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Post by apophys on Feb 10, 2017 21:23:09 GMT
Active scanning would probably be better done with lasers than nukes. Sweep across what is believed to be empty space. If anything heats up where there should be nothing, keep firing at it. Doesn't matter if you can detect a ship burning from a solar system's half-width away, if you can't distinguish whether it was just a civilian ship going on its duty or a military operation being undertaking. Can you determine whether an aircraft taking off somewhere is civilian or military? Pretty sure you can, if only because air traffic control exists. Any civilian craft would be required to respond to hails and present identification. After all, a rogue spaceship is even more deadly than a rogue aircraft.
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Post by newageofpower on Feb 10, 2017 22:16:53 GMT
Active scanning would probably be better done with lasers than nukes. Sweep across what is believed to be empty space. If anything heats up where there should be nothing, keep firing at it. Sensor angle is awful. Full sky scan-time per laser is going to be incredibly long. But yes, I suspect the best solution for detecting Hydrogen Steamers is to use some kind of FEL pumping out Xrays to sweep the local Hill Sphere.
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Post by Enderminion on Feb 10, 2017 22:33:37 GMT
Active scanning would probably be better done with lasers than nukes. Sweep across what is believed to be empty space. If anything heats up where there should be nothing, keep firing at it. Sensor angle is awful. Full sky scan-time per laser is going to be incredibly long. But yes, I suspect the best solution for detecting Hydrogen Steamers is to use some kind of FEL pumping out Xrays to sweep the local Hill Sphere. If you can't nail down the exact location but can get within a few Mm just blanket the area with Nukes
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Post by theholyinquisition on Feb 11, 2017 0:01:52 GMT
Bigger question is can the Hydrogen Steamer carry enough payload to do damage? Knowing this forum, I'm betting yes.
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Post by Enderminion on Feb 11, 2017 0:35:57 GMT
Bigger question is can the Hydrogen Steamer carry enough payload to do damage? Knowing this forum, I'm betting yes. I could pack 10 of my new torpedo into 1kt and 40t
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Post by newageofpower on Feb 11, 2017 3:02:56 GMT
Bigger question is can the Hydrogen Steamer carry enough payload to do damage? Knowing this forum, I'm betting yes. Did you not click my link? Because, hell yes, it has quite a deadly payload. Furthermore, the larger the steamer the more endurance; volume increases much faster than surface area, so hydrogen required for cooling goes down as a proportion of payload mass.
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Post by bdcarrillo on Feb 11, 2017 3:33:14 GMT
Bigger question is can the Hydrogen Steamer carry enough payload to do damage? Knowing this forum, I'm betting yes. I could pack 10 of my new torpedo into 1kt and 40t --snip-- Why sooooo many propellant tanks? Whyyyyy??? The space plumbers are crying at the sight of that! The space enginerds are just laughing, but whyyyyy?
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Post by Enderminion on Feb 11, 2017 3:35:34 GMT
they are UHMWPE they mass like nothing, also I thought I would not need as much propellant as I ended up needing
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Post by theholyinquisition on Feb 11, 2017 21:53:37 GMT
Bigger question is can the Hydrogen Steamer carry enough payload to do damage? Knowing this forum, I'm betting yes. Did you not click my link? Because, hell yes, it has quite a deadly payload. Furthermore, the larger the steamer the more endurance; volume increases much faster than surface area, so hydrogen required for cooling goes down as a proportion of payload mass. Well. So, next issue is, can we implement this ingame?
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Post by argonbalt on Feb 12, 2017 2:23:29 GMT
I don't think pure mass driver/mass catcher is practical. You need at least a little bit of on-board Δv to make correction burns. It is possible, the mass catcher designs ive seen are at least a mile or two wide in surface area. Though it really depends on where you are sending to and from and how much/how many/how large/how fast details etc..
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Post by shiolle on Feb 12, 2017 8:49:09 GMT
Did you not click my link? Two notes on that article: 1. Its launch is not stealthy. 2. Contrary to what that article claims, hydrogen steamer ship cannot feel safe orbiting its destination. Given constant traffic around it, hydrogen steamer ship has a good chance of being discovered because that 22K hull stands out against the planet it is orbiting like a bug in front of a mirror. So I think a good strategy to counter hydrogen steamer flee (which can't be built in complete secrecy either; the ships are too huge for that) is a network of intelligence agents aboard civilian freighters. Detecting even one of the ships anywhere but their port of call is guaranteed to cause a Cuban Missile Crisis on Solar System scale. P.S. There also seems to be something fishy about the endurance of the ship, in particular with hydrogen loss for constant cooling but I need some time to do the calculations myself.
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Post by newageofpower on Feb 12, 2017 15:51:51 GMT
I don't see a reason why the launch can't be stealthy. And please, do some calculations before interjecting.
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Post by Enderminion on Feb 12, 2017 16:09:35 GMT
yes, yes, while space is UNBELIEVEABLY vast, areas where ships go on a routine basis are MUCH, MUCH, smaller, espcally since if a steamer wants to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time they would pretty much have to take a pridictable course from their launch space station, in stable orbit around the target they run the problem of a unexpected large scale kinetic strike
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Post by shiolle on Feb 12, 2017 20:35:59 GMT
I don't see a reason why the launch can't be stealthy. And please, do some calculations before interjecting. It's launch can't be stealthy because the author claims that fully loaded, its acceleration is 1.25mm/s^2. That is 0.127 mg0. And that is around Earth; around Mars it will be around half that. Climbing out of any significant gravity well will take extended amount of time. The author claims his ship follows a Hohmann transfer trajectory which is not possible with acceleration like this. Burning those 2.65 km/s will take the ship 20 days, so it will have to expend much more delta-v than the author claims. If it does insert into orbit around Earth, it will take multiple months for the ship to get into position. The second maneuver the author describes will take 18 and a half days of pure burn time, but of course the ship will only burn in periapsis. On each orbit there is a good chance it comes between the Earth and some spacecraft at which point it is easy to detect. And by the way, if you were wondering, those 170 m/s per day were calculated as a continuous 24 hour burn using average acceleration, so in practice the ship will change its velocity much less each day. So please, do some calculations before you get on your high horse.
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Post by theholyinquisition on Feb 12, 2017 23:31:50 GMT
I don't see a reason why the launch can't be stealthy. And please, do some calculations before interjecting. It's launch can't be stealthy because the author claims that fully loaded, its acceleration is 1.25mm/s^2. That is 0.127 mg0. And that is around Earth; around Mars it will be around half that. Climbing out of any significant gravity well will take extended amount of time. The author claims his ship follows a Hohmann transfer trajectory which is not possible with acceleration like this. Burning those 2.65 km/s will take the ship 20 days, so it will have to expend much more delta-v than the author claims. If it does insert into orbit around Earth, it will take multiple months for the ship to get into position. The second maneuver the author describes will take 18 and a half days of pure burn time, but of course the ship will only burn in periapsis. On each orbit there is a good chance it comes between the Earth and some spacecraft at which point it is easy to detect. And by the way, if you were wondering, those 170 m/s per day were calculated as a continuous 24 hour burn using average acceleration, so in practice the ship will change its velocity much less each day. So please, do some calculations before you get on your high horse. I mean, that's around the acceleration of some of our MPD systems, and those can pull brachistochrone launches.
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