Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: Nitrogen on October 19, 2009, 02:34:36 AM
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A good friend sent me this website last week, and I killed almost a whole day reading it:
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/
It's basically a physics reference in rocket/starship design, along with explanations on how to "do scifi right" at least as far as science is concerned.
Now it can kill YOUR day...
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Gee, thanks.
I see much unfinished work in my immediate future. =|
DD
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I have posted links to the raygun section before
Kinda interesting to see fantasy being analyzed as authentic processes
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3l.html
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I refuse to click the linky, on the grounds that I would likely get sucked in and not surface for 24 hours.
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I just disappeared from life for about 45 minutes without intending to. THANKS. =( :rolleyes: :lol:
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Being the gun geek that I am, I went to that section first. Low and behold what did I find but this bit of wisdom that would be handy for almost anybody to learn:
Birdshot will not reliably stop a person. It generally causes a flesh wound only. There are no projectiles that will reliably stop a person and not also punch the wall.
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except for frying pans
they tend to stay with in the room they are tossed, unless one uses a mass driver to bring them up to speed
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I have posted links to the raygun section before
Kinda interesting to see fantasy being analyzed as authentic processes
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3l.html
That's exactly the section I read that made me think of you guys. Glad to see it didn't take you long to find it! :laugh:
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I prefer technobabble and deus ex machina.
Seriously, though, the toughest technical part of my writing involves translating the speed of spacecraft into travel times across various distances. For example, how long will it take a craft moving at 900 c to travel 27 light-hours? That one is relatively easy. I've also had to do 1.56 million c over 160,00 light-years. Lots o' zeroes for that one.
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I ended up in a section about stealth in space. It reminded me of the The Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell. They used telescopes to quickly scan a system for other ships and bases. It seemed to follow some of the logic presented in that section.
http://www.amazon.com/Dauntless-Lost-Fleet-Book-1/dp/0441014186
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I prefer technobabble and deus ex machina.
Seriously, though, the toughest technical part of my writing involves translating the speed of spacecraft into travel times across various distances. For example, how long will it take a craft moving at 900 c to travel 27 light-hours? That one is relatively easy. I've also had to do 1.56 million c over 160,00 light-years. Lots o' zeroes for that one.
If you do that, you usually have to focus on other areas like character and story development. (And having read your stuff, thats pretty much it right there.)
IT's interesting that someone put together a nice reference for people that WANT to get it right, but getting it "right" isnt a prerequisite for a good story, either.
Someone else mentioned "The Lost Fleet" series of books; I think that's a great example of the other extreme; wanting to get details like propagation right for thematic effect.
I find the whole thing interesting as a fledgling, aspiring writer.
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Honestly, the Lost Fleet books focus more on leadership than anything else. There are 5 of them so far and I think I read through all 5 in 2 weeks or so which is fast for me. They books also point out the amount of time required to cross a solar system. They do use "jump points" and hyperspace and "drive units", but they still talk about taking days to cross a system at 0.1c and have trouble keep up supplies like food and fuel. A lot of scifi books gloss over a lot of that.
As an aside: I recently finished a book called Freehold by Michael Williamson. It was basically about a planet that is a Libertarian's wet dream against the UN based on Earth. I figured the people on this site would like it a lot.
http://www.amazon.com/Freehold-Michael-Z-Williamson/dp/0743471792/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256003823&sr=1-1
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Great link, Nitrogen. Thanks for posting it.
I'm astounded at how comprehensive and well researched it is.
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except for frying pans
they tend to stay with in the room they are tossed, unless one uses a mass driver to bring them up to speed
First argument I've heard against greater sectional density. =)
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Mech, just in case you didn't already know, Michael Z. Williamson is a regular poster over at THR.us.
My first experience with an author trying to "do it right" was in Heinlein's The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, when the main character and his companion land on the Moon after launching from an orbital station. As someone who rather recently thought delta-V was a fancy kind of bathroom faucet, I was completely lost on the technicalities, and it drew me out of the story. "Fan Service" is all well and good as long as it doesn't seem preachy or smug.
