?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:The 3 second laser that is canonically less powerful than the BC grade graser on a Shrike?

Powerful, yes, canonically. We know it does not deliver as much energy per unit of time as a BC-grade graser does.

"Energyful" is another story. How much energy can the 3-second graser deliver on target versus a conventional graser? Mind you, the conventional graser might be able to fire multiple times within 3 seconds too.

I don't think we can speculate this or even speculate which one is worse. Materials that can sustain a short-timed spike to a very high energy density may fail when the total amount of energy delivered overloads them, but it's also conceivable some materials they may be able to dissipate huge amounts of energy so long as it is sustained below a threshold and yet not be able to deal with such a spike because they can't propagate it fast enough.

It may not matter either if you can't sustain the beam on target in the first place. Though TBH I don't think this is the limiting condition: against a target that can manoeuvre with wedges, the range is very small and the other side is tracking at FTL speeds.

Though if its 3 second endurance does let it deliver at least as much energy as the Shrike does in its fast firing that doesn't seem to help it against sidewalls.

Mission of Honor wrote:The power of the torpedo’s graser wasn’t remotely comparable to that of the weapon mounted by current-generation Shrikes, yet it was more powerful than any single bomb-pumped laser head. Of course, there was only one of it in each torpedo, but R&D had decided the new weapon could sacrifice the laser head’s multi-shot capability, because it offered three highly significant advantages of its own.
[...]
And, third, a bomb-pulsed laser had a burst endurance of barely five thousandths of a second; a laser torpedo’s graser’s endurance was a full three seconds...and it had a burn-through range against most sidewalls of over fifty thousand kilometers.

Over 50,000 km is 2/3rd further than old-style laser-heads. But it only marginally, if at all, exceeds the sidewall burnthrough range of current RMN missiles with their improved grav lensing. However a Shrike's sidewall burnthrough range appears to be about the same as any other ships - about 500,000 km against BCs or below, and somewhat less, but probably still over 250,000 km even against wallers. (And that was before they got their upgraded grav lenses; which increased their effectiveness).

Sp the extra endurance hasn't bought it any longer burnthrough range, which makes me wonder if it is actually delivering more energy over time. (Also what is the duty cycle on a shipboard graser? Over that 3 seconds how many shots has it gotten off, so what percent of that time is it firing?)


Heck, the (light?) cruiser grade graser they started with should have had much longer burnthrough range when it was in its unmodified (and thus shorter duration) shipboard form. Which makes me think that, in addition to ripping out the protections that keeps a graser from damaging itself, they must have dialed the output power way down in order to increase duration to that full 3 seconds (before it catastrophically fails). (Since it seems they did something that reduced its burnthrough range by a factor of 5-10x)

Jonathan_S wrote:Heck, the (light?) cruiser grade graser they started with should have had much longer burnthrough range when it was in its unmodified (and thus shorter duration) shipboard form. Which makes me think that, in addition to ripping out the protections that keeps a graser from damaging itself, they must have dialed the output power way down in order to increase duration to that full 3 seconds (before it catastrophically fails). (Since it seems they did something that reduced its burnthrough range by a factor of 5-10x)

The passage you quoted implies that whatever they did, it was an improvement. So my guess is you need to compare the torpedo's graser against a laserhead missile, not against a ship-borne one. Even the one borne by a ship as small as a LAC.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:The 3 second laser that is canonically less powerful than the BC grade graser on a Shrike?

Powerful, yes, canonically. We know it does not deliver as much energy per unit of time as a BC-grade graser does.

"Energyful" is another story. How much energy can the 3-second graser deliver on target versus a conventional graser? Mind you, the conventional graser might be able to fire multiple times within 3 seconds too.

I don't think we can speculate this or even speculate which one is worse. Materials that can sustain a short-timed spike to a very high energy density may fail when the total amount of energy delivered overloads them, but it's also conceivable some materials they may be able to dissipate huge amounts of energy so long as it is sustained below a threshold and yet not be able to deal with such a spike because they can't propagate it fast enough.

