Crimson Dark

charles wrote:

Dhraakellian wrote:

Dhraakellian wrote:Quote:blahblahblahI don't want to imagine how much energy and how effecient the transfer of it to the velocity would have to be to get a projectile going that fast.

Honestly I like to think plain and brutal. Build a huge, long cannon like the old style ship guns, get a nuke with a cannon ball on one end and shove it down the barrel, nuke first. Boom goes the nuke and woosh goes the cannon ball as fast as that nuke can blast it out that barrel... I wonder if a focused nuke blast alone would have much affect in space...

Probably need some insanely thick and strong barrel... Wouldn't like to know what the recoil would be like for the ship that fires it... maybe very small nukes rather than the full city or state wide killers.

First, I have absolutely no memory of writing this and, thus the editing of it into quote tags.

Second, if I'm going to use nukes in my weapon systems, I think I'd rather use them directly in the warheads rather than projectile launchers. I somehow doubt that nuclear explosion-launched projectiles are the most efficient way of doing things, and I'd prefer to have that hard radiation be released as far away from me as possible.

*LOL* my fault sorry. I've got admin permissions and must have accidentally hit "EDIT" against your post instead of "QUOTE"

The reason to use the nukes for propulsion as opposed to warheads is to get speed in your projectile. A nuke in a warhead usually means some kind of missile, torpedo or slower moving projectile that could potentially be shot down before it hits the target (as seems to still happen in Crimson Dark with poin-defence). So while a nuke should certainly cause more damage at the target, a nuke propelled projectile should have a better chance at zipping right through the defences and striking the target with considerable velocity and force, depending on the size. You'd likely use the smaller type nukes (I think they get as small as 10-15 kilotonnes today) for blasting the projectile and have some seriously sturdy gun barrel for withstanding the blast, particularly at the base.

Again, however, recoil would likely be a considerable problem for any ship which fires such a weapon. You'd probably need to use a barrel thats open at both ends and make sure an ally isn't tailing you.[/quote]

You are both wrong on some parts.

a nuke requires a medium to transfer it's force, MATTER. in space where there is no (or very little) matter to transfer the kinetic energy... nukes become almost entirely ineffective. You would have to surround it with a shell or something that does the damage... but then you have that pesky problem of friendly fire... the rear end of that nuke is going to blow off and then hit YOU

The use of a nuke powered cannon may be plausible, you could load something like liquid lead in, held in behind the projectile, and then a mini nuke at the back.

The nuke detonates, the lead transfers the energy, the slug rapes the enemy ship, and you reload.

However, you would have the issue of EMP within your ship, as well as the massive containment shell that would be required...

(IE something like this... this isn't what I was looking for but it's similar) http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/02/nuclea ... llout.html



Railguns, cannons powered by extremely powerful electromagnets, can (theoretically) accelerate projectiles to sufficient speed to make the idea of bullets in space feasible. (Also, the notion of ion engines, and other scifi technologies are based on railguns, or coilguns.) Railguns are much much more likely to be used than nuke powered cannons or figuring out some way to make a nuke effective against an armored ship hull.

Yeah the only way you could use a nuke "bomb" in space would be to surround it with some shell or projectiles that would do the actual damage when the nuke went off. As you point out however, there would be no stopping it from hitting friendlies or at least threatening them. The best you could hope for is to send in a suicide ship (and quite possibly, a small ship set to auto-jump to a location may well be worth the money) or jump in, defend yourself while you calculate an exit then drop the bomb off just before you jump and it blows up after you leave. The problem with both scenarios is the accuracy of jump technology. The Cirins do have more accurate technology, but even that could put them far enough away that a suicide ship would need to maneuver into position before firing off the nuke more effectively and the bomber would have to also survive right in among the enemy before being able to leave (if their jump calculations haven't been reset).

I'm not too worried about surviving the EMP. Shielding could be put around the barrel for that as well, plus we've seen them use this bridging technology which survived it's own EMP pulse (The Niobe is an old commercial ship which explains it's vulnerability).

Certainly a nuke is near useless in empty space, but if we're to presume that the warhead doesn't go off unless it connects with the ship (rather than a proximity warhead) or that the warhead is able to mould or penetrate the armour to a degree before exploding, it could have a far better effect than regular explosives performing the same task in space.

