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Post by samchiu2000 on Jun 15, 2017 10:00:29 GMT
Long time ago i went to project rho the website and find this article about relativistic weapon, or RKV, which is a weapon which travel at a hyper-velocity weapon among the interstellar space until it hit it's target, E.g enemy homeworld, which seems extremely powerful and awesome. Now i think about it again, and The Astronomer fusion drive come to mine. So i do a little bit of analysis about it as it is now possible to mod this stuff (although i can't mod it's effect, it will be cool at least for me...) And then i found out that RKV may not be effective against earth-like planet, which is surrounded by a reasonably thick atmosphere, which may weaken our RKV destructive capacity since RKV will turn into plasma at the edge of atmosphere (maybe something like around 160 km high) due to ultra high impact velocity. A similar example is the Tunguska event, which the asteroid release 30MT TNT worth of energy at an altitude of 5-10 km , but still did less damage (compare to high yield nuke) as the fireball can't reach the ground. And similar result is also obtained from the infamous "tsar bomba" test, as the reflected blast wave prevent the fireball to reach the ground. So here my problem: will a RKV cause some real damage to a earth-like planet strike by it? Or it will just like Tunguska event, a huge firework show doing little damage when compare to something like a high yield nuke explosion at a lower altitude?
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Post by Kerr on Jun 15, 2017 11:32:20 GMT
Long time ago i went to project rho the website and find this article about relativistic weapon, or RKV, which is a weapon which travel at a hyper-velocity weapon among the interstellar space until it hit it's target, E.g enemy homeworld, which seems extremely powerful and awesome. Now i think about it again, and The Astronomer fusion drive come to mine. So i do a little bit of analysis about it as it is now possible to mod this stuff (although i can't mod it's effect, it will be cool at least for me...) And then i found out that RKV may not be effective against earth-like planet, which is surrounded by a reasonably thick atmosphere, which may weaken our RKV destructive capacity since RKV will turn into plasma at the edge of atmosphere (maybe something like around 160 km high) due to ultra high impact velocity. A similar example is the Tunguska event, which the asteroid release 30MT TNT worth of energy at an altitude of 5-10 km , but still did less damage (compare to high yield nuke) as the fireball can't reach the ground. And similar result is also obtained from the infamous "tsar bomba" test, as the reflected blast wave prevent the fireball to reach the ground. So here my problem: will a RKV cause some real damage to a earth-like planet strike by it? Or it will just like Tunguska event, a huge firework show doing little damage when compare to something like a high yield nuke explosion at a lower altitude? At some point your particles are too fast to fuse with the atmosphere, this happens at 99% of C. At that velocity 1kg Matter has the relativistic energy of 5.47e17 J or 131 MT of TNT. For this you need 1560 kg D-He³ at 100% Burn-up efficiency (Z-pinch can do that very well, heck it can even fuse 100% DD, which has twice the ignition requirements.) Or 850kg Pure Hydrogen, if you have the technology for such extremely strong Z-pinches. This means your weapon has to have a weight ratio of 850-1560/1. Also you have to consider, most nuclear bombs are airburst, because it increased their effective range dramatically. If you have a 100GT Relativistic object (1kT at 29Mm/s) You can destroy anything in an area the size of texas, and give everyone in the US third-degree burns.
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Post by samchiu2000 on Jun 15, 2017 11:50:29 GMT
Long time ago i went to project rho the website and find this article about relativistic weapon, or RKV, which is a weapon which travel at a hyper-velocity weapon among the interstellar space until it hit it's target, E.g enemy homeworld, which seems extremely powerful and awesome. Now i think about it again, and The Astronomer fusion drive come to mine. So i do a little bit of analysis about it as it is now possible to mod this stuff (although i can't mod it's effect, it will be cool at least for me...) And then i found out that RKV may not be effective against earth-like planet, which is surrounded by a reasonably thick atmosphere, which may weaken our RKV destructive capacity since RKV will turn into plasma at the edge of atmosphere (maybe something like around 160 km high) due to ultra high impact velocity. A similar example is the Tunguska event, which the asteroid release 30MT TNT worth of energy at an altitude of 5-10 km , but still did less damage (compare to high yield nuke) as the fireball can't reach the ground. And similar result is also obtained from the infamous "tsar bomba" test, as the reflected blast wave prevent the fireball to reach the ground. So here my problem: will a RKV cause some real damage to a earth-like planet strike by it? Or it will just like Tunguska event, a huge firework show doing little damage when compare