It may not matter either if you can't sustain the beam on target in the first place. Though TBH I don't think this is the limiting condition: against a target that can manoeuvre with wedges, the range is very small and the other side is tracking at FTL speeds.

I have tried several times to say the same thing. I even used the analogy of the Doppler Effect. But it was taken literally, instead.

Range affects effectiveness as it does with all Directed Energy Weapons. That is why there is a burn through range.

Range is decreasing quickly. As a result energy delivery per unit of time is increasing.

If a 3-second firing graser can target and hold sidewalls at a specific area the sidewalls will fall.

The difference between continuous fire and intermittent fire is that intermittent fire gives the sidewalls more time to spread the energy and recover. Continuous fire does not give the sidewalls' reaction time a break. Energy delivery is increasing per unit of time because the range of the source is decreasing.

Also consider that the RMN uses gravity for focusing. The MAN has shown to be ahead of the curve as far as playing with gravity. See the insanely powerful tractors used for propulsion. Significantly upgrading grav lens technology does not seem to be far-fetched to me.

And I also stated the result would be capital ship sized output, which might fire even longer. It is obvious they had to dial it down. It could turn out to be that a bigger power budget can produce the intense gravity needed to not only focus the graser but to expel the heat away. In fact, the heat might be useful to increase the output since the limited space of a missile is not applicable.

An LD is a big assed warship. I will bank on it having a powerful energy weapon. I will also bank on that energy weapon benefitting from what they have learned from the development of the g-torp.

Although the g-torp could have been developed from what they have learned from the mighty beast(s) that will adorn the LDs.

I maintain. Can't let something that big get close.

That's my narrative. I'm sticking to it. If you see an arachnid. Duck!!!

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Heck, the (light?) cruiser grade graser they started with should have had much longer burnthrough range when it was in its unmodified (and thus shorter duration) shipboard form. Which makes me think that, in addition to ripping out the protections that keeps a graser from damaging itself, they must have dialed the output power way down in order to increase duration to that full 3 seconds (before it catastrophically fails). (Since it seems they did something that reduced its burnthrough range by a factor of 5-10x)

The passage you quoted implies that whatever they did, it was an improvement. So my guess is you need to compare the torpedo's graser against a laserhead missile, not against a ship-borne one. Even the one borne by a ship as small as a LAC.

And it is an improvement over a laserhead (less so over the RMN's latest; but still an improvement) - not only because of it's longer duration but also (I'm reminded, skimming back through IFF's armor essay) because grasers being shorter wavelength tend to penetrate more of the armor system depth simultaneously than the longer wavelength xray laser. (Though the essay also mentions that all else being equal depositing a given amount of energy in a smaller period of time produces shock effects that render it more effective. That implies that if the MAlign could take all the energy they currently spread out over 3 seconds and concentrate it into a sub-second blast that they'd actually do more damage -- though that might only apply to targets tough enough that even the current beam doesn't overpenetrate)

The bits of surrounding text I probably should have included were

Mission of Honor wrote:Daniel Detweiler’s R&D staff had taken another approach. They’d figured out how to squeeze what amounted to a cruiser-grade graser projector into something small enough to deploy independently.
[...]
there’d never been any possibility of squeezing in the power supply for more than a single shot. Even if there had been, no one could build a graser that small and that powerful which could survive the power bleed and waste heat of actually firing. But that was fine with the MAN’s designers and tacticians. In fact, they were just as happy every graser torpedo would irrevocably and totally destroy itself in the moment it fired

If it was actually cruiser grade (which I interpret as firing at the same power as a cruiser's graser) it should have burnthrough well in excess of the 50,000 km it's reported to have.

It also seems slightly unlikely that a cruiser grade mount, presumably designed for operations of pulses of less than a second (though I'm having trouble finding anything in the text that mentions the actual duration), could survive for even 3 seconds of that same power level. Generally margins between damage begins and damage become catastrophic are smaller than a factor of 2.

