The Workings of the Blade Runner Blaster within the Film.

By Phil Steinschneider and Richard A. Coyle

A discussion on how the Blaster Appeared to work and a reconciliation of the features of the gun.

 

The following is excerps from a e-mail discussion of the function of the gun’s

 

RAC - I don't know... My idea is that the bolt in the Prop gun services as both bolt and barrel. That the special round is loaded INTO the bolts chamber/barrel and the bolt closes OVER it. A telescoping type of action, that way we can have a shell in the top part of the gun, in the Steyr part and have it work. I also think that it might be a caseless round thus there would be no need for a extractor. Also as a caseless round it might be a tad bit of a rocket round which would not need a barrel, it would be self propelled, self truing, thus have no need for riffling in a barrel.

Hell, I have just written article 5 on the Blade Runner Gun. The make believe "real" gun action. All of the rounds are caseless, thus LEDs are needed to tell if your electronic firing system in working. 

PS >  I agree with most of your deductions. However, I envision a cased, short shotgun type of shell that is fed by the Steyr magazine and reloaded by the bolt-action - therefore the extractor would become necessary. The other round is a bullet fired from the revolver by one of the two triggers.

RAC - But the gun barrel is in-between the clip and the Steyr action, I picture the ammo clip feeding the lower barrel which we do see firing many times and the upper being more like a grenade launcher/one shot shotgun type of action.

And if you line up the bolt and ammo clips etc. there is no chamber for the round to feed into and fire out of and for the cartridge to be extracted out of.

PS > But in the workprint Deckard supposedly reloads his gun through the clip after firing at Batty the first time.

RAC - Well as I have not seen the work print so I can not say. He could have just nervously been checking to be sure he had indeed fired the shotgun round. Replacing the ammo clip may not require any action, like a auto with a round in the chamber a new clip would keep feeding, or there is a link from the shotgun action than also chambers the first round from the ammo clip like the charging lever on a M16.

PS > Didn't he use the most powerful round - the shotgun round - on Batty?

RAC - That is what I think, just after Batty enters the apartment. That supports my idea of a special round in the upper part of the gun. I purpose a radical new type of weapon, one with the best of a revolver and an automatic.

This design would draw from one of the earliest machine guns, the Gattling Gun. A muli-barrel auto loader that was clip fed, as it turned it presented a barrel for a round from the clip, then turned again and fired that round, turned again and dropped the spent cartage and then came around and presented itself to picked up a new round when it passed the clip again.

As you know a revolvers greatest straight is the fact that it almost never jams, and a dead round does not keep it out of action for a new round can be brought to fire in a split second  with a simple pull of the trigger. It's flaw is the number of rounds in the chamber, six being the common number. 

The Autoloader carried large amounts of ammo and some up to sixteen rounds. It's flaws are the problems with jamming, incompletely ejected rounds (a "stove pipe" is a name for a round caught within the ejector port) and a dead round mean's the shooter must cycle the action to remove it and re-chamber a new round, and a  even worst problem is when the ejector fails to extract a spent or dead cartilages.  In a gun battle this can be fatal.

Now how about this, a clip fed caseless rocket round revolver?

When the cylinder is at the bottom of the rotation the clip rams a fresh round into the cylinder. If there is an unfired round, it sensors this and does not try to load a full chamber. And simply waits for the next empty chamber to present it's self, thus would not jam the action. 

This would be a electricity powered system thus the need for battery power, and the need for the LEDs as tell tails, to let you know it is power up and ready for action. I think each clip would carry it's own battery, like Polaroid film packs do. 

This power pack would provide power for the sensors in the clip, the loading system which might be magnetic driven,  for the laser sight ( The rod on the side) and for firing the special caseless rocket round in the upper barrel. 

This would be the greatest weapon ever for a fire fight, shoots like a double action revolver, get a dud and just a pull on the trigger passes it by and you shooting the next round, with the auto reloading you carry say twenty-twenty five rounds total with one special grenade. 

With the caseless rocket round, where the push is within the projectile, and it could have small fins that unfld when it leaves the barrel and then put on the spin and guild it, so the bore could be lose fitting. So even a weak dud that laft a round with in the barrel would not be a problem the next round could just push it out of the way,  (In a normal hand gun this can cause the barrel to explode when a second slug rams into one stuck in the barrel) The only way this could ever jam would be if a round got stuck part way into the barrel and part way still in the chamber, and you still have a one shot upper barrel.

What a gun, I want one.

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