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Frangible bullets intended for use on airplanes and in other situations where shooting through walls would be hazardous have existed for ages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glaser_Safety_Slug Worth noting that Air Marshals use standard rounds these days anyway, even though they can easily punch through the side of the plane. As for the thickness of the walls of a spacecraft, mass is always at a premium when it comes to space travel. So while ships like the Roci, Donnager and Anubis are armored, commercial ships like the Cant and Scopuli probably have hulls no more capable of standing up to a bullet than a Soyuz capsule. That being said, if nukes and railguns that can punch through pretty much any armor that you can carry are the main tools of space combat... there may not be much point in armoring your ship very heavily, because you're screwed either way. You may be better off using the extra mass for more point-defense batteries to shoot down incoming missiles, helping to insure you don't get hit in the first place. It's almost a little surprising, given the advances in laser technology in the real world, and the easy abundance of electrical power from the ships' fusion plants, that they don't use laser-based PDS as that might have a chance of vaporizing incoming kinetics as well as missiles.
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Feb 11, 2016 00:17
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Kesper North posted:
Laser in The Expanse are used mostly for communication I believe.
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Feb 11, 2016 00:34
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In ship to ship combat lasers are used for targeting and as a countermeasure to gently caress with your foes targeting abilities. It gets brought up a whole bunch of times in the books.
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Feb 11, 2016 00:46
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etalian posted:You're either some kind of genius Mr. Holden, or you're the luckiest dipshit in the solar system. "I have been severely questioned about these shortcomings, and now must put the question to you: How could one man have slipped through your force's fingers time and time again? How is it possible? This is not some agent provocateur or highly trained assassin we are discussing. Gordon Freeman is a theoretical physicist who had hardly earned the distinction of his Ph.D. at the time of the Black Mesa Incident. I have good reason to believe that in the intervening years, he was in a state that precluded further development of covert skills. The man you have consistently failed to slow, let alone capture, is by all standards simply that--an ordinary man. How can you have failed to apprehend him?"
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Feb 11, 2016 01:18
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Kesper North posted:Frangible bullets intended for use on airplanes and in other situations where shooting through walls would be hazardous have existed for ages: Yeah I've heard of frangible bullets, but in space you wouldn't want little bits of crap flying around after a shot, that'd almost be as bad or maybe worse than a ricochet. But what Toast Museum said about anti-spalling is really super cool, I hadn't even really heard of that but it makes sense as a thing that would exist. You're right that if railguns and rockets can destroy thick armor, why even bother. But you still need thick enough armor to survive travelling through space at speed, especially if there's no shields. Lasers are advancing a lot but laser weapons are still pretty highly impractical, it just uses too much energy to sustain a beam of the right power. Its possible we'll make a breakthrough at some point but makes sense to me that they use railguns instead for the most part. But yeah you'd think they'd have tons of anti-rocket lasers. As far as kinetics though, hitting a railgun slug travelling at speed in the middle of space could just be really hard to do. Plus depending upon the ranges for the railguns and the lasers, could be prohibitively expensive to make a strong enough beam to hit it before its really close and then at speed you wouldn't have long to melt it or throw off its trajectory. Popcornicus posted:"I have been severely questioned about these shortcomings, and now must put the question to you: So in the MMORPG version of The Expanse, Holden was the main character?  That explains a lot actually.
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Feb 11, 2016 01:20
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I'm gonna guess that even with a super high energy laser that melts metal within milliseconds and has the range to have those milliseconds in which to heat a tungsten block moving at some insane velocity it wouldn't be incredibly effective to just melt it down cause it's gonna keep its momentum and trajectory and mess your poo poo up pretty good. Ballistic and explosive point defenses at least have a rather good chance to significantly alter the trajectory of the projectile.
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Feb 11, 2016 01:27
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48 Hour Boner posted:Laser in The Expanse are used mostly for communication I believe. On a random note communication by laser will go big in terms of space communications https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-engineers-tapped-to-build-first-integrated-photonics-modem/ NASA also has big interest in the technology as way to improve data rates for their interplanetary probes
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Feb 11, 2016 01:41
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The Epstein drive is a fusion plant. Power is not a problem. The mass savings of not having to carry ammunition and never running out of ammunition unless your powerplant fails is a pretty big plus for a space weapon, IMO.
