>>5984297It actually has a fair few benefits over a standard round when it comes to fighting in zero gravity.
A gyrojet round doesn't need a long, heavy barrel to accelerate, which reduces the weight of your weapon and thus increases fuel efficiency and maneuverability when using an RCS pack.
And because the round propels itself mid-flight rather than by using pressure to push back against the gun, it vastly reduces recoil meaning you don't get pushed around much while floating.
Likewise, the bullet itself is the casing and contains it's own propellant, meaning none of the mass carried with you is wasted.
The only downside, really, is that it takes time for a gyrojet to reach it's maximum velocity, as opposed to a regular bullet which only slows down after leaving the barrel.
However, even that can be beneficial as firing from close range, say inside of a ship, will mean that the penetration power of the round is automatically reduced.
They aren't caseless, per-se, but that's not a drawback at all, as the casing protects the propellant and prevents it from igniting easily due to, oh i don't know, fire? Or hot things in general, like say, an ionized nebula.
Of course, if you throw a bullet into the fire it'll go off eventually, but it's better than a bunch of completely exposed propellant.
The main issue with gyrojets is that they're a real pain to manufacture with traditional human methods. Really precise and fiddly things with a high failure rate.
That's not an issue out in space though, since even a shitty mass fabricator used for shipbuilding is orders of magnitude more precise than necessary to make a gyro work every time.
All of that, however, is just a standard gyro out of a standard pistol or whatever, no brain box involved whatsoever.
After talking with Kyla and particularly Sanig, you think the gyrojet has more potential.
"So, have you made any progress with it?" You ask.
Kyla and Sanig share a silent glance between eachother, before leading you over to a magnetized worktable covered in a scattering of tiny parts.
"Honestly, it's a weird system. It's been hard to integrate it into a 1911-shaped pistol with the analog specifications you wanted." Kyla admits.
"However, i managed to get the aim-assist system working." Sanig adds, picking up a small, metallic assembly and placing it in your hands.
You almost have to squint to see what you're looking at, it's so small.
Like a piece of heavy-duty clockwork, there's a spring-loaded hammer connected to a disk with five tiny little metal spikes in it.
Those spikes will punch out the thin metal membrane covering the back of your space-age gyrojets, forming the rocket nozzles used in flight on the fly.
Of course, the nozzles have already been mostly formed on the inside, so really all you're doing with that punch is making the final hole.
But the magic is all in the size of the hole.
