1: Minbari Posess EMP Weapons(The starfuries being disabled before they are broght aboard the cruiser), thus their ships would be shielded against EMP type attacks incase of malfuntion of their weapons.
2: It required multiple nukes to take out the Black Star. Also until the creation of Babylon 5, no one knew the weakness of the cruiser was the main engine fin on the back. So they were just trying to destroy them because they never had a chance to get behind them to take out the engine. Without knowing that one weakness, just one single nuke would not be effective. Also after one time of them tossing nukes at a cruiser, they would just make sure there is plenty of fighters protecting them against nukes. And as far as I know of, with exception of the Black Star, the rest of the Minbari fleets were always 2 or more ships always together.
3: When the EA Fleet attacked the first Sharlin, they did a full assault to the foward of the ship. If I remember correctly, that was a Nova and a couple hyperions. Nova's are heavy assault ships, the most powerful the EA had at the time. I was not too sure what type of Nova it was, I was assuming maybe a Alpha Model Nova with just dual pulse cannon arrays. The arrays can only fire one cannon at a time, so each volley from the nova was 8 pulses per round, and as long as they fired, would have equaled about 16-32 shots fired. With that much firepower, with the addition to the two hyperions, that Sharlin was still operational after a foward attack. That probably would have equaled about how much firepower a tatical nuke would have done.
Just thought I would throw in my two technical cents.
[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Alex [/i]
[B]but considder this: If the density is high enough to carry a shockwave, ships that are not designed for atmosperic travel (and that's the majority of warships) would not be able to go ther in the first place.[/B][/QUOTE]
I allways thought why ships could not do atmosperic flying was because of the gravity from the planet. The Thunderbolt could do it because it had wings.
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
Well partly it would be to do with the friction causing the nice blunt front end of an Omega (for example) to burn up. No doubt many other Earth Force ships would suffer the same fate. There would also be the whole gravity thing and trying to maintain an orbit that deep inside a gravity well while working against an atmosphere.
First, a great deal of our weapons systems even now are EMP hardened. Since the effect does work here on Earth, we design our fighters and tanks and such to still be able to function after nuclear weapons have been used. Especially the aircraft. After all, imagine dropping a smal nuclear bomb, turning for home, and having your plane just switch off and drop out of the sky.
Second, explosive weapons have been developed for use in space. There is the US Air Force ASAT rocket, launched from an f-15, and a Russian killer sattelite that both have the same purpose. Close with an enemy recon sattelite and destroy it. The Russian one seeks after reaching orbit, and the American one locks on before leaving the plane for a direct flight path, but both use blast fragmentation warheads.
Even in atmosphere, missiles destroy aircraft through the shraphnel thrown out by the warhead, not the shockwave. Think inverse square law, and how fast even atmospheric fighters are moving. Missile warheads are designed to throw out a tailored pattern of fragments in front of the blast.
Third, I wonder sometimes about Minbari stealth. I can understand radar stealth, although they could not have such neat looking ships if they designed for that, I can understand a relative lack of IR emmisions if they use gravitic propulsion, but we also use TV guided missiles. Even now, some of our f-14s have a camera system that can identify planes out to ten miles away. If we can also read license plates from orbit, what's to stop us from using hypervelocity, tv guided missiles? What kind of camera resolution could you get in the 2200's?
The planes that were used to drop nukes (when the idea was still prevalent) were electronics light. Stick and rudder mostly, until newer technology arrived. Nowadays a plane dropping a nuke can kick on the speed and be outside the 2-5 mile emp range fairly quickly.
Also, when it comes to emp discharge the military radios have a circuit in them to protect them from an emp pulse. However, that circuit must be replaced and the radio is not effective until that is done.
I imagine that most emp protection circuits are done the same way regardless of the equipment.
This information is from my own experience as a Radio/Electronics Technician 2841/61 in the Marines.
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
The protection circuit is probably just a fuse of some kind. All an EMP pulse does is cause lots of current in the circuits, burning them out.
