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Post by newageofpower on Jan 6, 2017 1:28:29 GMT
He meant DU is quite expensive in CoADE. Perhaps much of the DU is used for breeding into PU/other fissiles? liesteAlso, fissiles are moderately rare in comparison to, say, carbon.
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Post by amimai on Jan 6, 2017 1:51:10 GMT
The reason dU is so cheap on earth is simple... Americans!
You see way back when a certain president was (er lets say not smart?) he put a ban on the construction and use of breeder reactors (those magical machines that perform true alchemy, transmutation!) and then the only way to make the nuclear was to produce lots and lots of dU as a byproduct... so yea, blame the Americans!
If you happen to be in the possession of a breeder reactor (or many) you can stick dU in one end and get uU(useful uranium) out the other, really dU is in for a price hike if breeder reactors start being used and researched heavily again.
It's sad that we don't live in a world like the one pictured in fallout where building a breeder reactor in your back yard is legal and a pocket sized nuclear reactor is an everyday item of convenience, like a battery but better! Nuclear non-proliferation, Article 3, was a dick move...
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Post by David367th on Jan 6, 2017 3:58:14 GMT
[...] uU(useful uranium) [...] Isn't that called enriched uranium?
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Post by n2maniac on Jan 6, 2017 9:45:24 GMT
Enriched or mixed oxide fuel?
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sammi79
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Post by sammi79 on Jan 15, 2020 3:46:04 GMT
Great thread.
I would like to offer my own latest design for lightweight armour. I remembered a video I watched about building warships. Riveting... (sorry) so at some point a bright spark realised that laminating different strength materials worked better than monolithic plates, especially in terms of splintering and spalling and of course overall cost effectiveness.
Having played this game for a while I also learned that whipple shields are a thing! I love games that make me learn. so on to my latest setup;
Thin anti thermal film 5mm Selenium
Outer stuffed whipple (5mm Carbon Fiber - 10cm Graphite aerogel - 5mm Carbon Fiber) 2/3rds coverage
50cm gap
Thin anti radiation layer (5mm Tungsten Carbide) 2/3rds coverage
10mm Carbon Fiber surface 20mm Titanium intermediate layer 30-40mm Vanadium main layer 2/3rds coverage 10mm Polyethylene rubber
Only the Polyethylene rubber has 100% coverage, then each main armour layer is stepped in from the back by 5% a step, only reactor/crew/weapons at the front end of the ship have full armour coverage. (just my own practical weight saving decisions... might be unwise)
It's pretty light, holds up pretty well against my own payload railguns at least at glancing angles. I use a similar layering system of custom rad shields internally as bulkheads.
I don't think it's worth getting any heavier than that - rounds impacting at perpendicular angles are going to go through it sooner or later (sooner) they have too much energy. I reckon if you scaled it up using similar proportions it might, but only way past any sort of viable design specs.
Most of my failures result from rounds going through destroyed weapons ports and blowing up fuel tanks - the consequent violent spin seems to kill the crew a lot.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Jan 15, 2020 20:09:15 GMT
(5mm Tungsten Carbide) 2/3rds coverage (...) It's pretty light Does not compute. Tungsten carbide was all the rage for kinetic penetrator cores before dU stole the limelight, FFS! Whole 5mm of it over most of the hull sounds like downright hideous mass penalty. Well, you do cram the crew in the nosecone and presumably use singular large tanks to help offset the armour mass penalty. Also, why selenium?
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sammi79
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Post by sammi79 on Jan 16, 2020 1:57:08 GMT
(5mm Tungsten Carbide) 2/3rds coverage (...) It's pretty light Does not compute. Tungsten carbide was all the rage for kinetic penetrator cores before dU stole the limelight, FFS! Whole 5mm of it over most of the hull sounds like downright hideous mass penalty. Well, you do cram the crew in the nosecone and presumably use singular large tanks to help offset the armour mass penalty. Also, why selenium? Ahem... yes that's my mistake it's actually Titanium Carbide and it's 2.5mm. I'm not at all sure about it now you bring it up, I just seem to remember it helping against nuke flashes.
and the Selenium is heavy. But it seems to be magic against laser. Might not be neccessary depending on the situation, could be thinner, but it holds well against stock as well as my own designs which are considerably more optimised and probably a little unreal. I split the fuel tanks because I want some under armour, the crew ideally behind that, and possibly another weapons system behind that. Then the lighter armour covers the main fuel tank + rockets.
I do tend towards long and pointy, and I make the armour as functional as I can but for mass savings and aesthetic (for some unknown reason is important to me - the Selenium is not light but it is pretty) I do chop the layers down progressively. Kinda looks somewhat like a real rocket only with some rather bulbous turrets and oversized radiator wings all carefully tapered to get a sort of sci-fi jet fighter profile... again aesthetic. Don't ask me why.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Jan 16, 2020 22:33:24 GMT
Does not compute. Tungsten carbide was all the rage for kinetic penetrator cores before dU stole the limelight, FFS! Whole 5mm of it over most of the hull sounds like downright hideous mass penalty. Well, you do cram the crew in the nosecone and presumably use singular large tanks to help offset the armour mass penalty. Also, why selenium? Ahem... yes that's my mistake it's actually Titanium Carbide and it's 2.5mm. I'm not at all sure about it now you bring it up, I just seem to remember it helping against nuke flashes. Titanium carbide is pretty good. Both at tanking flash and at bouncing lightweight grazing kinetics. Ok, that's interesting. The most common used anti-laser stuff is aramid (allegedly best ablative), PE (allegedly cheapest ablative) and AC (thermally hard). But selenium is just grey with very slight purplish tinge? I also tend to build cool looking craft, but they typically tend to be fairly effective as well. I have a pretty long list of "cool" features with practical justifications.
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sammi79
New Member
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Post by sammi79 on Jan 18, 2020 12:33:13 GMT
Well in the drab coloured world that is CoaDE I'll take grey with a slight purplish tinge. After some not very rigorous testing I would say Aramid-Fiber is definitely better. at the same thickness (+less than half mass) it takes a few seconds longer to defeat than Selenium, which was lasting about 10 seconds at 500Km against some 50MW Ce:LLF pumped extreme UV Laser from a molten Gold arclamp. Those things put down about 191MW/m2 at 1Mm. but.. it's.. just so grey >< ah well. Functionality/Mass is a clear win here. Thanks for the tip
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Jan 18, 2020 16:25:20 GMT
Well in the drab coloured world that is CoaDE I'll take grey with a slight purplish tinge. A lot of ceramics have desirable qualities (hard, refractory) and attractive colours for thin outer layers. Titanium nitride is blingy gold, titanium dioxide kind of navy blue, a lot of other good outer coatings (ceramics, diamond) are somewhere between glossy black and various metallic shades, etc. You can make purty AND performant ships:
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