- Saturn's Children
, Charles Stross
- Zima Blue
, Alastair Reynolds
- Shriek: An Afterword
, Jeff VanderMeer (Sub Press, signed – with soundtrack!)
- Dread Island
, Joe R. Lansdale (Sub Press, signed)
- The Blade Itself
, Joe Abercrombie
- The Star Fraction
, Ken MacLeod
- The Happiest Days of Our Lives
, Wil Wheaton (Sub Press, signed)
- The Quantum Thief
, Hannu Rajaniemi
21 January, 2011
Today's take
Evil? Or "better"?
An interesting commentary on Amazon:
In 2001, when my first book Satan Burger came out, I promoted it to readers who were into weird fiction. Due to the also-bought feature on amazon, my book became linked up to a very popular weird fiction book: House of Leaves. For the next three years, Satan Burger was the #1 recommended book with House of Leaves. This launched my career and even though I made less profit per book than copies that were sold at smaller sites like Shocklines.com, I still sold hundreds of copies of the book that wouldn’t have sold otherwise. I’d rather get tons of people reading my books and make just a buck or two per copy sold than make a lot of money per book sold. Ever since Satan Burger was connected to House of Leaves, I was making $500-1000 per month on just that one book, which was enough for a 23 year old with a low cost of living to write full time without need of a day job. My dream of writing as a career became a reality, and it couldn’t have happened without amazon.com.
13 January, 2011
Reaching out to 2,000 yards with a .338 or .375 (and more!)
First and foremost, Lutz Moeller has been found. As far as I can tell, his new site is just the same as his old site, but I don't read any German (so it could be full of new information).
There have been many comments posted to the above post about Moeller. Frankly, it's been kind of heated, and things have deteriorated to name-calling. I wanted to make a new post to summarize some of the comments, but hopefully to also open the discussion a bit more, and to ask some direct questions that either haven't been asked, or haven't been answered.
I'd also like to take a moment to thank Noel Carlson for stepping forward and offering his input on this (although I think he has a commercial interest in this area, which may be some of his motivation). His tidbits of information have been valuable and insightful.
I also want to say that Moeller hasn't made any effort to speak up on his behalf here, and has never answered an email from me. I realize he speaks German, but he does correspond in English as well, and some pretty important things are being said about his work. It seems to me that it's very important he take the time to actually speak up. The reason I originally wondered "aloud" here where he had gone is that he had done a fairly heavy body of research (or at least, it seemed that way looking at his website), and then he simply disappeared after selling a few hundred (or perhaps many hundreds – there are several "transactions" that seem to have taken place on his website, usually involving sets of a hundred rounds) of his specially lathed bullets. It's of course nobody's obligation to respond to me personally, and I'm not by any means an expert in the field, but enough has been said by enough people, that coupled with his silence and strange disappearance, I feel it would probably be to his benefit to at least try to explain some of the research he has done, where he is going with it, what has become of it, results, or anything along those veins. I think it would be very much to his benefit.
So let me preface this by saying that my first accurate marks at 1,000 yards were with a .22-250 on Quantico's Range 4. I'm a capable shooter at that range. I am also well aware that a .308 – or a .300 Win, or a .338 LM, or a .50 BMG – or any of a great number of rounds can handle the range. We simply do the math, as I have walked through, here, in the past.
The background for my interest in very-long-range shooting started with varminting, but was fomented when I read this article a while back: Quest for the Two-Mile Prairie Dog. It occurred to me then, with the right optics and the right cartridge that just about anything was "open" as far as range was concerned. And around this same time, I happened upon what Lutz was doing, and started forming my own cartridges in CAD (and thankfully have access to CFD).