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Feb 11, 2016 01:43
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Kesper North posted:The Epstein drive is a fusion plant. Power is not a problem. The mass savings of not having to carry ammunition and never running out of ammunition unless your powerplant fails is a pretty big plus for a space weapon, IMO. I liked the "doesn't stop velocity, just converts payload to molten metal" suggestion
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Feb 11, 2016 01:44
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Power isn't a problem if you ignore the fact that the Donnager had to shut down systems to power up its rail guns.
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Feb 11, 2016 01:47
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Zaphod42 posted:
ISS has been traveling through space at speed for years and years, it's fine, and you could push a screwdriver through most of its skin. poo poo that's traveling through space that you can't see is small particulate stuff, when it hits it's going to vaporize. Thick enough armor to stop it penetrating is going to be ridiculously heavy, that's not what you do. You want what's called a Whipple shield:  A thin (light) sacrificial outer layer. The micrometeor impacts against that, explodes, and now spreads its impact over a wider area of the hull. If you like you could stuff the gap with kevlar fabric or whatever. For big poo poo, well, either you see it coming and avoid it, or you don't see it coming and it goes through you, because carrying enough armor to stop a big object traveling at a few 10s of kps ain't happening. But most of space is really empty quote:Lasers are advancing a lot but laser weapons are still pretty highly impractical, it just uses too much energy to sustain a beam of the right power. If you've got fusion engines of the performance in these books, you've got plenty of power, the fact that they use railguns instead of lasers is for flavor. I mean, railguns are advancing a lot but they're still highly impractical, there's just too much barrel wear due to arcing - you've got to handwave just as much stuff to make a real practical railgun for a spaceship as you to to make space laser weapons. Heck, in the books they even mention at one point when one ship was any closer to another that the communications laser could burn a hole in the hull. emanresu tnuocca posted:I'm gonna guess that even with a super high energy laser that melts metal within milliseconds and has the range to have those milliseconds in which to heat a tungsten block moving at some insane velocity it wouldn't be incredibly effective to just melt it down cause it's gonna keep its momentum and trajectory and mess your poo poo up pretty good. Ballistic and explosive point defenses at least have a rather good chance to significantly alter the trajectory of the projectile. You're not trying to melt it down, you're trying to make it miss. You put the beam on target, you're going to explosively ablate some of that target, and the momentum of that bit of material exploding off its surface is going to steer it a bit. You don't need to melt or vaporize the entire thing to make it not hit you (and even if you did melt it or vaporize it, a given mass of tungsten penetrator hitting you at kilometers per second, it doesn't really matter whether it's solid or not, you're still getting hurt. This is actually being looked at now as a way to clean up orbital debris. http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.3835 quote:Orbital debris in low Earth orbit (LEO) are now sufficiently dense that the use of LEO space is threatened by runaway collisional cascading. A problem predicted more than thirty years ago, the threat from debris larger than about 1 cm demands serious attention. A promising proposed solution uses a high power pulsed laser system on the Earth to make plasma jets on the objects, slowing them slightly, and causing them to re-enter and burn up in the atmosphere. In this paper, we reassess this approach in light of recent advances in low-cost, light-weight modular design for large mirrors, calculations of laser-induced orbit changes and in design of repetitive, multi-kilojoule lasers, that build on inertial fusion research. Phanatic fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Feb 11, 2016 |
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Feb 11, 2016 01:51
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tooterfish posted:Power isn't a problem if you ignore the fact that the Donnager had to shut down systems to power up its rail guns. I think they did that out of a certain misguided attempt at scientific accuracy, because the prototype railguns the US Navy is testing would require the destroyers they are intended to be mounted on (Zumwalt-class) to divert engine power to the weapon to fire. But that's only because they use conventional engines. A nuclear-powered vessel would not have the same limitation.
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Feb 11, 2016 01:53
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Railguns are largely rare and expensive, most vessels just use missiles for actual ship to ship combat.
