allomantic railgun?

[cobaltking360]

An Allomantic railgun is very possible, using harmonium, having steel pointing out and iron pointing in, with aluminum on the sides to it angles right, I know it needs work but I really want it to work and I feel like it would. side note, does harmonium work, with just metallic arts or all invested arts?

[Trusk'our he/him]

38 minutes ago, cobaltking360 said:

An Allomantic railgun is very possible, using harmonium, having steel pointing out and iron pointing in, with aluminum on the sides to it angles right, I know it needs work but I really want it to work and I feel like it would.

Yes, that's a plausible use of Harmonium, but may I ask why you can't a more conventional gun?

41 minutes ago, cobaltking360 said:

side note, does harmonium work, with just metallic arts or all invested arts?

Yes, it can.

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/498-youtube-spoiler-stream-4/#e15665

gk-sudo

Could primer cubes be used to store powers besides the Scadrial ones, such as Surgebinding?

Brandon Sanderson

This is theoretically possible. So much fun to have in the space age, that I'm not gonna let you have yet. You have one more Mistborn book, one more Stormlight book, three more Mistborn books, and then five more Stormlight books before I'm gonna let you have that fun. Keep theorizing.

 

[cobaltking360]

in the real world, there are some genuine advantages, first more range and speed, and with harmonium, you could make it work even better, as well as having a higher muzzle velocity. so actually, yeah, they are better than normal guns by all means.

[Trusk'our he/him]

2 hours ago, cobaltking360 said:

in the real world, there are some genuine advantages, first more range and speed, and with harmonium, you could make it work even better, as well as having a higher muzzle velocity. so actually, yeah, they are better than normal guns by all means.

After a quick Google search, it does seem that way, yes.

Still, finding a method that doesn't rely on an extremely rare, costly, and volatile Godmetal would be preferable I would think, especially since the rounds couldn't be Allomantically inert to fire with Harmonium. 

[alder24]

11 hours ago, cobaltking360 said:

An Allomantic railgun is very possible, using harmonium, having steel pointing out and iron pointing in, with aluminum on the sides to it angles right, I know it needs work but I really want it to work and I feel like it would. side note, does harmonium work, with just metallic arts or all invested arts?

An Allomantic railgun is an overly complicated weapon compared to other, cheaper and simpler devices that can be created - A-steel plus A-dualumin. This gives you a shot vastly more powerful than any A-steel could ever deliver. That's not a railgun, that's just a gun. 

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

@cobaltking360

I think the groundwork has already been established to support a Scadrian war requiring artillery, and there is a lot of time between then and now...er...relatively speaking of course...

You might try your hand at sketching out a model concept of your idea for the more artistically inclined members of the community to consider and build upon. (obviously not me, I haven't drawn or drafted CAD for folks in years). And maybe check out the pseudo-engineering sketches/notes of the miscellaneous artifabrian models included with the stormlight archive books for inspiration if you aren't familiar with them yet.

Your idea definitely works. Truly, the only major hurdles I see are:

1) generating a model design which is pretty and elegant enough to look wicked cool when depicted in both painting and isometric sketch

2) justifying, in succinct notes, how the maintenance cost and cost-per-shot of such a design are magically more competitive than a conventional gunpowder weapons (the US Navy and NASA have some good papers on this subject, buuuuuut...well, RAFO...lol)

3) proving that the destructive potential of such a weapon, relative to its cost-per-shot, make it a fundamentally attractive warmachine to produce and reproduce. Deathstar-esque galaxy-brain ultra-mega-super weapons are...neat...but also painfully stupid in the sense that using them makes them worthless because their win-condition is essentially to just flip the table over and scream that no one can play now because you're going to kill everything everywhere all at once...  (sooooo...the weapon needs to be stupid powerful, but not idiotically overpowered, in order to be viable is all I'm getting at)

Edited September 7, 2024 by hwiles

[The Bookwyrm he/him]

For Scadrial, I would say such technology is certainly within reach, and we will be seeing quite a bit of Allomantic weaponry like this in the Space age.