Things get murky here. So as near as I can tell, people started looking at superlative cartridges like the 6 PPC, 6 XC (to right), 6 BRDX, 6.5 Grendel, the 6.5x284, the 6.5x54, the .338 Lapua Magnum, as well as some of the new "short magnum" and "super short magnum" rounds and noticed something: these relatively small-caliber (ranging from 6mm to roughly 9mm; I say small when compared to what we traditionally think of a 1,000-2,000 yard round: 12.7mm "and up") shared a similar design trait. All of them had (in relation to other cartridges of the same caliber) very long, slender bullets, with exceptionally acute points. Some of these "very long" rounds frankly looked kind of silly, but the proof was in the contests: time after time, these rounds were dominating the competitions:
It seemed, especially after the advent of the super-short-magnums (pictured below, in polished silver cases), that people realized having a very wide, squat cartridge with a long, even strangely long bullet seated at the end of it was not impractical at all. The short, wide cartridge actually burned powder better than its longer, narrower brethren, and people began noticing that what should have been ballistically-equal rounds, like the .300 Winchester Short Magnum (WSM) actually had an edge on the .300 Winchester Magnum (hereafter referred to as the "300 Win Mag"). It was a small edge, but it was gaining higher speeds from a changed case.
So on the one hand, cartridges were changing, and on the other, bullets, too, were changing. One technique used on newer bullets which (apparently; this is disputed) met with some success was the inclusion of what Noel Carlson has called "sacrificial forward bands." Noel himself points out (sorry, Noel, I had to do some digging to find out where the term came from; I'm not stalking you around the internet) that this is not necessarily a new invention, but I think there has been new understanding as to the benefits of these forward bands. The linked post shows bullets with these forward bands. There is a company (and here I claim fair use under US law for purposes of illustration, I am not advertising or making any claims of my own innovation here) in South Africa which seems to have a patent (circa 1997) on these bands. The bullets are pictured below, and the bands are immediately obvious:
Without quoting directly from GS Group, there are two (apparently; again, some of this is disputed) main benefits of the "sacrificial bands" or rings on the bullet.
First, the bands allow us to increase pressure in the cartridge because they provide a sort of "gradual pressure relief" as the gas in the cartridge expands. As it passes by the rings, energy is transferred to the bullet (hence the term "drive bands") as gas passes by each successive band. In so doing, the transfer obviously reduces the energy in the gas, reducing the load on the cartridge. So – and this is my understanding; there are lots of secrets and half-truths and plenty of outright ignorance out there on these subjects – if your basic metallurgy in your cartridge is sound, you are able to seat the bullet deeper, fill the cartridge fuller, and drive a bullet with bands faster than you would be able to drive the same bullet in the same cartridge without the bands. And, without the bands, because of a more positive seal on the cartridge, the pressure would be higher in the chamber without necessarily translating to a faster projectile (and would create more danger for the shooter and his weapon).
The second benefit of the bands is more subtle, but is easier to understand with the advent of computational fluid dynamics and the availability of it to anyone with the time (and/or the money) to "do the homework." Moeller has a great image of air flowing over these bands, but because he has been (seeming deliberately) incommunicado, I am quite hesitant to picture it here. I will however, link to the page it is on.
One can come up with similar models on their own using typical CAD software (I've used Alibre, Rhino, and a smattering of others in my own work) and CFD software such as OpenFOAM (which is conveniently available for Ubuntu), provided you follow some rough math (which I will lay out a little further below). It doesn't hurt to have spent a year designing exotic turbojets, either. :)
What we are seeing when we look at the rings on the projectile in flight is a small area of turbulence surrounding the projectile. As it moves forward, the projectile carries with it an area of higher pressure air, effectively wrapped about its midsection. The speculation I've read is that this discourages interference from airflows which are at an angle to the direction of flight, which is to say, those which cross the path of the bullet. The idea is that the ridges or rings around the bullet, with the small amount of turbulence surrounding them, make the bullet more resistant to windage (drift side to side) than a similarly shaped bullet without the rings. This concept is not unlike that of supercavitation (in water; however, let us remember that at mach numbers greater than one, "air" behaves very much like water) but I have yet to build a suitably complex model to actually test this computationally (testing on the range is one thing; trying to prove why a thing works in simulation is entirely another).
There's another piece I keep hearing about (and seeing) in modern bullet design. Noel tells me this is actually a holdover from old (e.g., out of date) manufacturing dies and that it is not effective in stabilizing a bullet in flight. The piece I am referring to is the recessed boat tail, or an inverted "dimple" at the aft end of the bullet. Again, the principle in use here is to create a small pocket of turbulence that travels with the projectile, this time at the rear. By inverting the rear of the bullet, a small pocket of turgid air creates another high pressure area which resists the flow of air from the fore end of the projectile interfering with it. The notion here is that the high pressure area directly aft of the bullet serves to streamline the flow around it, and allow it to effectively "re-coalesce" aft of the projectile itself. This is not unlike the principle of a spoiler on a car, but of course the geometry is very different.
