Congreveopia wrote:Len Hyet wrote:Here! Okay, let's roll.
1a) I was going to go with a zped to generate energy. Potentially limitless and rather compact (FT science).
1b) I'm unsure as to what you're getting at here. The way I had envisioned it, and as far as I know how engines work, is simply the creation of focused energy in a single direction. Engine wash is a thing, and it can be dangerous, but it's hard to aim, limited in range, and when it comes to kinetic energy, simple to evade. Simply put, space combat takes place over massive areas. A lightsecond is nothing distancewise in extrasolar combat. Thus, even weapons moving at the speed of light become avoidable with simple combat maneuvers. It doesn't matter if it only takes your weapon three seconds (for example), to hit the target, in those three seconds the enemy ship can have shifted enough to one side or another to have rendered your shot useless. At even longer distances, (lighthours, even lightdays), it becomes quite simply a waste of energy to shoot at your enemy, as they can simply avoid it and you wouldn't even see them move until hours or days later.
2) At that point even the almost minimal stresses space puts on a ship would be too much. Gravity is almost negligible, space is practically empty, but even micrometeors and minimal gravitational pull becomes dangerous the higher in speed a ship gets. I put it at 0.7c because it seemed like a reasonable place to put it, based on my knowledge of FT combat and space itself.
2a) As to your question about attacking entire worlds, hypothetically you could. If you didn't mind destroying the planet utterly. It was my presumption that most combat in space would revolve around the few habitable worlds. Destroying one would be like blowing up the oil reserves both countries are fighting over. Its counterproductive. Assuming you did want to blow up a world, then accelerating anything for a time would be a good way to do it. Obviously ships are somewhat more maneuverable than say, asteroids, and thus harder to shoot down with planetary defenses, but they would have to stabilize at some point, simply to puncture the atmosphere. The G-Class Hunter Killers (the ship is named Valkyrie, tsk tsk), aren't large enough to survive the re-entry burn without a precise insertion, making them vulnerable during entry into the atmosphere. Furthermore, at sufficient velocities hitting the atmosphere of a planet would be like hitting a brick wall a few miles thick. The ship goes boom, the pilot goes splat, and the rubble burns up in the atmosphere.
If I was going to attack a planet with kinetic weaponry for the purpose of destroying it I'd go get a bunch of moon sized asteroids, point them at the planet, strap engines to them, and send them off. A year or so later, no more planet. Assuming they in that time didn't beef up their planetary security of course.
Awesome!
1a) Oooh. I forgot about zero point energy. Without even wondering about whether that would work, it clearly shows that you aren't about to hit an absolute maximum with regards to fuel. Excellent answer.
1b) Hrm. I'm a bit more dubious about this. I'm okay with you saying that long-range kinetic weapons traveling at near light speed can be dodged, but just having something that can make that much energy (enough to get a kinetic weapon up to near light speed) means that whatever weapons you are using are going to impart vast amounts of energy into your enemies. Wait. I have no objection to that. Okay.
2) Great answer.
2a) Hmm. I can see why killing a planet would be counterproductive, but I disagree about the atmosphere protecting the planet at those speeds. But I can imagine militaries not wanting to kill planets, and nobody else having the power and desire to, so yeah, that sounds fine to me. At least until the first holy war.
Thank you very much for your excellent answers. I will absolutely apply to this.
Hm, that's actually rather interesting reading. Thanks for that!
Ugh. Holy wars. We have GOT to start one!
(What are you planing?)