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Post by bdcarrillo on Feb 15, 2017 4:40:48 GMT
No math has gone into this, but I thought it might be worth discussion.
Why not mount a particle accelerator on a ship, speed up some fusile or fissile material, and fling it at the enemy?
Surely there's some viability at the proper speed and with the proper elements.
--Edit for clarity: Particle accelerators firing subatomic particles has been addressed thoroughly. The point of discussion I am presenting is whether or not inducing fission via accelerating fissile material to relative velocities might be feasible.
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Post by apophys on Feb 15, 2017 6:38:38 GMT
This has been brought up before. A short summary of prior discussion:
A particle accelerator firing only positive or only negative charges has problems. A charged beam will repel itself. Firing one charge will charge your ship. Firing one charge will charge your enemy and make them repel further shots. These problems can be solved by pairing a positive beam with a negative one.
A neutral particle accelerator is hard to make, but otherwise has no obvious issues.
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Post by argonbalt on Feb 15, 2017 6:53:44 GMT
Perhaps the greatest issue making this more of a mod weapon than a future in game addition, is mainly that while we have a couple workable real life lasers we could hypothetically weaponize with enough power dumped into them in game, we do not really have nearly enough data on weaponizing particle beams. In a basic sense you also have to deal with intense focusing issues, as the charged like particles naturally want to repel each other. Neutral particles fix this, but are neutral so they are incredibly hard to convince to do any serious kind of work.
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Post by caiaphas on Feb 15, 2017 7:16:13 GMT
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Post by thorneel on Feb 15, 2017 8:31:33 GMT
Neutron effects are already in game for nukes, so I suggested before that black box weapons should have a neutron beam option. Like the laser option, but with neutron speed/energy instead of wavelength. Then again, QSwitched has his plate full as it is.
The problem with neutron or other neutral particle beams is that there is no known effective design today. If there were, it seems that they would be relatively short range due to impossibilities to focus them as well as lasers. Also, at the moment, neutrons seems to be hard-countered by lithium-6.
That said, without going as far as atoms, I wonder how far can sandblasters be pushed. mg? μg?
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Post by bdcarrillo on Feb 15, 2017 12:31:10 GMT
Fellas fellas, I am totally on board with the complexities and issues of firing subatomic particles. My apologies, I should have worded my original post better:
What about accelerating a handful of fissile atoms? Could an impact of sufficient speed induce fission?
In some moderate reading last night I didn't find much information on accelerating heavier, complex materials.
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Post by Enderminion on Feb 15, 2017 13:22:23 GMT
I do like partical beams, and pulse lasers.
EDIT: more on topic I thing a better idea would be to fire a shell full of Fusion boost from a nuclear warhead and use a big laser to fuse the fuel to achive what I think you want to achive
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Post by bdcarrillo on Feb 15, 2017 13:38:35 GMT
I do like partical beams, and pulse lasers. EDIT: more on topic I thing a better idea would be to fire a shell full of Fusion boost from a nuclear warhead and use a big laser to fuse the fuel to achive what I think you want to achive That would probably work better... When dealing with the bits that come off from one fissile atom: "The range of these massive, highly charged particles in the fuel is of the order of micrometers" "The total energy released in a reactor is about 210 MeV per 235U fission, distributed as shown in the table. In a reactor, the average recoverable energy per fission is about 200 MeV, being the total energy minus the energy of the energy of antineutrinos that are radiated away. This means that about 3.1⋅1010 fissions per second are required to produce a power of 1 W. Since 1 gram of any fissile material contains about 2.5 x 1021 nuclei, the fissioning of 1 gram of fissile material yields about 1 megawatt-day (MWd) of heat energy." Excerpts from: www.nuclear-power.net/nuclear-power/fission/energy-release-from-fission/Bollocks to my idea, it's hardly worth trying to induce fission by flinging uranium at the enemy and hoping the ke on impact causes fission.
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Post by caiaphas on Feb 15, 2017 13:47:58 GMT
I do like partical beams, and pulse lasers. EDIT: more on topic I thing a better idea would be to fire a shell full of Fusion boost from a nuclear warhead and use a big laser to fuse the fuel to achive what I think you want to achive ...if you're capable of inertial confinement fusion via laser you by definition have a really honking big laser. Why don't you just use it to shoot the enemy ship directly? It's faster, simpler, you don't run the risk of your payload being shot down en route and you don't need to deal with setting up mirrors so that the laser pulse compresses the fusion fuel correctly.
