This Is the Gun That Soviet Cosmonauts Took with Them into Space
Awesome. Not made for firing in space.
10 Responses to “This Is the Gun That Soviet Cosmonauts Took with Them into Space”
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April 15th, 2011 at 9:59 am
I always wondered what would happen if you tried to fire a gun in space. Would the oxygen in the cartridge case leak out, preventing ignition? As there are additives to some powders that release oxygen, would you get partial ignition? Would it be too cold for the primers to work? Would UV radiation cause the rounds to self detonate? Would the extreme contraction of the steel and brass in the cold make either of them too brittle to create a gas seal? Would dense metals (such as Lead) become soft due to exposure to extreme heat from solar radiation?
The answer to the above is probably “Yep.” An actual space gun intended for space combat would likely need to have a super-oxidizer in the powder for reliable ignition, use plastic, caseless ammo, use armor piercing bullets (of course), be of a revolving cylinder or manually operated type (of which a revolver with a large trigger or pump action would be the most simple with heavy gloves to use), and use electronic ignition with direct contact anodes. Although maybe I’ve thought about this too much.
April 15th, 2011 at 10:12 am
Modern firearms with smokeless powder will work fine in a vacuum. All the oxygen it needs is already part of the propellent.
You’d need a dry lube like graphite though.
April 15th, 2011 at 11:02 am
There is no reason to go all high tech. Conventional primer/powder cartridges work just fine in a high vacuum environment. Probably a bit better than they do under 1 atmosphere, since they do not have a barrel full of air to move out of the way when they fire.
But you would not want to use a graphite lubricant. Graphite is slippery because it attracts moisture. Under low pressures the water sublimates and leaves grit. Moly lubes work fine in a vacuum, though.
Stranger
April 15th, 2011 at 11:37 am
Solid rockets work in space because they contain their own oxidizer. Gun powder, even the old kind, contains its own oxidizer; ergo, guns work in space.
April 15th, 2011 at 11:41 am
Also, I have a recollection of seeing an astronaut emergency servival kit from long ago that included a Government Model 1911 Colt. Probably eleminated during a subsequent move to PCness.
April 15th, 2011 at 1:29 pm
Armed-partisan:
UV radiation? What, are you afraid the ammo might get sunburned?
Lack of Oxygen: as other’s have already pointed out, primers and powder contain their own oxidizers.
Extreme cold: as long as it is in a holster or in a hand, conduction will keep it from getting too cold or too hot. Vacuum makes a great insulator, that is how the folks at Thermos made a bunch of money on their cylindrical coffee flasks. The Apollo capsule needed about as much energy to heat as a cabin in New England when it was in the Earth’s or the Moon’s shadow. Body heat will do the job for a holstered or slung firearm.
April 15th, 2011 at 5:41 pm
Hell, that gun wouldn’t be out of place in a BOB.
April 15th, 2011 at 6:53 pm
There will be something like a 500 degree temperature difference between sunlight and dark, assuming you’re near Earth’s orbit around the sun. Warmer as you get closer, colder as you go farther out. It would very likely be possible to initiate a cook-off of the ammo if you leave the gun in the sun.
Gun staying warm – in the hand- in space? What, you’re going to take off your spacesuit glove before firing? Forget that, but you’ll need an extra large trigger guard.
As stated; the temperature extremes (and they are huge – that’s why most of what you see around the space station is heavily insulated) would be the main issue. They dealt with the temp variations during Appolo by putting the craft is what they called a “barbeque roll” – a slow roll that kept the craft from getting baked on one side and super cooled on the other.
April 17th, 2011 at 11:56 pm
In the 1970’s the Soviets remotely test fired the 23mm automatic cannon of the Almaz manned military space station. The station was not crewed at the time of the test.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut_3#Unmanned_operations
Guns work fine in space. Even though the conditions in space are more extreme, automatic cannons are standard armament of jet fighters which operate at altitudes as high as 50,000 feet. At that altitude it might as well be a vacuum as far as a gun is concerned. And the cannon must survive the temperature extremes of cold soaking at that altitude and then rapidly heating from firing.
That being said, lubrication and over-heating would be the most challenging aspects of firing a gun in space. In fact lubrication issues are largely responsible for the problems and delays in the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover mission, which missed it’s 2009 launch window for Mars.
April 18th, 2011 at 7:26 pm
The whole vacuum thing is probably not that big of a deal, gentlemen. You can probably seal a case tightly enough to where it would work even if the oxidizers in the powder were not sufficient for a complete burn. You will all note that I pointed out that powder contains oxidizers in my first comment. That doesn’t necessarily guarantee that if you were to vacuum all the air out of a case, and then load it and try to fire it that it would work.
Non-corrosive primers do not work reliably at temperatures below -20°F, and space gets a damn sight colder than that. This is one reason why the Russians still use Corrosive Primers in their stuff, Corrosive primers are simply more reliable in super-cold environments. This was a big problem for M1 Carbines in Korea, FYI, since the M1 Carbine used non-corrosive primers.
In Alaska, you can’t use Kydex holsters, because if it gets to around -30°F, Kydex will shatter. Not crack, SHATTER. This happened to a friend of mine. Space would take all these fun little facts and multiply them times several thousand.
Also, all semi-automatic and automatic designs rely on inertia to operate their mechanisms, and you cannot rely on inertia when your entire body is moved by the firing of the weapon. It’s like this on Earth, but you can compensate,because your feet stay in one place, and down is always in the same direction. It’s possible that you would need a “recoil less” design just to make it usable.
Also, we’re talking “Outer Space Gun”, not “Space Craft Gun”. That Soviet Satelite Cannon is very interesting, and I will research that.
@ Kristopher: Yes, that’s exactly what I’m worried about. I know you don’t realize this, because you know nothing about outer space, but there’s no atmosphere out there, so when you get exposed to the sun light in space, assuming you aren’t wearing a protective space suit, like you’re in a big pressurized, transparent box, you’ll be cooked like an egg in the microwave. INSTANTLY.
You’ll be flash fried, and then the steam escaping from your corpse will cause you to explode. Direct exposure to UV radiation in an extraterrestrial environment will destroy all known lifeforms on a cellular level. If you were hidden from the sun, you’d have to worry about dying in the vacuum of space, but if you were in sunlight, you wouldn’t be alive long enough to notice the vacuum.