[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Biggles [/i]
[B]Well partly it would be to do with the friction causing the nice blunt front end of an Omega (for example) to burn up. No doubt many other Earth Force ships would suffer the same fate. There would also be the whole gravity thing and trying to maintain an orbit that deep inside a gravity well while working against an atmosphere. [/B][/QUOTE]
Yeah, but here's the thing....without gravity as a huge factor, you can actually slow down to the point where friction isn't that big of a deal. Furthermore, its not exactly a foregone conclusion to retrofit ships ahead of time with heat shielding so they can have a higher resistance to the heat generated by friction. When you factor that in tandum with the temperature of the surrounding area, it would take a hell of alot of friction to generate a sufficient ammount of heat to be a danger to the ship.
Even in atmosphere, missiles destroy aircraft through the shraphnel thrown out by the warhead, not the shockwave. Think inverse square law, and how fast even atmospheric fighters are moving. Missile warheads are designed to throw out a tailored pattern of fragments in front of the blast.
Third, I wonder sometimes about Minbari stealth. I can understand radar stealth, although they could not have such neat looking ships if they designed for that, I can understand a relative lack of IR emmisions if they use gravitic propulsion, but we also use TV guided missiles. Even now, some of our f-14s have a camera system that can identify planes out to ten miles away. If we can also read license plates from orbit, what's to stop us from using hypervelocity, tv guided missiles? What kind of camera resolution could you get in the 2200's? [/B][/QUOTE]
Fragmentation: In order to fatally damage an armoured warship, such an explosion would have to be VERY close. The fragments will spread out rather quickly; there is a lot of space in Space.
With regards to visual sighting;
1. Space is dark. A low reflectance hull would make visual sighting difficult. Also, acquisition ranges would be very high; space is big. Spot a speck of black dust on a black background.
2. Without scale, the missile won't know what the target is doing. By just observing it will be unable to calculate speed and distance to this target. Remember, it is emissions quiet and we need to calculate a very precise intercept point.
Fot the nebula thing, sure, you could slow down, but relative velocities in space combat could be huge. If you drop your speed that much, it could make you much easier to hit. Not to say it wouldn't work, but even unguided missiles might have a chance. I heard about a Russian torpedo a while back that goes over 100 knots, and just goes in a straight line to the target. I imagine it would only be useful at short range, but how do you dodge something moving at really high speed?
To SpiritOne, I did not know that about the radios. It makes sense, when you say it, but it is a little different for avionics, or any more complicated vehicle systems.
This site has a good explanation about a third of the way down the page.
And for the frag damage, yes you would need to be close. But what I was thinking was that a nuke going off in close proximity in an asteroid field would probably cause more damage from fragments of asteroid than from heat or shockwave. In open space, would it work anywhere near as well? A blast fragmentation warhead would be more suited to destroy a ship the size of a fighter, anyway. But it would have to have a tailored, directional blast pattern.
[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Bekenn [/i]
[B]Does anyone actually have any data on what the density of a nebula might be? [/B][/QUOTE]
According to [URL=http://fusedweb.pppl.gov/CPEP/Chart_Pages/5.Plasmas/Nebula/Emission.html]this site[/URL] ,
[quote]
For a typical emission nebulae, the density of ions (and electrons) is 1.0E8 to 1.0E10 particles per m^3.
[/quote]
Trying to recall my chemistry, this is significantly less than a [URL=http://environmentalchemistry.com/yogi/reference/molar.html]mole[/URL] (6.0221367E23 atoms per gram for hydrogen) meaning there is not much there.
Would you really need to measure distance if your missiles are moving fast enough? There is a new generation of anti-tank missiles in the works that is supposed to kill with kinetic energy only. They work by flying at mach 7 or 8. With no atmospheric drag, and a long distance to the target, you might get missiles with speeds of mach 40 or 50. How quickly can a large starship change direction?