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Feb 11, 2016 01:54
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Kesper North posted:I think they did that out of a certain misguided attempt at scientific accuracy, because the prototype railguns the US Navy is testing would require the destroyers they are intended to be mounted on (Zumwalt-class) to divert engine power to the weapon to fire. But that's only because they use conventional engines. A nuclear-powered vessel would not have the same limitation. Nah, they did that to convey the impression of "Oh poo poo, this is a really powerful gun."
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Feb 11, 2016 01:56
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How effective is any unguided ballistic weapon gonna be in ship to ship combat anyway? ships can engage one another with missiles from tens of thousands of kilometers away, if you're gonna accelerate a projectile to a velocity where it couldn't just be dodged by the other ship it's gonna be pretty drat quick, which would ergo require a lot of energy, much more than terran railguns ever would. The only advantage a railgun is gonna have over a missile is that it perhaps can't be jammed and that the ammunition is cheaper.
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Feb 11, 2016 02:00
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Kesper North posted:The Epstein drive is a fusion plant. Power is not a problem. The mass savings of not having to carry ammunition and never running out of ammunition unless your powerplant fails is a pretty big plus for a space weapon, IMO. Yeah fair enough. There's a reason the Enterprise used mostly Phasers! I always thought those were kinda dorky though. The hand-held ones were fine, but the ship phaser arrays and banks were kinda lame compared to torpedoes. But it makes so much sense because carrying ammunition around suuuuucks in space. Phanatic posted:ISS has been traveling through space at speed for years and years, it's fine, and you could push a screwdriver through most of its skin. poo poo that's traveling through space that you can't see is small particulate stuff, when it hits it's going to vaporize. Thick enough armor to stop it penetrating is going to be ridiculously heavy, that's not what you do. You want what's called a Whipple shield: That's a good point, ISS is indeed pretty rickity. Still, that's just hanging in Earth's orbit, the speeds you'd accelerate up to during interstellar travel would completely dwarf that of orbital velocity. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. Phanatic posted:
Ahh, fancy fancy. I like that. Kesper North posted:I think they did that out of a certain misguided attempt at scientific accuracy, because the prototype railguns the US Navy is testing would require the destroyers they are intended to be mounted on (Zumwalt-class) to divert engine power to the weapon to fire. But that's only because they use conventional engines. A nuclear-powered vessel would not have the same limitation. Aren't some of those nuclear though? Google says US used to have nuclear crusiers but no longer, so I guess not. Checks out. emanresu tnuocca posted:How effective is any unguided ballistic weapon gonna be in ship to ship combat anyway? ships can engage one another with missiles from tens of thousands of kilometers away, if you're gonna accelerate a projectile to a velocity where it couldn't just be dodged by the other ship it's gonna be pretty drat quick, which would ergo require a lot of energy, much more than terran railguns ever would. It entirely depends upon the state of the art of weapons at the time, but I could see the railgun slugs firing faster both in rate of fire and velocity as compared to rockets being fired from tubes and tracking. Like you said the rockets could correct, but if you can throw out slugs fast enough it could work, especially if you can lead your target, and these ships don't seem super nimble, especially the bigger ones. They also made a point that they couldn't use railguns effectively until within close range. But like you say, it can't be jammed and the ammo is cheaper / lighter, those are good too. Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Feb 11, 2016 |
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Feb 11, 2016 02:04
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Phanatic posted:Nah, they did that to convey the impression of "Oh poo poo, this is a really powerful gun." Also to drive home that the little corvettes that ALSO have mini functional versons of the same weapons are fuckoff advanced
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Feb 11, 2016 02:09
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Zaphod42 posted:That's a good point, ISS is indeed pretty rickity. Still, that's just hanging in Earth's orbit, the speeds you'd accelerate up to during interstellar travel would completely dwarf that of orbital velocity. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. Enh, it's hanging there for values of around 8000 meters per second worth of hanging there, stuff in LEO could be traveling at up to around 15kps relative to ISS, but interplanetary dust could be moving much faster than that. However fast the speeds you'd accelerate up to during interstellar travel, there's some debris out there going that fast right now. For purposes of dealing with space debris, *your* velocity is pretty irrelevant because the debris could be traveling in your direction, exactly opposed to your direction, across your direction, at whatever velocity you feel like thinking about.
