Previously on rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated, Joseph DeMartino said:
> Apparently at least a few.    It is amusing that you brought this
> topic because I just caught an episode of "Mythbusters" (not sure if
> it was a new one or an old one I hadn't seen before) in which the
> tested a couple of stories about both loaded guns and loose bullets
> being left inside household ovens - supposedly with deadly results
> when some unsuspecting person turned the oven on to preheat.
It's one you haven't seen before.  That episode is at least a year old,
probably three or four.
> I remember thinking that, without meaning to, the "Mythbusters" had
> just provided conclusive proof that JMS's steam gun would never work,
> even if the steam got hot enough to cook off the rounds.  The next day
> I saw this thread pop up.  (BTW, I'm pretty sure they also tested the
> idea of a steam machine gun based on a Civil War design.  Don't
> remember how that one turned out.  I'm pretty sure they created a
> *modern* steam gun that would do what the myth said, but I seem to
> recall that a battlefield-portable gun of this type with a suitable
> pressure vessel and control valves was simply beyond the technology of
> the time.  A steam engine for a factory or locomotive was one thing, a
> steam gun something else entirely.)
The steam machine gun used steam not to propel the bullets themselves,
but rather to power a centrifuge that whipped the bullets out much like
a sling (a real one, not the elastic cord between two posts variety).
As I recall, they determined that its effective range wasn't all that
great.
-- 
Jeffrey Kaplan                                         www.gordol.org
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"What do you call people you go out with but you don’t try to sleep
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Coupling, "Size
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