Leonard Erickson:
>Not necessarily. Fusion rockets don't use all that much fuel, so
>there's not that much exhaust. And space is big. There's a lot of IR
>sources out there too.
A million ton battleship (moderately light by MT standards) pulling 3g's
requires 5000Kg/s of fuel, which produces an energy of 9E16 joules. At
a range of 2000-odd Km, that appears about as bright as the Sun viewed
from Earth-orbit. At 1AU, it is about 16 times as bright as AlphaCent
viewed from Earth-orbit. At combat ranges (500,000Km or less), it is
over 1000,000 times as bright as AlphaCent as viewed from Earth (that's
brighter than the moon!). This will NOT fade into the background!
>Once again, you have to consider the *scale* involved. A fusion rocket
>giving 6 gs of acceleration to a *thousand* ton (mass, not
>displacement!) would be "burning" 10 *kilograms* of fuel per second.
>(assuming the more reasonable Isp of 600,000 instead of the atrociously
>higher one in the rules)(note that a higher Isp *reduces* the fuel
>used)
10Kg/s at Isp 600,000 produces energy equivalent to a 50 KT bomb every
second. This will NOT produce "*small* holes". Unless you define
*small* as comparable to Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Keep in mind that it
takes you 6g rocket 6 seconds to reach 1Km+ altitude. So you'll dump
the equivalent of a 300 KT bomb on the launch site. This will not be
dealt with be "blast pits".
---Steve Higginbotham