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Post by cuddlefish on Oct 10, 2017 1:21:16 GMT
I believe Nuclear Salt Water, as in the Uranium Salt Water rockets. Water with a high proportion of dissolved uranium salts, such that with careful pumping and nozzle design you can propel your ship with a continuous criticality event. This is generally considered to be kind of nuts, but the creator (name of Dr Zubrin, IIRC) thinks it's a practical method for space travel. Squirting this at someone would not be a way to endear yourselves to them, naturally.
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Post by cuddlefish on Oct 6, 2017 11:29:37 GMT
The old results of NEFP producing untold devastation are the result of a bug that was corrupting the results. The bug is now slain, and with it, the effectiveness of NEFP.
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Post by cuddlefish on Aug 28, 2017 23:59:38 GMT
In particular, the capacitor update game with a fix for most (all?) of the conservation of energy failures on electromagnetic guns. Blast Launchers gives dense packed, high velocity VLS systems that keep power costs low, though payload length can lead to cross-section expansion - on the flip side, radius counts for very little, so it's a different sort of optimization than for the old lengthwise magazine launchers.
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Post by cuddlefish on Aug 28, 2017 17:31:52 GMT
WRT radar, there's a number of important things people are missing. Radar isn't subject to an inverse-square relation, it's actually subject to an inverse hypercube relation(4th power). That means maximum radar range rises slowly with increasing power-aperature product, but also that RCS reduction has a much more gradual effect on radar ranges. Radar gives much, much more information on the target than passive IR. You can observe target range and importantly range rate, which gives you their precise orientation and motion, where IR just gives you bearings which are much harder to interpret into ranges. RCS reduction techniques work, but less well than people think. Materials give some RCS reduction, but are actually quite heavy to be effective and don't generate a huge reduction in returns. Similarly shaping only goes so far- and because CoaDE ships can be observed from any orientation, while aircraft and ships generally only from a few, it is much harder to generate a broadly effective shaping for them. Even then size matters a lot still, a big target like a capital ship is not going to be able to hide itself from a powerful radar(and with a ship's cooling and power supplies, you can design some ABSURD radars) at combat ranges very well. I'm now just imagining a ship with a multi-gigawatt RADAR array. SWACS?
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Post by cuddlefish on Jul 18, 2017 12:50:37 GMT
I believe this is the point at which someone should provide suggestions on modifying our methods of converting fast to thermal neutrons, no?
Joking aside, hopefully the evasion potential of the current ban infrastructure will be able to be improved as we move forward. Forums need careful handling to maintain their functionality as civil places for discussion, and a reliable moderator toolkit is critical to that.
How committed, as a community, are we to guest posting?
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Post by cuddlefish on Jul 16, 2017 3:47:31 GMT
Could an additional column be added to show the MJ/m^3 (or might be worth rescaling to GJ) on each? Should just require multiplying out the densities and the per-kilo energy, but might be useful for those trying to get as much power in as small a package volume as possible.
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Post by cuddlefish on Jul 7, 2017 15:33:57 GMT
Try disabling the "launch with order" setting on your drones' blast-boxes, then giving the released missile-cloud a homing order once it's safely clear of the launch platform.
Curiosity - how hot are your drones running?
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Post by cuddlefish on Jul 4, 2017 9:04:25 GMT
It's not funny the first time and it sure as fuck isn't funny the second time. when was the first time? Googling returns claims of May 2007, in the depths of /v/.
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Post by cuddlefish on Jul 2, 2017 11:53:19 GMT
They'd collide as soon as they'd try to turn. What if I have unguided submunitions? I understand the problems of collision on turnging, but why shouldn't I be alowed faster rates of fire on unguided munitions? Exception based design takes time, and is rather vulnerable to bugs in a complex system. I wouldn't be surprised if it comes eventually, but you have to walk before you run - best to get it working with solid reliability for the primary case first.