Noel, brings up many fascinating points. Where can I find details on artillery shells? I don't see any schematics online, and I don't think there are many communities that would really be consumers of such schematics. So it seems to me that researching very high caliber shells (107mm, 150mm, etc), would be fruitless, and possibly also not even relevant to small-arms design, even "down" to my 20mm ideas. Further, I notice currently we're using RAP shells, which sort of renders their bc moot (RAP I guess being the logical successor to base-bleed). Control surfaces... You've got me thinking, but I'm still missing something. Outside of the self-discarding sabot crowd, I can't think of any long-range projectiles that have control surfaces.
For my own part, I've still been trying to design a cartridge, or understand the right way to go about designing a cartridge (in spite of the lack of public information about what goes into said designs). The math that I have been using is by no means revolutionary; it is derivative, and I'll be the first to admit it. I looked around at what was working, and started drawing up relational dimensions for what these highly accurate cartridges shared. I've been experimenting with altering the ratios, but at present, I have the following constants, based upon the unit "cal" as one caliber.
Diameter of case rim: 2 * cal
Length to shoulder from base of cartridge: 5 * cal
Length of projectile: (anywhere from 5.5 to 8 * cal)
Length of cartridge shoulder: 2 * cal
Length of neck: 1.2 * cal
Seating depth: cal / 2
Barrel wall thickness: cal
This means that the length of the case (without the shoulder; I don't yet have any data on shoulder angles or depths) is going to be in the neighborhood of 8 calibers, but of course, 2 calibers in diameter making it a wide, short cartridge with a lot of volume. I have been experimenting with calibers, in this fashion, from 6.5mm up through 20mm (more on the 20mm in a minute). I have even written a program to plot the varying characteristics of these rounds on these assumptions (such as cartridge volume) to try to identify a sort of "sweet spot" between cartridge volume, caliber, and overall size of the cartridge with bullet seated. Things get big fast, even though the equations are linear (as volume is exponential and overall length expands geometrically). Pretty soon, especially in the 12.7mm+ category, the rounds get really, really big.
But nobody's talking about what goes into their rounds. Nobody is talking about their ratios, and what reasoning they have behind it. It can't just be lots of observed experience, as I have a very hard time believing people are cutting new barrels and re-tooling new chambers for each of these iterations. Increase the seating depth a little, and you have a new chamber, possibly a new barrel, and so on. Change the length of the projectile in calibers, and you of course need to adjust twist, the length of the barrel, and again, re-tool the chamber.
So how are people coming to these numbers? I have a good number of gunsmithing books, and an equal number on the practical details on shooting, and nobody seems to be sharing what their "magic numbers" are – even though, if they were to create a novel cartridge and start selling it, their secret would be out and the ratios would be easy to duplicate (and test, though not necessarily successfully) on different calibers.
I think this may be partially responsible for the reason people are being so quiet. Lutz was certainly interested as of March 2009. But can that be the only reason? I have a feeling people are just highly superstitious and private about their thoughts on rifle and cartridge design due to culture. It's almost as if everyone has their own secret chili recipe or secret barbecue sauce they think will win the county fair. But this strikes me as totally outdated and outmoded in an era where people can work together across continents to achieve results greater than the would have on their own.
Outside of Wikipedia, and its collation of a large amount of ballistic data (which I in fact helped populate with another user), and perhaps Chuckhawk's, there really isn't a large collection of ballistic data, cartridge dimensions, and notes on usage, accuracy, and so on. If a community formed to start researching these kinds of things, I think we would very rapidly start to see a new breed of cartridge (and indeed a new breed of rifle) emerge. Nothing bad can come of this. Yet, people cling to their secrecy.
Well, let me air a little of what I've been working on, although I'll admit I have a few secrets up my sleeve in respect to the actual design of the cartridge (mainly related to very novel and complicated manufacturing techniques beyond the simple lathing-down-a-billet-of-copper process).
