Re: Official "Discuss the latest page" thread
Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 8:50 am
*LOL* my fault sorry. I've got admin permissions and must have accidentally hit "EDIT" against your post instead of "QUOTE"charles wrote:First, I have absolutely no memory of writing this and, thus the editing of it into quote tags.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.
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.
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.