Atlantia-the rework(ignore other one- forgot the poll)

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 3:35 pm

My cargo ship has shields, yes; but made of metal and ceramic; not magical "force fields". Not sure what you meant about lasers.

Anyways, I'm not suggesting anything for Atlantia; I was just answering to Oblivion's statement that by year such and so, there should be technology such and so... I feel such falacies should be righted on the bud.

Kangaroo · Post by **Kangaroo** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 3:40 pm

Ok, looks like I missed something again, but that puzzles me even more. Are you going to have a separate hull over the small parts to make the details partly visible? Or will be everything covered with the ceramic plates?

With lasers I ment that I was just thinking how effective would be actual lasers in a fight if a powerful enough laser can cut through a diamond?

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 3:46 pm

The shields in my cargo ship are only at front and at the back; they are for stopping small micrometeorites, rather than as defense in firefights, and will look like bulldozer shovels that pivot out of the way for docking.

Lasers must be getting better, because if you look at US military appropriations, they are handing out laser-related contracts left and right: --laser everything-- Laser planes, laser boats, laser tanks and bradleys... I would think they'd be more effective in space, where atmospheric refraction and dispersion are not a problem. Big problem in space is getting rid of waste heat ...

Kangaroo · Post by **Kangaroo** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 3:53 pm

chuck_starchaser wrote:TBig problem in space is getting rid of waste heat ...

Freons?
Using the heat for generating electricity that would cool it?

Kangaroo · Post by **Kangaroo** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 3:53 pm

chuck_starchaser wrote:Big problem in space is getting rid of waste heat ...

Freons?
Using the heat for generating electricity that would cool it?

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 4:22 pm

Heat, by itself, cannot be converted to another form of energy. You nead *heat difference*. Basic thermodynamics.

Kangaroo · Post by **Kangaroo** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 4:23 pm

Well then, carrying a huge ammount of dry ice?

GAlex · Post by **GAlex** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 5:20 pm

by my knowledge, lasers aren't effective or usable anyway.

since it's always light, despite it runs packeted in high coherency, can be easily deflected, reflected, diffracted, interfered, polarized and then absorbed by the right materials whichever frequency you have: lower frequencies (radio- and micro-waves) cannot be easily blocked and can travel great distances, but have very low intensity; higher frequencies (like x and gamma rays) have great intensity, but it falls rapidly with distance and can be easily attenuated/blocked.

other thing is accelerated particles (protons and other charged particles): these are way more effective, but again can be deflected/attenuated by an intense electromagnetic field (like van allen belts deflects solar wind).

mesons are another bit more effective but are very difficult to produce in converging rays. thus, an intense enought flux of w mesons can accelerate the reactor fusion/fission process causing the ship's explosion.

plasma is very effective against metals and electric circuits, but again can be deflected/attenuated by an intense electromagnetic field.

how can we solve this?

Ryder P. Moses · Post by **Ryder P. Moses** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 6:15 pm

In an atmosphere, that's correct. Different rules in space. And plasma is ineffective because it can be blocked by sufficient magnetic fields in the same way that bullets are ineffective because they can be blocked by enough plate steel.

Still neither have a patch on a good solid 120mm shell, mind.

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 6:34 pm

I think you guys take magnetic fields for granted. Magnetism has polarity, first of all; you can't produce a spherical, protective shield using magnetism. Secondly, magnetic lines repel one another; magnetic fields tend to disperse. To make a strong magnetic field in a non-ferromagnetic space, you need to surround that small space by huge ferromagnetic pieces that direct and concentrate the field onto that small space. And last but not least, you'll spend a lot of energy to deflect a particle or group of particles with much lower energy. Won the battle but lost the war: If it's cheaper to send damage than it is to deflect it...
Some of the arguments are good. Reflectors can neutralize lasers; armor can defend from shells; but is there a way to do both? If I can throw some flak at you and damage your specular coating, then I can laser you more effectively...

GAlex · Post by **GAlex** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 6:56 pm

polarity... yes. but...
you can easily create a powerful rotating magnetic field by use of a solid metal (nickel and iron) nuclei rotating 6deg of freedom inside a plasma sphere (an advanced dinamo!). the rotation should be maintained by effective use of lasers. this field can propagate over the ship hull if powerfull enought, it's only a matter of energy consumption.
i think the same energy used to maintain a field like this could be used to accelerate a plasma beam towards an enemy. the better reactor (and the more deuterium) the winner of the competition. the field unlike the game cannot be depleted by weapons itself, but by the augmented energy needed to counter the incoming energy flux.
in this way a mule could not be defeated by a single gawain , only by a squadron, and this is right unless the gawain has missiles: missiles are not deflectable in any way, a missile can only be deviated by cheating its guidance system (by use of ecm, false targets, countermeasures).
in VS, if i'm smart enought I can get rid of a corvette with a medium fighter w/out missiles!

the idea someone posts of subtargets on ships is great and solves the problem: if you find a breach in the defence sistem of a ship, like with the aid of 2-3 missiles you manage to hit the thrusters, you can then finish it (with time) using beams on the weak side.

lasers can be blocked by reflective metals hard enough to get rid of some MINOR impact (for a LARGE ship a SMALL missile)

I was forgetting that electromagnetic fields can be annihilated by an inverse polarity equal field, so collisions between ships should destroy them.