to something like a high yield nuke explosion at a lower altitude? At some point your particles are too fast to fuse with the atmosphere, this happens at 99% of C. At that velocity 1kg Matter has the relativistic energy of 5.47e17 J or 131 MT of TNT. For this you need 1560 kg D-He³ at 100% Burn-up efficiency (Z-pinch can do that very well, heck it can even fuse 100% DD, which has twice the ignition requirements.) Or 850kg Pure Hydrogen, if you have the technology for such extremely strong Z-pinches. This means your weapon has to have a weight ratio of 850-1560/1. Also you have to consider, most nuclear bombs are airburst, because it increased their effective range dramatically. If you have a 100GT Relativistic object (1kT at 29Mm/s) You can destroy anything in an area the size of texas, and give everyone in the US third-degree burns. Great. No physic noob like me can write thing like it... But actually i am trying to ask the effect of a medium (2000 tons, maybe?) sized RKV travelling at 0.3c, which is a much more feasible velocity to achieve
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Post by Kerr on Jun 15, 2017 11:56:03 GMT
At some point your particles are too fast to fuse with the atmosphere, this happens at 99% of C. At that velocity 1kg Matter has the relativistic energy of 5.47e17 J or 131 MT of TNT. For this you need 1560 kg D-He³ at 100% Burn-up efficiency (Z-pinch can do that very well, heck it can even fuse 100% DD, which has twice the ignition requirements.) Or 850kg Pure Hydrogen, if you have the technology for such extremely strong Z-pinches. This means your weapon has to have a weight ratio of 850-1560/1. Also you have to consider, most nuclear bombs are airburst, because it increased their effective range dramatically. If you have a 100GT Relativistic object (1kT at 29Mm/s) You can destroy anything in an area the size of texas, and give everyone in the US third-degree burns. Great. No physic noob like me can write thing like it... But actually i am trying to ask the effect of a medium (2000 tons, maybe?) sized RKV travelling 0.3c, which is a much more feasible velocity to achieve Lol, already did the math for that, well rather for a .335c RKV. 1kT at that velocity can destroy: North/South America, Asia, Africa, Australia, Antarctica and Europa. Basically that is a continent buster. For your requirements I just have to double the yield. You RKV can burn everyone from South Africa to Germany/Denmark to crisp.
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Post by Kerr on Jun 15, 2017 12:11:15 GMT
For a realistic RKV. Dry mass: 100t Wet mass: 1.66kT Fuel: D-He³ Dry Mass: 25t 2.5GW reactor 5t Z-Pinch Engine 10t Radiators 10t Hull 50t MRKV
Micro RKV: 1000x 50kg 65,5MT RKV's/ 5000x 10kg 13.1MT RKV's/ 10000x 5kg 1.31MT RKV's
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Post by samchiu2000 on Jun 15, 2017 12:50:45 GMT
Great! Now we got a strategic interstellar force, just like the strategic rocket force back on terra~
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Post by Kerr on Jun 15, 2017 13:07:05 GMT
Great! Now we got a strategic interstellar force, just like the strategic rocket force back on terra~ Makes me wondering for the chances of other solar systems. Does Alpha Centauri has a gas giant? With 33 kT D-He³ (20 kT Helium-3) You can use 21x RKV's. That's enough to heavily cripple a civilization throughout a solar system. But you have to send your forces a few days after the attacks otherwise they can recover from the strike.
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Post by samchiu2000 on Jun 15, 2017 13:14:01 GMT
Great! Now we got a strategic interstellar force, just like the strategic rocket force back on terra~ Makes me wondering for the chances of other solar systems. Does Alpha Centauri has a gas giant? With 33 kT D-He³ (20 kT Helium-3) You can use 21x RKV's. That's enough to heavily cripple a civilization throughout a solar system. But you have to send your forces a few days after the attacks otherwise they can recover from the strike. I think that DD powered RKV maybe more cost effective to build since it is much cheaper~
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Post by Kerr on Jun 15, 2017 13:19:30 GMT
Makes me wondering for the chances of other solar systems. Does Alpha Centauri has a gas giant? With 33 kT D-He³ (20 kT Helium-3) You can use 21x RKV's. That's enough to heavily cripple a civilization throughout a solar system. But you have to send your forces a few days after the attacks otherwise they can recover from the strike. I think that DD powered RKV maybe more cost effective to build since it is much cheaper~ They would weight 4x more, and have way worse acceleration, the same amount of DD produces 4x less thrust than D-He³. Also it produces way more heat reducing the max performance further. samchiu2000 Ok, after some calculations I found out that is just needed twice as much fuel, because starships scale with thrust not KE. The Acceleration time will be increased from 6,2 to 12,5 years. It won't make that much of a difference I think. DD: 0.25m/s, 12,5 years, 134 AU. D-He³: 0.51m/s, 6,2 years, 66 AU. Those acceleration distances are pretty much nothing. DD needs 25 years from Alpha Centauri to Sol. D-He³ 18,5 years.