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Feb 11, 2016 02:12
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Rail guns are practically point blank weapons in universe. It's actually not that clear in the show, but the missiles are launched hours before the ships come inside effective rail gun range. That's why everyone on the Donnager is just standing around sipping tea during most of the battle, and practically everyone else in the system has time to tune in and watch even from light minutes away.
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Feb 11, 2016 02:13
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Phanatic posted:If you've got fusion engines of the performance in these books, you've got plenty of power, the fact that they use railguns instead of lasers is for flavor. quote:Heck, in the books they even mention at one point when one ship was any closer to another that the communications laser could burn a hole in the hull. Eventually. It's described as a pretty drat slow process, like using a cutting torch at range.
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Feb 11, 2016 02:16
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Azhais posted:Not really flavor, they just don't have effective versions. There's a throwaway line in a later book about Mars finally getting a prototype particle cannon working That's what I mean by flavor. It's exactly the same amount of handwavium to wind up with practical railguns as it is practical laser weapons, but the authors wanted space combat to me more of an O'Bria nesque "stand by to repel boarders" naval combat analogue than a Larry Niven "instantly pick your adversary off as soon as he comes around from behind the moon" bit.
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Feb 11, 2016 02:20
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Phanatic posted:Enh, it's hanging there for values of around 8000 meters per second worth of hanging there, stuff in LEO could be traveling at up to around 15kps relative to ISS, but interplanetary dust could be moving much faster than that. However fast the speeds you'd accelerate up to during interstellar travel, there's some debris out there going that fast right now. For purposes of dealing with space debris, *your* velocity is pretty irrelevant because the debris could be traveling in your direction, exactly opposed to your direction, across your direction, at whatever velocity you feel like thinking about. That's true, but in that case crashing into it head on at speed would effectively double the relative speed for the purposes of the impact right? But if the dust itself is travelling much faster than you would even during interstellar travel, I could see it being a negligible addition. But is that how the math works out? And how much of what hits the ISS is interstellar versus just other orbital space junk?
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Feb 11, 2016 02:21
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Zaphod42 posted:That's true, but in that case crashing into it head on at speed would effectively double the relative speed for the purposes of the impact right? Yes, but what I'm saying is that for the purposes of fiction, the difference is negligible and the envelopes overlap sufficiently for there to be no meaningful difference between "the sort of armor that's realistic for the ISS to withstand space debris" and "the sort of armor that's realistic for zoomy spaceships with railguns and torpedoes and fusion engines to withstand space debris."
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Feb 11, 2016 02:30
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I think the comms-laser-as-weapon line was in reference to the Nauvoo, the Mormon generation ship under construction at Tycho station, which needs to stay in touch from light years away.
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Feb 11, 2016 02:33
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Kesper North posted:Frangible bullets intended for use on airplanes and in other situations where shooting through walls would be hazardous have existed for ages: Not related to the show/books at all but I'm pretty sure the reason government employees don't use these is because it's super loving hard to treat a person who's been shot with one because those tiny pellets go EVERYWHERE inside a person. e: by the way here's a video demo of a test with two varieties of Glaser "Safety" slugs which may be entertaining to watch idk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TioEMEKzLn0 Flesh Forge fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Feb 11, 2016 |
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Feb 11, 2016 03:27
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Flesh Forge posted:Not related to the show/books at all but I'm pretty sure the reason government employees don't use these is because it's super loving hard to treat a person who's been shot with one because those tiny pellets go EVERYWHERE inside a person. It's mainly because they suck for actually stopping people. Wide, shallow wound cavity looks nasty but there's no physiological reason for it to stop someone, it's not penetrating to any vital organs or major blood vessels. Also in the Air Marshal role, the danger of penetrating an airframe at altitude is greatly exaggerated. They're not airtight, after all, and their pressurization systems have to be able to cope with an entire missing window; a few small-caliber holes in the plane aren't going to matter. There's a very small chance a handgun round could penetrate to something vital, but in the event that a cop's drawing and shooting his weapon in a plane full of people, you're going to be putting the aircraft on the ground ASAFP so there's not really any call to use Glasers even there.