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 7:09 pm

GAlex wrote:....so collisions between ships should destroy them.

Well, I'm glad to hear that from someone other than myself...

Ryder P. Moses · Post by **Ryder P. Moses** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 3:36 am

The thing is, your shield needs to have a huge powersource- far larger than the powersource for the plasma gun. The plasma gun only needs a high magnetic field in a few inches of space, maybe a couple cubic feet at the outermost if we're talking a Huge Damn Gun, and for a fraction of a second. A shield needs to cover an area of... shit, I can't even do the math involved, but we're talking about an enormous space that needs to be covered with greater intensity of turbulent magnetic field, all the time. You can't just fire it up when you're getting shot at, because particle beam weapons fire at the speed of light, so barring any obvious charge-up warning signs no engineer would be so stupid as to allow to manifest beyond the prototype stage you find out you're being shot at when sun-hot death is impacting your hull and no sooner.

So you're really not going for something that completely protects- if you've got hundreds of times more power on hand than your enemy does, you're using it to power counterattacks and drives, not die slightly later when their non-plasma weapons hit you. But even a weak (relative to the power levels we're discussing here) magnetic field is useful for partially disrupting the attack- it'll make the incoming beam quite a bit less potent by the time it hits, reducing a potentially fatal hit to a merely inconvenient or crippling one. And for this role, you don't even need to have it on all the time- if you've got very very very fast response systems that can bring a shield to full power in a nanosecond or two- plasma weapons, like all energy weapons, need to be focussed on a target for a period of time to really have an effect. In this role, energy shields would be more like a bulletproof vest than tank armor- there to increase the odds of survivability, but you still kinda wanna avoid getting shot if at all possible. And in this role, it would drain- because your shield relies on magnetic turbulence, and presumably has multiple emitters all along the ship, and they're presumably getting knocked out of commission rather rapidly by combat. They wouldn't regenerate, though.

And laser weapons are not your average Class 1 laser pointer. They'll eat through your mirrored surface like a fat lady through a tub of extra-buttered popcorn. In order to be reflective, a surface needs to be clean and intact within very fine parameters- we're talking electron-microscope levels here. A laser will, in the fraction of a second after it begins to hit, etch away the reflectivity of that surface, flash-vaporizing microscopic bits and pieces of your foil that don't reflect perfectly, expand those flaws, then dig in and kill you. It'll provide about an instant's protection and might save somebody's live a fraction of a percent of a time- generally that fraction of a percent when the enemy shoots you at a precisely 90* angle to the surface of your ship- but shininess alone will not help you and since there's plenty of perfectly good tactical reasons not to make your ship mirrory (like that it makes you that much easier to spot), well...

A mirrored surface might be particularly good for one thing in space combat, though, and that's if people use overwhelmingly light-based (including infrared) detection. It'll provide a brief period of something akin to disruptive camouflage at close ranges.

forlarren · Post by **forlarren** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 4:27 am

The final word in all space based weaponry. The X-ray laser. These things are Nasty with a capital N. Imagine a missle. Now imagine this missle has multible independent self guided warheads. Each warhead holds within itslef a nuclear bomb, the warheads are designed to scatter apon deployment to decrease the odds of countermeasures taking all of them out as well as hitting the target from multible vectors. The warheads are timed to all detonate at the same time with the targed ship being in effective the blast radious. At the moment of detonation the produced X-Rays are focused and fired at target. If the X-Rays do not get you the blasts from the nukes will.

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 4:52 am

Yep, and now that forlarren mentioned lasers... The other problem using magnetism to deflect an attack is that only charged particles are susceptible to a magnetic field. An attack with neutrons (or worse... ANTI-neutrons) would get through no problemo.
And then lasers shoot photons, --zero mass, no charge; whether infrared photons or X-ray photons, it doesn't matter. A magnetic field can only change the polarization of a photon, which is neither here nor there...
Unless it is important bragging material for you when you go to heaven, to be able to say "the bastard threw me vertically polarized laser; just before I died, though, I was able to change the polarization of his attack to horizontal"...

