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Post by Kerr on Nov 9, 2017 18:34:41 GMT
So yeah, that article seems to suggest that it should be too hard to create nukes that would deliver a lethal dose of radiation to anyone who was insufficiently shielded within about a 100 or 200 km radius!? Kerr : you seem to know your nuclear physics. Does that seem remotely accurate? If so, why would anyone even bother with elaborate ship-to-ship combat at all?* (note below) MAD doctrine would seem to extend into space with even more force than on Earth [url You mean "shouldn't it be too hard to create nukes to kill everyone within 200km"? 100-200km would require some pretty strong Neutron bomb, a 10MT neutron can only send someone instantly into a comma within 90km. Although LD50 is at 140km, and if your chances to survive are 50/50 I doubt you are able to operate an warship. Such a bomb would weigh at least 2t. If advanced PDW exist with ranges in the hundreds of kilometers Neutrons bombs would just become an anti-meat warhead for nuke missiles which maximize damage against human crews. And just imagine what you can do with that 10MT if you converted it into a casaba howitzer, neutrons bombs scale with the inverse square law, casaba howitzers don't. Why would anyone elaborate ship-to-ship combat at all even without Neutron bombs?
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Post by bigbombr on Nov 9, 2017 18:59:48 GMT
You mean "shouldn't it be too hard to create nukes to kill everyone within 200km"? 100-200km would require some pretty strong Neutron bomb, a 10MT neutron can only send someone instantly into a comma within 90km. Although LD50 is at 140km, and if your chances to survive are 50/50 I doubt you are able to operate an warship. Such a bomb would weigh at least 2t. If advanced PDW exist with ranges in the hundreds of kilometers Neutrons bombs would just become an anti-meat warhead for nuke missiles which maximize damage against human crews. And just imagine what you can do with that 10MT if you converted it into a casaba howitzer, neutrons bombs scale with the inverse square law, casaba howitzers don't. Why would anyone elaborate ship-to-ship combat at all even without Neutron bombs? And when you consider you don't need people on your weapon platforms, but only close enough to mitigate light-lag for tactical decision making (or at least for the decisions that can't be automated), any weapon specifically targeted against humans looses some of it's legitimacy. They might only be useful against unaware targets or targets without defensive capability, making their use almost by default war crimes. Not that that has ever stopped anyone.
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Post by Kerr on Nov 9, 2017 19:08:46 GMT
You mean "shouldn't it be too hard to create nukes to kill everyone within 200km"? 100-200km would require some pretty strong Neutron bomb, a 10MT neutron can only send someone instantly into a comma within 90km. Although LD50 is at 140km, and if your chances to survive are 50/50 I doubt you are able to operate an warship. Such a bomb would weigh at least 2t. If advanced PDW exist with ranges in the hundreds of kilometers Neutrons bombs would just become an anti-meat warhead for nuke missiles which maximize damage against human crews. And just imagine what you can do with that 10MT if you converted it into a casaba howitzer, neutrons bombs scale with the inverse square law, casaba howitzers don't. Why would anyone elaborate ship-to-ship combat at all even without Neutron bombs? And when you consider you don't need people on your weapon platforms, but only close enough to mitigate light-lag for tactical decision making (or at least for the decisions that can't be automated), any weapon specifically targeted against humans looses some of it's legitimacy. They might only be useful against unaware targets or targets without defensive capability, making their use almost by default war crimes. Not that that has ever stopped anyone. That's why I included casaba Howitzers, why have an short-ranged multi megaton neutron bomb that are only effective against meat sacks if you can have an multi-megaton ravening death beam that is lethal to anything at much greater distances?
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Post by treptoplax on Nov 9, 2017 21:21:08 GMT
So yeah, that article seems to suggest that it should be too hard to create nukes that would deliver a lethal dose of radiation to anyone who was insufficiently shielded within about a 100 or 200 km radius!? Kerr : you seem to know your nuclear physics. Does that seem remotely accurate? If so, why would anyone even bother with elaborate ship-to-ship combat at all?* (note below) MAD doctrine would seem to extend into space with even more force than on Earth [url 200km is short range, 100km extreme close range, with many non-core-module weapons. If the radiation isn't killing drone control systems it's not going to make a huge difference to warships with 50 Km/s dV drones and 100 Km/s railguns, never mind the large-mirror 100Mw+ lasers. I'm not saying it wouldn't matter - hypervelocity nukes would become a thing, I guess - but it's not obvious to me at least that this'd be a effective weapon against the current state-of-the-art player designs.
