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Whoa... That's actually pretty cool... Now if there were only schematics... >:D
Ask and you shall recieve.
http://www.powerlabs.org/emguns.htm
If you surf around this guys website, you'll find more technical information than you probably can handle. He's an impressive kid.
http://www.powerlabs.org/emguns.htm
If you surf around this guys website, you'll find more technical information than you probably can handle. He's an impressive kid.
Answers: I have an interest in Mexica mythology and the Nahuatlan language. So... yes, you're correct, and if you know your mythology well enough, you may be able to pick out the names of my characters as I play. I have one for each team.
While we're still fiddling over this theme-stuff, bear in mind that both gauss and railguns use the same force--the electromagnetic--to propel objects. It's very easy to convert an electrical force into a magnetic one and back again--in fact, this is exactly what transformers do; however, I won't go into it further here.
I would like to register slight disappointment that nobody picked up the xithrite/superluminary ball and ran with it, though.
While we're still fiddling over this theme-stuff, bear in mind that both gauss and railguns use the same force--the electromagnetic--to propel objects. It's very easy to convert an electrical force into a magnetic one and back again--in fact, this is exactly what transformers do; however, I won't go into it further here.
I would like to register slight disappointment that nobody picked up the xithrite/superluminary ball and ran with it, though.
picks up the xithrite/superluminary ball and runs with it
"hides behind celebrims big back :D"
cheers
"hides behind celebrims big back :D"
cheers
Hrmmmm....The speed deficiency could also be explained the way Mimesis did...
Man-Made bblack hole with no white hole on the other end + materials that disrupt the time-space continuum and dont follow the laws of physics as we know it today = disruption of euclidian physics all throughout the universe and the crash of several parallel universes into one planet, forcing several races together in effort to survive >:D
Full story at www.mimesis.com
Man-Made bblack hole with no white hole on the other end + materials that disrupt the time-space continuum and dont follow the laws of physics as we know it today = disruption of euclidian physics all throughout the universe and the crash of several parallel universes into one planet, forcing several races together in effort to survive >:D
Full story at www.mimesis.com
Or we could just invoke standard game suspension of disbelief and note that most people intelligent enough to know how badly the physics are wrong are probably intelligent enough to know why.
If we start trying to explain it away with technobabble, Vendetta will start sounding too much like ST:TNG and it will only make people pay more attention to the bad physics.
The probable realities of space combat don't make for particularly approachable games. If we seriously examine what space combat might be like using only those technologies which seem probable given our current understanding of physics we discover that the battleground is not one in which humans can meaningfully participate all that much beyond assigning broad strategic goals and approving operational goals. Tactics that would occur in space combat would require reflexes human don't have, sensory integration human lack the faculties for, precision humans cannot manage, and comprehension of distances and velocities beyond the scale of human imagination. In fact, I predict the single most important job of an officer aboard a space faring warship will be advising the ship's AI in what constitutes 'friendly' super-goal seeking behavior given the massive moral quandries of warfare and monitering the AI to insure it keeps its priorities straight.
There is a maxim of warfare that says war involves days of boredom followed by seconds of sheer terror. Space warfare would magnify those extremes of time to levels beyond human ability to cope. Distances would be so great that munitions fired upon the target might not reach (or engage) the target for hours or even days after being fired, but at the same time the velocities that those munitions would achieve in that time frame would be so great that at times the window of time in which meaningful reactions to the attack could occur would be measured in microseconds.
There will certainly not be a captain on the bridge yelling, "Fire!" or "Raise Shields", and the likelihood of a human pilot with a control yoke of some sort is not much greater.
A typical space warship (which might be a socialogical oxymoron but that's another topic) will probably be somewhere around the size of a modern day supertanker, but much more massive owing the the extremely thick steel shield on the ships 'prow' to protect it from collision with space debris such as _grains of sand_. Such a shield is of course practically useless against actual weapons or anything massing more than a few grams. The remainder of the ship will probably be armored with several feet of aluminum and aluminum alloys - not to provide protection from impacts but from radiation and EMP. Thrust is provided by large plates which emit streams of ions at high percentages of 'c' and a large ammount of photons. Power is provided by a series of toroids containing ongoing fusion reactions in magnetic bubbles. The heat from these reactions is captured in thermoconductive cerarmics surrounding the reaction chamber and converted directly to electricity at relatively high levels of efficiency. The average warship will probably be producing as much electrical power as say Belgium or Denmark or a US state. A big one might be producing as much power as all of France or Germany.
