system energy defense

Eridani Edict is a prohibition against the use of attacking civilians / non military targets, with Kew, missiles, wedges, energy weapons, nukes biological chemical and nanotech. While every use of it has been against military and political individual so far, if it were to be used on a civilian population, it should be a violation. Including crashing an aircar into a shopping mall or blowing up an aircar going over a sporting arena...if government sponsored. The Kew in CoG might be considered military, support. Haven nukes likely killed many civilians even if the military was the target. That is iffy. In SoF the Kew strikes on civilian towns would be a violation.

SWM wrote:

Lord Skimper wrote:Thinking about this some more perhaps the beam could be devised to sweep a system as a big radar like reflection devise. Wouldn't be perfect but it could be an enhanced security feature for a system. Super radar or the like.

Once again you obviously have no idea how big space is. How wide a beam are you suggesting? What range do you want to detect anything? The longer the range, the narrower the beam will have to be to get a measurable signal, and thus the more sweeps you will have to make to cover the entire sky. And because of the long time for the signal to go out and come back, the detector waiting for a reflected signal would have to be watching the entire sky at the same time, rather than a narrow slice like a radar dish does. That drastically reduces the sensitivity of the system, which means you need even narrower beams to get a detectable signal back.

You wouldn't want it to be weapon strength but I was thinking powerful enough to reflect with sensors cameras looking for the reflection. Say multiple in the light second width / cone to perhaps as a singular AU level search cone light. For outer system searches.

Although for spider drive specific search I always thought a hermes bouy might be tuned to look for the hyper / gravatic "foot print" of the spider drive.

Roguevictory wrote:Honestly even if someone built a planet thrower

Thrower? No no no! For this you should obviously play planetary pool!

(ref. Red Dwarf episode "White hole")

Lord Skimper wrote:Eridani Edict is a prohibition against the use of attacking civilians / non military targets, with Kew, missiles, wedges, energy weapons, nukes biological chemical and nanotech. While every use of it has been against military and political individual so far, if it were to be used on a civilian population, it should be a violation. Including crashing an aircar into a shopping mall or blowing up an aircar going over a sporting arena...if government sponsored. The Kew in CoG might be considered military, support. Haven nukes likely killed many civilians even if the military was the target. That is iffy. In SoF the Kew strikes on civilian towns would be a violation.

Once again, no. If someone uses an aircar to destroy a shopping mall or a sporting arena, it is the aircar itself which is the weapon of mass destruction. It doesn't matter whether the person is under the influence of drugs, or hypnosis, or mind control, or brainwashing, or insanity, or is in his own right mind.

The use of the nano virus in itself is not an Eridani Edict violation, because it affects only a single person. Causing someone to use a weapon of mass destruction as a deliberate genocidal act can be an Eridani Edict violation. It doesn't matter how you caused that person to use the weapon--it is the use of that weapon which is the violation. The nano virus is no more a weapon of mass destruction than hypnosis is. It is illegal, but it is not a weapon of mass destruction.

Lord Skimper wrote:You wouldn't want it to be weapon strength but I was thinking powerful enough to reflect with sensors cameras looking for the reflection. Say multiple in the light second width / cone to perhaps as a singular AU level search cone light. For outer system searches.

Although for spider drive specific search I always thought a hermes bouy might be tuned to look for the hyper / gravatic "foot print" of the spider drive.

I'm not exactly sure what you are saying here. Could you correct me if I am guessing wrong? I think you are suggesting a beam expanding at an angle of a few arcseconds, out to a distance at which the beam is 1 AU across. Is that correct?

That would have to be an incredibly powerful beam. Let us suppose we have an emitter 500 m in radius (a really huge emitter!) When that beam is 0.5 AU in radius, the power of the beam would be a mere 1.8e-16 times the power emitted. If the beam then reflected off a mirror, the power of the reflected beam would be 3.2e-32 times the power of the emitted beam. But it won't be reflecting off a mirror--the target will be a ship, which has a smaller cross-section than 500 m radius and has rounded sides that will dramatically reduce the reflected signal, and if it is stealthy will be designed to reflect very little.

I will try to come up with a more realistic example later this evening.