The case for a bigger hammer
My idea was, why not make a 20mm round with the same characteristics of a "stretched" (e.g., 6.5 caliber) .338 LM (or Dominator, or whatever) round? I never intended it to be an HE or arty round (or anti-tank, like the Lahti or NTW-20), mind, but a single-shot rifle round. With a 20mm round, you have the case capacity to make just about any range that we can practically see with any optics I know of, and the mass to "affect" anything at the desired distance. (I suppose non-line-of-sight impact is also possible at with a 20mm [ ... ]).
But when I started my modeling on the cartridge, I found almost no public research on either 20mm caliber (outside artillery) or what people were doing with the 6.5-caliber rounds that made them so accurate. CFD wasn't showing me anything I hadn't seen, but I knew that when one is working with that much propellant, one does not make assumptions.
I guess what I'm getting at is it seemed to me to be "missing the point" to take a small-caliber round like a .338, and try to re-engineer the shape of the bullet so that it could better resist windage and reach out further. Why not instead increase the mass of the projectile (reduced windage is a nice effect of increased mass), using sound geometry from the outset, and increase the case capacity so that you had the push to "get it out there."
By increasing the mass of the round, we can effectively cheat at the math and physics parts involved in making small, fast cartridges go very far accurately. A more massive round simply resists windage better, and drop is far easier to compensate for.
I did find that Anzio Iron Works makes a 20mm rifle, but will not speak of it, its specifications, provide ballistic data, let alone CAD data, and so on. It seems a bit of a non-sequitor. Or at least not relevant to my interests. They never responded to my emails, and their rifle is incredibly expensive. They also don't discuss accuracy at all, nor what its intended purpose is. Or if they've had any military sales. Given the size of the thing, my guess is no.
I've got most of the work for the 20mm "done," but lots of questions remain, like what would the BATF think of it, were I to build it? the rifle itself would be entirely non-man-portable and likely have to be towed: consider just the weight and length of the barrel required. Assuming I found somewhere to test it, would it actually be legal to do so? Could I just class III it? (the real technical details I'm intent on patenting, so I don't want to get into some of the finer details; certain implementation details – which are, at present, proprietary to me – might make it a lot less relevant to the BATF.)
I can just see the headlines, though. Virginia Man Builds 3-mile Cannon, Reportedly for "Testing Purposes" It might be worth it for the patents alone.
Anyways, I know this is a very long post, but I am tired of all the comments coming in on the "where is Lutz Moeller" post that are argumentative, slanderous, uninformed, or speculative at best. Noel, unfortunately, you've been the subject of a number of these comments (which I have deleted rather than let through; they're not adding to the discussion, but they don't stop coming in, either). I'd really like it if you could take a little time to describe some of the things you're doing and maybe we could start a public discussion on what makes a cartridge a great cartridge.
There have been many comments posted to the above post about Moeller. Frankly, it's been kind of heated, and things have deteriorated to name-calling. I wanted to make a new post to summarize some of the comments, but hopefully to also open the discussion a bit more, and to ask some direct questions that either haven't been asked, or haven't been answered.
I'd also like to take a moment to thank Noel Carlson for stepping forward and offering his input on this (although I think he has a commercial interest in this area, which may be some of his motivation). His tidbits of information have been valuable and insightful.
I also want to say that Moeller hasn't made any effort to speak up on his behalf here, and has never answered an email from me. I realize he speaks German, but he does correspond in English as well, and some pretty important things are being said about his work. It seems to me that it's very important he take the time to actually speak up. The reason I originally wondered "aloud" here where he had gone is that he had done a fairly heavy body of research (or at least, it seemed that way looking at his website), and then he simply disappeared after selling a few hundred (or perhaps many hundreds – there are several "transactions" that seem to have taken place on his website, usually involving sets of a hundred rounds) of his specially lathed bullets. It's of course nobody's obligation to respond to me personally, and I'm not by any means an expert in the field, but enough has been said by enough people, that coupled with his silence and strange disappearance, I feel it would probably be to his benefit to at least try to explain some of the research he has done, where he is going with it, what has become of it, results, or anything along those veins. I think it would be very much to his benefit.