Acceleration from all this power conversion will probably be ~.3g, insufficient to lift the ship out of most gravity wells but sufficient to reach a high percentage of c in only several days time. Of course, the maximum speed of the ship while a high percentage of c will never be obtained because the maximum safe speed of travel due to dust in space will probably be < .01c and maybe much less than that. Nonetheless, an object traveling at .008c is moving at 2.4 million m/s, or about 10,000 times as fast as the velocities in Vendetta. Humans do not have the reflexes to handle even a tiny portion of that, nor the mathimatical skills to properly control thier course - even before the effects of gravity and other hazards of space are accounted for.
Supplementing the main drive will be simple chemical reaction rockets to provided manuevering power when needed. Probably only a few seconds of fuel for each thruster will be on board for this purpose, but the fuel will give the capacity to accelerate at as 7g or so in any direction if necessary.
It's entirely likely that a human would simply be too much of a liability to have on board giving the life support requirements and the fact that a human passenger severely limits the ammount of g's you can use when manuevering. For the moment, I prefer to assume at least one human passenger per warship (the titular captain), and a crew largely of sentient to semi-sentient robots. It's entirely possible that the human crew could be memetic in some fashion as well, but we won't go there because I admit to wanting to maintain some hope that something that looks something like a human will one day live in space and that we won't entirely abandon the dream to our metaphorical children.
One thing you can be fairly sure won't exist is a manned space fighter. For one thing, manned fighters of any type are going to be basically obselete within 20 to 40 years, well before we get into space in a big way, and even before we develop human transcendent AI (which may for our species be a necessary precursor to getting into space in a big way). For another, its not clear to me that something as 'small' as say a space shuttle can pack a power plant, drive, prow shield, and all the other essential systems into its frame. It's also not clear at all that large vessels won't have higher acceleration, and the resources to acclerate longer (and thus higher speeds) over operationally useful distances. I suspect that anything that small is going to be considered an expendable munition, not a ship.
The primary munitions of warships will be something like huge drones playing about as close to the role of fighter as you might expect to see and each carrying a flock of ICBM type submunitions. The drone will have an acceleration rate that is only a fraction of the warship speed, but an operational range basically measured in the size of the time window to target. If you are willing to not hit the target until a couple of weeks from now, the whole solar system is in range. It will not generally be possible to fire such a weapon from behind a ship, because the weapon won't be able to overtake it (unless the ship is decellerating and unaware of the attack). Generally such weapons would be used against relatively immobile targets (things in orbit), or against targets which are moving toward the firing vessel in the hopes of overtaking it before it can reverse its velocity (a process taking several days at least). One thing Vendetta has right, if you fire a homing weapon, you probably will be able to overtake it (but not for the reasons in Vendetta).
The submunitions will probably be something like 30-60 300kt nuclear warheads, on short duration independent boosters or a mixture of warheads with iron slugs that use thier relative velocity (which could be much greater than 1,000,000 meters per second) to kill hardened targets. Incidently, the kill effectiveness of an iron slug is probably greater than a nuclear warhead at the velocities we are talking about. The warheads just let you miss by a few dozen km and dose the target with x-rays and energetic particles. The slugs will take out significant portions of a continent. Of course, drones don't come cheap and you won't have many of them so don't waste them unwisely.
Secondary munitions will consist of a variaty of chemical rockets , the smallest of which is on the neighborhood of about 5m long and designed to rapidly accelerate to engage targets at the relatively point blank range of less than 300km.
Tertairy weapons will consist of a variaty of automated direct fire weapons : lasers, rail guns, perhaps even gatling guns designed to primarily to knock out or at least deflect incoming munitions at ranges of 2-30km. Reaction time on these weapons to be successful is probably measured in micro or even nano-seconds. There is also the possibility of some heavier direct fire weapons (EM guns of various sorts, mulitple charge hyper-velocity cannons, etc) designed basically to put debris into the path of a nearby ship, but its probable that by the time ships get within a few thousand km of each other that the fighting is basically already over.
Success in such a battle field will depend on EM and IR stealth - making sure that your excess heat (and there will be alot), and the output of your drive is radiated away from the thing you are hunting. Most ships will run entirely on passive scanners, occasionally lifting a 'periscope' containing a large optical device (a telescope) over the lip of the prow shield to attempt to confirm a reading visually. Seeing the enemy, recognizing it for what it is, making a stealthy attack, and changing courses before the enemy sees you and does the same is everything. Communication will be done by lasers via relays at known positions so as to minimize the chance of interception. 'Radio' communication, that is broadcasting in all directions where everyone can hear you, is tantamount to suicide in a hostile space.
