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Comparing weapons

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Re: Comparing weapons
Post by 6L6   » Thu Nov 19, 2015 12:34 am

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An example I would use, Merlin droped a 500 lb bomb on the ship that Thirsks family was on, it seems to me that in 400 years a 1 lb bomb should do the same job. evilauthor reread my post, you will see that I was talking about bridging the gap between chemical and nuclear wepons.
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Re: Comparing weapons
Post by n7axw   » Thu Nov 19, 2015 12:50 am

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6L6 wrote:An example I would use, Merlin droped a 500 lb bomb on the ship that Thirsks family was on, it seems to me that in 400 years a 1 lb bomb should do the same job. evilauthor reread my post, you will see that I was talking about bridging the gap between chemical and nuclear wepons.


One of the reasons for that 500 pound bomb was that it wasn't up to TF tech. The thought was that by equiping the skimmer to use more primitive tech, one could avoid the attention of the OBS.

Don

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When any group seeks political power in God's name, both religion and politics are instantly corrupted.
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Re: Comparing weapons
Post by Expert snuggler   » Thu Nov 19, 2015 2:32 am

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We don't know whether the OBS could detect duodecylplylatomate or other technically exotic explosives. It does not do to leave a dragon out of your calculations if you live near one. Old-style chemical high explosives are good enough for the next few years of warfare at least.

That said I can imagine some profitable covert ops that could be done with hafnium (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafnium_controversy).
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Re: Comparing weapons
Post by evilauthor   » Thu Nov 19, 2015 2:42 am

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n7axw wrote:[
One of the reasons for that 500 pound bomb was that it wasn't up to TF tech. The thought was that by equiping the skimmer to use more primitive tech, one could avoid the attention of the OBS.

Don

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Exactly. The bomb had chemical explosives more powerful than anything Charis had yet developed, but they weren't anything nuclear.

Because you know, nukes - even tiny ones - will be giving off all kinds of distinctive radiation when they blow.

6L6 wrote:An example I would use, Merlin droped a 500 lb bomb on the ship that Thirsks family was on, it seems to me that in 400 years a 1 lb bomb should do the same job. evilauthor reread my post, you will see that I was talking about bridging the gap between chemical and nuclear wepons.


How would you bridge the gap? Conventional chemical explosives rely on releasing the energy in chemical bonds, ie, the electron bonds that bind atoms to each other. Nukes release energy by splitting/fusing atomic nuclei. There's not much in between.

I suppose you could use whatever high density power cell technology the Federation used to explosively release their stored charge, but that starts running into the "distinctive signature" problem.
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Re: Comparing weapons
Post by Expert snuggler   » Thu Nov 19, 2015 4:04 am

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>How would you bridge the gap?

Speculatively, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_gamma_emission.

Science fictionally, with the invention of the handwavium device which weighs a pound but can convert only one milligram of matter into antimatter.
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Re: Comparing weapons
Post by isaac_newton   » Thu Nov 19, 2015 7:10 am

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Expert snuggler wrote:We don't know whether the OBS could detect duodecylplylatomate or other technically exotic explosives. It does not do to leave a dragon out of your calculations if you live near one. Old-style chemical high explosives are good enough for the next few years of warfare at least.

That said I can imagine some profitable covert ops that could be done with hafnium (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafnium_controversy).


'Duodec' eh - now there's a blast from the past :-)
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Re: Comparing weapons
Post by USMA74   » Thu Nov 19, 2015 9:36 am

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isaac_newton wrote:
Expert snuggler wrote:We don't know whether the OBS could detect duodecylplylatomate or other technically exotic explosives. It does not do to leave a dragon out of your calculations if you live near one. Old-style chemical high explosives are good enough for the next few years of warfare at least.

That said I can imagine some profitable covert ops that could be done with hafnium (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafnium_controversy).