Wider Cosmere Spoilers:

Spoiler

...However, I would like to point out that Roshar probably also has the capability for Railgun tech using the surge of Gravitation, and maybe Abrasion to help the projectile move smoother.

I guess the Cosmere is just a good place for railguns.

 

Edited September 7, 2024 by The Bookwyrm

[Duxredux he/him]

Could someone give more design details for this Allomantic railgun? I'm not visualizing it well, and with my admittedly limited experience of only building a single railgun back in my high school physics class, I don't see how the principles that make railguns work apply to Allomancy, at least in a rail setup. Perhaps excessive pedantry ahead.

Let's start by laying out some of the different methods of propelling projectiles:

1. Directly pushing the object - throwing a rock or a spear
   1. Tricks that improve mechanical advantage, like the atlatl that simply increase the lever length of the arm I'm keeping here
2. Place mechanism under tension to store potential energy before releasing - bow, catapult
3. Pressurized gas expanding to propel object - guns, explosives
   1. Self propelled - missiles
4. Magnetic fields - railgun, coil gun
5. Swing object in a circle and build up speed locally before releasing - sling, bolas
   1. This category is less how you propel it and more the circular direction - and how keeping it at close proximity lets you apply force for longer to build up to full speed. The trick is that it requires a mechanism to continuously apply force to the projectile, which is a major difficulty for pressurized gas or stored tension like a bow.

I'm trying to decide if Allomancy fits in category 1 or if it belongs in its own category. 

As I understand it, when firing a projectile it takes increasingly more force to continue to accelerate the object as the propellant must catch up to the projectile. Categories 1 and 2 involve accelerating the solid matter propelling the object to the same velocity as the projectile itself (at least locally, like the bow string) and it takes considerable energy to accelerate the propellant in this way. Category 3: pressurized gas delivers huge force initially, but as the gas expands, pressure drops, in addition to accelerating the gas particles pushing the projectile. Missiles can extend the period of acceleration but at the cost of carrying and accelerating the fuel along the duration of the trip. Categories 1, 2, and 3 require accelerating the propelling mechanism to the same speeds as the projectile which costs a significant amount of energy.

Category 4 is a bit different. A railgun works based on the magnetic fields generated by a current of electricity running through two parallel rails and a sliding connector that bridges the rails. When current moves along a conductor, it creates a magnetic field perpendicular to the direction of current movement. Often this relationship is remembered with the "right-hand rule" where if you hold out your right hand and extend your thumb and curl the other fingers, the thumb points in the direction of the current and the curled fingers indicate the direction of magnetic field. The magnetic fields generated by the current running through the two parallel rails and the sliding bridge are all in opposition with each other - the rails are firmly security but the bridge is designed to slide, and slide it does along the rails towards the target. See below.

From https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Railgun-1.svg

As this bridge accelerates, the path of the electrical current is shifted further along the rails, and in a small manner, the electrons also must play "catch up" to move the new magnetic field generated along the rail to the new location of the bridge. The difference between this and the other methods of propulsion though, is that electrical current already moves close to the speed of light, unlike your arm, ignited gunpowder, or a bowstring. Furthermore, you can scale up the power generated to huge degrees, whereas there is only so compact a combustion driven shell can be. Because the accelerating force moves along the vector of motion, at near the speed of light, it has more time to continue to accelerate the projectile. This is why a railgun has such a high muzzle velocity, it's how you accelerate both the projectile and the matter/energy exerting the force on the projectile.

Incidentally, electromagnetic acceleration should get honorable mention for IRL usage. The current king of projectile acceleration as far as I know, combines categories 4 and 5, in the particle accelerator by using electromagnetic force to accelerate particles into a circle. From CERN's websites: "At full power, trillions of protons will race around the LHC accelerator ring 11 245 times a second, travelling at 99.9999991% the speed of light."