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elukka
Junior Member
Posts: 73
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Post by elukka on Nov 11, 2017 14:48:43 GMT
edit: Whoops, I missed the last page; I was replying to dichebach's post regarding nukes killing ships at 100-200 km ranges.
I'm no expert but it sounds about right to me. Maybe a bit high for actually killing you promptly as opposed to weeks later. Of course it depends on the shielding on the ship. It's very easy to kill a lightly shielded human. Electronics, though considerably tougher, are also in danger.
100-200 km is still pretty close in space. CDE limits us to low ranges, but at the same time it lets us easily build lasers that would fry the missiles at thousands of kilometers (at the very least). There is also an inherent advantage defensive missiles would have: The opposing missiles need the delta-v to get to you in a timely manner, besides needing to go fast enough to run your laser gauntlet, whereas the defensive missiles only need enough to counter any maneuvers the attacking missiles make (plus a little to get a safe distance away from your ship; this could even be provided by a gun). The upshot is that defensive missiles are much smaller and you can carry many more of them than the enemy can carry offensive missiles. How any of this shakes down depends heavily on your assumptions for various details, and I'm not at all sure about the consequences in any case.
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Post by shynung on Dec 21, 2017 19:16:53 GMT
Throwing a quick thought here. Would a layer of fissile material wrapped around a nuclear missile (as the innermost layer) increase its yield?
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Post by Rocket Witch on Dec 21, 2017 19:37:26 GMT
Throwing a quick thought here. Would a layer of fissile material wrapped around a nuclear missile (as the innermost layer) increase its yield? I think the answer is technically yes but the number of atoms in your wrapper that would actually undergo fission could be counted by hand.
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Post by Enderminion on Dec 21, 2017 20:23:54 GMT
Throwing a quick thought here. Would a layer of fissile material wrapped around a nuclear missile (as the innermost layer) increase its yield? I think the answer is technically yes but the number of atoms in your wrapper that would actually undergo fission could be counted by hand. is that counting by finger or that weird base 12 thing?
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Post by Rocket Witch on Dec 22, 2017 13:53:08 GMT
is that counting by finger or that weird base 12 thing? I wish I had 12 fingers so it could be both, but then I suppose the knuckle counting would become base 15...
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Post by Kerr on Dec 22, 2017 21:34:31 GMT
Throwing a quick thought here. Would a layer of fissile material wrapped around a nuclear missile (as the innermost layer) increase its yield? Yes, it is called "Third Stage". It is made out of U-238 and absorbs High energy neutrons from the fusion reaction. This can more than double your yield
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Post by boersgard on Aug 15, 2018 21:11:10 GMT
So yeah, that article seems to suggest that it should be too hard to create nukes that would deliver a lethal dose of radiation to anyone who was insufficiently shielded within about a 100 or 200 km radius!? Kerr : you seem to know your nuclear physics. Does that seem remotely accurate? If so, why would anyone even bother with elaborate ship-to-ship combat at all?* (note below) MAD doctrine would seem to extend into space with even more force than on Earth [url You mean "shouldn't it be too hard to create nukes to kill everyone within 200km"? 100-200km would require some pretty strong Neutron bomb, a 10MT neutron can only send someone instantly into a comma within 90km. Although LD50 is at 140km, and if your chances to survive are 50/50 I doubt you are able to operate an warship. Such a bomb would weigh at least 2t. If advanced PDW exist with ranges in the hundreds of kilometers Neutrons bombs would just become an anti-meat warhead for nuke missiles which maximize damage against human crews. And just imagine what you can do with that 10MT if you converted it into a casaba howitzer, neutrons bombs scale with the inverse square law, casaba howitzers don't. Why would anyone elaborate ship-to-ship combat at all even without Neutron bombs? A casaba howitzer still scales with the inverse square law, all you're doing is, instead of spraying the energy in every direction, you've picked one particular direction to spray most of it. Lasers also still follow the inverse square law.
When I did a small bit of research/math on using a casaba howitzer in space, it looked like they'd only be effective for a couple hundred kilometers at best - shaped explosion it may be, but it still has fairly wide dispersion. A bomb-pumped laser might be better.
As for the effective lethality of nukes in general, they're pretty short-ranged. Even megaton monsters won't do much thermal damage at 30km - they're best used for taking out sensors, guns, and radiators. I would still put them on every single missile if possible since it effectively turns a 100m wide target into a 1-10km wide target - but the costs ought to be prohibitive.
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