If you did need distance, though, you could triangulate with cameras on multiple ships. I agree with MeadDrinker, the ranges would be large, but here we have to make a distinction between what happens on the show and what happens with real-world physics. Do we accept that for some reason, ships close to distances where ramming is an option, and swarms of fighters can be effective? Or do we look at realistic ranges and accelerations? Unless you have gravitic propulsion, delta-v for a large ship is going to be very small. Since, as has been said, space is big, range to target could be easily in the thousands of miles.
Another thing I would be interested in is how much frictional heating a nebula would cause with such low density. When the shuttle de-orbits, it hits the upper atmosphere at something like mach 35, right? Of course, ships motionless to each other could have either very large or nonexistent relative velocity to the nebula, and I guess jumping out of hyperspace gives zero relative velocity? On the other hand, why fight in a nebula if it could potentially give such problems?
Okay, accepting (as seen on the show) that the ships do fight in close proximity, I would suggest another reason for the apparent lack of missiles.
I would say that it is more economic to use the energy from the vessels power supply to fire a beam or pulse weapon than use limited supplies of missiles. Missiles are seen in use in situations where they can be resupplied (Earths GOD platforms) but generally not in vessels that will be away from base for extended periods of time. Conoisseurs among you will point out the Warlock's missile batteries, but I think they were intended for use in planetary sieges (which is another situation which would allow resupply.)
Even these pulses were often seen being intercepted by point defence weapons, including B5's own defence grid. If a packet of plasma / energy / whatever could be stopped, a fabricated material weapons would be a waste. The deployment of GOD missiles was on a huge scale, potentially overwhelming defences.
Good point. I guess just as when missiles advanced beyond what guns could offer, a new gun could offer better performance in certain aspects than a missile. Especially a laser, since you don't have to worry about leading your target.
And I imagine that most ships could produce far more power in the reactors than the engines could use, so you would have enough of a surplus to mount some pretty big energy weapons.
You know, this could explain part of why ships close in so much for B5 space combat. It is hard to focus a laser beam over really long distances without enormous (fragile?) lenses, and particle beams don't really fare much better in a planetary magnetic field. If a ship with energy weapons wants to fight a ship with missiles, it must close in to do so effectively. And while in the real world, this would give a lot of time to batter the attacker with missile salvoes, it wouldn't work if they just jump out of hyperspace right on top of you.
This could also explain the small relative velocities, because if you jump in close proximity with high relative velocity, you will only have time for a few bursts before you are out of range. Then your backside is wide open for missiles as a going away present.
ShadowDancerWhen I say, "Why aye, gadgie," in my heart I say, "Och aye, laddie."London, UK
IMHO i think Hasdrubal has hit it on the head with his last post (well that, and he beat me to posting much the same thing:D)
Another point to remember concerning the speed of combate, especially with Earth ships that do not have artifical gravity, the rate of change in velocity is limited, lest the occupants get turned into pools of ooze...I think the devs once recalled a discussion about the yaw rate of an Omega as shown in the game would have actually crushed the crewmembers in the outer regions of the ship...
You know, I have visited this board on and off for quite some time now. It is one of the best places I have seen anywhere both for the quality of discussion (aside from a few of the political threads, but part of that is my fault too), and for the friendliness and quality of the members.
Threads like this one really make it worth being here, so it is kind of sad that I will miss the rest of it. I am heading off to boot camp at Ft. Benning later today, so I won't have computer access for the next four months or so. I hope this place is still here when I get back.
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
Don't worry, we arn't going anywhere. :) Good luck with your training!
We can also discuss the effect of opposite reaction from firing High Energy weapons on a ships navigation or station keeping.
Like an Ion Engine, everytime you fire, it pushes the ship backward or in the opposite direction of fire...
So thruster and engine control has to be tied into firing systems to compensate. Computer assist would be required at the VERY least if not by computer all together.
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
I can't imagine that future space ships wouldn't be entirely controlled via a computer interface system. Such a system would be a necessity to translate the human's high level ideas of what they want to do into the complex control of various different thrusters. Think something along the lines of the computer assist mode in I-War and B5:IFH, only even more advanced.