Thinking about such things is to me an interesting intellectual exercise, but I can't imagine making such a 'realistic' game remotely playable without compressing and depcompressing time as needed - something that I don't think you can do in a game with more than 2 players and is problimatic even then. And in any event the AI would probably consistantly beat players with less than a few years of intense experience pretty consistantly unless you basically let the human rely on the AI and watch the results.
If we start trying to explain it away with technobabble, Vendetta will start sounding too much like ST:TNG and it will only make people pay more attention to the bad physics.
The probable realities of space combat don't make for particularly approachable games. If we seriously examine what space combat might be like using only those technologies which seem probable given our current understanding of physics we discover that the battleground is not one in which humans can meaningfully participate all that much beyond assigning broad strategic goals and approving operational goals. Tactics that would occur in space combat would require reflexes human don't have, sensory integration human lack the faculties for, precision humans cannot manage, and comprehension of distances and velocities beyond the scale of human imagination. In fact, I predict the single most important job of an officer aboard a space faring warship will be advising the ship's AI in what constitutes 'friendly' super-goal seeking behavior given the massive moral quandries of warfare and monitering the AI to insure it keeps its priorities straight.
There is a maxim of warfare that says war involves days of boredom followed by seconds of sheer terror. Space warfare would magnify those extremes of time to levels beyond human ability to cope. Distances would be so great that munitions fired upon the target might not reach (or engage) the target for hours or even days after being fired, but at the same time the velocities that those munitions would achieve in that time frame would be so great that at times the window of time in which meaningful reactions to the attack could occur would be measured in microseconds.
There will certainly not be a captain on the bridge yelling, "Fire!" or "Raise Shields", and the likelihood of a human pilot with a control yoke of some sort is not much greater.
A typical space warship (which might be a socialogical oxymoron but that's another topic) will probably be somewhere around the size of a modern day supertanker, but much more massive owing the the extremely thick steel shield on the ships 'prow' to protect it from collision with space debris such as _grains of sand_. Such a shield is of course practically useless against actual weapons or anything massing more than a few grams. The remainder of the ship will probably be armored with several feet of aluminum and aluminum alloys - not to provide protection from impacts but from radiation and EMP. Thrust is provided by large plates which emit streams of ions at high percentages of 'c' and a large ammount of photons. Power is provided by a series of toroids containing ongoing fusion reactions in magnetic bubbles. The heat from these reactions is captured in thermoconductive cerarmics surrounding the reaction chamber and converted directly to electricity at relatively high levels of efficiency. The average warship will probably be producing as much electrical power as say Belgium or Denmark or a US state. A big one might be producing as much power as all of France or Germany.
Acceleration from all this power conversion will probably be ~.3g, insufficient to lift the ship out of most gravity wells but sufficient to reach a high percentage of c in only several days time. Of course, the maximum speed of the ship while a high percentage of c will never be obtained because the maximum safe speed of travel due to dust in space will probably be < .01c and maybe much less than that. Nonetheless, an object traveling at .008c is moving at 2.4 million m/s, or about 10,000 times as fast as the velocities in Vendetta. Humans do not have the reflexes to handle even a tiny portion of that, nor the mathimatical skills to properly control thier course - even before the effects of gravity and other hazards of space are accounted for.
Supplementing the main drive will be simple chemical reaction rockets to provided manuevering power when needed. Probably only a few seconds of fuel for each thruster will be on board for this purpose, but the fuel will give the capacity to accelerate at as 7g or so in any direction if necessary.
It's entirely likely that a human would simply be too much of a liability to have on board giving the life support requirements and the fact that a human passenger severely limits the ammount of g's you can use when manuevering. For the moment, I prefer to assume at least one human passenger per warship (the titular captain), and a crew largely of sentient to semi-sentient robots. It's entirely possible that the human crew could be memetic in some fashion as well, but we won't go there because I admit to wanting to maintain some hope that something that looks something like a human will one day live in space and that we won't entirely abandon the dream to our metaphorical children.
One thing you can be fairly sure won't exist is a manned space fighter. For one thing, manned fighters of any type are going to be basically obselete within 20 to 40 years, well before we get into space in a big way, and even before we develop human transcendent AI (which may for our species be a necessary precursor to getting into space in a big way). For another, its not clear to me that something as 'small' as say a space shuttle can pack a power plant, drive, prow shield, and all the other essential systems into its frame. It's also not clear at all that large vessels won't have higher acceleration, and the resources to acclerate longer (and thus higher speeds) over operationally useful distances. I suspect that anything that small is going to be considered an expendable munition, not a ship.
