Re: TNE: Antimatter Missiles

Well you should probably assume that some of the damage resistance of
a surface feature or armor is its ability to conduct heat away from
the place where the laser is hitting so the temperature doesn't get
too high.  This is not of particularly too much help when half the
hull is recieving energy at the same time.

1MJ/cm^2 is a pretty high energy density.  Enough in fact, to melt 34
cm of iron.  Even assuming a really polished surface and better
properties than Iron, this is going to really screw up your average
antenna.  And a 10MT antimatter warhead is a lot cheaper I'm sure than
some ship designed to clean off the antennas from an enemy ship.
Heck, fusion weapons that size aren't too hard or expensive to build.
Certainly a 10MT weapon is going to be unfriendly.  I doubt your
antenna can take the energy involved with vaporizing 3.4m of iron.  I
don't have TNE but I doubt that the antenna arrays weigh enough that
you can claim that they have enough mass/thickness to withstand that,
and it strikes me as unlikely that the entire hull of the ship is
thermally superconducting.

Exploding missiles also have the advantage that it's easier to hit
with them than with det lasers.  (Oh, look, the missile is within
100km, time to detonate!)

And if the antennae can withstand this sort of treatment, that brings
up all sorts of interesting things you can do with the technology :-)

        -Love, Kisses, and a Neutron Bomb
                -Eric the Finn