[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by JackN [/i]
[B]Like an Ion Engine, everytime you fire, it pushes the ship backward or in the opposite direction of fire...[/B][/QUOTE]
This reminds me of something I read of in some Star Trek book years back. If you look on the model of the [i]Enterprise-A[/i], on the back of the neck of the ship, just above the torpedo launcher, is a vent. The idea is that whenever a torpedo is fired, the vent would automatically shoot out exhaust gasses to compensate and keep the ship in position.
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
Interesting, but I would have thought the impulse engines would do that job, but perhaps they're too powerful for that task, especially given that the kickback from firing a torpedo would not have too much effect on a ship the size of the Enterprise.
This is true, but the fact that they even thought of that and put in something to compensate gives me even more respect for the people who designed the refit enterprise. One of the two best IMHO.
[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Hasdrubal [/i]
[B]Would you really need to measure distance if your missiles are moving fast enough? There is a new generation of anti-tank missiles in the works that is supposed to kill with kinetic energy only. They work by flying at mach 7 or 8. With no atmospheric drag, and a long distance to the target, you might get missiles with speeds of mach 40 or 50. How quickly can a large starship change direction?
[/B][/QUOTE]
With an directed energy system, you woudn't need to change position. The energy beam could remain on the incoming projectile the whole time. Most likely, the heat from the beam would cause ablation and plasma ejection, which would in effect work as a reverse thruster, decreasing the missile's velocity.
[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Hasdrubal [/i]
[B]It is hard to focus a laser beam over really long distances without enormous (fragile?) lenses, and particle beams don't really fare much better in a planetary magnetic field.
[/B][/QUOTE]
I would imagine that in the vacuum of space, it would be easier to maintain a focused beam, since there is no atmosphere to cause diffraction.
[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Hasdrubal [/i]
[B]I am heading off to boot camp at Ft. Benning later today, so I won't have computer access for the next four months or so. I hope this place is still here when I get back. [/B][/QUOTE]
I, for one, look forward to your return. I appreciate you're honest and polite replies.
[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Biggles [/i]
[B]Think something along the lines of the computer assist mode in I-War and B5:IFH, only even more advanced. [/B][/QUOTE]
Oh, you mean the computer-assist mode I never use?
...for IFH, anyway. I haven't really had much chance to get into I-War yet.
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
Aye, that one. You may not think you're using it, but even at a basic level you are (OK, maybe this doesn't apply to games but in real life it would). You tell the ship to slide left, the computer instructs the correct thrusters to fire to move the ship in that way.
Recoil from directed energy would be minimal; ion engines utilise the expulsion of mass to impart momentum to the vessel. Energy weapons would have very little mass. However, plasma and particle weapons would indeed have some recoil, though this wshould be easily countered by the ships reaction control system.
This does lead on to a factor against missiles in space though; they will need fuel, more than on Earth. This is because airborne missiles initially accelerate to a high speed with their rocket motor and then coast, using fins to guide the weapon.
Fins will not work in space, so the missile must continuously expend fuel to change direction and intercept the target. The faster it is, the more fuel will be required, the larger the weapon will be. The slower it is, the smaller it can be. However slow = easily shot down. Big = easily shot down. (I'm assuming gravitic technology is too complex / big to be used in expendable missiles.)
Comments
1: Minbari Posess EMP Weapons(The starfuries being disabled before they are broght aboard the cruiser), thus their ships would be shielded against EMP type attacks incase of malfuntion of their weapons.
2: It required multiple nukes to take out the Black Star. Also until the creation of Babylon 5, no one knew the weakness of the cruiser was the main engine fin on the back. So they were just trying to destroy them because they never had a chance to get behind them to take out the engine. Without knowing that one weakness, just one single nuke would not be effective. Also after one time of them tossing nukes at a cruiser, they would just make sure there is plenty of fighters protecting them against nukes. And as far as I know of, with exception of the Black Star, the rest of the Minbari fleets were always 2 or more ships always together.