'Duodec' eh - now there's a blast from the past :-)


I wonder if those young whippersnappers playing on my lawn and posting here have even read Doc E.E. Smith's Lensman Series to understand the reference.
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Re: Comparing weapons
Post by isaac_newton   » Thu Nov 19, 2015 10:25 am

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USMA74 wrote:
isaac_newton wrote:quote="Expert snuggler"We don't know whether the OBS could detect duodecylplylatomate or other technically exotic explosives. It does not do to leave a dragon out of your calculations if you live near one. Old-style chemical high explosives are good enough for the next few years of warfare at least.

That said I can imagine some profitable covert ops that could be done with hafnium (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafnium_controversy)./quote

'Duodec' eh - now there's a blast from the past :-)


I wonder if those young whippersnappers playing on my lawn and posting here have even read Doc E.E. Smith's Lensman Series to understand the reference.


I thought that was a requirement of being permitted entry to these forumns by Drak... Now there was real space opera for you!!
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Re: Comparing weapons
Post by Jonathan_S   » Thu Nov 19, 2015 11:52 am

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6L6 wrote:An example I would use, Merlin droped a 500 lb bomb on the ship that Thirsks family was on, it seems to me that in 400 years a 1 lb bomb should do the same job. evilauthor reread my post, you will see that I was talking about bridging the gap between chemical and nuclear wepons.

I don't have the text in front of me. Did it say the bomb literally weight 500 lbs (or even that the explosive filler weighed 500 lbs)?

It's possible that by the 24th century the "megatons" style designation had worked it's way down to conventional explosives - so unless you're talking about carry weight explosives are talked about in terms of their equivalent tons (or pounds) of TNT.
But that's just off the cuff speculation on my part and might be flat out contradicted by the actual text...
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Re: Comparing weapons
Post by thinkstoomuch   » Thu Nov 19, 2015 12:28 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:I don't have the text in front of me. Did it say the bomb literally weight 500 lbs (or even that the explosive filler weighed 500 lbs)?

It's possible that by the 24th century the "megatons" style designation had worked it's way down to conventional explosives - so unless you're talking about carry weight explosives are talked about in terms of their equivalent tons (or pounds) of TNT.
But that's just off the cuff speculation on my part and might be flat out contradicted by the actual text...


As more than a month has passed.

Sept. YOG 897 .VIII. wrote:Merlin Athrawes had learned a bitter lesson in helplessness when Sir Gwyllym Manthyr’s men were consigned to the Punishment. He’d been unable to sink the ships on which they were transported for the over-water portion of the trip, unable to give them the far more merciful death of drowning. There’d been several reasons for that, but one of them had been the very high probability that the emissions of his skimmer’s normal energy weapons would have been detected by the sensors serving the orbital bombardment platform. There’d been no way to predict how the bombardment system might have reacted to that, and so he’d been powerless to intervene. But he’d also been determined that would never happen again, and so the remotes in Nimue’s Cave had built the skimmer an anachronistic nose gun—a multi-barreled auto-cannon—to replace its original internal weapons. And to go with it, those same remotes had produced a small stock of ancient, laser-guided bombs. They were loaded only with old-fashioned chemical explosives, but Owl had built them in several sizes . . . including a two-thousand-pound version filled with half a ton of explosives far better than anything Sahndrah Lywys had ever produced. 

In this instance, however, a rather smaller weapon would do.


Stefyny and Hailyn, and every member of their families, whirled back to the north as the five-hundred-pound bomb punched through Saint Frydhelm’s decks as if they’d been made of paper. It detonated squarely in the galleon’s magazine, surrounded by fifteen tons of gunpowder, and a pillar of fire raged into the heavens.


Have fun,
T2M
Last edited by thinkstoomuch on Thu Nov 19, 2015 1:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Q: “How can something be worth more than it costs? Isn’t everything ‘worth’ what it costs?”
A: “No. That’s just the price. ...
Christopher Anvil from Top Line in "War Games"
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