X-ray laser is indeed a nasty thing, and probably the only weapon in the whole Wing Commander and Vegastrike canon that actually makes a bit of sense, other than missiles. I had a roommate, years ago, who was a mad scientist like myself. He had this thick book (like 1000 pages) of nothing but diy laser building plans. The last chapter was for a home-made X-ray laser. BIG warning signs all over it. One of the things NOT to do with it was pointing it out a window; -specially in stormy wheather, as it can ionize the air all the way to a cloud and instantly create a path of lightning...

Oblivion · Post by **Oblivion** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 10:50 am

Chuck:

I was just answering to Oblivion's statement that by year such and so, there should be technology such and so... I feel such falacies should be righted on the bud.

Nor will these force-field kind of "shields" that deflect particles, much less asteroids.

hmmm. Touchy. I was not suggesting it will deflect asteroids. I was not even implying it. I said...

Playing VS, it seems that docking on planetside spaceports is as easy as docking with spacestations. Shouldn't antigrav and/or better air friction shielding ( I'm nitpicking: Shields can withstand impact of space dust, which is just as hazardous as big asteroids, so why not the atmosphere?) already be invented VS-time?

I'm not saying it will come true someday. I meant in the current VS universe. Micrometeorites is a hazard in space. If one gets through shielding, even your ceramic/metal shields, it will either kill your ship or depressurize a random section, if your ship is large enough. Ceramic shielding will degrade rapidly anyway, because VS ships are not the use-once-then-throw-away NASA rockets, and VS ships travel FAST. VS spaceships do not seem be bothered by micrometeorites (which is not always stationary, but often zooming around space like bullets, so a front/back shielding is not enough), so I am assuming that the "magical force field" (which exists... in the fictional VS, in case you didn't notice the bubble on the ships.

), is the one that prevents it from harming the hull.

I am not exhorting that all the things in sci-fi would eventually be true. Hell, I too don't believe in time machines. But I enjoy SF. Especially Sagan & Clarke. Sagan promoted SETI. Clarke introduced the idea(I think he designed. not sure) the first human artificial satellite. Though they are fiction writers, that does not make them less intelligent enough in their books. I have to admit, I easily get bored reading entirely theoretical/factual books. But hey, Vega Strike is fiction. Why would we need it to be realistic?

I'm sorry, I am not that good at physics.

So if my ignorance shows...

Ryder P. Moses · Post by **Ryder P. Moses** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 2:35 pm

chuck_starchaser wrote: One of the things NOT to do with it was pointing it out a window; -specially in stormy wheather, as it can ionize the air all the way to a cloud and instantly create a path of lightning...

...[wants]

Zeog · Post by **Zeog** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 3:11 pm

chuck_starchaser wrote:The last chapter was for a home-made X-ray laser.

Actually, I'd say I don't believe this book had plans for actually working versions in it and one can't build an x-ray *laser* at home. But I wonder, was it a sychrotron or a free electron laser with undulator type?

Post by **klauss** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 4:25 pm

Alright... xaser.

Anyway... isn't it difficult enough to produce a powerful blue laser? I heared somewhere that the highest energy output they got was from a green laser, because shorter-wavelength ones were difficult to produce with high enough power output.

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 4:39 pm

The book was serious and each chapter (laser type), was like a book itself, detailing the construction. Most were pretty expensive to make. Unfortunately, I didn't take a deep look at the last chapter, or any chapter for that matter; I just said to him let's make the cheapest one first, which was one that you could make by recyclint the laser unit out of a laser printer. In the end, we settled for making a high voltage generator, instead; with a ladder of 10KV diodes and 20KV capacitors; 150,000 VDC; which took chunks out of the penny we had connected at the end of a ground wire, at the end of a long broomstick, every time we lifted it up and got zapped by a half-foot long spark...

Yeh, I really regret I didn't scrutinize that lasers book, and I've lost touch with my old roommate...

EDIT:
Oblivion, sorry; missed your post; yeah, it sounded to me like you were saying "shields will take care of that in the year 3500". Yeah, the proverbial micrometeorite in space... There's not that many of them. If you look at the Voyager crafts, they went through the asteroid belt, the cuiper belt, and the oort cloud; and are now well outside the solar system by now, and still healthy, sending greetings back to Earth from time to time...

Some stuff on building an X-ray laser...
http://repairfaq.ece.drexel.edu/sam/laserioi.htm#ioixrl
http://repairfaq.ece.drexel.edu/sam/las ... tm#conwnss

I have a feeling we've effectively hijacked this thread, tho...

