Chapter 135: Development [1]
I walked around the workshop looking at all of the tools and the space Layla had been spending her time.
I eventually started up the computer.
I wanted to see what she had been working on. She wanted to keep it a secret until I returned. But, now that I’m back, she can’t show me.
I started looking through the files, I filtered out the projects for Metube and looked for something cool.
Which I found. She had completed her engine. The stats on it were very impressive. She managed to build an engine that has a gas mileage ratio that was 1 gallon of gas for 100 miles.
Revolutionary, to say the least.
She also made a few versions, a v6, v8, and a v12 model. They had varying gas mileage and performance.
She was a beast at... this. And she will never know how this turns out. She won’t see everyone driving cars with her engine in them. She will never get to enjoy the wealth and fame that would follow.
Sigh.
It’s time to get to work.
Time to find the scumbag.
And time to put him in the ground.
My first thought was guns. But, I immediately ruled that out. For a few reasons, the first is that the upgrade ceiling for guns has pretty much already been reached.
I mean what else could a gun get better at? Not jamming? Not over heating? To make a gun more powerful you have to change the bullets and the blasting powder you use. It’s going to be hard to upgrade something that is single use.
So what is the work around? Use a gun that can be made more powerful, like a railgun or a coil gun.
Now I have always thought coil guns will be the future. But, I also understand that railguns are currently more practical. But, they also have a major downside, that being the rails and the complications surrounding them.
I thought, how do you make the rails work without being trashed or damaged so frequently? The answer I came to? Don’t have them touch, use high powered magnets to make a floating rail. Problem fixed right? Sure, now you have another problem. Because the rails are floating, no matter how strong the magnets are they won’t be perfectly stable. That means that there are now precision problems, and the accuracy of the gun has dropped.
So, I quickly realized that that was not something I should count on. Instead I should focus on how to make the coil gun practical.
My first thought on how to do that was just get or make one, upgrade it a few times. Then scan it into the computer and have the AI take a shot at improving it. Remake that model, and see if you can upgrade it further.
But I also didn’t want to take the risk of the ability seeing through the loophole. So I should have the AI take a look first.
First I should explain how a coil gun works.
A coilgun (or Gauss rifle) is an electromagnetic mass driver that uses sequential coils to accelerate ferromagnetic projectiles to high velocities. It bypasses gunpowder in favor of stored electrical energy discharged through a series of coils.
The main points are:
Energy Storage: Power from a battery is transferred into a bank of capacitors, which can discharge massive amounts of energy almost instantaneously.
Magnetic Attraction: When a projectile is aligned with the first coil, the capacitor dumps power, creating an electromagnetic field that pulls the metal projectile toward the center of the coil.
Sequential Timing: As the projectile reaches the middle of a coil, an optical gate or sensor triggers the system to turn that coil off and engage the next one. This prevents the projectile from being pulled backward.
Muzzle Exit: The projectile accelerates through a series of coils and exits the smoothbore barrel at high speeds.
The best way to think of this is like a plane landing strip. At night when a plane is landing the runway has lights that light up in order, with two lights never being on at the same time. The light moves smoothly from one end of the runway to the other.
That is essentially what is happening with powered magnets in the gun to pull the "bullet" forward.
Now the main problems are that all of the above things that make the gun work are inefficient and impractical.
For energy storage most hand made models use the battery packs that electric drills use. They can’t provide a proper charge for a good length of time.
The magnetic attraction isn’t as powerful as it should be. Most hand made models shoot their projectiles slower than a basic airsoft gun. It is pathetic.
The sequential timing is very important, the problem here is that the timing is so precise and is subject to variables that we don’t have a proper way to manage them. The timing is what keeps the projectile from stopping in the barrel.
Finally the muzzle exit or the barrel as a whole. The problem here is that the barrel is smoothbore. Which means unlike guns that spin the bullets with rifling, this thing is basically a musket.
It just launches the metal projectile and lets it tumble through the air. Which affects the accuracy immensely.
So over all the coil gun is a pathetic excuse of an airsoft gun that has the accuracy of a civil war era musket.
But! I still think it has potential for the future.
Let’s get cooking.
The first thing I decided to do was Foolgle my idea first. Just to see if I could piggy back off of another person’s research.
The first link was that Xia was doing exactly what my idea was. Use AI and machine learning to not only develop the gun but to manage all of the sensors and internal components.
They have actually already developed a small hand held model. They are still running into similar problems in regards to batteries and maximising power. But, they have curbed the other problems.
They even managed to solve the accuracy problem.
I need to get my hands on their research. But, almost all of my computers have gone up in smoke. The only one I have left is my original old computer, still sputtering along.
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