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Feb 11, 2016 03:42
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I'll agree they're not very reliable for ~stopping power~ but I wouldn't call this kind of wound "wide and shallow": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAgC6B5yiyQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3ROwMpB7Zk skip to 6:18 where he digs a pile of metal fragments and the bullet casing and whatever out of the block, 6-8 inches inside But yeah probably law enforcement wouldn't rely on these because the bullets can do some unpredictable poo poo like flatten out on a belt buckle and stuff.
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Feb 11, 2016 03:57
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Flesh Forge posted:skip to 6:18 where he digs a pile of metal fragments and the bullet casing and whatever out of the block, 6-8 inches inside That's in gelatin, which isn't the same thing as human tissue, and definitely isn't the same thing as human tissue wrapped in clothing. The FBI's judgement was that unless a bullet can reliably penetrate to *minimum* of 12" in soft tissue, it is not an effective bullet for law enforcement use. Granted, wound ballistics has progressed since Fackler, and there's now definite evidence that a bullet moving rapidly enough can cause a pressure wave that can induce unconsciousness, but a Glaser's going to avoid that as well. Zaphod42 posted:That recent airplane bomb proves this; they lost an entire seat and section of the hull and other than the one guy with the bomb getting sucked out, everybody else was fine and even pretty calm about the whole thing, even with a gaping hole in the craft. Not really. Cruise altitude for a commercial airliner's around 36,000 feet, that's about 3psi air pressure outside, and about 11psi inside. Not a big difference there between 3psi and 0, assuming you pressurize your spacecraft to the same altitude as a commercial airplane (which you probably don't). Phanatic fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Feb 11, 2016 |
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Feb 11, 2016 04:08
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Phanatic posted:It's mainly because they suck for actually stopping people. Wide, shallow wound cavity looks nasty but there's no physiological reason for it to stop someone, it's not penetrating to any vital organs or major blood vessels. That recent airplane bomb proves this; they lost an entire seat and section of the hull and other than the one guy with the bomb getting sucked out, everybody else was fine and even pretty calm about the whole thing, even with a gaping hole in the craft. Space is much worse though.
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Feb 11, 2016 04:12
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Somewhat fine. The couple of people sitting near him were badly burned. But yeah, it could have been way worse, and the fact that the guy just blew himself out the side of the airplane is loving hilarious, really. I'd like to take a moment to plug the excellent Spaceflight Megathread: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3580990 If you're interested in real space stuff, or just have questions like the ones that have been coming up in this thread, it's an excellent thread to follow with lots of posters who actually work in both science/exploration and commercial spaceflight. Railgun chat: The reason why railguns are CQB weapons is because if you fire them at range, your target can detect and jink to avoid them, because they can't steer after being fired. So you want to make sure that you're so close to your target when you fire that dodging simply is not possible. The same is true for point-defense batteries; you have to wait for the missile to get close enough that it can be shot down without dodging. Lasers work around this by - at least across the range at which they are effective as weapons - hitting their target more or less instantly, but power requirements are even higher than a railgun. The state of the art in weaponized lasers is getting to the point where we're probably going to start seeing them actually get deployed as point-defense batteries on ships and aircraft: http://m.military.com/daily-news/2015/06/16/navy-plans-to-fire-lasers-from-carriers.html You can see that the reasons for using lasers instead of projectiles are pretty much the same as the ones I've cited - mass, space, ammunition, cost. It's also worth considering that lasers work a lot better in space than they do in atmosphere, since there's no dust or water vapor to scatter the beam. Missiles are going to be the go-to ship-to-ship space weapon for medium to long range engagements, pretty much exactly as portrayed in The Expanse - possibly augmented by unmanned combat drones. Missiles are a great space weapon: self-propelled, small, stealthy, and able to coast ballistically for an indefinite period before relighting their drive and going in for the kill. Also if you change your mind, you can cancel the attack. You can't take back a railgun spike. All this being said, I think all these weapons are going to be used in various situations. I just find the absence of shipboard lasers slightly conspicuous, but as others have mentioned that may be because lasers seem less 'grounded' than projectiles. Or perhaps there's other reasons. Franck and Abraham are smart guys, they probably have a reason.
