Re:Tungsten: The Perfect Metal for Bullets and Missiles (2014)
by HankB99 on Wednesday September 20, 2017 @10:24AM
(#15294033)
Interesting. In the SciFi series (and books) The Expanse the rail gun projectiles were tungsten. I thought it was just due to the heat resistance of tungsten but it might have been chosen by the authors for the additional property of density. I wonder if the electrical properties make it suitable for the mechanisms used for rail gun propulsion.
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Re:Tungsten: The Perfect Metal for Bullets and Missiles (2014)
by hwillis on Wednesday September 20, 2017 @11:16AM
(#15294660)
It's almost always chosen for density in scifi- most early railguns used tungsten because the density means you can have a very small cross section per unit mass, meaning low wind resistance which is important at super and hypervelocity. Of course it's irrelevant in space, but it carried over to sci-fi anyway.