I wrestled with the top speed of my sci-fi ship (1.56 million c ) until I remembered time dilation. I revived the old premise that advanced races could bomb all over the galaxy at insane velocities, but that it wasn't often done because of the seriousness of time dilation. Nobody wants to transport a cargo bay full of Arcturian caviar halfway across the galaxy if it means their families won't see them for decades. This leaves die-hard exploration and the trade of commodities that simply can't be had anywhere else as the only worthwhile long-haul missions.
Ultimately I set the average top speed for most ships at 900 c, which is great for local star systems but impractical for much else. As for the actual effects of time dilation, which can be calculated with Lorenz's equations, they are so far beyond my ability that I've simply resorted to Author's Fiat (aka BS).
And, oh you of seven protons, what kind of stuff do you have in mind?
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And, oh you of seven protons, what kind of stuff do you have in mind?
We're all such geeks. :lol:
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I like the fact that the section on sidearms includes both a picture of Malcolm Reynolds' pistol AND a picture of Spaceman Spiff's blaster. :lol:
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As an aside: I recently finished a book called Freehold by Michael Williamson. It was basically about a planet that is a Libertarian's wet dream against the UN based on Earth. I figured the people on this site would like it a lot.
http://www.amazon.com/Freehold-Michael-Z-Williamson/dp/0743471792/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256003823&sr=1-1
I read this book, and loved the depiction of the society presented there. I'd love to live in a society like that, I just think it's impossible, because humans would eventually have to live in it.
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I like the fact that the section on sidearms includes both a picture of Malcolm Reynolds' pistol AND a picture of Spaceman Spiff's blaster. :lol:
A friend has an original Whitney Wolverine, as listed on the page as an example of sci-fi art-deco lines. I never fired it, but it was the most comfortable and ergonomicaly pointing pistol I have EVER held.
I know Olympic makes a new all polymer copy of it, and it's not very expensive, but I've heard lots of bad reviews, at least anecdotally. =(
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And, oh you of seven protons, what kind of stuff do you have in mind?
My basic idea is something along the lines of "Dies the fire" except instead of modern technology all of a sudden no longer working, ancient mythical artifacts, superstition, magic, etc START working.
One of the story ideas i'm working on within that framework is a "second civil war", with new "technology" that nullifies the current military advantage of entrenched forces.
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My basic idea is something along the lines of "Dies the fire" except instead of modern technology all of a sudden no longer working, ancient mythical artifacts, superstition, magic, etc START working.
One of the story ideas i'm working on within that framework is a "second civil war", with new "technology" that nullifies the current military advantage of entrenched forces.
It's been done, perhaps the earliest was "Waldo and Magic" the double novella compendium from Heinlen.
I think the neatest thing you could do would be to work really hard to put magic in a modern context, such as mass advertising, bureaucratic red-tape etc. Harry Potter touches on this a bit... but they still dress it up in gothic/baroque trappings.. wizard robes etc.
I'm thinking "Harry Potter" meets the banality of "Office Space", with YouTube and a healthy dose of 4chan (the non-revolting parts) thrown in. Kids over-using texting spells etc.
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My basic idea is something along the lines of "Dies the fire" except instead of modern technology all of a sudden no longer working, ancient mythical artifacts, superstition, magic, etc START working.
One of the story ideas i'm working on within that framework is a "second civil war", with new "technology" that nullifies the current military advantage of entrenched forces.
Larry Correia (Of Monster Hunter International fame) is working on a book like that. It's called The Grimnoir Chronicles. Basically magic makes a sudden comeback in the mid 19th century, and history diverges from that point on.
If you're looking for something sort of like what you're describing (magic AND guns), check out the Dresden Files series.
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Just pulling ideas from thin air:
A combination plasma rifle/rail gun. A hollow sphere of copper alloy is injected with plasma nanoseconds before being firing. The shell stabilizes the plasma just long enough for the sphere to reach its target, thus delivering both heat energy and kinetic energy to the target.
Total BS, I know, but do any aspects of this idea have merit?
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Just pulling ideas from thin air:
A combination plasma rifle/rail gun. A hollow sphere of copper alloy is injected with plasma nanoseconds before being firing. The shell stabilizes the plasma just long enough for the sphere to reach its target, thus delivering both heat energy and kinetic energy to the target.
Total BS, I know, but do any aspects of this idea have merit?
