X-ray lasers, gravitic lenses

[Forwarded to [email removed].  Came to traveller-request alone.
Watch the auto-reply address, Ed -- James]

>From: [email removed] (Stephen Camp)
>Subject: Brilliant Lances Design Notes & Gravitic focusing...
>Date: Sun, 5 Dec 1993 19:00:10 -0700 (MST)

>If gravitic focusing really throws their system out of whack, I guess
>I'd
>rather have beam weapons restricted in range to tens of thousands of
>kilometers.  Then you'd have to get close to do some damage, or you'd
>have to rely on missiles more.

I also have a problem with the way CT/MT/T:TNE treated artifical
gravity.  I did a little digging in my trusty physics book and found
that there isn't any unique diffculty in creating a X-ray pulse.
(Obviously so since it is routinely used in medical and engineering
equipments.)  Anyway, I found that if a heat source can be maintained at
a temperature of 483000 Kelvin (I see a plasma here) about 66% of the
energy it radiates will be in the upper x-ray band (about 6 x 10-9
meters).  With proper cooling and using the same technolgy used to
confine the much hotter plasma found in fusion reactors, So big
shipmounted x-ray lasers ahould be possible at relatively low tech
levels.

As far as pointing the beam it would be much easier and simpler to
float the emitter mechanism using magnetic suspension technology.
Especially if you game in a "No-Gravity Control" universe...

So In any case, there really isn't any need for the 'gravity lense' in
the current BL.  Imagine a crew person walking by an active grav lense
laser,..THUNK! "Help I've fallen on the ceiling and I can't get down." :))

- -Ed Fok