So let me preface this by saying that my first accurate marks at 1,000 yards were with a .22-250 on Quantico's Range 4. I'm a capable shooter at that range. I am also well aware that a .308 – or a .300 Win, or a .338 LM, or a .50 BMG – or any of a great number of rounds can handle the range. We simply do the math, as I have walked through, here, in the past.
The background for my interest in very-long-range shooting started with varminting, but was fomented when I read this article a while back: Quest for the Two-Mile Prairie Dog. It occurred to me then, with the right optics and the right cartridge that just about anything was "open" as far as range was concerned. And around this same time, I happened upon what Lutz was doing, and started forming my own cartridges in CAD (and thankfully have access to CFD).
Things get murky here. So as near as I can tell, people started looking at superlative cartridges like the 6 PPC, 6 XC (to right), 6 BRDX, 6.5 Grendel, the 6.5x284, the 6.5x54, the .338 Lapua Magnum, as well as some of the new "short magnum" and "super short magnum" rounds and noticed something: these relatively small-caliber (ranging from 6mm to roughly 9mm; I say small when compared to what we traditionally think of a 1,000-2,000 yard round: 12.7mm "and up") shared a similar design trait. All of them had (in relation to other cartridges of the same caliber) very long, slender bullets, with exceptionally acute points. Some of these "very long" rounds frankly looked kind of silly, but the proof was in the contests: time after time, these rounds were dominating the competitions:
There have been some amazing results with the 6.5-284 over the last couple of years. In 1000-yard benchrest, the 30-calibers are still used by more shooters, but the little 6.5 is becoming more prevalent every season, and taking home more than its share of fake wood trophies. Rich DeSimone set a tough record to beat in the IBS Light Gun category with 1.564" 5-shot group at 1000 yards with his Ackleyized 6.5-284 Super and Clinch River 147s. Last year alone, John Hoover and his daughter Marissa each nailed perfect 100 scores at Williamsport with their 6.5-284s. In 1998, John shot Williamsport's first-ever perfect Light Gun 100 score, with 5X and a 5.585" group for TEN shots.
(via 6mmbr.com – an authoritative source, if there is one, on the state of small-caliber, long-distance, benchrest shooting and competition)
It seemed, especially after the advent of the super-short-magnums (pictured below, in polished silver cases), that people realized having a very wide, squat cartridge with a long, even strangely long bullet seated at the end of it was not impractical at all. The short, wide cartridge actually burned powder better than its longer, narrower brethren, and people began noticing that what should have been ballistically-equal rounds, like the .300 Winchester Short Magnum (WSM) actually had an edge on the .300 Winchester Magnum (hereafter referred to as the "300 Win Mag"). It was a small edge, but it was gaining higher speeds from a changed case.
So on the one hand, cartridges were changing, and on the other, bullets, too, were changing. One technique used on newer bullets which (apparently; this is disputed) met with some success was the inclusion of what Noel Carlson has called "sacrificial forward bands." Noel himself points out (sorry, Noel, I had to do some digging to find out where the term came from; I'm not stalking you around the internet) that this is not necessarily a new invention, but I think there has been new understanding as to the benefits of these forward bands. The linked post shows bullets with these forward bands. There is a company (and here I claim fair use under US law for purposes of illustration, I am not advertising or making any claims of my own innovation here) in South Africa which seems to have a patent (circa 1997) on these bands. The bullets are pictured below, and the bands are immediately obvious:
 |
| Courtesy GS Custom Bullets, gsgroup.co.za |
First, the bands allow us to increase pressure in the cartridge because they provide a sort of "gradual pressure relief" as the gas in the cartridge expands. As it passes by the rings, energy is transferred to the bullet (hence the term "drive bands") as gas passes by each successive band. In so doing, the transfer obviously reduces the energy in the gas, reducing the load on the cartridge. So – and this is my understanding; there are lots of secrets and half-truths and plenty of outright ignorance out there on these subjects – if your basic metallurgy in your cartridge is sound, you are able to seat the bullet deeper, fill the cartridge fuller, and drive a bullet with bands faster than you would be able to drive the same bullet in the same cartridge without the bands. And, without the bands, because of a more positive seal on the cartridge, the pressure would be higher in the chamber without necessarily translating to a faster projectile (and would create more danger for the shooter and his weapon).
