectile would also call for high-precision machining, as any imperfection may result in it deviating and coming into contact with the inner wall). But an actual Gauss gun would probably be rather impractical. Note it's largely a passive system - while a coilgun or railgun burns through electricity to accelerate the projectile, a true Gauss gun uses fixed, permanent magnets. Considering it also involves an impact inside the barrel (the trigger ball strikes the magnet and the momentum is transferred to the projectile), that's also going to limit the destructive power (a sufficiently-strong trigger impact will destroy the magnet).

[Strategos' Risk]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Oh, railguns can be weaponized, but they'd lose a lot of energy to friction and burn through barrels very quickly.

Is the Gauss gun I linked to a railgun? I would’ve thought it’s a third entirely different thing. A Newton’s Cradle gun if you will.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Strategos' Risk

Is the Gauss gun I linked to a railgun? I would’ve thought it’s a third entirely different thing. A Newton’s Cradle gun if you will.

Sorry, your comment made me think you had interpreted what I said about railguns meaning they couldn't be weaponized and so neither could a true Gauss gun, on account of both basically traveling on rails. A railgun can be weaponized. For a true Gauss gun, I guess that would depend on what you count as a "weapon." I'd imagine you could design one that at least matched the performance of a sling, maybe even a pistol, but I don't think you'll be able to match a rifle. I'd expect such weapons to be fairly cumbersome, however.

[Ulzgoroth]

I see two problems with weaponizing this purported true Gauss gun.

- It's more or less a magnetic crossbow, storing energy by drawing back the trigger weight. That promises to make it really hard to store a lot of energy.

- Since the energy is passed to the shot by collision of solids you really need the forces in play to stay low enough that the parts only deform elastically during firing, limiting how fast the shot can be thrown. (Probably? You could make a version where the parts are disposable but you'd also be losing energy in the deformation so I question if it would be useful.)

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Varyon

To my understanding, coilguns are superior in most ways, although I think they require much more precision

Immensely more. You need high speed switches and perfect precision, because the position of the projectile in the magnetic field is dynamically unstable, whereas a railgun just requires two rails with a large voltage difference and a magnetic field. GURPS doesn't really talk about the difference between different types of electromagnetic launcher and 'gauss gun' usually refers to coilguns, but I wouldn't be surprised if most of the low speed options (such as the EMGL) are railguns.

[Strategos' Risk]

Yeah, I figured that the “Gauss gun” is simply a name, the sci-fi parlance for coil guns just happen to coincide with it. Was just curious though since that doohickey was dubbed first.

Apparently there are two other potential weapons- a helical rail/coil hybrid gun and using EM effects to supercharge propellant:

https://youtu.be/Xll9rIzZPeQ

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Strategos' Risk

Apparently there are two other potential weapons- a helical rail/coil hybrid gun and using EM effects to supercharge propellant:

The latter is what GURPS calls electrothermal or electrothermal-chemical.