The primary munitions of warships will be something like huge drones playing about as close to the role of fighter as you might expect to see and each carrying a flock of ICBM type submunitions. The drone will have an acceleration rate that is only a fraction of the warship speed, but an operational range basically measured in the size of the time window to target. If you are willing to not hit the target until a couple of weeks from now, the whole solar system is in range. It will not generally be possible to fire such a weapon from behind a ship, because the weapon won't be able to overtake it (unless the ship is decellerating and unaware of the attack). Generally such weapons would be used against relatively immobile targets (things in orbit), or against targets which are moving toward the firing vessel in the hopes of overtaking it before it can reverse its velocity (a process taking several days at least). One thing Vendetta has right, if you fire a homing weapon, you probably will be able to overtake it (but not for the reasons in Vendetta).
The submunitions will probably be something like 30-60 300kt nuclear warheads, on short duration independent boosters or a mixture of warheads with iron slugs that use thier relative velocity (which could be much greater than 1,000,000 meters per second) to kill hardened targets. Incidently, the kill effectiveness of an iron slug is probably greater than a nuclear warhead at the velocities we are talking about. The warheads just let you miss by a few dozen km and dose the target with x-rays and energetic particles. The slugs will take out significant portions of a continent. Of course, drones don't come cheap and you won't have many of them so don't waste them unwisely.
Secondary munitions will consist of a variaty of chemical rockets , the smallest of which is on the neighborhood of about 5m long and designed to rapidly accelerate to engage targets at the relatively point blank range of less than 300km.
Tertairy weapons will consist of a variaty of automated direct fire weapons : lasers, rail guns, perhaps even gatling guns designed to primarily to knock out or at least deflect incoming munitions at ranges of 2-30km. Reaction time on these weapons to be successful is probably measured in micro or even nano-seconds. There is also the possibility of some heavier direct fire weapons (EM guns of various sorts, mulitple charge hyper-velocity cannons, etc) designed basically to put debris into the path of a nearby ship, but its probable that by the time ships get within a few thousand km of each other that the fighting is basically already over.
Success in such a battle field will depend on EM and IR stealth - making sure that your excess heat (and there will be alot), and the output of your drive is radiated away from the thing you are hunting. Most ships will run entirely on passive scanners, occasionally lifting a 'periscope' containing a large optical device (a telescope) over the lip of the prow shield to attempt to confirm a reading visually. Seeing the enemy, recognizing it for what it is, making a stealthy attack, and changing courses before the enemy sees you and does the same is everything. Communication will be done by lasers via relays at known positions so as to minimize the chance of interception. 'Radio' communication, that is broadcasting in all directions where everyone can hear you, is tantamount to suicide in a hostile space.
Thinking about such things is to me an interesting intellectual exercise, but I can't imagine making such a 'realistic' game remotely playable without compressing and depcompressing time as needed - something that I don't think you can do in a game with more than 2 players and is problimatic even then. And in any event the AI would probably consistantly beat players with less than a few years of intense experience pretty consistantly unless you basically let the human rely on the AI and watch the results.
A couple of things you left out that could change they way you describe Futureistic space ships:
1: Mastering of gravity
If you can succesfully synthesize gravity, it wouldnt matter what g's your pulling. Just set the grav synthisizers to the exact apposite of your acceleration.
2: If your going fast enough when "Space Dust" strikes your hull, yes it will do serious damage. BUT say you have a "Heat Feild" to ionize the space dust and use a magnetic feild to part the ionized gases. No more space dust!
3: Today with certain missiles we can engage at the ranges your talking about
4: When these weapons are developed, if they are, there _Will_ be ways of negating theyre affect Ie lasers: magnetic screen, Iron slugs= more powerful "Space dust" clearing procedure Warheads= lasers to safely destroy at long ranges
5: With fighters: I would think it necessary to create fighters to go into territory where a bigger ship cant follow. Something the size of the shuttle could penetrate deep into enemy lines more easily than a 500,000 ton warship.
6: Toriods have been tried with magnetic setups such as you describe, but these toriods couldnt _Sustain_ fusion for more than a couple of micro seconds
7: Ever check how big a shuttles storage space is?
and then theres the living quarters etc.
The shuttle is bigger than a house, Ive seen it up close
8: 5km long missiles? that size of missile could take out the whole planet, easy
From what you seem to be saying is that your going to have ships the size of mars or the moon or something, dont you think that will be a tad bit drastic?