Heck, I'd go one better:
Magnetically guided plasma, spun and ejected. No shell. That'd be cooler, at least as a short-range sidearm, I think, assuming you can power it.
Personally, I think a particle-beam sidearm would be the bees knees, again, assuming you could power it.
I liked someone's idea of magnetically accelerated projectile weapons, that I read in someones book (it might have been Devonai's actually)
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Contact with anything robs a plasma of it's energy very quickly. And anything that can actually contain enough power to create the plasma is probably better off used as the weapon directly.
Also, in terms of actual damage, good energetic plasmas are a pretty close approximation of what would seem like a hard vaccuum to you or I. At least in terms of in use for a atmospheric/infantry weapon.
Although a thin conductive plasma conduit created by a UV laser can shoot a lethal electrical charge in a very straight line.
Kinetic energy seems "primitive" but it's insanely efficient, at least as compared to energy weaponry. A particle beam is almost impossible in atmosphere, save neutrons, but making that many guided neutrons is darn tough, them being well... neutral and all. =D
Caseless ammo, gasses or liquid fuel powered projectile weapons. (think a cordless butane nail gun) or electromagnetic are probably the most reasonable personal weapons for the forseeable future. Solid-state tactical lasers in the kilowatt range are getting ever miniaturized, there are systems that can fit on a HMMV or small armored car, or even in an F-35 prototype. One that's the size of say a shoulder fired missile/recoiless rifle tube, or perhaps a large broadcast TV camera is concievable in the next 20-30 years, however the power supply is the rub.
Something that was backpack sized that could power such a laser for a reasonable number of shots would revolutionize everything else too. Cell phones that run for a year, laptops a month, "batteries" you could run your house off of etc. And any device with that energy density would also be a halfway decent bomb if it malfunctioned.
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Nitrogen, you didn't read about it in my books! I've always been intentionally vague about alien weaponry, taking the lazy way out (natch). I do mention in my second book that a combination of conventional slugs (30mm and .50 BMG) and energy weapons are particularly effective against ship hulls: The energy weakens the hull and the slugs punch through.
I am hoping to provide more detail on alien weapons for my third book, hence the query. I'm trying to envision something like an Explosively Formed Projectile in the vacuum of space over distance. I was thinking the plasma could dump all of its energy into the copper alloy, turning it into slag, but the timing would be tricky.
AJ, I seem to recall reading that the plasma conduit lasers are easily dispersed by atmospheric interference. Do you think it would work better in space?
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Nitrogen, you didn't read about it in my books! I've always been intentionally vague about alien weaponry, taking the lazy way out (natch). I do mention in my second book that a combination of conventional slugs (30mm and .50 BMG) and energy weapons are particularly effective against ship hulls: The energy weakens the hull and the slugs punch through.
I am hoping to provide more detail on alien weapons for my third book, hence the query. I'm trying to envision something like an Explosively Formed Projectile in the vacuum of space over distance. I was thinking the plasma could dump all of its energy into the copper alloy, turning it into slag, but the timing would be tricky.
AJ, I seem to recall reading that the plasma conduit lasers are easily dispersed by atmospheric interference. Do you think it would work better in space?
It wouldn't work at all. No air in space for the laser to ionize.
Niven had the "Kizinti Lesson" namely: Any spacecraft drive of sufficient efficiency is also equally useful as a weapon. Although it's a pretty short range affair. Except for the one story of the very first Kizinti/Human encounter where the Angel's Pencil uses a photon drive.
Although most drive exhaust products will still disperse quite nicely making "drive weapons" a pretty short range affair. IMO he missed the point that the biggest threat of any ship is it's ability to get up to thrust and let things go which will keep on moving. For instance, a high-thrust "tug" devoid of any cargo pods, and armed with a few bags of sand or gravel and a crewmember to rip them open and toss them out an airlock could really ruin someone's day. =D
As far as the explosively formed warheads, it's neat, but again, all you need is velocity. Even at the modest sub-orbital velocities our ABM prototypes work at don't have any kind of warhead, just an impactor. A weapon system that explodes somehow right before impacting the target is just wasting mass it could be hitting that target with, either in impact mass, or fuel to accelerate that mass. It's not like on Earth in atmosphere where the explosive, such as in a HEAT style conical shaped charge self-forging penetrator can then step up the velocity at the last minute to penetrate an enemy vehicle.