 

So... help me understand how this Allomantic railgun is at all like a railgun? What makes a railgun so effective is that the power basically follows along the whole "barrel/rail" of the gun and provides force for acceleration along the whole path, something that solid matter or gas has a very hard time doing. This is different from something like magnetizing a projectile and briefly turning on an extremely powerful electromagnetic to repel projectile which is how I might characterize a Steelpush, where the accelerating force does not follow the projectile along the rail. As far as I can tell, a rail setup won't do anything for Allomancy, you might as well use a baseball batting tee. Steel and Duralumin allows compression of power far beyond most charges in fire arms, and is inert (aside from Allomancy) when not in use. Steel charges can be previously calculated and adjusted on the fly, and should be readily accessible. If you're looking for high powered Allomantic projectile launchers, I'd look in this direction.

 

@The Bookwyrm, friendly reminder that this is the Mistborn forum, not the general Cosmere board. I agree, but let's keep SA out of the discussion or in a spoiler box.

Edited September 7, 2024 by Duxredux
finished incomplete thoughts.

[The Bookwyrm he/him]

4 minutes ago, Duxredux said:

friendly reminder that this is the Mistborn forum, not the general Cosmere board. I agree, but let's keep SA out of the discussion or in a spoiler box.

You're completely right. I missed that this was the Mistborn forum; I clicked on it from the recent threads section. Thanks for the reminder!

Edited September 7, 2024 by The Bookwyrm

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

17 minutes ago, Duxredux said:

Could someone give more design details for this Allomantic railgun?

...

Yeah, i think the only satisfying solution here can come from someone drafting up a sketch or basic 3D model to kick things off. I'm 100% confident that a rail-based iron/steel-pushing harmonium-fueled ship-mounted artillery weapon of mass destruction is possible with established cosmere physical system limits. However...if I draw it myself, those rails aren't going to be parallel, they're going to be a double-helix and make any real world naval weapons expert vomit...lol. the really hard part is going to come up with a robust hand-wavy explanation for why the weapon makes more sense and could be arrived at more intuitively by in-world character than just...the "optimized" solution that we came up with in real life under the same metaphorical stressors: stuffing fat metal tubes full of explosives and large balls of metal...this is definitely a problem for a visual artist and wordsmith at this point, with only small inputs needed from the engineering and theoretical physics departments in my humble opinion.

[alder24]

2 hours ago, Duxredux said:

So... help me understand how this Allomantic railgun is at all like a railgun? What makes a railgun so effective is that the power basically follows along the whole "barrel/rail" of the gun and provides force for acceleration along the whole path, something that solid matter or gas has a very hard time doing. This is different from something like magnetizing a projectile and briefly turning on an extremely powerful electromagnetic to repel projectile which is how I might characterize a Steelpush, where the accelerating force does not follow the projectile along the rail. As far as I can tell, a rail setup won't do anything for Allomancy, you might as well use a baseball batting tee. Steel and Duralumin allows compression of power far beyond most charges in fire arms, and is inert (aside from Allomancy) when not in use. Steel charges can be previously calculated and adjusted on the fly, and should be readily accessible. If you're looking for high powered Allomantic projectile launchers, I'd look in this direction.

My idea of an Allomantic railgun is way more complicated than what's described in the first post. Maybe there aren't any rails, but the constant acceleration created along the entire length of the gun is what makes it comparable to a railgun. Don't know how well I can describe it.

Basically you place pairs of small primer cubes charged with A-steel A-iron along the length of the barrel. They obviously can't work at the same time, as they would cancel each other out and they also can't work the entire time when the projectile is accelerating. This is because a steel primer cube in the middle of the barrel would at first push the bullet away from it, towards the deadend of the barrel, preventing it from escaping the barrel through the hole. There needs to be some device detecting the bullet as it passes through it to turn on the steel cube as the bullet passes it. And if you add iron cube next to the steel one, the iron cube can be turn on pulling on the projectile, but when it flies by the pair of cubes, the iron cube switches off andthe steel one activates, pushing the projectile towards the exit hole. 

