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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 12, 2016 19:06:02 GMT
Maybe the Teller-Ulam thing. I'm not sure. I know the stock high-yield warhead uses the max boost possible, so it's clearly intentional. As a side note, I wish that using DU or other fissionables as the tamper affected yield due to neutron flux. Right now, as far as I can tell, with pure fission and low-boost warheads you want the densest possible tamper (osmium) and with high-boost warheads you instead want the lightest possible tamper (lithium). Of course, it might be that secondary fission is only a feature of two-stage warheads. I don't know. That is part of it--U-238 only in response to a very high-energy neutron (1 MeV). Fission reactions produce few such neutrons, so tamper fission plays little role in pure-fission/boosted fission (where most of the fission-produced neutrons will be absorbed by the primary fission fuel). That said, there were designs (I think one was built, and none tested) for bombs with a much larger quantity of fusion fuel between the primary warhead and a DU tamper for the purpose of inducing fission in the tamper. I think this is the static density, not the imploded density, just from how the total masses work out. And I think the "this is replicating Teller-Ulam" unsatisfying because we are achieving ~10x the yield:mass of real Teller-Ulam bombs (for a given mass). This is true but I can't help but feel like this is one thing which isn't going to ever get really solved as all of the details needed to make an accurate simulation of a nuclear weapon are very very classified so the closest we'll be able to get is some sort of approximation. Now as for the issue of yield:mass. Well I am not sure what to say about it other than it is something that should be minimized if possible but without classified information I think we'll always somehow end up with weapons that are impossibly good. Again I am not terribly knowledgeable about the deeper working of nuclear weapons but to some extent the nukes are going to have to emulate the type of yields we can get with Teller Ulam without having Teller Ulam in game as the equations all around Teller Ulam is even more classified but has to be in game to be realistic. |
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Post by cuddlefish on Oct 12, 2016 20:44:50 GMT
At the moment, my houserule set is to use pure fission nuclear, lasers, and conventional ordinance exclusively. I suspect that dodges most of the major "wait what" results.
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Post by concretedonkey on Oct 13, 2016 3:43:04 GMT
At the moment, my houserule set is to use pure fission nuclear, lasers, and conventional ordinance exclusively. I suspect that dodges most of the major "wait what" results. I have a strong suspicion that some of the conventional kinetic missiles are broken too. One of the micro missiles that I have brakes through 10 meters of depleted uranium in 3 to 5 shots. |
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Post by nivik on Oct 13, 2016 19:26:33 GMT
At the moment, my houserule set is to use pure fission nuclear, lasers, and conventional ordinance exclusively. I suspect that dodges most of the major "wait what" results. I have a strong suspicion that some of the conventional kinetic missiles are broken too. One of the micro missiles that I have brakes through 10 meters of depleted uranium in 3 to 5 shots. That might be related to heating. I think when an area of armor hits its melting point, it's basically treated as having been blasted away. You might want to try a backing layer of high conductivity material (graphite aerogel spreads heat like nobody's business) to see if that helps. It might also be brittleness, which could possibly be helped by a backing layer with a very low shear modulus. If you want both heat conductivity and flexibility, I think zirconium copper is a good option. |
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Post by concretedonkey on Oct 13, 2016 19:35:08 GMT
It was covered with basalt 1cm at one meter and 2cm of boron , the depleted uranium was 1 meter behind all this this. Initially the test was with UHMWPE, the switch to depleted uranium was just for shits and giggles... the target looked like this :  ... you may be right about the conventional explosive blasting away the armor. But still 10 meters is a lot. |
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Post by nivik on Oct 13, 2016 23:02:45 GMT
It was covered with basalt 1cm at one meter and 2cm of boron , the depleted uranium was 1 meter behind all this this. Initially the test was with UHMWPE, the switch to depleted uranium was just for shits and giggles... the target looked like this : ... you may be right about the conventional explosive blasting away the armor. But still 10 meters is a lot. Well, I was more talking about the fact that impact energy is partially dissipated as heat, and that repeated strikes could drive the strike point temperature over the melting point of the armor material. In particular, if your missile and part of that Whipple shield get converted into hot gas which then sprays against your underlying armor layer, it can drastically heat things up, because the missile isn't glancing off and all of its kinetic energy is transformed into heat. Which is substantial, even for small KKVs (over 1 MJ per kg of missile mass, if the impact is at 3500m/s or more). |