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Post by cuddlefish on Jul 1, 2017 7:19:46 GMT
I don't think there's any model by which a payware product can be meaningfully open-sourced, and QSwitched certainly deserves every penny for the toil and dedication a project like this demands.
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Post by cuddlefish on Jun 30, 2017 0:27:44 GMT
If they don't have a very heavily armored module, the thermal effects from a contact-detonation 100-ton nuke should destroy it nicely, forget the radiation exposure... You don't even need a nuke to do that... Very true!
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Post by cuddlefish on Jun 29, 2017 14:45:29 GMT
they surrender? duct tape a megaton range bomb to the hull and if they misbehave then the bomb goes off If they don't have a very thick module shell then a few hundred ton equivalent bomb might kill them with acute radiation exposure. If they don't have a very heavily armored module, the thermal effects from a contact-detonation 100-ton nuke should destroy it nicely, forget the radiation exposure...
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Post by cuddlefish on Jun 29, 2017 8:24:01 GMT
I can confirm that flak means air defence cannon or gun or more litterely form the older definition gun meant to shoot down airplanes (see the en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flak_(disambiguation)link and en.wiktionary.org/wiki/flak). So, unless you plan to use spitfires as missiles the term flak doesn't realy apply. Technically all cannons missiles and lasers we use would be classed as orbital defence weapons. As for launching ClF 3 containers as schrapnel, the design outlined in this thread would make it possible if you mod in ClF 3 (which can be found here). It won't do anything though, as I don't believe chemical reactions are modeled on armor/internals during combat. First defenition on the list and it's not even from Wikipedia www.dictionary.com/browse/flakI think it's worth distinguishing between Flak as it has been adopted into the English language, and the original German technical term. The one came from the other: English-sense 'Flak' being the stuff fired by 'Flak Guns', which got their name from the German technical designation of Flak (Air Defense Cannon). See also the interesting coincidence between another period English term for hostile anti-air weaponry ("Ack-Ack") and the informal German name for the sort of heavy gun that Bomber crews had to fear ("Acht-Acht", Eight-Eight (88mm caliber)). Now, the reason I suspect Flak was adopted in usage for space-borne fragmentation weapons is that they're both cases where the intention is to shred a fast moving vehicle with a storm of fragments - they have bursting charges, but those are an intermediate step to create the actual lethal effect, and any direct damage they may cause in a very precise hit is incidental.
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Post by cuddlefish on Jun 26, 2017 1:11:55 GMT
So - shoot off their life support radiators and wait. If they would rather die than let you have your prize ... If the enemy is determined to die, you can't stop them, all you can do is make sure they don't take any of your people with them. If they aren't? They'll work with you. That doesn't hold up when you realize that all the people on board are individuals, and human beings! It's not a switch, either "willing to burn to death" or "willing to work with you", and not everybody on board is omniscient and knows exactly what is going on, and even if everyone did, they most likely don't all agree. And even if they all were 100% stubborn, completely omniscient, and of a single mind, it's still wrong to just let them die over attempting to arrest them. Police don't do that in real life. Genuine question: Who said anything about police? I'd understood this discussion to be in the context of military vessels, of the sort where people are apt to be destroying resources, fighting counter-boarding actions, and so on. Policing is a different kettle of wax, though I question the extent to which it's even a viable paradigm in a space-borne context. Either way, the same rule of demanding full compliance to be safe to board still applies - see below for the expansion of that argument. --- I agree that not every group is going to be unanimous. The thing is, that's not a problem potential boarders can diagnose or fix. If you have half of a vehicle trying to surrender, and the other half still shooting, it's going to receive return fire. It's not great, but there's no viable alternative. The people outside can't force those inside to choose surrender, that has to be the job of those on the inside in favor. There's plenty of cultural precedent for hardliners being forced to submit by their friends to avoid getting everyone killed, or mutinies against officers intent on continuing the fight when their crew has had more than enough of it. Aside from which, if the vessel is in any state to actually win rather than make capturing them a bloody affair, boarding is an entirely moot question until they're rendered safe, as there's no reasonable prospect of success and a grave danger to your own ship. So