Seems to me that a sword or spear would be a pretty good bet. Probably a combination of the two, like an epee’ used in fencing. As for long-distance carnage in zero-g, I would think some sort of recoiless rifle set-up would be best. Something like a WWII Bazooka, where you get equal kick from the front and back so that firing the thing wouldn’t send you spinning off into the void. (Which would be considered a Very Bad Thing.)
There was a recoil-less handgun made a while back that fired rocket propelled rounds. The gun was called a GyroJet. Each round was a hollow projectile containing propellant and three small nozzles. The nozzles were slightly offset so that the exhaust gases would cause the projectile to spin on it’s long axis. Hence the GyroJet name. It was IIRC a semi automatic with maybe a seven shot capacity. NO RECOIL!
Of course there is still the penetration problem.
The Bazooka mentioned by catmandu42 was in the same fashion a rocket launcher, so it too has no recoil.
On the one hand, considering that most astronaut crews (and esp. the pilots/commanders) have consisted of high-ranking military officers, I’m surprised that they don’t, as a rule, carry sidearms or at least survival knives. I figured that would just be mission protocol, esp. on trips to lift military satellites into orbit, etc.
On the other hand, despite air rage and the occasional hijacking, the crews of commercial airliners still do not carry weapons. And that system, consisting of a bunch of tired, frustrated, overcrowded strangers, is still chugging along fairly peacefully. So it’s unlikely that seven highly trained and rigorously screened individuals would need weapons. Maybe if things between the US and Russia get nasty again, you might see a 2010-type situation where the two countries’ astronauts have to segregate themsleves while aboard the ISS.
The Criterion Collection version of Armageddon has a voice track with the movie director (Michael Bay?). Anyway, he said that the story didn’t originally call for the rovers to have guns. He said that the studio told him to add them because “it will help merchandise sales”, because guns would appeal to boys who would buy the action figures.
Swords? Spears?
From an engineering perspective a human body is a container for multiple liters of liquid under pressure. Opening one up in an unregulated fashion during orbital conditions, or while maneuvering, could have unfortunate consequences on mission status.
Hospital restraint methods and equipment seem much more reliable for implementing controlled violence. Uncontrolled violence is sufficiently unreliable to preclude providing equipment as a standard procedure.
Tris
Armed undercover FBI agents routinely fly on commercial airliners. It is the old Air Marshall program and is intended to prevent hijacking. I don’t know how many of them are on this job, and the FBI isn’t saying, but surely they can’t cover more than a fraction of the flights. Sooner or later, one of them will be involved in suppressing an air rage incident, and even then, we probably won’t hear about the FBI’s involvement.
Pah! Obviously not a veteran. Senior officers almost never go armed. That’s the job of juniour personnel, espcially enlisted: Officers can’t be trusted with real weapons, they might hurt themselves. Even when they are equipped, it’s with wimpy sidearms, not the real stuff.
Swords? Not likely, save under some form of acceleration: A sword puts a lump of metal at the end of your arm, with much more leverage than your arm normally has. If you can’t vigourusly swing your arm without tumbling, how’re you going to effectively use a sword? Swords also, by definition, are long, but spaceships, by necesity, are small and cramped. Make it short enough to be effective and it becomes a knife.
Spears? Maybe… but a ‘spear’ is a long item, and spaceships are cramped, tiny places. Once you’re inside a spear’s point, its nothing but a clumsy club. Make it short enough to be useful, and it becomes a funny-looking knife.
Knives? Brass knuckles? Hmmm… Likely: Essentally nothing more than a really dangerous finger, a knife can be used in numerous useful ways. Brass Knuckles are useful anywhere a fist is useful.
Stun-guns and Tazers? Yup, very likely to be functional.
As for ‘repel boarders’ situations, well, how would you board a space craft that didn’t want to be boarded, anyway? The hatches latch from the inside, and have about 5-6lbf/in[sup]2[/sup] over their surface (internal atmoshere). For a 21" hatch, that’s roughly 350lbf. What will you use to create that much force in a vacuum? Battering rams? That would fling you off into space. A rocket? Assuming you hit the hatch, that would render the spacecraft you’re trying to board useless (no reentry without a hatch). Jacks? to what would you anchor it? You can’t weld pad-eyes on thermal tiles, nor can you remove the tiles for attaching said pad-eyes, as that would also prevent reentry, and a jack would still irrepairably damage the hatch.
Mean while, the spaceship you’re trying to board only has to make a realitivly small burn to place themselves out of reach. No MMU is going to have the fuel capacity to chase a spaceship, and even if your supposed boarders were using some kind of sled, all the target would need to do is perform a reentry burn. Problem solved.
On the other hand, if you want to destroy the spaceship, or kill all of it’s crew before boarding, a simple kinetic-kill missile will do, and nothing that anyone can (currently, or for the forseeable future) put into space can stand up to that.
There are many other posiblities, all equally compromised by microgravity and harsh vacuum. I’ve obviously only touched the surface here, but if you want, you can email me specific scenarios, and I’ll take a crack at them.
Sorry to be a spoil-sport: I now return you to your regularly scheduled space-opera thread.
I understand that the main problem with the GyroJet (which, BTW, is one incredible-looking weapon. Like something out of Star Wars) is that the projectile built up speed gradually and within a few yards of the gun it was still going so slow it would bounce off an unprotected person. I’ve heard that a GyroJet “bullet” could actually be stopped by placing a finger over the end of the barrel!
Um, yeah, nevermind the skylab crew that went on strike…
I recommend the book Dragonfly for a little insight into some of the interpersonal problems amongst astronauts and cosmonauts in various configurations, in space for various lengths of time. Put a group of people into a tin can they can’t leave for 6 months I don’t care how “highly trained” they are - there is going to be friction. If fistfights haven’t happened already I’d be very surprised.
Also, I’ve heard that the space shuttles carry “self-destruct” bombs, so that if they veer off course on take-off they can be destroyed before crashing into inhabited areas. Don’t know if it’s true or not - but heck, rockets are basically semi-controlled bombs anyhow.
In regards to the OP about weapons onboard the Shuttle:
Absolutely, positively not. No way, no how. Not in the past, not in the present, not in the future. Not ever. There would be no reason for it. In that kind of environment you rely totally on the fact that any potential troublemakers would have been long since screened out.
And on the very remote chance they weren’t, a weapon would only make things worse. If it was ever necessary there’s little doubt that the rest of the crew could physically subdue one person.
As for the “self-destruct bombs”, yes, there are explosives mounted on the external tank, the solid rocket boosters and the orbiter itself. The crew has absolutely no control over them whatsoever. They are radio controlled by the Range Safety Officer and are there as a last resort option in case a launch or landing goes awry. The explosives were detonated on the Solid Rocket Boosters during the Challenger launch about half a minute after it blew up.
Do you have an official cite on the ‘self-destruct bombs’? I’ve never heard about them on manned missions, but I suspect they might be common on unmanned rockets.
By the way, by definition they really aren’t self-destruct, are they?
Go find the full Feynman Report on the Challenger disaster. It talks about the self-destruct charges. They were removed from the Shuttle after the flights resumed, IIRC.
In the small confines of the shuttle or a space station I think the best weapon would some sort of knock out gas either from a tanks or from an emergency stash bean burritos.