Laser battles in space.
POSTED BY: Hjermsted
UPDATED: Monday, March 22, 2004 21:20
VIEWED: 21470
PAGE 9 of 9
In "Out of Gas" we simply don't see the ship move because the camera is moving with the ship. We see nothing that tells us the ship is moving or not. The fact is the ship is moving to slow to see any stars moves and the only other thing to tells us if Serenity is moving is the other ship and it is matching the movement of the Serenity.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
The ship destroyed in "Bushwacked" is seen getting hit by glowing green speres which leave some kind of gas behind. They appear to move slowly.
We could only be able to see the drive transients of whatever weapon that is. By which I mean that there could be a missile/pod in front of the green orb, which is not visible at the distance shown. It could be a very thin little sliver of black, or a little black sphere*. So the weapon could NOT be the green orb, or it could be that the orb WAS the weapon and we seeing at all armed up and ready to detonate. So the there could be a plasma field generator inside that orb, but I beg to differ.
(*The missiles used by the fighter were atmospheric missiles, they needed to be aerodynamic)
'Space' Missiles, by which I mean guided anti ship weapons, should probably be very stealthy and fairly smart. They should be able to lie in wait for a target, stealthed, with only passive sensors operating. They would then activate when their target was inside their range, based upon the velocity of that target (like would they be capable of altering their relative velocity to match that of tthe target enough for their payload to be effective). That implies that they would need to be smart to do this, and have fairly good sensors that could detect a target in time for them to intercept it.
Of course the faster a target is going the narrower their intercept window. This isn't SF level stuff though anti aircraft missile batteries do this now. Yet it could be that a sufficiently fast ship could be traveling too fast for a stealthy missile/mine to kill it, unless that ship had the extreme misfortuine to essentially run into the detonation radius of the missile/mine. Like a direct hit from a flak gun in WWII. Rare. Given the volume and distances in space, very, very rare.
Since the missile/mine may in fact be directed at a maneuvering target, BY a maneuvering target, or sewn near a likely avenue of approach, or deployed from a moving ship in the general direction of an area of space that should be denied to an enemy, they may be in several shapes or sizes to accommodate the mission parameters. They would probably be as spherical as possible, so that they could move in any direction without stressing any major components, and stow easier when they were, umm, stowed. Hmm, littlel cigar shapes stack the best in contained environments. They COULd be little cigar shpaes then, or maybe M&M shapes. Mmm, M&MS.
Or they could simply be multi mission munitions, all the same size and shape. The user would simply dial in the necessry mission profile (or the munition would) and let fly. A close in taget that is moving slowly could be a profile wherein the missile would move slowly also, ensuring maximal weapon effects.
Why slowly? Well, this is suppositional, but I think that such a weapon would eat itself as it moved. The net energy effects would depend upon how much energy was left in the weapon plus its velocity upon impact, in one type of scenario. So at short range, my missile would move slowly (non moving target and slow moving firing platform-the Alliance cruiser) still have lots of Balonium left in its engine core/tanks/ magnetic bottle, and then make a nice biiig energy transfer when it reached its lethal radius (the ship that was shot in Bushwacked)
The same weapon may have to expend energy to pursue a faster target but would or could have collateral effects related to its velocity -shrapnel if it is an area effect weapon or atraight up impact if it needs to be contact with something solid and THEN detonate whatever Balonium was left in its tanks.
So at extreme velocities, it would simply be a chunk of mass, with very little maneuvering ability since it expnded all of its Balonium getting there.
Considering the distances that engagements could occur in space (and they are orders of magnitude over what we see in any conflicts here on earth) there should be two arming modes-area effect and point impact. The deadliness of a given detonation would be related to how much energy+B
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Nice ideas Kugelblitz. That's a possibility we never considered before. Though I can't see the use in having a big green trail on a missile, or a laser, for that matter. While it would help you target, you could just give all gunners, pilots and commanders a monoculer that would fill in the weapon trails along with tactical information, like Apache helicopter pilots use today. Though it certainly wouldn't look as cool, and this is a TV show. 
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Absolutely, launch transients are a big no no.
Yet they look reeeeally cool to the laymen.
"We are exporting democracy because we have all of this unused democracy lying around at home. Why not make some money doing it?"
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME