Hi folks,
Well, all the talk about the subject of high velocity projectiles got me
to thinkin' about it again. (OH NO! I hear you cry, NOT AGAIN!)
Well, for those who don't remember, Here was the basic summary.
Take a Scout ship, accelerate for 18 days @ 2 G's and you reach 10% of the
speed of light. Toss a 10 gram object out the airlock and it will hit
with the equevalent energy of 1 Kiloton of TNT.
Problems: @ .1c navigation can be difficult. A dust particle will rip your
ship to shreds... Sensors won't provide aedequate warning time for course
corrections. The potential energy of the hydrogen fuel (when converted
completely from mass to energy w/100% efficiency) is insufficient to get you
to .1c. There were other problems. I still think if done outside the
eccliptic plane the nav problems could be solved, but that's not really
important.
Well, I got to thinking about this matter again, and wondered just what
energy would be had after just 1 day's worth of acceleration @ 2G's.
Well, with some really rough back of the envelope calculations. (no I didn't
really check my math very well) One comes to the conclusion that one
must increase the mass of the projectile dramatically to keep the energy
the same. So, after 1 day's acceleration instead of 10 grams, you have
to throw 3.25 kilograms out the airlock to still hit the target with 1
kiloton. So, you want that city wiped out? Just throw 3.25 metric tons
out at it for a one megaton yield.
Now while I am willing to conceed that accelerating on a constant vector
for 18 days might get you a speeding ticket, accelerating for ONE day will
have to fall under the category of normal operations for a scout ship.
BOOM!
Scott Kellogg
92 pretenders to the throne on the wall
92 pretenders to the throne
If one of their power bases happens to fall
91 pretenders to the throne on the wall