Add to this a bigger primer cube charged with duralumin, which would supercharge all smaller cubes and you've got a really fast muzzle velocity. 

However, a primer cube vibrates when it’s turned on and this many cubes would shake the entire gun really badly, making aiming impossible - you would need some dampener to minimize this shaking, which would increase the size of the gun and its complexity. The electronics needed to detect the passing bullet and switch on/off each pair of cubes would be also quite advanced. The entire gun would need to be made out of aluminum, which would prevent you from utilizing Awakening to aid the electronics and also make it very weak and susceptible to damage, which is a big factor considering the speed and forces active inside the barrel. This entire setup is already way too complicated. 

Here is a simplified diagram of my idea. Behold, my paint skills:

Spoiler

 

It's way easier to just use a larger primer cube fully charged with a lot of A-steel and an A-duralumin cube to discharge the first one all at once. Easier to build, easier to use, easier to charge without any need for a complex design.

Edited September 7, 2024 by alder24

[Duxredux he/him]

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

My idea of an Allomantic railgun is way more complicated than what's described in the first post. Maybe there aren't any rails, but the constant acceleration created along the entire length of the gun is what makes it comparable to a railgun. Don't know how well I can describe it.

Basically you place pairs of small primer cubes charged with A-steel A-iron along the length of the barrel. They obviously can't work at the same time, as they would cancel each other out and they also can't work the entire time when the projectile is accelerating. This is because a steel primer cube in the middle of the barrel would at first push the bullet away from it, towards the deadend of the barrel, preventing it from escaping the barrel through the hole. There needs to be some device detecting the bullet as it passes through it to turn on the steel cube as the bullet passes it. And if you add iron cube next to the steel one, the iron cube can be turn on pulling on the projectile, but when it flies by the pair of cubes, the iron cube switches off andthe steel one activates, pushing the projectile towards the exit hole. 

Add to this a bigger primer cube charged with duralumin, which would supercharge all smaller cubes and you've got a really fast muzzle velocity. 

However, a primer cube vibrates when it’s turned on and this many cubes would shake the entire gun really badly, making aiming impossible - you would need some dampener to minimize this shaking, which would increase the size of the gun and its complexity. The electronics needed to detect the passing bullet and switch on/off each pair of cubes would be also quite advanced. The entire gun would need to be made out of aluminum, which would prevent you from utilizing Awakening to aid the electronics and also make it very weak and susceptible to damage, which is a big factor considering the speed and forces active inside the barrel. This entire setup is already way too complicated. 

Here is a simplified diagram of my idea. Behold, my paint skills:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

It's way easier to just use a larger primer cube fully charged with a lot of A-steel and an A-duralumin cube to discharge the first one all at once. Easier to build, easier to use, easier to charge without any need for a complex design.

Interesting. Reminds me of a maglev. Let's see if I can simplify the design. Start with the same layout for cubes, but partially wrap each cube in Aluminum to only allow Steelsight along the path of the projectile. Charge all the cubes with Steel and insert the projectile into the tube. What Aluminum and Harmonium can do that magnets cannot is directional force vectors rather than mostly spherical magnetic fields. Something like this:

Spoiler

I was lazy and reused your paint art. Basically, you can set it up to only Push the bullet forward, with Aluminum blocking any backward Pushing. No fancy switching or timing, just straight PUSH. I'm still not sure if this can fire a bullet faster than Duralumin for the same amount of Steel, just based on how fast Duralumin utilizes the metal. What it can do that Duralumin cannot is a continuous stream of fire so long as the cubes remain charged. Add a magazine that pushes ammunition into the barrel, and it looks like it should fire as long as it had Steel, bullets, and the whole assembly didn't shake apart. Adding Aluminum also makes it significantly safer to be standing anywhere close to this thing when it fires. 