The second benefit of the bands is more subtle, but is easier to understand with the advent of computational fluid dynamics and the availability of it to anyone with the time (and/or the money) to "do the homework." Moeller has a great image of air flowing over these bands, but because he has been (seeming deliberately) incommunicado, I am quite hesitant to picture it here. I will however, link to the page it is on.
One can come up with similar models on their own using typical CAD software (I've used Alibre, Rhino, and a smattering of others in my own work) and CFD software such as OpenFOAM (which is conveniently available for Ubuntu), provided you follow some rough math (which I will lay out a little further below). It doesn't hurt to have spent a year designing exotic turbojets, either. :)
What we are seeing when we look at the rings on the projectile in flight is a small area of turbulence surrounding the projectile. As it moves forward, the projectile carries with it an area of higher pressure air, effectively wrapped about its midsection. The speculation I've read is that this discourages interference from airflows which are at an angle to the direction of flight, which is to say, those which cross the path of the bullet. The idea is that the ridges or rings around the bullet, with the small amount of turbulence surrounding them, make the bullet more resistant to windage (drift side to side) than a similarly shaped bullet without the rings. This concept is not unlike that of supercavitation (in water; however, let us remember that at mach numbers greater than one, "air" behaves very much like water) but I have yet to build a suitably complex model to actually test this computationally (testing on the range is one thing; trying to prove why a thing works in simulation is entirely another).
There's another piece I keep hearing about (and seeing) in modern bullet design. Noel tells me this is actually a holdover from old (e.g., out of date) manufacturing dies and that it is not effective in stabilizing a bullet in flight. The piece I am referring to is the recessed boat tail, or an inverted "dimple" at the aft end of the bullet. Again, the principle in use here is to create a small pocket of turbulence that travels with the projectile, this time at the rear. By inverting the rear of the bullet, a small pocket of turgid air creates another high pressure area which resists the flow of air from the fore end of the projectile interfering with it. The notion here is that the high pressure area directly aft of the bullet serves to streamline the flow around it, and allow it to effectively "re-coalesce" aft of the projectile itself. This is not unlike the principle of a spoiler on a car, but of course the geometry is very different.
Noel, brings up many fascinating points. Where can I find details on artillery shells? I don't see any schematics online, and I don't think there are many communities that would really be consumers of such schematics. So it seems to me that researching very high caliber shells (107mm, 150mm, etc), would be fruitless, and possibly also not even relevant to small-arms design, even "down" to my 20mm ideas. Further, I notice currently we're using RAP shells, which sort of renders their bc moot (RAP I guess being the logical successor to base-bleed). Control surfaces... You've got me thinking, but I'm still missing something. Outside of the self-discarding sabot crowd, I can't think of any long-range projectiles that have control surfaces.
For my own part, I've still been trying to design a cartridge, or understand the right way to go about designing a cartridge (in spite of the lack of public information about what goes into said designs). The math that I have been using is by no means revolutionary; it is derivative, and I'll be the first to admit it. I looked around at what was working, and started drawing up relational dimensions for what these highly accurate cartridges shared. I've been experimenting with altering the ratios, but at present, I have the following constants, based upon the unit "cal" as one caliber.
Diameter of case rim: 2 * cal
Length to shoulder from base of cartridge: 5 * cal
Length of projectile: (anywhere from 5.5 to 8 * cal)
Length of cartridge shoulder: 2 * cal
Length of neck: 1.2 * cal
Seating depth: cal / 2
Barrel wall thickness: cal
This means that the length of the case (without the shoulder; I don't yet have any data on shoulder angles or depths) is going to be in the neighborhood of 8 calibers, but of course, 2 calibers in diameter making it a wide, short cartridge with a lot of volume. I have been experimenting with calibers, in this fashion, from 6.5mm up through 20mm (more on the 20mm in a minute). I have even written a program to plot the varying characteristics of these rounds on these assumptions (such as cartridge volume) to try to identify a sort of "sweet spot" between cartridge volume, caliber, and overall size of the cartridge with bullet seated. Things get big fast, even though the equations are linear (as volume is exponential and overall length expands geometrically). Pretty soon, especially in the 12.7mm+ category, the rounds get really, really big.
