Advanced Question Starship Weaponry

[Hielor]

I think we should be more concerned with the Chinese government than the no longer existent Soviet Empire (Soviet Union). But the weapons are only to be used for self defence, if nessissary, they can be used in war. But once I build the starship, I plan on quickly retiring it for a starship that can get to Mars and back to Earth without the stage one rocket while having at least 15% of it's fuel left to give for a greater margin for error.

Weapons with a range of 20 million miles are not for "self defense" unless your self defense strategy is to obliterate your entire planet to prevent the other guy from taking it.

 

[TCR_500]

The amount of weaponry aboard the starship to start can be configured with each scenerio. I doubt that the starship will have enough fuel to get an orbit past the asteroid belt. My first use of the weapon will a test that shouldn't destroy anything to endanger any of the planets. Other than that use, I shouldn't have any reason to use it.

 

[garyw]

Not according to your first post.

 

[TCR_500]

I said in a previous post on the first page that the weapons are only for self defence. Here is a list of the weapons the ship can hold and their intended use. Don't fire them at your own ship!

Plasma Pulse: Small Debris items like loose tool bags and paint chips that may pose a threat to the ships hull integrity by vaporizing the threat and nothing else.

Standard Missile: Large asteroids that may pose a threat to the general population of any given area by blowing the asteroid to smaller pieces that may disintegrate in the planets atmosphere or can be destroyed by another missile or a short round of plasma firing.

Anti-Matter Missile: Clear large areas of debris by instantly vaporizing what it hits and a huge area around it. The only way you can reach a point for using one of these is by careless operations on the ship. Carelessness with this weapon can and will result in the destruction of the space craft and everything within 15 million miles of the explosion point and you will probably loose your rank as Captain if you have to use the weapon and you don't blow yourself up first.

 

[Urwumpe]

You might not have understood it: What destroys all in 25 million km distance, also terribly cripples all in 9 times more distance. You wiped out a solar system.

And now tell me: What kind of self-defense is that? Scorched Earth?

 

[TCR_500]

As I said before, need to use such a weapon would be the result of careless operations aboard the starship. However, I may not build any other starship with the capabilities for carrying an anti-matter weapon.

 

[Hielor]

As I said before, need to use such a weapon would be the result of careless operations aboard the starship. However, I may not build any other starship with the capabilities for carrying an anti-matter weapon.

Er, what? "Need to use such a weapon would be the result of careless operations aboard the starship." What does that even mean?

In the real world, careless operations lead to the loss of the ship and (potentially) crew, not the destruction of the solar system.

 

[garyw]

I said in a previous post on the first page that the weapons are only for self defence. Here is a list of the weapons the ship can hold and their intended use. Don't fire them at your own ship!

Plasma Pulse: Small Debris items like loose tool bags and paint chips that may pose a threat to the ships hull integrity by vaporizing the threat and nothing else.

Or you could use a forward disc made of ice blocks. As the debris hits, the ice get's vapourised. This is only really necessary for interstellar travel at speeds about 0.10c

Standard Missile: Large asteroids that may pose a threat to the general population of any given area by blowing the asteroid to smaller pieces that may disintegrate in the planets atmosphere or can be destroyed by another missile or a short round of plasma firing.

Chances of that are.... very, very remote. in 10,000 years of human existence we have seen just a few asteroidal impacts that caused any damage. There are better ways of dealing with an errant asteroid.

Anti-Matter Missile: Clear large areas of debris by instantly vaporizing what it hits and a huge area around it. The only way you can reach a point for using one of these is by careless operations on the ship. Carelessness with this weapon can and will result in the destruction of the space craft and everything within 15 million miles of the explosion point and you will probably loose your rank as Captain if you have to use the weapon and you don't blow yourself up first.

Sounds like it's too risky for anyone to even posess one. Also, sounds like if you are the sort of Captain to need an anti-matter missile then you are exactly the sort of Captain I wouldn't want to see within 15 million miles OF one.