Whatever velocity you put into the system in space, your going to keep until it hits something.
Nukes in space are way less efficient than people would think. Without atmosphere to heat, blast effects are limited to the actual mass of the bomb itself. And the radiation disperses with the inverse square law, just like light from stars or anything else radiating in space would.
Tactical battlefield lasers are making extrordinary leaps, however in space-warfare, you're limited to the minimum divergence to which a laser is physically possible, as defined by it's Rayleigh length, which is a function of it's wavelength and complicated mathematics as it relates to Gaussian beam profiles. Essentialy, this means even a perfect laser will diverge and spread out, given enough distance. You can extend the range, but the emitter diameter needs to be progressively larger to do so.
You can get close to a perfectly parallel colimated beam that needs no focus on it's target, but then you're talking about an ungodly power level.
Missiles and kinetics rule, unless you're postulating extremely high tech levels. If they have armor, just have a row of impactors that will hit in quick succession.
Maybe you could have the self-forging warhead also electromechanically charge a disposable coil-launcher which then flings the projectile. Well... but you're always dealing in energy conversions, which will never be 100% efficient, and all that energy is better put to use to moving the weapon, than fancy ways of launching it.
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Yep, mass plus high velocity is king.
"You have a fancy-shmancy active armor protection system with cutesy little missiles or even a laser? Heh, try stopping a Mach 6.5 telephone pole with them, bucko..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pEU9tHmoOc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwixhQI-r5w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULRsLR1i1yU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7npZtSGw84&feature=related
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOSAT
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Kinetic_Energy_Missile
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LOSAT and CKEM are some seriously scary weapon systems.
No explosives needed. Pure kinetics. The foreshortened angles of most all of the video undermines just how damn FAST those missiles are going. And I love the squeaky riccochet-like squeal they make as they take off.
Those rockets must be experiencing thousands of G's of acceleration. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULRsLR1i1yU&feature=related This one where at 0:15 where a camera pans (I'm guessing a rotating prisim or mirror fired by a pyro...) with the rocket for a second looks almost cartoonish.
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DROOL.
I love the Lockheed-Martin engineers cheering in one of the videos.
This makes me rethink the whole idea of directed energy weapons as standard for space combat. Since I haven't yet explained my own "laser banks" and "plasma cannons," I wonder if I can artfully employ a little bit of harmless retconning, at least for the latter. I can take advantage of the occasional fact that weapons systems get nicknames based on the power source or mechanism of action rather than the projectile.
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DROOL.
I love the Lockheed-Martin engineers cheering in one of the videos.
This makes me rethink the whole idea of directed energy weapons as standard for space combat. Since I haven't yet explained my own "laser banks" and "plasma cannons," I wonder if I can artfully employ a little bit of harmless retconning, at least for the latter. I can take advantage of the occasional fact that weapons systems get nicknames based on the power source or mechanism of action rather than the projectile.
Perhaps a KE missile powered by an on-board ship laser. After initial launch, KE missile drops some material/fuel into a rear venturi and the on-board laser zaps the fuel, setting it off and getting the KE missile to scoot.
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That's not a bad idea.
The idea of using a laser to expand propellant in a combustion/reflection chamber is seriously being considered for getting things into low orbit. And anything good enough to get something into low orbit is certainly useful as a weapon too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_propulsion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAdj6vpYppA
And despite the fact that the system in the video above uses the ambient atmosphere, ablative systems that push a projectile by vaporizing some of it's own mass from the tail end would work well in space.
It also postulates that a CIWS laser does not need to destroy incoming projectiles, it need only laser them enough to create outgassing that pushes them off course for a miss.
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It also postulates that a CIWS laser does not need to destroy incoming projectiles, it need only laser them enough to create outgassing that pushes them off course for a miss.
That's pretty much how the ABL works. It doesn't have to destroy the IRBM/ICBM, just burn through the skin to cause a failure in the boost phase. ;)
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Yeah, it's kind of like if you (carefully) support your entire body weight on an empty aluminum can, then with just one finger flick a tiny dent into one side and WHAMO! =D