Laser battles in space.
POSTED BY: Hjermsted
UPDATED: Monday, March 22, 2004 21:20
VIEWED: 21470
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The Prime Advantage to Lasers:
Lasers travel at the speed of light.
Railguns will not ever be able to propel anything at the speed of light. Particle accelerators can scarcely do the job. But you're talking about throwing SLUGS, not individual atoms or electrons.
In Slower Than Light applications, Lasers leave almost no room to maneuver. There is no way to evade or intercept a laser. Only armoring systems would be useful.
A slug from a railgun could take several seconds to impact a target, and thus be evadable or interceptable. THAT is why people use lasers in Sci-Fi shows in space. They are FAST, virtually instantaneous impact weapons.
--Anthony
"Those who beat their swords into plowshares usually end up plowing for those who didn't."
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
-Benjamin Franklin
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Quote:
Originally posted by Cartagia:
Also, you are assuming that there wouldn't be an increase in defensive technology as well. Against projectiles, it is possible that some form of Aegis system could be developed that can reduce or negate that weapons system. The same is true for laser and beam weapons.
Ye canne change the laws of physics Captain. Once an object starts going it requires an equal and opposite force to stop it. A ball of metal is not like a missile it has a lot of mass to stop and doesn't explode if hit
It would be easier to "upgun" a mass-driver to fire a faster or more massive projectile than it would be to design something to stop one
Eventually ships would just be built around the darn things I'd think
Quote:
Originally posted by Cartagia:
I think the best use of beam weapons in scifi was on Babylon 5 where instead of just pointing the laser at the target to punch a hole, they would slash with them to cut a ship.
To "slash" a ship you need to be able to cut through the hull very fast which means a very powerful beam weapon
If you've got the wattage why not chuck something that will total the ship with one blow rather than take time carving it up giving it time to fire back?
They did use Mass-Drivers on B5 by the way. I think the Centauri used them to pulverise the Narn homeworld from orbit. They'd be better suited for that than directed energy weapons and unlike nukes don't leave fallout
Quote:
Originally posted by Cartagia:
The other benefit of beam weapons over projectiles is no need for ammunition. No chance of a stray shot igniting a magazine and detonating the ammo. There would probably be higher energy consumption to deal with.
Mass-Driver ammo wouldn't explode, it's just inert metal. Actually if you were creative you'd have the spare ammunition stored just under the hull or around the powerplant because it could actually be considered supplementary armour
Oh good grief I'm really going to get carried away with this now
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Also, incidentally...
No slug is more stealthy than a laser, which must actually strike you before you can detect it. No stealth coating, no nothing. It hits you, and you know its there.
No radar or sensing apparatus can detect it before impact.
--Anthony
"Those who beat their swords into plowshares usually end up plowing for those who didn't."
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
-Benjamin Franklin
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Quote:
Originally posted by Hotpoint:
Never understood why people would use Lasers in space anyway? If you've got the power use it to run a Railgun/Mass Driver
You get infinite range and imagine the damage you could cause with a steel ball say 250mm across moving at tens of thousands of miles an hour
Also, remember that at a fast enough speed even a speck of dust is a danger in space. Instead of your 250mm steel ball, instead fire a 2.5mm ball. If your rail gun can fire enough of these at a very high speed and velocity then it would make a very dangerous weapon. Try hitting a cloud of those with a laser! The only problem is that such a small warhead might be effected by local gravity fields (which perhaps could be compensated for), making it a short range weapon.
Also, since artificial gravity exists in the Firefly universe, perhaps they have some sort of deflector system (NOT "shields") used to alter gravity around incoming warheads or missiles, causing them to veer off course and miss.
Hans
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Quote:
Originally posted by Hotpoint:
Quote:
If you've got the wattage why not chuck something that will total the ship with one blow rather than take time carving it up giving it time to fire back?
Because throwing a slow moving boulder at a ship is useless if the ship can evade it. In the world of space travel, even a high speed massdriver is a turtle compared to light. Incidentally, you do know that we have terawatt range lasers currently in operation, right?
Quote:
They did use Mass-Drivers on B5 by the way. I think the Centauri used them to pulverise the Narn homeworld from orbit. They'd be better suited for that than directed energy weapons and unlike nukes don't leave fallout.
You are right about massdrivers being suitable to planetary bombardment. Both for the reasons you mentioned, and because they are slow, cumbersome weapons best used against large, stationary targets.
Once again, remember that we are not speaking of hitting tanks or navy ships. We are speaking of hitting objects traveling at fractions of the speed of light, at possible ranges of tens of thousands of kilometers.
