From:	David Buehrer <dbuehrer@****.ORG>
Subject:	Re: 6 gas vents on a minigun (was Re: Assault cannons)
Date:	Fri, 6 Dec 1996 07:55:51 -0700

Guido Hölker wrote:
|
|>One question about a minigun. Wouldn't the fact that the barrels are
|>spinning help offset recoil? You know, that principle about trying to
|>rotate something that is spinning? I don't remember the name off the top
|>of my head...
|
|Absolutely true! But this depends on the 2spinning momentum" whoch depends
|on (among others) the weight, so the heavier the barles are, the better
|recoil is reduced. Unfortunatley there are a lot of thigs requiering the
|barrels beeing as light as possible...

See my previous post on a house rule for this.

Keep in mind though, that if you get enough mass spinning
fast enough, you won't be able to change it's axis easily
(at least not in the direction you want).

Wait a sec... if you put a minigun in a remote turret and
spun it really fast to reduce recoil, and then programed
the firing computer to take the gyroscopic reactions into
account, the computer could do "fly by wire" calculations
to apply force just so so that the minigun would aim where
you wanted it to. If this was applied to a sentry gun...
run away (minigun firing at full auto with no recoil).

-David

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