But nobody's talking about what goes into their rounds. Nobody is talking about their ratios, and what reasoning they have behind it. It can't just be lots of observed experience, as I have a very hard time believing people are cutting new barrels and re-tooling new chambers for each of these iterations. Increase the seating depth a little, and you have a new chamber, possibly a new barrel, and so on. Change the length of the projectile in calibers, and you of course need to adjust twist, the length of the barrel, and again, re-tool the chamber.
So how are people coming to these numbers? I have a good number of gunsmithing books, and an equal number on the practical details on shooting, and nobody seems to be sharing what their "magic numbers" are – even though, if they were to create a novel cartridge and start selling it, their secret would be out and the ratios would be easy to duplicate (and test, though not necessarily successfully) on different calibers.
I think this may be partially responsible for the reason people are being so quiet. Lutz was certainly interested as of March 2009. But can that be the only reason? I have a feeling people are just highly superstitious and private about their thoughts on rifle and cartridge design due to culture. It's almost as if everyone has their own secret chili recipe or secret barbecue sauce they think will win the county fair. But this strikes me as totally outdated and outmoded in an era where people can work together across continents to achieve results greater than the would have on their own.
Outside of Wikipedia, and its collation of a large amount of ballistic data (which I in fact helped populate with another user), and perhaps Chuckhawk's, there really isn't a large collection of ballistic data, cartridge dimensions, and notes on usage, accuracy, and so on. If a community formed to start researching these kinds of things, I think we would very rapidly start to see a new breed of cartridge (and indeed a new breed of rifle) emerge. Nothing bad can come of this. Yet, people cling to their secrecy.
Well, let me air a little of what I've been working on, although I'll admit I have a few secrets up my sleeve in respect to the actual design of the cartridge (mainly related to very novel and complicated manufacturing techniques beyond the simple lathing-down-a-billet-of-copper process).
The case for a bigger hammer
My idea was, why not make a 20mm round with the same characteristics of a "stretched" (e.g., 6.5 caliber) .338 LM (or Dominator, or whatever) round? I never intended it to be an HE or arty round (or anti-tank, like the Lahti or NTW-20), mind, but a single-shot rifle round. With a 20mm round, you have the case capacity to make just about any range that we can practically see with any optics I know of, and the mass to "affect" anything at the desired distance. (I suppose non-line-of-sight impact is also possible at with a 20mm [ ... ]).
But when I started my modeling on the cartridge, I found almost no public research on either 20mm caliber (outside artillery) or what people were doing with the 6.5-caliber rounds that made them so accurate. CFD wasn't showing me anything I hadn't seen, but I knew that when one is working with that much propellant, one does not make assumptions.
I guess what I'm getting at is it seemed to me to be "missing the point" to take a small-caliber round like a .338, and try to re-engineer the shape of the bullet so that it could better resist windage and reach out further. Why not instead increase the mass of the projectile (reduced windage is a nice effect of increased mass), using sound geometry from the outset, and increase the case capacity so that you had the push to "get it out there."
By increasing the mass of the round, we can effectively cheat at the math and physics parts involved in making small, fast cartridges go very far accurately. A more massive round simply resists windage better, and drop is far easier to compensate for.
I did find that Anzio Iron Works makes a 20mm rifle, but will not speak of it, its specifications, provide ballistic data, let alone CAD data, and so on. It seems a bit of a non-sequitor. Or at least not relevant to my interests. They never responded to my emails, and their rifle is incredibly expensive. They also don't discuss accuracy at all, nor what its intended purpose is. Or if they've had any military sales. Given the size of the thing, my guess is no.
I've got most of the work for the 20mm "done," but lots of questions remain, like what would the BATF think of it, were I to build it? the rifle itself would be entirely non-man-portable and likely have to be towed: consider just the weight and length of the barrel required. Assuming I found somewhere to test it, would it actually be legal to do so? Could I just class III it? (the real technical details I'm intent on patenting, so I don't want to get into some of the finer details; certain implementation details – which are, at present, proprietary to me – might make it a lot less relevant to the BATF.)