So the combination of its shorter burnthrough distance than a cruiser grade weapons would be expected to have, plus its surprising long duration before total destruction, led me to speculate that they may have dialed back on the power. (Possibly to find some sweet spot of total power delivered)


But however must more capable a ship mounted weapons, like a Shrike's, might be this is still a step up in effectiveness over a laserhead.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Heck, the (light?) cruiser grade graser they started with should have had much longer burnthrough range when it was in its unmodified (and thus shorter duration) shipboard form. Which makes me think that, in addition to ripping out the protections that keeps a graser from damaging itself, they must have dialed the output power way down in order to increase duration to that full 3 seconds (before it catastrophically fails). (Since it seems they did something that reduced its burnthrough range by a factor of 5-10x)

The passage you quoted implies that whatever they did, it was an improvement. So my guess is you need to compare the torpedo's graser against a laserhead missile, not against a ship-borne one. Even the one borne by a ship as small as a LAC.

Jonathan_S wrote:And it is an improvement over a laserhead (less so over the RMN's latest; but still an improvement) - not only because of it's longer duration but also (I'm reminded, skimming back through IFF's armor essay) because grasers being shorter wavelength tend to penetrate more of the armor system depth simultaneously than the longer wavelength xray laser. (Though the essay also mentions that all else being equal depositing a given amount of energy in a smaller period of time produces shock effects that render it more effective. That implies that if the MAlign could take all the energy they currently spread out over 3 seconds and concentrate it into a sub-second blast that they'd actually do more damage -- though that might only apply to targets tough enough that even the current beam doesn't overpenetrate)

The bits of surrounding text I probably should have included were

Mission of Honor wrote:Daniel Detweiler’s R&D staff had taken another approach. They’d figured out how to squeeze what amounted to a cruiser-grade graser projector into something small enough to deploy independently.
[...]
there’d never been any possibility of squeezing in the power supply for more than a single shot. Even if there had been, no one could build a graser that small and that powerful which could survive the power bleed and waste heat of actually firing. But that was fine with the MAN’s designers and tacticians. In fact, they were just as happy every graser torpedo would irrevocably and totally destroy itself in the moment it fired

Jonathan_S wrote:If it was actually cruiser grade (which I interpret as firing at the same power as a cruiser's graser) it should have burnthrough well in excess of the 50,000 km it's reported to have.

It also seems slightly unlikely that a cruiser grade mount, presumably designed for operations of pulses of less than a second (though I'm having trouble finding anything in the text that mentions the actual duration), could survive for even 3 seconds of that same power level. Generally margins between damage begins and damage become catastrophic are smaller than a factor of 2.

So the combination of its shorter burnthrough distance than a cruiser grade weapons would be expected to have, plus its surprising long duration before total destruction, led me to speculate that they may have dialed back on the power. (Possibly to find some sweet spot of total power delivered)


But however must more capable a ship mounted weapons, like a Shrike's, might be this is still a step up in effectiveness over a laserhead.

It could be a function of a lower power budget and or inferior focusing.

penny wrote:I have tried several times to say the same thing. I even used the analogy of the Doppler Effect. But it was taken literally, instead.

It's a bad analogy. The Doppler Effect could be used when trying to speak about the energy of the photons being higher because the firing ship is approaching. That is, it's blue-shifted into higher frequencies. But the effect of that even at 0.8c isn't that high. 2.77x

No, what you should have talked about is the more obvious effect of hearing a siren when the ambulance is coming towards you: the sound is louder because the ambulance is getting closer and closer. This even increases with time; assuming a constant speed, the energy is actually increasing with the square of time passed. Meanwhile, the Doppler Effect with constant speed and a direct vector towards you does not change at all with time.

Range affects effectiveness as it does with all Directed Energy Weapons. That is why there is a burn through range.

Range is decreasing quickly. As a result energy delivery per unit of time is increasing.

Yes.

If a 3-second firing graser can target and hold sidewalls at a specific area the sidewalls will fall.

