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well this place is crowded with smart people so can someone explaine to me how exactly could an ion canon or a beam turret worck????

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well this place is crowded with smart people so can someone explaine to me how exactly could an ion canon or a beam turret worck????

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Last edited by FSF Ashrak on 02-11-2002 at 05:27 PM

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Beams & Space weapons

I'll take a crack at it 8)

Mind you this is not based on anything substential, nor is it based on the B5 "Tech", just my understanding as to how such weapons might functions.Having said that, lets get down to biz:

Beams: Beams (IMO) are quite "easy" to produce, a Beam or Lance is energy in the form of light, only not the regular flash light beam but a LASER ie a beam of high energy photon's traveling at light speed or there about. The beam will energize any matter it hits till it is boiled off. An easy way to produce such a beam is a laser. But since we are talking SF we would need a fusion reactor to realy get anything going...

As for "Ion Cannons" and the likes...I belive it's a popular misunderstanding among SF writes...I think the term is CPB's Charged Particle Beams or any variation on that form. The term relates to a "cannon" that produces high speed, high energy particles with the ability to focus the stream at a certain target, the particles will impact the target, delivering their momentum and energy, creating heat, and boiling off the target.

Another variation is the "Star wars" Ion weapons which were used to disable ships and systems...I belive those could be described as EM pulse weapons. A weapon which prodec radiation on the electro-magnetic bands, causing arcs (miniature lightening) in computer hardware & electronics. Any nuke will produce such a pulse, detonating a nuke in the atmosphere or near space above a major city would black out the city and wipe out any circuit board (unless it is shielded).

There are other weapons that could be used in space: missiles, "torpedo"'s dunno why people call 'em that, maybe becuase space ships look like navy ships and space based fighters are like fighters and bombers. The idea is the same, really. Both would be guided, carrying a specific payload with a specific goal. Actually in "real" space you don't need a warhead...accelrate hard enough and the kinetic energy would be formidable (hence kinetic weapons)...Use some shaped metalic slug (DU-Depleated Uranium perhaps?) to penetrate the hull, the slug would be turned into molten slag at impact causing large damage.

I wont go into A-M weapons, nukes and other nasties.

Hope i helped

Flounder

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Registered: Oct 2001
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Posts: 32

Beams & Space weapons

I'll take a crack at it 8)

Mind you this is not based on anything substential, nor is it based on the B5 "Tech", just my understanding as to how such weapons might functions.Having said that, lets get down to biz:

Beams: Beams (IMO) are quite "easy" to produce, a Beam or Lance is energy in the form of light, only not the regular flash light beam but a LASER ie a beam of high energy photon's traveling at light speed or there about. The beam will energize any matter it hits till it is boiled off. An easy way to produce such a beam is a laser. But since we are talking SF we would need a fusion reactor to realy get anything going...

As for "Ion Cannons" and the likes...I belive it's a popular misunderstanding among SF writes...I think the term is CPB's Charged Particle Beams or any variation on that form. The term relates to a "cannon" that produces high speed, high energy particles with the ability to focus the stream at a certain target, the particles will impact the target, delivering their momentum and energy, creating heat, and boiling off the target.

Another variation is the "Star wars" Ion weapons which were used to disable ships and systems...I belive those could be described as EM pulse weapons. A weapon which prodec radiation on the electro-magnetic bands, causing arcs (miniature lightening) in computer hardware & electronics. Any nuke will produce such a pulse, detonating a nuke in the atmosphere or near space above a major city would black out the city and wipe out any circuit board (unless it is shielded).

There are other weapons that could be used in space: missiles, "torpedo"'s dunno why people call 'em that, maybe becuase space ships look like navy ships and space based fighters are like fighters and bombers. The idea is the same, really. Both would be guided, carrying a specific payload with a specific goal. Actually in "real" space you don't need a warhead...accelrate hard enough and the kinetic energy would be formidable (hence kinetic weapons)...Use some shaped metalic slug (DU-Depleated Uranium perhaps?) to penetrate the hull, the slug would be turned into molten slag at impact causing large damage.

I wont go into A-M weapons, nukes and other nasties.

Hope i helped

Flounder

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A note on the Ion Cannon and Torpedo. The Torpedo is in reference to a throwback technology. The slow warhead "in the water".

Ion Cannon basically means the same thing as Charged Particle Beam, Blaster, whatever. Ions are charged particles. Mind you, the whole detail thing I don't remember too well so I won't profess to know physics or anything.

I can forsee this thread becoming another tech talk about sci-fi weapons and space travel (hyperspace and warp speed stuff again).

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A note on the Ion Cannon and Torpedo. The Torpedo is in reference to a throwback technology. The slow warhead "in the water".

Ion Cannon basically means the same thing as Charged Particle Beam, Blaster, whatever. Ions are charged particles. Mind you, the whole detail thing I don't remember too well so I won't profess to know physics or anything.

I can forsee this thread becoming another tech talk about sci-fi weapons and space travel (hyperspace and warp speed stuff again).

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A note on the laser weapons. Lasers don't have to use high energy photons, in fact visible lasers don't use high energy photons at all, they use photons in the visible light range. For high energy laser weaponry more energetic photons could be used such as ultra violet or X-ray but the real killer weapons would be gamma ray lasers (grasers ). The problem with these gamma ray lasers is that you need a lot of focussing material and it is hard to produce a very powerful coherent gamma ray laser.