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Post by concretedonkey on Oct 14, 2016 3:52:34 GMT
Makes sense  . Thanks. When I have time I'll make more tests wiht different distances, materials and thickness of the whipple shield. I saw something about this effect on the blog , just didn't understand the scale of the problem. |
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 15, 2016 2:59:31 GMT
Ok so with the latest patch pocket nukes got screwed! I therefore present the first post reality fix pocket nuke! Still over 1 megaton and still 190kg. Back to the point where I started off! In addition gigaton nukes are DEAD! The highest yield I have manged to get is 10 megatons at 50 times the weight! In addition the max value of fusion fuel density is impossible so far as I have been able to test.  |
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Post by nonwonderdog on Oct 15, 2016 3:48:29 GMT
My nuclear hand grenades weren't hurt nearly as much as I thought they might be. They're 40% heavier and 10% bigger and I have to make the casings out of osmium, but they still fit in my cannons:  |
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Post by blothorn on Oct 15, 2016 5:29:33 GMT
It seem that large nuke design is now trivial--everything hits the 50% fission efficiency hardcap, so you just dial in the mass of fissile material to achieve the smallest yield and otherwise optimize for weight/cost. Uranium is actually now very competitive--a minor mass penalty achieves a huge cost reduction vs. plutonium.  And if you do want to trade price for weight with plutonium, go for Pu-240; its lower spontaneous fission rate allows more compact sub-critical assemblies.  Uranium seems less attractive for very small warheads; they have less fissile material for their mass so the mass penalty is steeper and the cost benefit smaller.  Trying to push on cost savings, switching from Octogen seems mass-prohibitive in small warheads (and the difference is negligible in large warheads). Edit: It turns out that fusion boosts can be useful for some configurations of larger bombs: this is a 1.27Mt yield without the boost. (Note the boron; this is a useful middle ground for when osmium is mass-prohibitive and you need more fusion boost than lithium can contain (i.e. more than zero). I have also had good results from UHMWPE, rather bizarrely.) Interestingly, you can make bombs out of depleted uranium, but the cost savings in fissile material are offset by the ridiculous quantities of fast explosive required.  |
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Post by goduranus on Oct 15, 2016 15:12:09 GMT
I think the patch might have changed the dynamics of the nuke game, because you can't boost them so much any more, it's no longer possible to get a multi-megaton nuke in a small and cheap package. They still work, but at the smaller end their damage output is overshadowed by equivalent-mass of fragmentation warheads imo.
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Post by blothorn on Oct 15, 2016 19:38:44 GMT
I think it depends on what you are doing. If you can line up a direct hit, frags are undoubtedly more damaging; if you want to be able to chase a flare and still cripple the target (or take out a flight of drones), there is no substitute for a nuke.
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Post by cuddlefish on Oct 15, 2016 19:56:44 GMT
I think it depends on what you are doing. If you can line up a direct hit, frags are undoubtedly more damaging; if you want to be able to chase a flare and still cripple the target (or take out a flight of drones), there is no substitute for a nuke. Micro-nukes also have the advantage of turning poor homing into a virtue - when your kinetic energy payloads all pass just behind the engine, it's frustrating. When your .5kt flashbulbs do it... that's fun times. |
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 15, 2016 20:38:46 GMT
I think the patch might have changed the dynamics of the nuke game, because you can't boost them so much any more, it's no longer possible to get a multi-megaton nuke in a small and cheap package. They still work, but at the smaller end their damage output is overshadowed by equivalent-mass of fragmentation warheads imo. Well I mean I would much rather get a near miss with even a small nuke than a near miss with a flack. Because if that nuke has a line of sight to the engines of the hostile ship that ship will no longer have engines! |
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Post by redparadize on Oct 15, 2016 20:41:31 GMT
Well, lets see how we can get close to that result then. On my side, I just can't have a fusion boosted. I can get a decent 3kt at 9kg trough.
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. Thanks. When I have time I'll make more tests wiht different distances, materials and thickness of the whipple shield. I saw something about this effect on the blog , just didn't understand the scale of the problem.