Edited September 7, 2024 by Duxredux
Added arrows

[alder24]

17 minutes ago, Duxredux said:

Interesting. Reminds me of a maglev. Let's see if I can simplify the design. Start with the same layout for cubes, but partially wrap each cube in Aluminum to only allow Steelsight along the path of the projectile. Charge all the cubes with Steel and insert the projectile into the tube. What Aluminum and Harmonium can do that magnets cannot is directional force vectors rather than mostly spherical magnetic fields. Something like this:

  Reveal hidden contents

I was lazy and reused your paint art. Basically, you can set it up to only Push the bullet forward, with Aluminum blocking any backward Pushing. No fancy switching or timing, just straight PUSH. I'm still not sure if this can fire a bullet faster than Duralumin for the same amount of Steel, just based on how fast Duralumin utilizes the metal. What it can do that Duralumin cannot is a continuous stream of fire so long as the cubes remain charged. Add a magazine that pushes ammunition into the barrel, and it looks like it should fire as long as it had Steel, bullets, and the whole assembly didn't shake apart.

That's a good and nice change. Yes, it would simplify the design significantly, but the acceleration would be much slower here, leading to the much lower muzzle velocity. In my design all cubes would contribute a force to the projectile, while in yours only the first 4 would work at the beginning. Today's tech is fully capable of providing sensors and circuits needed for the fine control of every cube. Sure, your design would be well beyond deadly, but it wouldn't be "shooting through buildings deadly"  There is also no way to introduce duralumin primer cubes to supercharge all other cubes, because they are now all shielded with aluminum (it wouldn't be used every shot, just if you want to destroy that tank hiding behind another tank). With that many primer cubes I think bullets should easily reach duralumin-level speeds and potentially even exceeding it.

There are several ways of utilizing duralumin cubes in our design. In my, you can just place 4 cubes at the very beginning of the barrel, which would supercharge all other cubes in a row. Because duralumin provides a massive power, there is no need to supercharge all cubes to fire a single bullet. You can divide all cubes into several groups, like every 4th cube in a row is turned on, allowing you fire 4 duralumin charged bullets.

But now I wonder, can you have a Mistborn burning both steel and duralumin (or steel+nicrosil Mistings) while charging a primer cube with all the energy of supercharged A-steel? That would give you a single cube with duralumin powered steelpush, giving you a railgun of the biggest power possible. And that would work with your design. Alternatively, you can charge cubes with a Dor powered A-steel, which would provide almost duralumin power Push.

24 minutes ago, Duxredux said:

Adding Aluminum also makes it significantly safer to be standing anywhere close to this thing when it fires. 

It was already safe, most of the gun, if not all must be made out of aluminum, if you don't want to end with a trigger being a self-destruct button. 

That made me think that the inner barrel can't be a cylinder, rather 4 aluminum rails (hey, name makes sense again) placed diagonally in between cubes to guide the projectile along them, but to allow Pushes/Pulls to pass through them in a straight line. You can't have a non-aluminum metal in this gun, because all those cubes would Push and Pull on it, stressing it, weakening it and potentially breaking it, destroying the whole gun. If you were to use a duralumin cube and there were metal parts in the gun, the gun would just implode. It all has to be made out of aluminum with bullets being the only exception (depleted uranium for maximum penetration).

Anyway, I still think a simple A-steel+A-duralumin cube is the best solution to achieve high-speed projectiles. Simple, non-breakable, easily exchangeable and deadly. You rarely need to destroy a battleship so applications of an actual supercharged railgun are very limited. 

[cobaltking360]

First of all, woah I didn’t think it would get this technical and all of you are significantly smarter than me, and you bring up some great points, I didn’t even think about the shaking witch would be significant so it’s seeming a fair bit less useful, but I think it could still work out, while I was thinking like on a space ship it seems more plausible to have it in a defence system for a planet, the speed could get out of atmosphere which seems more useful. Thank you to all of you for the ideas and the fact checks! it could also be faster than a normal conventional gun, because it’s not firing them individually it’s just all at the same time so faster fire rate.

Edited September 8, 2024 by cobaltking360
new ideas