--Anthony
"Those who beat their swords into plowshares usually end up plowing for those who didn't."
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
-Benjamin Franklin
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Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
The Prime Advantage to Lasers:
Lasers travel at the speed of light.
A slug from a railgun could take several seconds to impact a target, and thus be evadable or interceptable. THAT is why people use lasers in Sci-Fi shows in space. They are FAST, virtually instantaneous impact weapons.
Well you have to see the slug coming for a start to evade it and as I said you'd fire lots of them to allow for manoevering.
If you were facing ships with very high drive output relative to their mass they are likely to be lightly armoured so fire canister shot from the Railgun that shatters into a cloud of ballbearings all still going roughly the same direction.
Time the charge in the cannister so the cloud is several miles across say by the time they reach where the target is expected to be to allow for attempted evasion
Like I said. It's unsubtle but it would work
Cannister shot in a defensive role would also render missile technology a bit obsolete. You could chuck storms of the stuff out to knock out incoming missiles which unlike big inert metal balls would explode when hit. The Russians use a similiar idea on a current tank design to take out incoming Anti-Tank Missiles
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Hurrah, hurrah, when things are at their worst
With cries of “Death or Glory” comes the mighty Twenty-First
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Quote:
Originally posted by Hans:
Instead of your 250mm steel ball, instead fire a 2.5mm ball. If your rail gun can fire enough of these at a very high speed and velocity then it would make a very dangerous weapon. Try hitting a cloud of those with a laser!
Hans
Smaller = easyer to melt away with a laser. So you set your ship's defensive lasers to a wide beam and fire at close range, the balls melt, impact the hull and cool forming new armor on your ship.
Or you just head right for the cloud, and punch a hole in it for you ship to get though.
The Firefly CCG Web Site:
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/Bllm119/firefly_ccg_web_site.htm
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Canister shot may seem like a great idea, until you realize some fundamental realities about space.
Space is huge. If you use canisters that disperse over an area of miles, there will be hundreds of meters of space that are safe for travel within the dispersion 'cloud.' Plus, this would only be effective if the canister is detonated close to the target. Once again, the canister becomes evadable.
You *might* be able to make a massdriver weapon undetectable, but a laser weapon is by definition both undetectable and un-evadable.
Can you imagine the frustration at chasing an enemy ship, trying to pummel them with massdriver shells, and all they have to do to evade you is accelerate? They don't even need to dodge. And God Forbid that you accelerate to match their speed... and impact your own previously fired massdriver ammunition. (This has actually happened to jet planes firing cannon at an enemy jet.)
You can't accelerate faster than light, without using some special FTL technology.
While agree that massdrivers may be useful Sci-Fi weaponry, I don't see them as inherently superior to lasers, most especially not in the area of ship-to-ship combat. I'd rather have a particle accelerator.
--Anthony
"Those who beat their swords into plowshares usually end up plowing for those who didn't."
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
-Benjamin Franklin
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Quote:
Originally posted by Hotpoint:
Cannister shot in a defensive role would also render missile technology a bit obsolete. You could chuck storms of the stuff out to knock out incoming missiles which unlike big inert metal balls would explode when hit.
Not if missiles are equiped with counter-anti-missile defense systems. Equip a big ship kill'in torpedo/missile with defensive lasers and mass drivers, give it a real time remote link to its mother ship so it can be guided around and/or throgh any intercepion mesures.
This may sound excessive (building what abounts to a small ship with a bomb on it) but in reality it isn't, after all a modern UGM-109 Tomahawk is just a small plane with a bomb, and a preditor UAV is a small combat plane.
The Firefly CCG Web Site:
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/Bllm119/firefly_ccg_web_site.htm
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Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Also, incidentally...
No slug is more stealthy than a laser, which must actually strike you before you can detect it. No stealth coating, no nothing. It hits you, and you know its there.
No radar or sensing apparatus can detect it before impact.
"Captain somebody is warming up our armoured hull with a Laser"
"Fire back"
OR
"Captain there's a Mass-Driver round incoming! Impact in 3, 2..."
"Crap!"
Sorry couldn't resist that one. As for Terrawatt powered Lasers well for the foreseeable future (next few centuries) I don't see us having that kind of power-output
Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Once again, remember that we are not speaking of hitting tanks or navy ships. We are speaking of hitting objects traveling at fractions of the speed of light, at possible ranges of tens of thousands of kilometers.
Hmmmm. I'd think any decent design would be stealthy enough that engagements wouldn't be at a fraction of that range because you can't actually see or target the damn things until they're a lot closer
...................................
Hurrah, hurrah, when things are at their worst
With cries of “Death or Glory” comes the mighty Twenty-First
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