Interestingly most weapons don't need to melt or boil their target (but that doesn't stop them from doing so) but can cause a lot of their damage from explosive decompression effects (or even just plain explosive effects). The kinetic weapons with no warhead are ultimately liable just to punch a hole right through the enemy craft (not that this would be a bad thing).

Futuristic weapons that rely on anti-matter of even anti-gravitons could be the truely destructive weapons as you get to tear the ship apart at the molecular level.

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A note on the laser weapons. Lasers don't have to use high energy photons, in fact visible lasers don't use high energy photons at all, they use photons in the visible light range. For high energy laser weaponry more energetic photons could be used such as ultra violet or X-ray but the real killer weapons would be gamma ray lasers (grasers ). The problem with these gamma ray lasers is that you need a lot of focussing material and it is hard to produce a very powerful coherent gamma ray laser.

Interestingly most weapons don't need to melt or boil their target (but that doesn't stop them from doing so) but can cause a lot of their damage from explosive decompression effects (or even just plain explosive effects). The kinetic weapons with no warhead are ultimately liable just to punch a hole right through the enemy craft (not that this would be a bad thing).

Futuristic weapons that rely on anti-matter of even anti-gravitons could be the truely destructive weapons as you get to tear the ship apart at the molecular level.

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Weapons

Some very nice points.

Heres' a couple more:

1) If you read Dan Simmons's "Hyperion" series he actually has some very good weapon description, specially weapon usage.

2) Explosive decompression...Catastrophic, true. But Like sea going war ships, any starship would be devided with compartments to prevent a single hit-kill scenerio. Which means you need cutting beams a-la the battle crab 8) Or your gonna lance the other guy and play the lance all over the ship to get sufficint hull dammage.

3) Kinetic weapons are the way to go. Assuming you have the technology to move fast (and i mean FAST) all you need is an engine, fuel and guidence. The war head could be anything! Fly fast enough, and we are talking fracions of C here, the energy release will be awesome. Even with non-reletavistic speeds there were ideas and talks about space based weapon platforms that will lob projectiles from LEO, there would be a small burn to send the projectile into the atmosphere, terminal guidence would be achived using flight surfaces (fins) and that thing could take out any ground based vehicle or target. It was/is the ultimate weapon against large armor formations (Cluster munitions from heck). I think Niven described such an engagment in "Footfall" The only problem with kinetic weapons in space is that to achive the speeds we are talking about the burn times are very long, and are a dead give-away, such a missile is easily defeated, you just lance it, at the speed of light.

Flounder

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Registered: Oct 2001
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Weapons

Some very nice points.

Heres' a couple more:

1) If you read Dan Simmons's "Hyperion" series he actually has some very good weapon description, specially weapon usage.

2) Explosive decompression...Catastrophic, true. But Like sea going war ships, any starship would be devided with compartments to prevent a single hit-kill scenerio. Which means you need cutting beams a-la the battle crab 8) Or your gonna lance the other guy and play the lance all over the ship to get sufficint hull dammage.

3) Kinetic weapons are the way to go. Assuming you have the technology to move fast (and i mean FAST) all you need is an engine, fuel and guidence. The war head could be anything! Fly fast enough, and we are talking fracions of C here, the energy release will be awesome. Even with non-reletavistic speeds there were ideas and talks about space based weapon platforms that will lob projectiles from LEO, there would be a small burn to send the projectile into the atmosphere, terminal guidence would be achived using flight surfaces (fins) and that thing could take out any ground based vehicle or target. It was/is the ultimate weapon against large armor formations (Cluster munitions from heck). I think Niven described such an engagment in "Footfall" The only problem with kinetic weapons in space is that to achive the speeds we are talking about the burn times are very long, and are a dead give-away, such a missile is easily defeated, you just lance it, at the speed of light.

Flounder

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In footfall, I believe they used a who wack of X-Ray lasers too

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In footfall, I believe they used a who wack of X-Ray lasers too

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As you may have seen from such films as Armageddon and Deep Impact even if you destroy a large kinetic object, the mass remains just in smaller pieces so using weapons like this against stationary (in relative terms) bases would be a nightmare to defend because they can't avoid them.

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As you may have seen from such films as Armageddon and Deep Impact even if you destroy a large kinetic object, the mass remains just in smaller pieces so using weapons like this against stationary (in relative terms) bases would be a nightmare to defend because they can't avoid them.

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if you nuke a asteroid enough, the pieces will be so small, they'll burn up.

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if you nuke a asteroid enough, the pieces will be so small, they'll burn up.

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Ahhhh, but that's the beauty of using kinetic weapons in space - no atmosphere to burn the object up.

Also, having an atmosphere that burns the objects up still doesn't reduce the transfer of momentum, it effectively just spreads the impact over a very, very large area.

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Ahhhh, but that's the beauty of using kinetic weapons in space - no atmosphere to burn the object up.

Also, having an atmosphere that burns the objects up still doesn't reduce the transfer of momentum, it effectively just spreads the impact over a very, very large area.

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So the basic gist is, in space combat you are either very good, or very dead.

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Yup...without something getting invented like shields, pretty much a pebble can rip right through the thickest armor and out the other side.

JMS said something about having some sort of integrity web around ships to help protect themselves against beams and impacts. Not well, but a bit.

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