Loren Pechtel wrote:Daryl wrote:I as well remember the quoted time dilation effects on people.
What to me seemed to have the potential to be more significant was the energy gained by missiles.
Everyone knows E=MC2, but equations can run both ways. Apart from the application where small grams of matter in fission or fusion can generate large amounts of energy; the "free" energy from missile wedges can impart massive energy to them as they near C.
As an object gets closer to C more and more energy is required to accelerate it as it becomes more massive.
An old SF joke is that it's not true that nothing can reach the speed of light in normal space, as such a ship would reach an infinite mass at that point, causing that universe to crunch around it. So only one ship per universe then you get a new big bang.
Back when the MDMs first came out I was part of a discussion trying to figure out what would happen if they hit a planet.
Ballpark answer: A pod of MDMs at burnout is equivalent to the dinosaur killer.
I have also been arguing that missile designers should be making their missiles attempt to ram if feasible, their warheads should be a fallback if that's not possible. (Note that it almost never would be possible, the objective is to make the defenders roll so as to degrade their defensive fire.) The missile kinetic energy makes the warheads look like child's toys, the only point to the warhead is that it can fire sideways.
As long as sidewalls are up, the missiles will just vaporize when they hit the sidewalls - it's what sidewalls were created for in the beginning. It doesn't change when you give them more KE - it's just Honorverse physics.