Re: Analysis of ship combat and design.
- From: "Raghar" <RagharA2@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 7 Mar 2007 12:54:44 -0800
On Mar 7, 7:20 am, Maurizio Mugelli <_nessuno_m_muge...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Il 28 Feb 2007 11:37:26 -0800, "IsaacKuo" <mech...@xxxxxxxxx> ha
scritto:
However, conversely that lump of something is even easier to
crack just by putting a thicker bit of something in its way.
A fixed installation can have a defensive debris field around it,
so that the kinetic energy of an incoming projectile is used
against it.
Some installations have a nice gravitational field available to
keep the debris orbiting around. If the local gravity field is
too weak, then a station can use a magnetic field along with
curie radiator particles. These particles are ferromagnetic
and possibly coated with amorphous diamond for damage
resistance (enemy lasers can vaporize the iron filling, but
as long as the diamond shell holds, the iron will eventually
recondense). The particles get heated by the station's
reactor beyond the curie point, so they drift outward into
the defensive field. After a particle cools down below the
curie point, the station's magnetic field pulls it back to the
station.
The big issue with a defense field is that it blocks the
installation's weapons also. Narrow diameter beam weapons
Bigger prolem is that it block the orbit of the installation itself,
block a couple of big kinetic penetrators with your kinetic protection
field and you have a storm of shards in orbit at really high speed,
barring the installation to receive any ship from outside - it's a big
logistical problem imho.
a = k*M/d^2
d = 26000 km
M = 4E27
a = v^2/r
v^2 = k*M/r
To simplify it, you'd need about 20420 fragments if they will be on a
slightly higher orbit and ship could pass through theirs threat range
in 1 s. If you did an effort of this magnitude, why didn't you attack
that station immediately?
In fact this amount is significantly worse if you will actually want
to block the orbit. Even if you would need just a one piece per 120 s,
if you would need at least 120 km thick disk, you'd need 20+ million
fragments.
Now the other problem. A station, or orbiting ship would have highly
likely a powerful laser. What would prevent the ship to use the laser
to clean up the debris? In fact this duty might be a reason why
powerful energy weapons would be introduced on the Earth orbit.
Considering a debris would be natural problem, so any ship would need
to be able to deal with it, only large, or special pieces would be
danger. And if these pieces would need to be noticeably large, why not
create small kinetic warhead missiles?
In fact firing anything without terminal guidance, that isn't a laser
beam, is waste of resources.
.
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- Re: Analysis of ship combat and design.
- From: Maurizio Mugelli
- Re: Analysis of ship combat and design.
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