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Feb 11, 2016 05:03
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Ice posted:Is "delta-v" something physicists actually say, or is it just a nerd term? It took me a while to figure out what people were talking about. Why not say "acceleration" or "change in velocity" or dV? Is it because you cant type a triangle? Not even joking, I took a semester of physics before calculus and the entire class was figuring out how to long-hand calculate the rate of change of (god I',m sick of "ladder sliding down the wall!" examples) velocity/acceleration/etc, then the last day of the semester the instructor wrote a single equation on the board to find out the rate of change for any formula, and I realized gently caress physics, I need calculus! I spent an entire semester working this poo poo out long-hand when there was a cut and dried calculation to make it work right every loving time! coyo7e fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Feb 11, 2016 |
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Feb 11, 2016 05:03
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Kesper North posted:Somewhat fine. The couple of people sitting near him were badly burned. But yeah, it could have been way worse, and the fact that the guy just blew himself out the side of the airplane is loving hilarious, really. Subfuckingscribed.
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Feb 11, 2016 06:39
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im going to murder all of you if this is what this thread is going to consist of for the next 12+ months
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Feb 11, 2016 08:36
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:im going to murder all of you if this is what this thread is going to consist of for the next 12+ months At least it's not like the Patrick Rothfuss thread. 99.9% of the posts were just shitposts berating Rothfuss over and over for being a lovely author. While valid, it gets old.
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Feb 11, 2016 08:38
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:im going to murder all of you if this is what this thread is going to consist of for the next 12+ months It's probably either this or book chat. Honestly, the thread probably doesn't even need to exist until much closer to the start of the next season, since there's no new material to discuss.
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Feb 11, 2016 09:02
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Odette posted:At least it's not like the Patrick Rothfuss thread. 99.9% of the posts were just shitposts berating Rothfuss over and over for being a lovely author. While valid, it gets old. My girlfriend's been going through The Name of the Wind recently and I've thought about reading it once she's done. I've heard good things about the series, did it not get the goon stamp of approval? Also is there a specific Expanse thread in TBB or is it just the general Space Opera thread because I want somewhere to livepost all my moments of exclamation while progressing through Nemesis Games.
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Feb 11, 2016 09:16
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I don't think there is, we usually talk about the Expanse books in the Sci-Fi and Fantasy thread or the Space Opera thread (more the former than the latter). Book spoilers, obviously.
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Feb 11, 2016 16:03
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coyo7e posted:Because "delta"(the rate of change) of "velocity" is almost literally the definition of acceleration before anyone came up with the word. Or, just learn Physics or/and extremely basic calculus and you would have a pretty good grasp of it all. Delta isn't rate of change. Delta is just change. Derivative is rate of change and is velocity. You're mixing up two closely related things, which some other goon did earlier too. Delta velocity is just a change in velocity. If I'm going 20mph and then 40mph that's a Delta V of 20 mph. Its not a rate of change necessarily.
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Feb 11, 2016 16:14
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Zaphod42 posted:Delta velocity is just a change in velocity. If I'm going 20mph and then 40mph that's a Delta V of 20 mph. Its not a rate of change necessarily. Yep. Like, to start from earth's surface (v=0) and make it to Ceres, you need about 20kps of total delta-V. Doesn't matter if you do it really slowly with a Hohmann transfer, or with a really high-thrust Epstein drive, you need to change your velocity by about 20kps. Here's a decent map of what you need to jaunt around the solar system: 
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Feb 11, 2016 16:52
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Phanatic posted:Yep. Like, to start from earth's surface (v=0) and make it to Ceres, you need about 20kps of total delta-V. Doesn't matter if you do it really slowly with a Hohmann transfer, or with a really high-thrust Epstein drive, you need to change your velocity by about 20kps.  Wow, that's a really cool chart. Like, drat.What I don't get about that chart (and this is just my ignorance of space travel) wouldn't there be a possibly more efficient route between Earth and Jupiter than passing through the Earth-Mars transfer or the Earth-Ceres transfer? Everything is presented like they're required steps on the same course, but couldn't you plot a more direct course? I guess maybe I'm not sure what the transfer positions are, since you still have to burn to get from the Earth-Mars transfer to Mars, I guess its just a midpoint in space which then makes sense. Doesn't take into account possible slingshot maneuvers at least, but just for direct fastest travel time. Right? Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Feb 11, 2016 |
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Feb 11, 2016 17:13
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