fredgiblet wrote:BattleRaptor wrote:You decided to get into the argument with a statement I made in this very thread, the argument was based on the assumption I implied that THE SAME RAILGUN that fires pellet with reduced weight would have double the velocity, and you argued because of inefficiencies it wouldnt
1. You never stated that it would be a vastly different weapon firing the different slug, you said, and I quote "Half the weight double the speed" with no mention of the design of the weapon.
2. It doesn't really make much of a difference anyway.
The problem isn't just inefficiency, it's basic physics. Doubling acceleration while leaving the barrel length the same will get you roughly (IIRC) 1.4 times the muzzle velocity assuming that efficiency stays the same. The end result of that is that to double the velocity you need to increase the barrel length and/or increase the energy. If you do either of those things you are no longer comparing apples to apples, you're comparing
this to
this with predictable results.
Not what I said at all, unless you think cutting up sentences is acceptable.
1.I never said it wasnt, smarty pants.
Weapons however when they change what they fire also need to change, its common sense.
2.If I HALVE a cake, it is half of the original cake.
If a cake is half the size, it is HALF the size of the original not unless specificly mentioned is it part of the orginal.
See the meaning change between half and halve.
Its very important.
sad thing is, my english is horrible.
I also made the mistake of assuming some things would be apparent... which amazingly they were in that you decided to argue how apparent they were and that my statement was wrong based n the assumption that I didnt and thought something I didnt.
If I was not talking about the original Projectile then I wouldnt be talking about the original gun, it wouldnt function, just like almost projectile weapons known to man.
If you change the size of the round, you have to made modifications to the gun.. or use a diffrent weapon.
Common sense I made the mistake of thinking everyone had.
osmium
Your reading must be very poor.
Its Self foccusing abilities currently leave it at diffusing below 9ft.
The plasma has a very low speed, I think its around 120km/s before its no longer self foccusing.
It also has a maxium density before it also tears itself apart.
This is theory mind you.. since they havnt even got it to say Focused for 9ft in testing.
Its also a Example of a Plasma/particle hybrid.
That has very slow maxium possible therorectical speeds.
Has Diffusion greater then modern lasers even if it works in theory, that excludes its use as a particle weapon unless the targeted ship is going to be nice and focus that plasma itself and blow itself up.
I asked for a example in theory or practice that could be upscaled to be a weapon.
MAGBEAM is not.
Also make up your mind.. is it a example of a weapon as I asked for.. or is it not?
Mjolnir is the one that brought up efficiency, and started spouting about Particle weapons being so much better in this regard.
So why should I have to provide citations for such things and he not?
He brought up CRT NOT I, I simply pointed out they are massively inefficent.
So your back of the Envelope calculations dont support it?
What would those be?
Mine
I decided to start with REAL world examples.
37inch CRT old style TV uses 320watts(dimmer then most LCD, but doesnt use any kind of CPU controler to draw extra voltage, that said moden CRT are far more efficent but they switched from the standard CRT to a hybrid)
a 37inch LCD using a CCFL(9% viable light efficiency) uses ~180 watt.(found between 140-190)
LED LCD(20-40% efficiency) 37inch (60 watts, however not as bright as the normal LCD or CRT)
Unlike a CRT the beam is not split up where only the targeted pixel receives the beam and each beam strength(brightness) is controlled the Light falls across the whole LCD panel.
LCD if assumed to be 100% efficient and all pixels are set to max brightness blocks 66% of the total light that hits the rear of the LCD film.
This discounts the fact LCD blocking light even in the spectrum they are supposed to allow it to pass though, and that about 5% of the screen is cell walls that allow no light though, and is ignored in estimation that the LOSS here is about the same as loss of Electrons to similar effects in a CRT. This is ontop of the loss of light from a non 100% reflective surface, and that some of the light hits non reflective parts of the insides of the LCD screen which is most often black, and even escapes entirely.
This gives a LCD screen 3% BEST CASE energy/output to light, that uses less power then the CRT screen of the same size(we also know that for quite a few years LCD screens have been brighter then CRT).
We know that the CRT is using 50% more power so it must only be half as efficent.. 1.5%.
Assuming same brightness which is yet again another averageing that favours the CRT.