Certainly Railguns (or similar technology) is far better than using nuke to launch your projectiles, if you have the technology. Nuke guns are brutal but simple requiring investment in EMP shielding and reinforce barrels rather than complex technology.

officially nukes can be made as small as 5 kilotons most small scale nukes are around 10-15 kilotons unofficially there are roomers that the US has one that is 0.5 kilotons

zeracore wrote:officially nukes can be made as small as 5 kilotons most small scale nukes are around 10-15 kilotons unofficially there are roomers that the US has one that is 0.5 kilotons

The smallest nuke that I am aware of was the W54 warhead with a minimum yield of 10 tons, in other words, 0.01 kilotons.

In space the most effective use of a nuke would be ether as the main warhead of a tandem warhead anti-ship missile or to pump an X-ray laser. The front conventional warhead, what ever that would be in space combat, would punch a hole in the armor allowing the primary nuke warhead to enter the ship. Once inside the hull of the ship almost all the energy of the warhead will be delivered to the target vessel inflicting maximum damage. Essentially it is HE and AP shells vs battleship armor all over again. The nuke exploding outside the hull is like an HE shell with an instantaneous nose fuse that will blow itself to bits on contact with a battleship's armor. The nuke exploding inside the hull is like a base fused AP shell that detonates high order after penetrating the armor.

The bomb pumped X-ray laser is possible but much less likely in an environment like Crimson Dark. They use rods ejected from the missile before the detonation of the nuke to catch the hard X-Rays and Gamma Rays it emits and use it to generate a high energy laser pulse. However this is highly inefficient due to the small area of the rods relative to the omni-directional nature of the bomb. It would really only be practical if you could direct most of the nuke's energy into the rods so that almost none of the energy was wasted. Tech that is science fiction at present.

KJ_A wrote:The bomb pumped X-ray laser is possible but much less likely in an environment like Crimson Dark. They use rods ejected from the missile before the detonation of the nuke to catch the hard X-Rays and Gamma Rays it emits and use it to generate a high energy laser pulse. However this is highly inefficient due to the small area of the rods relative to the omni-directional nature of the bomb. It would really only be practical if you could direct most of the nuke's energy into the rods so that almost none of the energy was wasted. Tech that is science fiction at present.

Maybe thats what the Lances are in Crimson Dark. A more efficient version that focuses the nuke's blast much better into the rods for a laser shot.

Kerr wrote:a nuke requires a medium to transfer it's force, MATTER. in space where there is no (or very little) matter to transfer the kinetic energy... nukes become almost entirely ineffective. You would have to surround it with a shell or something that does the damage... but then you have that pesky problem of friendly fire... the rear end of that nuke is going to blow off and then hit YOU

If you're looking for fireball damage, yes, but AtomicRocket appears to make a good case for the lethality of close-proximity nuclear explosions. (The medium, in this case, would be the hull of the enemy ship.)

As for friendly fire, the concentration of dangerous radiation falls off proportional to the inverse square of the distance from the detonation, assuming you don't shape the charge. If you do use a shaped charge, the dropoff is more gradual and the effective blast radius larger, but only in the direction you send it.

charles wrote:Maybe thats what the Lances are in Crimson Dark. A more efficient version that focuses the nuke's blast much better into the rods for a laser shot.

Hey! No fair trying to bring this back on topic!

Anyway, scroll down on that page to see some information about particle beams. Hmm.

I wonder how familiar David is with that site.

Okay, you believe you are going to penetrate the hull with your warhead in space... May I ask what you are going to propel the missile with?

for some reason i imagine space ship armor being thick, and possibly having a carbide shell (A carbide armor shell would potentially redirect many many small projectiles without being damaged in any way.) then underneath that a thick hardened steel layer, or even other alloys such as something like vascomax, titanium, inconel , haspalloy...

Carbide Shell:
An example of redirecting bullets today would be (tank armor, against rifles) helmets, they "turn around" and bullet that doesn't stike it at nearly a 90 degree angle. If hit at 90 degrees the helms are too brittle and crack... Same thing could happen with carbide. ( / retired marine told me this stuff )
But the brittleness renders using such armor useless against more than micrometeors or small projectiles, It would also be potentially expensive to replace cracked hull plates.

Titanium:
Titanium is extremely lightweight, and has ~ the same structural strength of steel (With other desirable properties) This could allow much thicker armor (2X or more thick) to be used without adversely affecting the weight of the ship.
Titanium also hardens when it's deformed, and is a very "Tough" material, meaning it deforms (under great force) where other armor may crack.