3: When the EA Fleet attacked the first Sharlin, they did a full assault to the foward of the ship. If I remember correctly, that was a Nova and a couple hyperions. Nova's are heavy assault ships, the most powerful the EA had at the time. I was not too sure what type of Nova it was, I was assuming maybe a Alpha Model Nova with just dual pulse cannon arrays. The arrays can only fire one cannon at a time, so each volley from the nova was 8 pulses per round, and as long as they fired, would have equaled about 16-32 shots fired. With that much firepower, with the addition to the two hyperions, that Sharlin was still operational after a foward attack. That probably would have equaled about how much firepower a tatical nuke would have done.
Just thought I would throw in my two technical cents.
[B]but considder this: If the density is high enough to carry a shockwave, ships that are not designed for atmosperic travel (and that's the majority of warships) would not be able to go ther in the first place.[/B][/QUOTE]
Uhh....proof?
I allways thought why ships could not do atmosperic flying was because of the gravity from the planet. The Thunderbolt could do it because it had wings.
First, a great deal of our weapons systems even now are EMP hardened. Since the effect does work here on Earth, we design our fighters and tanks and such to still be able to function after nuclear weapons have been used. Especially the aircraft. After all, imagine dropping a smal nuclear bomb, turning for home, and having your plane just switch off and drop out of the sky.
Second, explosive weapons have been developed for use in space. There is the US Air Force ASAT rocket, launched from an f-15, and a Russian killer sattelite that both have the same purpose. Close with an enemy recon sattelite and destroy it. The Russian one seeks after reaching orbit, and the American one locks on before leaving the plane for a direct flight path, but both use blast fragmentation warheads.
Even in atmosphere, missiles destroy aircraft through the shraphnel thrown out by the warhead, not the shockwave. Think inverse square law, and how fast even atmospheric fighters are moving. Missile warheads are designed to throw out a tailored pattern of fragments in front of the blast.
Third, I wonder sometimes about Minbari stealth. I can understand radar stealth, although they could not have such neat looking ships if they designed for that, I can understand a relative lack of IR emmisions if they use gravitic propulsion, but we also use TV guided missiles. Even now, some of our f-14s have a camera system that can identify planes out to ten miles away. If we can also read license plates from orbit, what's to stop us from using hypervelocity, tv guided missiles? What kind of camera resolution could you get in the 2200's?
The planes that were used to drop nukes (when the idea was still prevalent) were electronics light. Stick and rudder mostly, until newer technology arrived. Nowadays a plane dropping a nuke can kick on the speed and be outside the 2-5 mile emp range fairly quickly.
Also, when it comes to emp discharge the military radios have a circuit in them to protect them from an emp pulse. However, that circuit must be replaced and the radio is not effective until that is done.
I imagine that most emp protection circuits are done the same way regardless of the equipment.
This information is from my own experience as a Radio/Electronics Technician 2841/61 in the Marines.
[B]Well partly it would be to do with the friction causing the nice blunt front end of an Omega (for example) to burn up. No doubt many other Earth Force ships would suffer the same fate. There would also be the whole gravity thing and trying to maintain an orbit that deep inside a gravity well while working against an atmosphere. [/B][/QUOTE]
Yeah, but here's the thing....without gravity as a huge factor, you can actually slow down to the point where friction isn't that big of a deal. Furthermore, its not exactly a foregone conclusion to retrofit ships ahead of time with heat shielding so they can have a higher resistance to the heat generated by friction. When you factor that in tandum with the temperature of the surrounding area, it would take a hell of alot of friction to generate a sufficient ammount of heat to be a danger to the ship.
[B]
Even in atmosphere, missiles destroy aircraft through the shraphnel thrown out by the warhead, not the shockwave. Think inverse square law, and how fast even atmospheric fighters are moving. Missile warheads are designed to throw out a tailored pattern of fragments in front of the blast.