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Post by Enderminion on Feb 15, 2017 13:53:26 GMT
Whoosh, ever read the books of Bolo? Hellbore cannons operate like that (most likely handwavium)
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Post by caiaphas on Feb 15, 2017 14:02:34 GMT
Fellas fellas, I am totally on board with the complexities and issues of firing subatomic particles. My apologies, I should have worded my original post better: What about accelerating a handful of fissile atoms? Could an impact of sufficient speed induce fission? In some moderate reading last night I didn't find much information on accelerating heavier, complex materials. In a word, yes, but it's not going to work like you think it is. You're neglecting the iron peak in terms of the involved energetics. Any energy you put into fusing two nuclei together above iron is wasted, because the resultant atom stores it as mass rather than releasing it as energy. At best you'll do some damage through direct energy transfer. You're also going to get very few fission events against enemy armor unless you crank up the flux, so you are, at all times, literally doing more damage through direct energy transfer than you are by fissioning anything. You're also not considering the design of the accelerator itself. A uranium atom is around 200 times heavier than a single proton, which means that you'll get proportionally less acceleration, and you'll need to put in roughly 14 times as much energy to get it to the same velocity (discounting relativistic effects, I haven't had the time to derive/look up the relevant equations yet). You could compensate for this by cranking up the voltage, but then you'll run the risk of vacuum arcing (BAD), or you could increase the length of your accelerator (also bad, different reasons) or use a cyclotron. Frankly I'm still digging up the relevant equations. I think the mistake that you're making here is comparing individual fissile nuclei with a fission bomb. Remember that you need a specific bomb geometry, a sufficiently high mass of fissile material (enough to sustain the chain reaction), and a sufficient neutron flux (more than you'll achieve with a particle accelerator, I'd wager) to get one of them to go boom. You're not going to achieve the same effect with just throwing subcritical ( very subcritical; it is by definition impossible to get a chain reaction out of individual nuclei) masses of fissile material at a target really fast. So yes, you might technically be able to get a few fissile events. No, it is probably not going to be a practical weapon.
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Post by bdcarrillo on Feb 15, 2017 14:06:18 GMT
Definitely agree across the board that --fission/fusion via flinging material at enemy ships-- is not viable.
It was worth exploring, for the sake of posterity and educational bits posted here.
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Post by Enderminion on Feb 15, 2017 14:06:25 GMT
Fellas fellas, I am totally on board with the complexities and issues of firing subatomic particles. My apologies, I should have worded my original post better: What about accelerating a handful of fissile atoms? Could an impact of sufficient speed induce fission? In some moderate reading last night I didn't find much information on accelerating heavier, complex materials. In a word, yes, but it's not going to work like you think it is. You're neglecting the iron peak in terms of the involved energetics. Any energy you put into fusing two nuclei together above iron is wasted, because the resultant atom stores it as mass rather than releasing it as energy. At best you'll do some damage through direct energy transfer. You're also going to get very few fission events against enemy armor unless you crank up the flux, so you are, at all times, literally doing more damage through direct energy transfer than you are by fissioning anything. You're also not considering the design of the accelerator itself. A uranium atom is around 200 times heavier than a single proton, which means that you'll get proportionally less acceleration, and you'll need to put in roughly 14 times as much energy to get it to the same velocity (discounting relativistic effects, I haven't had the time to derive/look up the relevant equations yet). You could compensate for this by cranking up the voltage, but then you'll run the risk of vacuum arcing (BAD), or you could increase the length of your accelerator (also bad, different reasons) or use a cyclotron. Frankly I'm still digging up the relevant equations. I think the mistake that you're making here is comparing individual fissile nuclei with a fission bomb. Remember that you need a specific bomb geometry, a sufficiently high mass of fissile material (enough to sustain the chain reaction), and a sufficient neutron flux (more than you'll achieve with a particle accelerator, I'd wager) to get one of them to go boom. You're not going to achieve the same effect with just throwing subcritical ( very subcritical; it is by definition impossible to get a chain reaction out of individual nuclei) masses of fissile material at a target really fast. So yes, you might technically be able to get a few fissile events. No, it is probably not going to be a practical weapon. tldr the fire from uranium entering the crew module did more damage then the fission
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Post by newageofpower on Feb 15, 2017 14:23:55 GMT
Definitely agree across the board that it's not viable. It was worth exploring, for the sake of posterity and educational bits posted here. Particle weapons might be made viable, but not by attenpting fission/fusion.
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Post by bdcarrillo on Feb 15, 2017 15:15:39 GMT
Definitely agree across the board that it's not viable. It was worth exploring, for the sake of posterity and educational bits posted here. Particle weapons might be made viable, but not by attenpting fission/fusion. D'oh, I was too vague. Edited my post for clarity
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