 

[Sky Captain]

Have you tried to calculate how much antimatter would be needed for bomb that big. I`m fairly sure your ship needs to be roughly the size of a Deathstar to actually have enough room to carry that bomb.

 

[TCR_500]

I'm not sure how you got those calculations. One of the shuttles on Voyager has enough firepower in the warp core to make an explosion three times the size I mentioned. Unless there is a huge exageration on the firepower of antimatter in Star-Trek Voyager, all I need to do is make an antimatter reserve in the missile that has a mass only one third the size of that warp core.

 

[Urwumpe]

I'm not sure how you got those calculations. One of the shuttles on Voyager has enough firepower in the warp core to make an explosion three times the size I mentioned. Unless there is a huge exageration on the firepower of antimatter in Star-Trek Voyager, all I need to do is make an antimatter reserve in the missile that has a mass only one third the size of that warp core.

Star-Trek is physically non-sense - the energy output of a warp core is never the same between two episodes of the same series. If you want to play Star Trek, the reference to Bridge Commander already happened in the thread.

Also, how do you want to define destruction in your model? Lets say you assume a fictional material called handwavium, which makes up the hull of your enemies ships. This has thermodynamic properties, which are beyond what we have today. Now you calculate, how much radiation you would have to produce, so enough energy arrives at the enemy ship to destroy it.

To give you an idea about the dimensions: Titanium has a melting enthalpy of 400 J/g. This means, for melting one Gram of Titanium, you need an energy of 400J. Ideally in a short burst, so you don't loose energy by radiation from the heated target.

Melting a spacecraft weighting 750,000 tons and being made only of Titanium would take 750,000,000,000 g * 400 J/g = 300,000,000,000,000 J or 300 TJ (Terajoule) energy.

Now, lets assume your explosion energy follows the inverse square law (as you stated the destruction region is spherical). We assume a fireball radius of 25 km as source of the radiation, for making my math simpler (I did not calculate this radius, but do it better).

25,000,000 km away from the explosion center, the energy is 300 TJ. 25 km away, or one million times closer, the energy in the same solid angle needs to be one million squared higher: 1 Trillion times higher (12 zeros more).

Instead of 300 TJ, you will get 300 YJ (300 Yottajoule, a bit less than the energy produced by our sun every second) - and that in each small surface area of the fireball. If your target ship was 1 km large, this means a solid angle of 1/25,000,000 ~ 4.000E-08 radians. The surface area of a full sphere is 4 * Pi * radius^2, about 100 million times higher.

So, the full energy of your antimatter/matter warhead is 300 YJ * 4*Pi/4.000E-8 or 9.425E+34 Joule. Now, we can use the mass energy equivalence (Einsteins E=mc²) to calculate the minimum mass of the warhead:

m = 1.049D+18 kg.

If you think, this is now peanuts:

Our moon is only 7.3477D+22 kg. 70,000 warheads would weight as much as the moon. And this is a minimum mass.

You release as much energy in one explosion, as our sun in 11 years!

Do you now see why people don't like what you are want? Not only that you want brute force - getting your rocket from Earth to moon would already require the mass equivalent of a small natural satellite.

It is so unlogical, that only the disciples of Roddenberry could like it.

 

[TCR_500]

Now I understand. But a spacecraft of that much mass would alter the orbit of just about anything that the craft gets close to. I'm not going to build an antimatter weapon that powerful. If I scaled down the weapon to an explosion radius of about 7,000 miles, then could one of those weapons fit inside a small spacecraft. Let's see, that's about 2000 times less powerful than the original disign. The mass should be somewhat linear in some way.

 

[Ghostrider]

Besides, why do you want to use a Nova Bomb when a rifle bullet is enough to kill your opponent?

 

[garyw]

And why do you want a starship to go to Mars? Why would such a ship need weapons?