Third, I wonder sometimes about Minbari stealth. I can understand radar stealth, although they could not have such neat looking ships if they designed for that, I can understand a relative lack of IR emmisions if they use gravitic propulsion, but we also use TV guided missiles. Even now, some of our f-14s have a camera system that can identify planes out to ten miles away. If we can also read license plates from orbit, what's to stop us from using hypervelocity, tv guided missiles? What kind of camera resolution could you get in the 2200's? [/B][/QUOTE]
Fragmentation: In order to fatally damage an armoured warship, such an explosion would have to be VERY close. The fragments will spread out rather quickly; there is a lot of space in Space.
With regards to visual sighting;
1. Space is dark. A low reflectance hull would make visual sighting difficult. Also, acquisition ranges would be very high; space is big. Spot a speck of black dust on a black background.
2. Without scale, the missile won't know what the target is doing. By just observing it will be unable to calculate speed and distance to this target. Remember, it is emissions quiet and we need to calculate a very precise intercept point.
And finally; This Thread Rocks.
To SpiritOne, I did not know that about the radios. It makes sense, when you say it, but it is a little different for avionics, or any more complicated vehicle systems.
[url]http://www.house.gov/hasc/testimony/106thcongress/99-10-07wood.htm[/url]
This site has a good explanation about a third of the way down the page.
And for the frag damage, yes you would need to be close. But what I was thinking was that a nuke going off in close proximity in an asteroid field would probably cause more damage from fragments of asteroid than from heat or shockwave. In open space, would it work anywhere near as well? A blast fragmentation warhead would be more suited to destroy a ship the size of a fighter, anyway. But it would have to have a tailored, directional blast pattern.
[B]Does anyone actually have any data on what the density of a nebula might be? [/B][/QUOTE]
I have a feeling it would be a lot less dense than we assume, probably nothing like an atmosphere.
[B]Does anyone actually have any data on what the density of a nebula might be? [/B][/QUOTE]
According to [URL=http://fusedweb.pppl.gov/CPEP/Chart_Pages/5.Plasmas/Nebula/Emission.html]this site[/URL] ,
[quote]
For a typical emission nebulae, the density of ions (and electrons) is 1.0E8 to 1.0E10 particles per m^3.
[/quote]
Trying to recall my chemistry, this is significantly less than a [URL=http://environmentalchemistry.com/yogi/reference/molar.html]mole[/URL] (6.0221367E23 atoms per gram for hydrogen) meaning there is not much there.
If you did need distance, though, you could triangulate with cameras on multiple ships. I agree with MeadDrinker, the ranges would be large, but here we have to make a distinction between what happens on the show and what happens with real-world physics. Do we accept that for some reason, ships close to distances where ramming is an option, and swarms of fighters can be effective? Or do we look at realistic ranges and accelerations? Unless you have gravitic propulsion, delta-v for a large ship is going to be very small. Since, as has been said, space is big, range to target could be easily in the thousands of miles.
Another thing I would be interested in is how much frictional heating a nebula would cause with such low density. When the shuttle de-orbits, it hits the upper atmosphere at something like mach 35, right? Of course, ships motionless to each other could have either very large or nonexistent relative velocity to the nebula, and I guess jumping out of hyperspace gives zero relative velocity? On the other hand, why fight in a nebula if it could potentially give such problems?
And yes, this thread does rock.
Okay, accepting (as seen on the show) that the ships do fight in close proximity, I would suggest another reason for the apparent lack of missiles.
I would say that it is more economic to use the energy from the vessels power supply to fire a beam or pulse weapon than use limited supplies of missiles. Missiles are seen in use in situations where they can be resupplied (Earths GOD platforms) but generally not in vessels that will be away from base for extended periods of time. Conoisseurs among you will point out the Warlock's missile batteries, but I think they were intended for use in planetary sieges (which is another situation which would allow resupply.)