That's a statement that can be true, but we do not know for sure. And it obviously depends on the starting and ending range. If the torpedoes are coming at 0.25c, 3 will get them 225,000 km closer. How much burn-through can a missile-grade graser accomplish from 250,000 km out?

The difference between continuous fire and intermittent fire is that intermittent fire gives the sidewalls more time to spread the energy and recover. Continuous fire does not give the sidewalls' reaction time a break. Energy delivery is increasing per unit of time because the range of the source is decreasing.

That's true, but what I had said my post is also true: it depends on how much energy the LAC grasers can deliver in 5 ms and how many times they can fire in 3 seconds. If they could fire only once but produced 600x more power, they'd have delivered the exact same amount of energy (I don't think it's that much).

To give a similar case: a lightning can deliver 15 coulombs of charge in 0.5 ms, for an average current of 30 kA. A 1.5V AA battery can (when fully charged) produce 2 A of current, so it would only need 7.5 seconds to deliver 15 coulombs of charge. AA batteries can be used to power all types of gadgets that would definitely blow up if hit by lightning.

Also consider that the RMN uses gravity for focusing. The MAN has shown to be ahead of the curve as far as playing with gravity. See the insanely powerful tractors used for propulsion. Significantly upgrading grav lens technology does not seem to be far-fetched to me.

No, they have not. At best, we can say they know an avenue of research that the RMN and GSN do not, namely the spider. I agree it does not seem far-fetched, but that's a long way from "they can definitely crack it."

There's no evidence that tractors lead to better power delivery on target. Whereas we do know the newest RMN/GSN warheads have improved focusing and this did increase the range of effectiveness of their weapons.

And I also stated the result would be capital ship sized output, which might fire even longer. It is obvious they had to dial it down. It could turn out to be that a bigger power budget can produce the intense gravity needed to not only focus the graser but to expel the heat away. In fact, the heat might be useful to increase the output since the limited space of a missile is not applicable.

Thermodynamics says that waste heat is not usable to produce work (which is why it's called that). However, this is sci-fi and some rules of Physics go out of the window or of the sidewall gunport.

I suppose they could have made the weapon fire for even longer, at lower power levels. But 3 seconds may have been the sweet spot for inflicting damage and the ability of the target to lock on the torpedo or ship doing the firing and destroy it.

An LD is a big assed warship. I will bank on it having a powerful energy weapon. I will also bank on that energy weapon benefitting from what they have learned from the development of the g-torp.

Although the g-torp could have been developed from what they have learned from the mighty beast(s) that will adorn the LDs.

All very likely.

PS: the LD is probably a skinny ass ship. Sir Mix-a-lot probably does not like her.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:I have tried several times to say the same thing. I even used the analogy of the Doppler Effect. But it was taken literally, instead.

It's a bad analogy. The Doppler Effect could be used when trying to speak about the energy of the photons being higher because the firing ship is approaching. That is, it's blue-shifted into higher frequencies. But the effect of that even at 0.8c isn't that high. 2.77x

No, what you should have talked about is the more obvious effect of hearing a siren when the ambulance is coming towards you: the sound is louder because the ambulance is getting closer and closer. This even increases with time; assuming a constant speed, the energy is actually increasing with the square of time passed. Meanwhile, the Doppler Effect with constant speed and a direct vector towards you does not change at all with time.

Range affects effectiveness as it does with all Directed Energy Weapons. That is why there is a burn through range.

Range is decreasing quickly. As a result energy delivery per unit of time is increasing.

Yes.

If a 3-second firing graser can target and hold sidewalls at a specific area the sidewalls will fall.

That's a statement that can be true, but we do not know for sure. And it obviously depends on the starting and ending range. If the torpedoes are coming at 0.25c, 3 will get them 225,000 km closer. How much burn-through can a missile-grade graser accomplish from 250,000 km out?

The difference between continuous fire and intermittent fire is that intermittent fire gives the sidewalls more time to spread the energy and recover. Continuous fire does not give the sidewalls' reaction time a break. Energy delivery is increasing per unit of time because the range of the source is decreasing.