Kangaroo · Post by **Kangaroo** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 7:42 pm

I'm sure Chrisdn won't mind. I believe he's very busy now, hasn't replied to my emails for some time already, and that means that he had little chance of working on Atlantia. Don't tell him that, tho.

chrisdn · Post by **chrisdn** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 10:48 pm

Did you miss me? Bloody computer had a coronary on Friday and everything is gone!!!!! Just getting some quotes on data recovery to repair the HDD but I'm not holding out hope! Luckily I have the renders here and some soft copies of my novel so far scattered throughout the internet!
Got the laptop sorted now and my new workstation arrives tomorrow or friday (it's a beast and I'm like a kid at Christmas waiting for it!) I'll be running XP 64 so I'll be getting some updated design software which might help me out. If anyone is interested, all the work on Atlantia to date was done on a PII 400 with 256MB RAM and a 64MB graphics card. Who says you need massively powerful PCs to do design work eh?

In reply to posts I don't know where to start! In response to the whole wing/no wing thing...well:
a) I LIKE wings!
b) Atlantia's CTD drive for FTL has numerous pylons that extend from the hull and 2 very important and very large pylons fold off the wings and re direct the field forward through the forward emitters.
c) There are about 16 enrgy weapons and 20 torpedo tubes in each wing
d) As an EV (explorer vessel), she carries modules with her. Depending on her mission she could be carrying alot of these modules- habitats, space elevators, orbital platforms etc. One of the places these will be carried will be on top and below the wings where they can be easily deployed. I was meaning to re design the wings anyway but the design was always going to habe some slight recesses and clamps for these modules
e) by having thrusters/ engines mounted on the extremities of the wings she will be more easily manouverable. Sounds daft but I figured it out but can't be bothered to explain it right now.
f) I like wings- did I mention that?

As far as her being target is concerned then I don't really get your point? Any ship will have a large visible section depending on the aspect you view it from. Look at Atlantia's profile from the side, it's quite low. If any small fighters wanted to make a run at her superstructure then God help them. There a vast amounts of defense turret cluster right across the hull. Each cluster has a missile launcher turret, energy based weapon turret and a rail gun turret. Not even Luke 'I never get shot' Skywalker would be having a bad day if he tried to take a pot shot at Atlantia!

Halleck mentioned that there are some asthetes in my Universe, he's very correct- the merchants are all about that but beyond anything else everything is designed to have a certain aesthetic look it. From a tin opener toan MP3 player, form a warship to a space shuttle. They all have elements of design which are purely aesthetic and exist for no other reason. In the future I believe it will be exactly the same.

Right now we struggle with technology because it's in it's infancy in 100 years we'll have gotten used to things and will build things more and more to fit aesthetics rather than purely practical. Look at a car from 1920s and a modern sports car? The difference between a 1810 steam and a modern super heated steam boiler?

In the future the technology will be more matter of fact than awe inspiring and so more focus will be put on aesthetics. My opinion anyway.

Lost track of the other things but I like the argument on shields and energy based weaponry. I read about the problem of creating massive shields to envelope an entire ship? I would have thought that energy shields would only be positioned around very crucial equipment and the rest of the hull would just have armour plating?

Chuck...you ain't hijacking the thread and you know I don't think like that. I enjoy seeing great discussions and as far as I can figure...thats what's been going on!

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 11:15 pm

Sorry to hear you lost work. One very wise thing I once heard, and used to follow to a T was: Have one partition for the OS, Another partition for apps, and another partition for your DATA. Every precious thing you create (or download) should be in this last one; nowhere else; so that you know exactly where the stuff is that you need to backup. The OS you can reinstall. The apps you can reinstall. But the Data is what cannot be reinstalled, therefore needs backing up. Furthermore, being on a separate partition makes it a lot less likely to get corrupted beyond recovery by the OS. I still have my data partition, but I'm rather scattered about where I put files. My desktop's almost full of crap...

I got your book. Same email? I'll send it to ya.

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 4:34 am

Ah, that's too bad chrisdn. Will the hard drive just not start, or has the data been outright corrupted?

I've heard that 'percussive maintenance' actually can be quite effective on hard drives that won't spin up. Also, if it's the 'puter that won't start up, you might want to check and see if it's some obvious problem like the power supply going bad before you pay some expensive data recovery firm to figure it out for you...

Also, I have a copy of Before the Dawn.doc from Feb. 9 2006, I can send it over unless there are more recent copies you can get your hands on.

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 4:43 am

I had the same date; sent it to him already.
Careful with percussive maintenance. If anything, you'd grab the drive and rotate a bit, to get past the dead point. I had one drive like that, years ago; used to fail to start so often, that I had it sitting on a vase next to the computer. Fortunately, it had an end of the axle visible, flush with the bottom surface; all I had to do was put a finger on it and turn it. But shock can actually damage a drive pretty easily, and if the drive is spinning, shock will almost for sure damage the disk itself, as in bad sectors, by causing the head to make contact with the spinning disk. I heard horror stories of people hitting their computers in anger, and losing everything.

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Atlantia-the rework(ignore other one- forgot the poll)

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