I can just see the headlines, though. Virginia Man Builds 3-mile Cannon, Reportedly for "Testing Purposes" It might be worth it for the patents alone.
Anyways, I know this is a very long post, but I am tired of all the comments coming in on the "where is Lutz Moeller" post that are argumentative, slanderous, uninformed, or speculative at best. Noel, unfortunately, you've been the subject of a number of these comments (which I have deleted rather than let through; they're not adding to the discussion, but they don't stop coming in, either). I'd really like it if you could take a little time to describe some of the things you're doing and maybe we could start a public discussion on what makes a cartridge a great cartridge.
A quick rant on the Global Observer
First, the Global Observer aircraft has many of the same parameters that we at Spun were aiming for, only we were aiming to do far better. Second, at Spun, we were prepared to do on kerosene or JP-8 what the Global Observer appears to be doing on LH2. Folks, there's a reason we decided that LH2 was not a reasonable fuel for aircraft, and we decided that back in the fifties with the Suntan engines. It Just Doesn't Make Sense. Either operationally or functionally. So I'm not sure what the big accomplishment is, nor am I sure what GO does that something like Corona or Keyhole couldn't do, nor am I sure it's cheaper, and I certainly don't think it's implemented in a better way.
It seems that somebody has pulled the wool over somebody else's eyes. We (Spun – I won't bother with linking to Spun's website since we're not operating anymore) were more than capable of providing this craft to people on standard fuels, and finding people who would even listen, let alone pour in one percent of the budget that's gone to Global Observer was nigh on impossible.
And so, the age-old rule of government acquisition seems firmly in place. Buy what's expensive because it must be better, by the very nature of the fact that it's expensive.
Folks, we could have had hyperspectral imagery in place for a month or more over any given geographic area, running conventional fuels, in a cheap, simple flight and avionics package. Pilot training would have been minimal, airfield resources would have been minimal, and nobody would have taken the (extraordinary) notice that they have taken of GO. Maybe that's the whole point. A low-key solution is not what the US Government wants right now – it wants a mythical monster that can loiter on liquid hydrogen doing unconventional things in unconventional ways, damn the costs and logic. Because that's what we represent: maximum effort despite the reasoning to the contrary.
We still own Spun's IP. Anyone wishing to get in touch with us knows how to reach me, and I'll be happy how to tell you how to put Global Observer to shame with conventional fuels and a typical sensor package, designed and built by a guy who has worked in the industry.
Right now it's hard just not being disgusted.
It seems that somebody has pulled the wool over somebody else's eyes. We (Spun – I won't bother with linking to Spun's website since we're not operating anymore) were more than capable of providing this craft to people on standard fuels, and finding people who would even listen, let alone pour in one percent of the budget that's gone to Global Observer was nigh on impossible.
And so, the age-old rule of government acquisition seems firmly in place. Buy what's expensive because it must be better, by the very nature of the fact that it's expensive.
Folks, we could have had hyperspectral imagery in place for a month or more over any given geographic area, running conventional fuels, in a cheap, simple flight and avionics package. Pilot training would have been minimal, airfield resources would have been minimal, and nobody would have taken the (extraordinary) notice that they have taken of GO. Maybe that's the whole point. A low-key solution is not what the US Government wants right now – it wants a mythical monster that can loiter on liquid hydrogen doing unconventional things in unconventional ways, damn the costs and logic. Because that's what we represent: maximum effort despite the reasoning to the contrary.
We still own Spun's IP. Anyone wishing to get in touch with us knows how to reach me, and I'll be happy how to tell you how to put Global Observer to shame with conventional fuels and a typical sensor package, designed and built by a guy who has worked in the industry.
Right now it's hard just not being disgusted.
12 January, 2011
More books arrived
- Steven Hall, The Raw Shark Texts
Charles Henderson, Marine Sniper: The Explosive True Story of a Vietnam Hero
Eric Brown, Engineman
10 January, 2011
Today's take
- Jeff Noon, Vurt
- Richard Matheson, Hell House
- Stanislaw Lem, The Cyberiad
- Jeremy Robert Johnson, Angel Dust Apocalypse
