[TML] Question on canon

[Richard Aiken]

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 11:04 PM, Jerry W Barrington
<jerry.barrington at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/28/08 10:59 PM, "Derek Wildstar" <wildstar at io.com> wrote:
>
>> In order to be as effective as a Tigress spinal mount, the deep meson
>> gun needs to be about the same length.  The weapon must be aimed by
>> physically pointing its firing axis at the target ... so if it is
>> installed underground, it has to be in a cavity at least large in
>> diameter as the weapon's length.
> It takes time to achieve a firing solution.  Meanwhile, the gun has packed
> up and moved down the line to the next firing chamber.

And - as Leonard has been pointing out - you need more than one shot
in order to achieve that firing solution.  Most likely several and
hitting different targets (in order to get decent parallax).  If the
gun concentrates on one target at a time *and* changes firing chambers
every few shots, you simply aren't going to get a valid firing
solution.

NOTE: I see the maglev train as two engine units (for redundancy) with
a gun carriage in between.  The gun carriage is 200 meters long and
the firing chambers are 200 meter diameter spheres, with the track
tube running through the center.  Except that it isn't a tube as it
passes through here, but a retractable grid of girders.  The train
halts centered in the sphere and the girders retract.  The gun barrel
is hinged at it's center to the center of the carriage, with is itself
hinged at it's couplings to the engines on either end.  The gun can
thus rotate fully through all axis, without requiring a 400+ meter
diameter volume.

-- 
Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident." Robert A. Heinlein