Except for the last factor, around 15-30W of a LCD screen it drawn by its electronics such as the CPU.
So non hybrid CRT at (<=)1% is a reasonable conclusion.
As for Electron Microscopes, they have seen over a 3 fold order of magnitude increase in efficiency since the first generation.
They are also a VERY poor examples, efficiency ratings are combined of the Emitter and the receiver, and untill recent methods would make it unfair to even bring them up with rateing in the 0.01% or even less range, now in theory they can get 80% efficiency yet the method is for single atom electron emitters, cant be used for a weapon due to interference between emitters.
osmium wrote:A wonderful statement, but likely wrong and quite hyperbolic. You might melt something, but explode? To note here it might be nice to provide some additional reasons, your thoughts / musings etc. Because at face value this argument is "because I said so" which you'll find rarely flies here.
a 100MW beam based on a Electron Emitter from a CRT design would require 10000MW of energy being transfered almost instantly into a Physical blocking aperture, I did state CRT at less then 1%.
Ship goes BOOM, I thought such things would be as apparent to others as they are to me, my mistake, I apoligise.
Lasty now... the argument has turned into.
The Particle beam doesnt need to acclerate all the particles to the same speed?.
It doesnt matter...
Lets assume a particle beam with a average DIFFRENCE in acceleration of its particles of 10% and of max speed 99% light.
Lets assume at point blank range the particle weapon JUST penetrates with a single shot enemy armor.
Lets also pretend the particle beam isnt a beam but actually a Discreate PELLET and that all particles are fired INSTANTLY.
Lets take Loroi vessal acceleration of 30g as a base for this example.
At one light second such a pellet has now expanded to ~30000 kilometers in length and now takes 0.1 second to fully hit a target.
A Ship at 147m/s relative velocity can move during that .1 of a second 14.7 meters during start to finish of getting hit with the beam.
beams effectiveness now now been droped to ~1/15th of its effective power.
If at point blank range the particles could just penetrate the armor of the ship, it now takes 14.7 shots on the EXACT same location to penetrate.
Now a SHIP would be traveling FAR faster then this... lets take a ship that has undergone 5 seconds of acceleration at 30g.
Its Velocity is 1470m/s.
in 1/10th of a second it Travels 147 meters.
Its now going to take 147 shots of that same particle weapon to penetrate the ships armor assuming it swiped the ship exactly the same spot every time.
Which brings us back to RELATIVE speed.
So far we have only countered ONE ship, but there are infact 2, this means the Relative velocity assuming they both perform equaly could be zero... to 2930m/s.
Which even assuming a beam hits a ship the entire team, the beams effective penetration power can be as low as 1/294th.
Yet in reality it would do even far less damage.
A perfect real world example, armor penetrators.. just a 20% drop in energy can cause them to go from penetrating the target to causing no damage.
I have been extremly generous towards particle weapons in assuming energy/surface area is the only cause of drop in effectiveness.
Particle weapons to actually be effective they need to either fire Particles as descrete packets at the same Relative velocity.
OR
They need to be a continued Beam Operation, which would require such large ammounts of power and mass as to be well.. massively INEFFICENT at anything but short range.
We know this is not the case because we know the destructive energy levels of the outsider beam weapons, we also know there effective range.
A Particle Beam in outsiders that fired over 1 second would be useless agasint a moving dodging target at one light second.
This all comes in before we take into account normal diffusion, over a light second the stream could be 2-3 maybe even 10 times wider, nothing we have today can accheive this.. or even GET in the order of magnitude of it.
Which once again effects how efficient the weapon is, if you are spreading your energy across an area 1/1000th or even GREATER(diffusion+time+speed) what was once a weapon capable of blowing a ship apart at point blank range now is simply recorded on the targeted ship as slight increase in hull temperature.
If weapon focus only tripples at 1 light second, and particle speeds only have a 0.1% variation, Loroi ships with a 20-30second acceleration would become damn near immune to there own particle weapons.
Infact the greatest defense agasint particle weapons of this kind wouldnt be armor or shields but speed.
When we add in the shields that Both Loroi and Umiak ships have.
Fighting with particle weapons that dont fire single homogeneous packets at anything other then point blank ranges(mass driver range) is impossible for the given destructive energy levels given in outsider to cause any reasonble damage to a moving ship.