I agree. Propellants used in ammunition contain an agent that produces oxygen when heated. My (admittedly somewhat dim) memories of long-ago basic chemistry and thermodynamics courses tell me that potassium nitrate serves this purpose in black powder; I've either forgotten or never knew what compound is used in smokeless powder. Point being that the energy supplied to ignite the propellant in the first place is also enough to start a reaction in the oxidizer that produces enough oxygen to support combustion of the other propellant components. So yeah, counterintuitive as it might seem, you can totally fire a gun in a vacuum.rm9792 wrote:What would the lack of oxygen matter? Should still fire.i8godzilla wrote:My biggest pet peeve--as has already been mentioned--is the lack of a need to reload.
There is a scene in Armageddon where the shuttle commander pulls out a gun. Although they were inside of the spacecraft, I would have liked to have seen how they would have portrayed the gun firing in zero gravity without oxygen.
The part that they usually leave out is that Newton's 3rd Law is a little more relevant when you're not rooted in place by gravity....