And I thought you said your "Typical Space Warships" were the size of todays supertankers...Those cant hold a single 5km long missile, much less stores of them
9:_last point in this ramble_ On your drive propulsion, wouldnt it be easier to use a gravity synthesizer drive and warp the space in the direction you want to move? Ie make something equivelwnt to jupiters gravity of to your left and ZOOM!!
/me waits nervously for Celebrim to shoot down his thoughts
1: Mastering of gravity
If you can succesfully synthesize gravity, it wouldnt matter what g's your pulling. Just set the grav synthisizers to the exact apposite of your acceleration.
2: If your going fast enough when "Space Dust" strikes your hull, yes it will do serious damage. BUT say you have a "Heat Feild" to ionize the space dust and use a magnetic feild to part the ionized gases. No more space dust!
3: Today with certain missiles we can engage at the ranges your talking about
4: When these weapons are developed, if they are, there _Will_ be ways of negating theyre affect Ie lasers: magnetic screen, Iron slugs= more powerful "Space dust" clearing procedure Warheads= lasers to safely destroy at long ranges
5: With fighters: I would think it necessary to create fighters to go into territory where a bigger ship cant follow. Something the size of the shuttle could penetrate deep into enemy lines more easily than a 500,000 ton warship.
6: Toriods have been tried with magnetic setups such as you describe, but these toriods couldnt _Sustain_ fusion for more than a couple of micro seconds
7: Ever check how big a shuttles storage space is?
and then theres the living quarters etc.
The shuttle is bigger than a house, Ive seen it up close
8: 5km long missiles? that size of missile could take out the whole planet, easy
From what you seem to be saying is that your going to have ships the size of mars or the moon or something, dont you think that will be a tad bit drastic?
And I thought you said your "Typical Space Warships" were the size of todays supertankers...Those cant hold a single 5km long missile, much less stores of them
9:_last point in this ramble_ On your drive propulsion, wouldnt it be easier to use a gravity synthesizer drive and warp the space in the direction you want to move? Ie make something equivelwnt to jupiters gravity of to your left and ZOOM!!
/me waits nervously for Celebrim to shoot down his thoughts
1) So far as we can tell, there isn't a practical way to do that. That doesn't mean it is impossible, I just don't feel comfortable in the discussion of realism invoking anything that resembles magic like artificial gravity or FTL travel. All those are at present is conveinent literary devices.
2) What do you mean by 'heat field'? What physical principals are involved in its creation? Actually, when decellerating, the ships are relying upon thier drive to literally blast small particles away from the ship, but note that this system a) isn't perfect, b) emits alot of detectable radiation, and c) requires alot of energy, d) has the effect of producing propulsion which makes doing it while accelerating forward problimatic.
3) What ranges do you mean? 300km? Yes, a medium range ballistic missile will go that far (India just tested one). A pheonix AAM has a pretty good range on it as well and is guided to boot. But 300,000 km? No, we have nothing like that. We don't even have targets that far away, much less the ability to hit them. But so what if we did, it just means that my numbers are rather realistic. I'm talking about hitting targets at like 40 au, which is beyond either of our ability to comprehend the meaning of.
4) I'm not sure what your point is. First, there is no way to know whether defence will keep up with offence. There are many periods of history - including this one - in which offensive power has had an absolute advantage over defensive power. This is most evidently seen in strategic nuclear weapons. Periods in which the reverse have been true are relatively rarer in history. Yes, there are defenses - and I describe ones pretty much exactly like you mention; but, my suspicion is that the offensive capabilities of future weapon systems will basically overwhelm the defensive.
I don't want to get in to it with you on why lasers can never be made to be accurate at long ranges. I've been in that arguement before and unless you've had college level quantum dynamics and get it even before I explain it, you just won't get it. Just take my word for it that they can't. I might be willing to get into energy densities, kinetic energies of photons, strengths of magnetic fields, and so forth to explain why 'blasters' and 'force fields' will always be obseleted by mere 'reaction guns' - ei rifles and cannons.
5) Why? Why do you even need to penetrate deep into enemy lines? Didn't I just say that a single warship could sit back in the oort cloud among the ice and hit anything in the solar system? The things that are perpetrating the attack aren't fighters, and don't have people in them, and aren't 'nimble' or even tactically speaking 'fast' - nor do I think there is much evidence you could create such a thing. You might as well call a cruise missile a 'fighter'. At least the UAV's that are about to replace fighters operate tactically and operationally sufficiently like fighters to call them fighters.
6) Yes, I know. However, there isn't any known physical law preventing sustained fusion from occuring in a device similar to the ones being tested now - or they wouldn't be under testing. Most of the obstacles to successful hot fusion power production are political and economic in nature.