That's true, but what I had said my post is also true: it depends on how much energy the LAC grasers can deliver in 5 ms and how many times they can fire in 3 seconds. If they could fire only once but produced 600x more power, they'd have delivered the exact same amount of energy (I don't think it's that much).

To give a similar case: a lightning can deliver 15 coulombs of charge in 0.5 ms, for an average current of 30 kA. A 1.5V AA battery can (when fully charged) produce 2 A of current, so it would only need 7.5 seconds to deliver 15 coulombs of charge. AA batteries can be used to power all types of gadgets that would definitely blow up if hit by lightning.

Also consider that the RMN uses gravity for focusing. The MAN has shown to be ahead of the curve as far as playing with gravity. See the insanely powerful tractors used for propulsion. Significantly upgrading grav lens technology does not seem to be far-fetched to me.

No, they have not. At best, we can say they know an avenue of research that the RMN and GSN do not, namely the spider. I agree it does not seem far-fetched, but that's a long way from "they can definitely crack it."

There's no evidence that tractors lead to better power delivery on target. Whereas we do know the newest RMN/GSN warheads have improved focusing and this did increase the range of effectiveness of their weapons.

And I also stated the result would be capital ship sized output, which might fire even longer. It is obvious they had to dial it down. It could turn out to be that a bigger power budget can produce the intense gravity needed to not only focus the graser but to expel the heat away. In fact, the heat might be useful to increase the output since the limited space of a missile is not applicable.

Thermodynamics says that waste heat is not usable to produce work (which is why it's called that). However, this is sci-fi and some rules of Physics go out of the window or of the sidewall gunport.

I suppose they could have made the weapon fire for even longer, at lower power levels. But 3 seconds may have been the sweet spot for inflicting damage and the ability of the target to lock on the torpedo or ship doing the firing and destroy it.

An LD is a big assed warship. I will bank on it having a powerful energy weapon. I will also bank on that energy weapon benefitting from what they have learned from the development of the g-torp.

Although the g-torp could have been developed from what they have learned from the mighty beast(s) that will adorn the LDs.

All very likely.

PS: the LD is probably a skinny ass ship. Sir Mix-a-lot probably does not like her.

Waste heat is only waste if it isn't recovered for use. Like turbocharging and heating the inside of your car.

But in the HV, and certainly this application, I think it is a moot point. Remember, the Unified Field Theory and the Theory of Everything has obviously been solved. Under the extremes of fields in the HV, all things are possible.

penny wrote:Waste heat is only waste if it isn't recovered for use. Like turbocharging and heating the inside of your car.

Strictly speaking, no. There is a certain type of energy that having reached maximum entropy cannot be used for further work.

But before we get there, technological limitations would apply. So in practice there's always some energy that could have been used for further work but was released as waste heat instead.

But in the HV, and certainly this application, I think it is a moot point. Remember, the Unified Field Theory and the Theory of Everything has obviously been solved. Under the extremes of fields in the HV, all things are possible.

And yet David imposes strict limits so magic is not possible. He needs to keep both sides in a conflict balanced, so there are no short victorious wars. And he does that with plausible technological or physical limitations.

penny wrote:And if the MA successfully attacks freighters in hyper delivering crucial materials for the war effort, the GA could become seriously hamstrung.

A current discussion in another thread got me to thinking. Asteroid belts and mining facilities in each system can be targeted by spider-drive ships. Aren't these facilities located beyond the hyper limit? The facility, and freighters approaching and leaving can easily be destroyed.

Result, war effort crippled.

penny wrote:Asteroid belts and mining facilities in each system can be targeted by spider-drive ships. Aren't these facilities located beyond the hyper limit? The facility, and freighters approaching and leaving can easily be destroyed.

Result, war effort crippled.

Doesn't the Malign have to find Bolthole first? The Solar System's asteroid belt is within Jupiter's orbit, is that really outside the hyper-limit?