Even these pulses were often seen being intercepted by point defence weapons, including B5's own defence grid. If a packet of plasma / energy / whatever could be stopped, a fabricated material weapons would be a waste. The deployment of GOD missiles was on a huge scale, potentially overwhelming defences.
And I imagine that most ships could produce far more power in the reactors than the engines could use, so you would have enough of a surplus to mount some pretty big energy weapons.
You know, this could explain part of why ships close in so much for B5 space combat. It is hard to focus a laser beam over really long distances without enormous (fragile?) lenses, and particle beams don't really fare much better in a planetary magnetic field. If a ship with energy weapons wants to fight a ship with missiles, it must close in to do so effectively. And while in the real world, this would give a lot of time to batter the attacker with missile salvoes, it wouldn't work if they just jump out of hyperspace right on top of you.
This could also explain the small relative velocities, because if you jump in close proximity with high relative velocity, you will only have time for a few bursts before you are out of range. Then your backside is wide open for missiles as a going away present.
Jake
Threads like this one really make it worth being here, so it is kind of sad that I will miss the rest of it. I am heading off to boot camp at Ft. Benning later today, so I won't have computer access for the next four months or so. I hope this place is still here when I get back.
Like an Ion Engine, everytime you fire, it pushes the ship backward or in the opposite direction of fire...
So thruster and engine control has to be tied into firing systems to compensate. Computer assist would be required at the VERY least if not by computer all together.
[B]Like an Ion Engine, everytime you fire, it pushes the ship backward or in the opposite direction of fire...[/B][/QUOTE]
This reminds me of something I read of in some Star Trek book years back. If you look on the model of the [i]Enterprise-A[/i], on the back of the neck of the ship, just above the torpedo launcher, is a vent. The idea is that whenever a torpedo is fired, the vent would automatically shoot out exhaust gasses to compensate and keep the ship in position.
[B]Would you really need to measure distance if your missiles are moving fast enough? There is a new generation of anti-tank missiles in the works that is supposed to kill with kinetic energy only. They work by flying at mach 7 or 8. With no atmospheric drag, and a long distance to the target, you might get missiles with speeds of mach 40 or 50. How quickly can a large starship change direction?
[/B][/QUOTE]
With an directed energy system, you woudn't need to change position. The energy beam could remain on the incoming projectile the whole time. Most likely, the heat from the beam would cause ablation and plasma ejection, which would in effect work as a reverse thruster, decreasing the missile's velocity.
[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Hasdrubal [/i]
[B]It is hard to focus a laser beam over really long distances without enormous (fragile?) lenses, and particle beams don't really fare much better in a planetary magnetic field.
[/B][/QUOTE]
I would imagine that in the vacuum of space, it would be easier to maintain a focused beam, since there is no atmosphere to cause diffraction.
[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Hasdrubal [/i]
[B]I am heading off to boot camp at Ft. Benning later today, so I won't have computer access for the next four months or so. I hope this place is still here when I get back. [/B][/QUOTE]
I, for one, look forward to your return. I appreciate you're honest and polite replies.
Be careful out there, and write back soon.
[B]Think something along the lines of the computer assist mode in I-War and B5:IFH, only even more advanced. [/B][/QUOTE]
Oh, you mean the computer-assist mode I never use?
...for IFH, anyway. I haven't really had much chance to get into I-War yet.
Recoil from directed energy would be minimal; ion engines utilise the expulsion of mass to impart momentum to the vessel. Energy weapons would have very little mass. However, plasma and particle weapons would indeed have some recoil, though this wshould be easily countered by the ships reaction control system.
This does lead on to a factor against missiles in space though; they will need fuel, more than on Earth. This is because airborne missiles initially accelerate to a high speed with their rocket motor and then coast, using fins to guide the weapon.
Fins will not work in space, so the missile must continuously expend fuel to change direction and intercept the target. The faster it is, the more fuel will be required, the larger the weapon will be. The slower it is, the smaller it can be. However slow = easily shot down. Big = easily shot down. (I'm assuming gravitic technology is too complex / big to be used in expendable missiles.)