7) My wife has worked on 5 shuttle missions.
8) I don't think I said 5km long missiles anywhere in the text. I believe you are misquoting me.
While we are on the subject though, you don't need anything remotely like a 5km missile to take out an earth size planet (or at least all life and artificial structures on it). A 100m iron ball with a suitable drive would probably do the trick. More likely you wouldn't even bother building a missile if you were a space faring people and Earth was a target. You'd simply find a suitable 3km rock (or 10), attach engines to it and send it off to the Earth. The people at the bottom of the gravity well wouldn't stand a chance.
9) I don't know; would it be easier? You explain the physics to me and I'll tell you. Personally, creating a well of gravity in front of you and falling into it while simultaneously moving it forward sounds beyond tricky, it sounds like magic. Now, I can think of some possibilities that might involve generating a soliton gravity wave behind you and surfing it that just might work, but I'm guessing that is certainly not 'easier' than an efficient Ion drive if it is even possible at all. For one thing, I don't think anyone on the planet has a clue how to generate gravity waves without say harnessing a rotating black hole (does that sound easy to you?) or how to harness black holes in the first place. And even if it turns out to be possible there is no gaurantee that it will be more energy efficient than an ion drive. At least at present we know ion/photon drives to be possible, and people can build one and are testing how to get them to work better and have every reason to believe that they can be made to work alot better with the right particle acceleration techniques and an efficient source of electricity.
2) What do you mean by 'heat field'? What physical principals are involved in its creation? Actually, when decellerating, the ships are relying upon thier drive to literally blast small particles away from the ship, but note that this system a) isn't perfect, b) emits alot of detectable radiation, and c) requires alot of energy, d) has the effect of producing propulsion which makes doing it while accelerating forward problimatic.
3) What ranges do you mean? 300km? Yes, a medium range ballistic missile will go that far (India just tested one). A pheonix AAM has a pretty good range on it as well and is guided to boot. But 300,000 km? No, we have nothing like that. We don't even have targets that far away, much less the ability to hit them. But so what if we did, it just means that my numbers are rather realistic. I'm talking about hitting targets at like 40 au, which is beyond either of our ability to comprehend the meaning of.
4) I'm not sure what your point is. First, there is no way to know whether defence will keep up with offence. There are many periods of history - including this one - in which offensive power has had an absolute advantage over defensive power. This is most evidently seen in strategic nuclear weapons. Periods in which the reverse have been true are relatively rarer in history. Yes, there are defenses - and I describe ones pretty much exactly like you mention; but, my suspicion is that the offensive capabilities of future weapon systems will basically overwhelm the defensive.
I don't want to get in to it with you on why lasers can never be made to be accurate at long ranges. I've been in that arguement before and unless you've had college level quantum dynamics and get it even before I explain it, you just won't get it. Just take my word for it that they can't. I might be willing to get into energy densities, kinetic energies of photons, strengths of magnetic fields, and so forth to explain why 'blasters' and 'force fields' will always be obseleted by mere 'reaction guns' - ei rifles and cannons.
5) Why? Why do you even need to penetrate deep into enemy lines? Didn't I just say that a single warship could sit back in the oort cloud among the ice and hit anything in the solar system? The things that are perpetrating the attack aren't fighters, and don't have people in them, and aren't 'nimble' or even tactically speaking 'fast' - nor do I think there is much evidence you could create such a thing. You might as well call a cruise missile a 'fighter'. At least the UAV's that are about to replace fighters operate tactically and operationally sufficiently like fighters to call them fighters.
6) Yes, I know. However, there isn't any known physical law preventing sustained fusion from occuring in a device similar to the ones being tested now - or they wouldn't be under testing. Most of the obstacles to successful hot fusion power production are political and economic in nature.
7) My wife has worked on 5 shuttle missions.
8) I don't think I said 5km long missiles anywhere in the text. I believe you are misquoting me.
While we are on the subject though, you don't need anything remotely like a 5km missile to take out an earth size planet (or at least all life and artificial structures on it). A 100m iron ball with a suitable drive would probably do the trick. More likely you wouldn't even bother building a missile if you were a space faring people and Earth was a target. You'd simply find a suitable 3km rock (or 10), attach engines to it and send it off to the Earth. The people at the bottom of the gravity well wouldn't stand a chance.
