Eric Moore says (message 7987) that 1 MJ per square centimeter is enough to do
serious damage to antennas. I agree with this, but GDW apparently doesn't.
Their guidline for lasers is that 1 MJ per square cm is about a point of
damage. I think that warships would be built with a different design
philosophy if large nukes were a mainstay of space combat. A missile gets
within 100 km, detonates, and then your blind because all of your antennas are
slag. This isn't exactly a difficult fire control problem either. Antennas
would be designed to better withstand this kind of abuse. A zillion watt
particle accelerator in a jillion ton vessel is useless if you've burnt off all
the antennas. maybe you could look through a porthole and aim??? :)
Large fusion bombs aren't that hard to build, especially at higher tech levels.
They're also MUCH cheaper than antimatter. And even if you want to be
environmentally conscious, there is a known fusion process that is entirely
clean. Boron-11 fusing with a proton (hydrogen nucleus) produces a Carbon-12
nucleus which is stable, and some gamma rays. No positrons, no nasty
radioactive waste. Just soot. Of course for it to be clean is has to be
detonated by inertial confinement (lasers), or by gravitic confinement if you
want to use that tech. And boron-11 isn't even that rare. The other naturally
occuring isotope (B-10 i think) is commonly used in reactor shielding. The
palnt to separate natural boron are already lying around. There's even piles
of Boron-11 already separated. The only catch is that its a lot harder to make
it fuse than the hydogen reactions.
Another design point: forget solid fuel on space missiles. Put a small
powerplant (2 MW) and a 8G HePlaR drive on it. Then you can carry about 100
g-turns of fuel, and fly circles around other missiles. And why not more than
one warhead. The missiles in Brilliant Lances aren't very optimized. Unless
an 8G missile needs 80 points of armor. This is clearly ridiculous. 40cm of
steel on a 7m long missile????? what were they thinking???
Ted Baltz
[email removed]