Comments by "Caleb Hu" (@calebhu6383) on "Reproduction 1877 "Bulldog" Gatling Gun" video.

@ba94845 Motor=adding more parts that could fail. For peak reliability it would have a motor plus a manual backup.
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@gcart7675 That doesn't matter. These parts could still theoretically fail and on top of that you need electricity to run it. How often have you seen a Toyota break down? Not often but that doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.
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@SimuLord But it's still mechanically reliable. How is this any different from the engine running out of power or the gun running out of ammo?
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@gcart7675 I'm saying that engines can fail. Especially engines from the 1960s. Human power can't fail like an engine does. Anybody with arms and muscles can work that thing.
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@David-cy5zu But that's not how reliability works. Reliability isn't a measure of how much stamina something has. An engine may last longer than someone's arm but an engine also has a higher failure chance than someone's arm.
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@David-cy5zu Breakdown of the arm? You mean like cramps? Usually that doesn't happen save for outside circumstances. I know that electric motors tend to be reliable but the rule is that the simpler it is, the less there is to go wrong.
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@mikec8086 That has nothing to do with reliability.
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@mikec8086 That's not reliability, that's durability. And an engine hit by a bullet will be equally damaged. Armor has nothing to do with reliability.
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@mikec8086 It's not because they are less reliable but because they are slower and tire out faster. Humans max out at 500-600 rpm while an electric motor can go up to 6000 rpm, or even 10000 rpm on some models. An electric motor with a manual backup is inherently more reliable than no manual backup. There is a big reason why human power is used for emergency flashlights.
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@mikec8086 The difference is that a human is easily replaceable on the battlefield and a machine is not.
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@mikec8086 Again, nothing at all to do with reliability. The inherent mechanical simplicity of a manually operated machine gun is not superior but more reliable.
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@mikec8086 The human being is not a part of the gun. When you add more parts to something there is more that can go wrong. A human being's failure has nothing to do with the gun's failure, an electric powered Gatling still needs a human to operate it.
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@mikec8086 Again, nothing to do with reliability. Safer, but how is it more reliable?
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@mikec8086 You don't know what reliability means. And I'm sure the failure rate is very low but for a manually powered gun it is much lower, simply because there are less moving parts. The human portion doesn't matter.
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@mikec8086 Except a healthy human won't fail. It is almost the same as a healthy human failing to fire a normal machine gun. Stamina is not reliability. Vulnerability is not reliability. When you add a mechanical backup to the gun you add reliability because a failure can be circumvented by an easily replacable source of power. I'm not saying that the human is the better option. I'm saying any sort of backup is more reliable than no backup at all.
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