9) I don't know; would it be easier? You explain the physics to me and I'll tell you. Personally, creating a well of gravity in front of you and falling into it while simultaneously moving it forward sounds beyond tricky, it sounds like magic. Now, I can think of some possibilities that might involve generating a soliton gravity wave behind you and surfing it that just might work, but I'm guessing that is certainly not 'easier' than an efficient Ion drive if it is even possible at all. For one thing, I don't think anyone on the planet has a clue how to generate gravity waves without say harnessing a rotating black hole (does that sound easy to you?) or how to harness black holes in the first place. And even if it turns out to be possible there is no gaurantee that it will be more energy efficient than an ion drive. At least at present we know ion/photon drives to be possible, and people can build one and are testing how to get them to work better and have every reason to believe that they can be made to work alot better with the right particle acceleration techniques and an efficient source of electricity.
1: Good point, though it may be possible in the near future.
Computers were once sci-fi too you know
2: The heat feild probably isnt possible in the sense Im talking about _Yet_ say a stream of high band frequency particles (above any waves we've discovered so far) that hits the dust, not much at all is needed, and turns it into ionized gas
3: 40AU is roughly 5983940000km wich is a tad farther from pluto to the sun (avg 39.5AU from the sun) Shooting an object AT LIGHT SPEED from that distance will take about 280.9 days to get there. I dont thank _Any_ 5m long rocket has enough fuel to use _Any_ guidance system to correct a path after launch enough to hit something a better part of the year later
4: Im not talking about ranges of 300,000km here just something like 20,000km I dont think a human can see something at that range, much less target it so I would leave that up to a big computer
5: You cant sit back in the oort cloud!! IT IS A LIGHT YEAR AWAY FROM THE NEAREST PLANET!!!!!
Im not in the state of mind where you can hit something with a projectile or laser or whatever a year from now! _At Least_
6: you think the military can do any better?
7: good for you
8: sorry bout the misquote
9: will finish when my dad gets off the comp o_0
grrrrr @ him
Computers were once sci-fi too you know
2: The heat feild probably isnt possible in the sense Im talking about _Yet_ say a stream of high band frequency particles (above any waves we've discovered so far) that hits the dust, not much at all is needed, and turns it into ionized gas
3: 40AU is roughly 5983940000km wich is a tad farther from pluto to the sun (avg 39.5AU from the sun) Shooting an object AT LIGHT SPEED from that distance will take about 280.9 days to get there. I dont thank _Any_ 5m long rocket has enough fuel to use _Any_ guidance system to correct a path after launch enough to hit something a better part of the year later
4: Im not talking about ranges of 300,000km here just something like 20,000km I dont think a human can see something at that range, much less target it so I would leave that up to a big computer
5: You cant sit back in the oort cloud!! IT IS A LIGHT YEAR AWAY FROM THE NEAREST PLANET!!!!!
Im not in the state of mind where you can hit something with a projectile or laser or whatever a year from now! _At Least_
6: you think the military can do any better?
7: good for you
8: sorry bout the misquote
9: will finish when my dad gets off the comp o_0
grrrrr @ him
3) 40AU is indeed about the radius of the solar system (at least the planetary part), which is why the number was chosen. However, at light speed it only takes about IIRC ~9 minutes to go 1 AU. 1 AU is (as you probably know) the average distance from Earth to Sol. Sol is not 7 light days away, nor is the radius of the solar system 280 light days. It's more like 6 light hours.
I didn't say that the 5m rocket had solar system level range (though it technically could, it just would take years to get there ). If you will look again, I said it was used to attack targets with 300km, which I think is reasonable given the thrust of rockets of that size at present and the resulting acceleration that would occur in 0g. For targets at > 1 AU, the missiles would be roughly the size of space shuttles. The guidance system of all the munitions in question would be semi-sentient AI aboard the AI. The fuel source would be He3 or similar fuel used to power a fusion planet, and rotation would be achieved via an internal gyroscope.
4) You don't need to see what you are aiming for. You just have to know in what general direction it lies, and you tell your munitions AI 'go sic it' Humans obviously can't see it. Various sorts of optical magnification, IR sensors and the like as are used in astronomy would be the 'eyes' of the munition. Obviously this isn't a perfect analogy because it won't be a mirror collecting the light, but if you like think of the warheads being armed with the equivalent of small Hubble type telescopes. The warships themselves would certainly have that sort of sensory capacity (and then some).
5) It's not a light year away. Its a few light hours at most. And if your munition is traveling at >.001c, you can get anywhere in the solar system in a few weeks time.
6) No I don't. I think the problem will be solved and that various other groups will adopt the technology for thier own purposes. Among them would be civilian power generation, but the applications in space travel are obvious.