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Post by Kerr on Jun 15, 2017 16:53:21 GMT
I think that DD powered RKV maybe more cost effective to build since it is much cheaper~ They would weight 4x more, and have way worse acceleration, the same amount of DD produces 4x less thrust than D-He³. Also it produces way more heat reducing the max performance further. samchiu2000 Ok, after some calculations I found out that is just needed twice as much fuel, because starships scale with thrust not KE. The Acceleration time will be increased from 6,2 to 12,5 years. It won't make that much of a difference I think. DD: 0.25m/s, 12,5 years, 134 AU. D-He³: 0.51m/s, 6,2 years, 66 AU. Those acceleration distances are pretty much nothing. DD needs 25 years from Alpha Centauri to Sol. D-He³ 18,5 years. After rechecking the numbers I found a big problem. A DD RKKV needs a mass ratio 2417 to achieve 33,5% of C. D-He³ 43, And Antimatter 2,8. Your max effective Delta-v is limited by what your exhaust velocity is. The higher the exhaust velocity the higher the effective Vmax. Either you use DT or D-He³. You can let tritium decay into Helium-3, that way you can utilize D-He³ which can produce 3,5x more thrust at the same waste heat production.
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Post by samchiu2000 on Jun 16, 2017 0:54:10 GMT
They would weight 4x more, and have way worse acceleration, the same amount of DD produces 4x less thrust than D-He³. Also it produces way more heat reducing the max performance further. samchiu2000 Ok, after some calculations I found out that is just needed twice as much fuel, because starships scale with thrust not KE. The Acceleration time will be increased from 6,2 to 12,5 years. It won't make that much of a difference I think. DD: 0.25m/s, 12,5 years, 134 AU. D-He³: 0.51m/s, 6,2 years, 66 AU. Those acceleration distances are pretty much nothing. DD needs 25 years from Alpha Centauri to Sol. D-He³ 18,5 years. After rechecking the numbers I found a big problem. A DD RKKV needs a mass ratio 2417 to achieve 33,5% of C. D-He³ 43, And Antimatter 2,8. Your max effective Delta-v is limited by what your exhaust velocity is. The higher the exhaust velocity the higher the effective Vmax. Either you use DT or D-He³. You can let tritium decay into Helium-3, that way you can utilize D-He³ which can produce 3,5x more thrust at the same waste heat production. Oh yeah that make me remember that we could mass production helium-3 through mass production tritium thought irradiating lithium with neutron. So, no more gas giant mine?
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Post by Kerr on Jun 16, 2017 12:36:51 GMT
After rechecking the numbers I found a big problem. A DD RKKV needs a mass ratio 2417 to achieve 33,5% of C. D-He³ 43, And Antimatter 2,8. Your max effective Delta-v is limited by what your exhaust velocity is. The higher the exhaust velocity the higher the effective Vmax. Either you use DT or D-He³. You can let tritium decay into Helium-3, that way you can utilize D-He³ which can produce 3,5x more thrust at the same waste heat production. Oh yeah that make me remember that we could mass production helium-3 through mass production tritium thought irradiating lithium with neutron. So, no more gas giant mine? Mining gas giant is still quite feasible. just wanted to point out that helium-3 is actually more abundant and cheaper than tritium.
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Post by samchiu2000 on Jun 16, 2017 13:39:14 GMT
Oh yeah that make me remember that we could mass production helium-3 through mass production tritium thought irradiating lithium with neutron. So, no more gas giant mine? Mining gas giant is still quite feasible. just wanted to point out that helium-3 is actually more abundant and cheaper than tritium. Alright. Well scientist still haven't find any evidence to prove the existence of gas giant in the alpha centauri, and it is not likely that there will be one because it should be observed by Doppler spectroscopy if one really exist out there. Doppler spectroscopy BTW, is a method that discover exoplanets by observing gravitational pull between star and planets orbiting them
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Post by The Astronomer on Jun 16, 2017 13:52:29 GMT
Mining gas giant is still quite feasible. just wanted to point out that helium-3 is actually more abundant and cheaper than tritium. Alright. Well scientist still haven't find any evidence to prove the existence of gas giant in the alpha centauri, and it is not likely that there will be one because it should be observed by Doppler spectroscopy if one really exist out there. Doppler spectroscopy BTW, is a method that discover exoplanets by observing gravitational pull between star and planets orbiting them I don't think gas giants could exist in the Alpha Centauri system, unless (if the pair formed in a wider orbit than now) one migrated before they close in. Proxima Centauri has chance to host small ones, but Jupiter-sized planets around red dwarfs are unlikely.
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Post by Kerr on Jun 16, 2017 14:15:33 GMT
samchiu2000 The Astronomer Ok, which is the nearest planetary system that has a gas giant? RKKV are only useful If you have enough threats around. And Sol having an He-³ monopol would mean that any other weapon system is obsolete. Just keep firing RKKV's. They can't fire back.
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