 

[Eagle]

Besides, why do you want to use a Nova Bomb when a rifle bullet is enough to kill your opponent?

Nova Bomb requires less accuracy.

You could go bird hunting with a stick (1ft long 1/2 in diameter is more than enough to throw or swing), BB gun, shotgun, or 4,000 lbs of C4. Any of the above will kill a bird. Some have different range and accuracy requirements.

 

[TCR_500]

In space, a bullet will only penitrate cirtain amounts of armor. Once the armmor exceeds that limit, you'll need something more powerful. And if something large enough came to threaten the ship, an antimatter missile could be very usefull. And I'm now I'm thinking of an explosion radius of only a few hundred miles. Which is perfect for defeating the death star as someone mentioned it earlyer and there would be no threat to any planets in the solor system unless you are within a few hundred miles of it.

 

[garyw]

In space, a bullet will only penitrate cirtain amounts of armor. Once the armmor exceeds that limit, you'll need something more powerful. And if something large enough came to threaten the ship, an antimatter missile could be very usefull. And I'm now I'm thinking of an explosion radius of only a few hundred miles. Which is perfect for defeating the death star as someone mentioned it earlyer and there would be no threat to any planets in the solor system unless you are within a few hundred miles of it.

So, in your run from Earth to Mars you expect to run into the deathstar..... :lol:

 

[insane_alien]

In space, a bullet will only penitrate cirtain amounts of armor. Once the armmor exceeds that limit, you'll need something more powerful.

That is what RKV's are for. you can even deliver MORE than the mass equivalent energy too.

 

[Urwumpe]

In space, a bullet will only penitrate cirtain amounts of armor. Once the armmor exceeds that limit, you'll need something more powerful. And if something large enough came to threaten the ship, an antimatter missile could be very usefull.

The first part is almost right, the second not absolutely wrong and the last one is a result of your lack of experience in military science.

1. Armor thickness is not linear to the protection. The M1A2 armor can stop kinetic energy penetrators, but is offering less protection against HEAT projectiles than the lighter and slightly thinner armor of the Leopard 2 tank. Important is also against which target you employ it.

Against your Antimatter missile, a roughly 20 centimeter thick layer of polyethylene foam would be enough for protecting the spacecraft even at close distance to the explosion. But the same armor would be an epic fail against a kinetic energy weapon.

2. More powerful is not only bigger calibers. Like the first part had shown, armor protects only against a special set of dangers. And these armors don't combine - in the typical worst case, a good protection against one kind of danger turns into an amplifier for damage from another source. A 30mm rail gun projectile battering against a M1A2 would destroy the tank even without penetrating the armor - the supersonic shock waves inside the armor would cause separation on the inside (The inner layer of the armor would explode inwards).

And like I have also shown: Pure energy release is not enough. You also need to direct the damage against the target. A kinetic energy dart works by concentrating the whole kinetic energy of the projectile onto a very small surface, creating a very powerful concentrated shock wave in the armor, while also having the pressure to coldly form the armor out of the path.

3. Wrong. The complete package is important. Not only the armor and the gun/missile, but also how you can move it. A main battle tank does not mount the strongest gun (artillery does that) or the thickest armor (bunkers and fixed emplacements can do that better), or has the fastest propulsion system, but it has the best combination of all three. It is well armored, has a good weapon and is fast enough to deploy the weapon and improve the chances of the armor protecting it.

Your antimatter weapon system, for example, would be like a WW2 battleship. Like the Yamato. The strongest of the strongest. The thickest armor, the best guns. Yet, it was defeated by many small planes. While you try to move in position to deploy it, the enemy can already destroy you with spacecraft, which have a far better combination of offensive powers, defensive systems, sensors and propulsion.

 

[Nerull]

You are creating an advanced physics simulator, or so you claim. Why are you getting your physics from Star Trek?

Antimatter isn't a sci-fi concept. It has real properties governed by real physics, not TV shows.