Vascomax:
Vascomax... that stuff... Ever tried to machine titanium? ever tried to machine vascomax (C350)? I have, you dont cut these metals with normal tools and methods.

Vascomax is freaking tough stuff, it has a yield strength of 325,000 PSI, according to it's specification. I was told that it's used in propellers for some ground based hover military vehicle thing, their old Steel props lasted a few weeks under the sand at most, the vascomax props last years! (that's abrasion though, not armor...)

this material (based on my experience of machining it) is so freaking tough, and card to cut, I find it hard to believe that a rocket could penetrate a 5" or so think layer of it.



Additionally these materials are the materials of today, in a space age civilization I do believe that stronger armor would exist...

Energy weapons heat up the armor, weakening and burning it away violently... that's ideal. Probably why we see energy weapons (actually, since we can see them, i still hold the idea that it's a stream of plasma) instead of railguns or missiles.

You can see here
http://www.davidcsimon.com/crimsondark/ ... rip_id=305
that seeking weapons aren't exactly considered cutting edge in CD. Although they do express concern...

IMO your chances of puncturing an armored ship hull with self propelled missiles are slim, they don't have the energy to overcome space-age armor. (While, a railgun accelerating a carbide slug to thousands of miles an hour might very well be able to cause damage.)

my $1.50

Preedit:

As for friendly fire, the concentration of dangerous radiation falls off proportional to the inverse square of the distance from the detonation, assuming you don't shape the charge. If you do use a shaped charge, the dropoff is more gradual and the effective blast radius larger, but only in the direction you send it.

Any self-respecting space ship needs external radiation shielding, I wasn't worried about the radiation. I was worried about the shrapnel going thousands of miles an hour in every direction.

Equal and opposite reactions, either you take the recoil when firing the shot, or when it blows up an equal portion of energy (carried in the shrapnel, if the back end is lighter it will move faster) will be flying towards the shooter.

If you're looking for fireball damage, yes, but AtomicRocket appears to make a good case for the lethality of close-proximity nuclear explosions. (The medium, in this case, would be the hull of the enemy ship.)

Thy basically describe the killing factor as being the radiation...

Perhaps, but that comes back to how much radiation shielding the ship has. that, and you still have the superheated bits of metal flying around.

No doubt that today's space craft would be seriously affected by a radiation burst that strong at close range... but they aren't warships.

assuming you are correct, and nukes overcome the target ship's armor and radiation shielding, wouldn't a technology to counter this come about shortly? point defense lasers would easily outrange a nuke at 1KM, their only limit is the scanner range and how accurate the laser's aiming systems are. (both of which should be rendered non-issues. Today's server motors and resolvers in CNC systems can repeat movements to within 15-50 millionths of an inch easily.) If not PD, then more complex radiation shielding may be in order.

All of this would add up to a very expensive weapon, perhaps using a railgun, laser, plasma cannon, etc... would be more effective.

Of course, surprising the current passive defense systems could be an advantage as well.

Whats the bet the Niobids pull out all that gold trim and sell it... Probably just make the whole thing more homey. Put up a few posters, some old couches... I did see Daniel's piano in there so *shrug*

I wonder how Novosi as a Patriot is dangerous... I guess she's probably the one who supported the suicide attack on the Daranir station. Really though it means that, despite all, she will put her people and her nation first. The old, anything to win the war or save the nation. So if she thought she could give her nation a better chance in the war or something, she may well sell the scarborough (or even the hero of White-rim) out. She may also send them to more dangerous areas than she's letting on, to risk Mercs and civilians rather than military units. She certainly had no problem using freighters and even a civilian opera house to do her work. She may have even been responsible for the Jak which was put on Kari's ship. Its a dirty war and she's likely just as willing to play dirty if it means victory.

David, I think you should just move your schedule to GMT +15 or whatever, so that the Aussies and others in the earlier part of the world just get the material a bit later than usual. It's only going to be about half a day, so surely we can wait. Great current work by the way.

Hope things are going well in Austin. I'd expect you'll probably be tired for some time (I know I would...and was when I lived in Japan...because your constanly dealing with new things that take your energy. Eventually I found things settled down...and I felt only normally tired).

I'm wondering how many pages of our friends will be on screen before david's buffer gets completed.



<mournful face>