I didn't say that the 5m rocket had solar system level range (though it technically could, it just would take years to get there ). If you will look again, I said it was used to attack targets with 300km, which I think is reasonable given the thrust of rockets of that size at present and the resulting acceleration that would occur in 0g. For targets at > 1 AU, the missiles would be roughly the size of space shuttles. The guidance system of all the munitions in question would be semi-sentient AI aboard the AI. The fuel source would be He3 or similar fuel used to power a fusion planet, and rotation would be achieved via an internal gyroscope.
4) You don't need to see what you are aiming for. You just have to know in what general direction it lies, and you tell your munitions AI 'go sic it' Humans obviously can't see it. Various sorts of optical magnification, IR sensors and the like as are used in astronomy would be the 'eyes' of the munition. Obviously this isn't a perfect analogy because it won't be a mirror collecting the light, but if you like think of the warheads being armed with the equivalent of small Hubble type telescopes. The warships themselves would certainly have that sort of sensory capacity (and then some).
5) It's not a light year away. Its a few light hours at most. And if your munition is traveling at >.001c, you can get anywhere in the solar system in a few weeks time.
6) No I don't. I think the problem will be solved and that various other groups will adopt the technology for thier own purposes. Among them would be civilian power generation, but the applications in space travel are obvious.
9: (from above) Scientists beleive (At least according to what Ive read) that where theres gravity theres gravitons, hence the name, if we use the belief that gravitons have a wavelength, how hard would it be to set up a telescopic boom and "Transmit" these gravitons to make Artificail Gravity?
3:At 300km why dont you use lasers and whatnot? you could do much more damage with lasers than missiles if your opponent has a missile tracking system
But the idea of greater than 1AU travelling rockets is sound
4: erm...thats exactly what I said, only longer
5: wont the ship have moved by then? under your propusionary laws from above it could be far, far away by that time
6: Of course I agree completely
3:At 300km why dont you use lasers and whatnot? you could do much more damage with lasers than missiles if your opponent has a missile tracking system
But the idea of greater than 1AU travelling rockets is sound
4: erm...thats exactly what I said, only longer
5: wont the ship have moved by then? under your propusionary laws from above it could be far, far away by that time
6: Of course I agree completely
"At 300km why dont you use lasers and what not?"
In brief, because of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal. Another reason - figure out how many photons it takes to emulate the effects of a 30mm depleted uranium shell travelling at a couple thousand meters per second.
In brief, because of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal. Another reason - figure out how many photons it takes to emulate the effects of a 30mm depleted uranium shell travelling at a couple thousand meters per second.
erm....Thats a lot o'photons
Something that big would leave a crater in your hull o_0
what about teh other stuff?
Something that big would leave a crater in your hull o_0
what about teh other stuff?
I confess that when you start talking Gravitons you are really getting over my head in Grand Unified Theory (GUT). My understanding is that are current understanding of gravity is very limited and that most aspects of how its works are entirely theoretical. I can remember from my own explorations of Eistein's Theories of Relativity coming to the conclusion that the motive force of gravity was time itself. Some scientists assert that what we experience as gravity is not a classical force at all but the result of things attempting to move contrary to the curvature of space time. Unfortunately, I've lost the math by which I might use to bring you up to that conclusion, and it is a nontrivial task involving some long forgotten differential equations to reaquire it.
To complicate matters, the GUT is based on assumptions of quanitized space and time which measurements from the Hubble have called into questions recently. It's entirely possible that all of the GUT and maybe even the quantum theory it is based on will seem something like believing in a flat earth to physicists a century or two hense.
In the mean time though I consider belief in artificial gravity (or at least the type created without a rotating inertial frame) about as scientifically valid as belief in little green men from UFO's. No scientific papers I know of have even proposed a theoretical system by which it might be possible (which can't be said of the equally improbable FTL travel), nor has any graviton ever been detected.
To complicate matters, the GUT is based on assumptions of quanitized space and time which measurements from the Hubble have called into questions recently. It's entirely possible that all of the GUT and maybe even the quantum theory it is based on will seem something like believing in a flat earth to physicists a century or two hense.
In the mean time though I consider belief in artificial gravity (or at least the type created without a rotating inertial frame) about as scientifically valid as belief in little green men from UFO's. No scientific papers I know of have even proposed a theoretical system by which it might be possible (which can't be said of the equally improbable FTL travel), nor has any graviton ever been detected.
/me comes out behind celes back and jumps back behind his back
PS: to difficult to follow for me :D
cheers
PS: to difficult to follow for me :D
cheers