if enough of the crew who hold positions of power are in favor of continued resistance despite being in a position where they have long since lost any reasonable hope of victory or escape? If they do that, they'll get themselves and those on ship with them killed. That's not a thing with a feasible means of prevention. It really isn't fair, that they are in a position to murder-by-proxy their coworkers and shipmates, but from outside the ship, the only input you get is whether you put your people on the chopping block as well. It's just as irresponsible for you to put your troops through that as it is them to put their shipmates through that. And when you're outside, you have absolutely no way of knowing how that debate is going on internally. You have, what, IR and optical cameras, laser-microphones on the remote possibility that there's appreciable noise conducting in the outer wall of the crew compartment, maybe some imaging RADAR if they have compatible hull materials? That can't tell you much about the mood and actions of the crew aboard. Certainly not enough to send your people into a potential trap. The point of the surrender demands, and requiring compliance to them, is to give you a way of gauging whether the subject vessel is willing to cooperate rather than trying to kill your people. If you can't get them to make symbolic and material concessions as a way to communicate their intent to cooperate, you can't rightly order your own people to stake their lives on full compliance. Is there still technically a risk if they do make all the right moves? Sure. But we have laws of war for that, and have had in one way or another since laws of war were a thing. False surrender and related perfidy is a grave crime, and imperils the entire project of civilized behavior by mutual agreement. If the enemy makes a pattern of violating those laws, then yeah, you likely will have to stop accepting surrenders entirely. That's again, pretty terrible, but also the exact reason why such conduct is illegal. It's like storing weapons caches in hospitals - willfully perverting the protections of law is sufficient to make those protections contextually void, and the crime is on those who knowingly made it so, not the actors who must set aside the protections in response.
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Post by cuddlefish on Jun 24, 2017 5:47:43 GMT
There's a fairly simple solution to the boarding problem, I think.
You have power of life or death over them already, if you're even at a tenth of the level of control you need to send a troop shuttle to their ship, get inside the exterior armor, and dock up with their crew module(s) in a way that doesn't just decompress things so badly as to make the exercise pointless. You can manage that same journey with a few kilotons of nuke if you can get troops there, and it's a lot easier to replace a nuke than to write those "We must regretfully inform you that..." letters to next of kin for a dozen young men and women of the Marine detachment.
So - shoot off their life support radiators and wait. If they would rather die than let you have your prize, they'd probably manage that whether you tried to board or not (they may even have a suicide nuke for the purpose), so no sense risking your crew. Make it clear that providing the desired information (and full compliance with the interview teams that follow) is a necessary precondition for them not getting left to cook in their bunks as the heat exchange systems fail to keep it livable in there, or else try to walk home via the airlock. If they intend to live, they'll provide the stuff, in advance, because otherwise you'll have to either let them waste away, or decompress the module with weapons fire, and then sort through the detritus afterwards (forensic data recovery techs can do a lot with media that hasn't actually been melted) to see what you can find.
You don't need to point a gun at someone, or trade rounds with them, when everyone knows you can blow them away without any hope of defense from a safe position.
I recall reading of an SF universe where ships didn't take much damage in battle short of destruction, so if a ship was fought to the brink of destruction, before long it will be as dangerous as ever. So it was standard practice, when a ship requested to surrender, for the victor to canvas their own crew for a volunteer. If one is found, they go aboard the defeated vessel with a literal suitcase nuke on a dead-man switch. They have discretion to loose that trigger for any disobedience, and everyone knows they literally volunteered for exactly that role, so it's not a hard ask to believe they'll do it. So, the crew of the prize remains on the best behavior they can, while they are given their new navigation orders to surrender themselves and their ship to the victor navy.
And if they didn't find a volunteer, well, that's too bad, can't accept the surrender without undue risk to your ship, mission, and crew. Military necessity, they burn.
If the enemy is determined to die, you can't stop them, all you can do is make sure they don't take any of your people with them. If they aren't? They'll work with you.
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