long range laser

Kytheros wrote:

Bill Woods wrote:You know ... I've been playing with the numbers, and it turns out Mr. Weber also doesn't get this right. For single-drive missiles, Newtonian physics is fine, but for 2DMs and 3DMs, it's noticeably off. As far as the plots go, this isn't a problem, since the missiles should have even greater range than stated, though they shouldn't go so fast.

You aren't the first to note this irregularity. Acceleration under impeller drive appears to ignore relativistic effects on the acceleration math, whilst the time dilation effects still happen(at least, they do while under sails, per HotQ).

It is possible that the impeller drive, bending space as it does, is in effect, something like an alcubeirre drive or the Path of the Fury-verse Fasset drives at velocities approaching c, but there's not really any support for that other than ignoring relativistic effects on acceleration, and even if that bit of speculation is viable, there would be no way to test it - particle and radiation shielding wouldn't support those velocities, and you'd blow up your testing platform in short order.

I was reminded that impeller (missile) drives don't pay attention to relativity recently in another thread when crunching numbers for the 4th drives on the new system defense missiles.

For those RFC will most likely have to do something about relativity because their straight line terminal velocity, if you ignore relativity, is greater than c. And we can't have that.
Though we speculated that he may just do a quick & dirty fix by revealing a 'speed limit' on missiles -- similar to (but obviously higher than) the 0.8c (n-space) limit rad-shielding imposes on manned ships.

Bill Woods wrote:You know ... I've been playing with the numbers, and it turns out Mr. Weber also doesn't get this right. For single-drive missiles, Newtonian physics is fine, but for 2DMs and 3DMs, it's noticeably off. As far as the plots go, this isn't a problem, since the missiles should have even greater range than stated, though they shouldn't go so fast.

Kytheros wrote:You aren't the first to note this irregularity. Acceleration under impeller drive appears to ignore relativistic effects on the acceleration math, whilst the time dilation effects still happen(at least, they do while under sails, per HotQ).

It is possible that the impeller drive, bending space as it does, is in effect, something like an alcubeirre drive or the Path of the Fury-verse Fasset drives at velocities approaching c, but there's not really any support for that other than ignoring relativistic effects on acceleration, and even if that bit of speculation is viable, there would be no way to test it - particle and radiation shielding wouldn't support those velocities, and you'd blow up your testing platform in short order.

Jonathan_S wrote:I was reminded that impeller (missile) drives don't pay attention to relativity recently in another thread when crunching numbers for the 4th drives on the new system defense missiles.

For those RFC will most likely have to do something about relativity because their straight line terminal velocity, if you ignore relativity, is greater than c. And we can't have that.
Though we speculated that he may just do a quick & dirty fix by revealing a 'speed limit' on missiles -- similar to (but obviously higher than) the 0.8c (n-space) limit rad-shielding imposes on manned ships.

I believe I was in on that conversation ... or a similar one.
The effective speed limit seems to be the most likely fix, IMO, although if particle/rad shielding for missiles can be made to support ever higher velocities*, then looking at his other works for possibilities, ending up in a pocket universe and going effectively FTL to the regular universe ala the Furyverse would seem the next most likely "solution/explanation".
*Not impossible, given the development of the bow buckler, which would grant a ship improved protection, possibly enough to get around the normal limitations of rad and particle shielding.


Some of relativity's effects may still apply, at least under warshawski sails time dilation still happens, although the impeller drives on missiles seem to ignore time dilation effects.

Kytheros wrote:
Some of relativity's effects may still apply, at least under warshawski sails time dilation still happens, although the impeller drives on missiles seem to ignore time dilation effects.

Possibly because none of the stories are written from a missile's point of view. They are written from outside the missile's point of reference, in almost all cases from the point of view of a vessel or other object moving far slower than the missile is.

As for time dilation, does it? If that were the case, how would one communicate via either lasers *or* the FTL coms, since it's obvious "both ends" of the communication would be experiencing different perceived time rates. Sure, one can speed up or slow down the data; but doing so without "gaps" could only happen when going from the slowest moving object to the fastest; since the slowest moving would be perceiving a much faster time rate. But we've never seen any indication of that. Even when ships in a fleet accelerating "in system" have had dialog with someone on a planet, there's been no obvious "waiting" or adjustments needed to the data flow *other* than in the case of light-speed-limited methods imposed by actual *distance*. Yet the people talking on the ships at an appreciable percentage of c *should* have been talking far slower than their planetbound counterparts.

Remember, the impeller drive works via direct gravitational action on the actual "fabric", if you will, of space. Time dilation occurs because of the mass increase of the moving object as it's velocity increases changing the shape of space-time. It's quite possible that the impeller drive "flattens" that out, in which case time dilation wouldn't occur.

On another subject, most "high energy" applications require non-material methods of handling. For example, in nuclear fusion research, it's not any material casing that holds the plasma, it's a magnetic bottle or torus. You don't see solid shells on the surface of stars. The energy levels are just too high.

Also, as someone else noted, elements of higher atomic number don't deal well with high energy. Only a certain number of electrons can 'fit' in each orbital shell, and as the number required to balance the protons in the nucleus increases, so do the number of shells. And just like planetary orbits, the farther out one orbits, the less energy is needed to achieve escape velocity. So higher atomic number elements would be even less stable than lower ones.

The only possible exception would be neutronium, where the matter is *so* compressed that all the electrons have been physically pressed down and fused with the protons in the nucleus so only neutrons remain. Hugely dense. Unfortunately, it would also be opaque to the laser or graser beams you were trying to produce. Not to mention impractical for engineering; a ship made of neutronium would be very massive - probably enough to distort the orbits of nearby satellites and other ships in planetary orbit.

So some sort of energy lens would be required. Gravitic would be the most logical, since it should affect *any* beam, no matter what it's wavelength.

OrlandoNative wrote:

Kytheros wrote:
Some of relativity's effects may still apply, at least under warshawski sails time dilation still happens, although the impeller drives on missiles seem to ignore time dilation effects.

Possibly because none of the stories are written from a missile's point of view. They are written from outside the missile's point of reference, in almost all cases from the point of view of a vessel or other object moving far slower than the missile is.

As for time dilation, does it? If that were the case, how would one communicate via either lasers *or* the FTL coms, since it's obvious "both ends" of the communication would be experiencing different perceived time rates. Sure, one can speed up or slow down the data; but doing so without "gaps" could only happen when going from the slowest moving object to the fastest; since the slowest moving would be perceiving a much faster time rate. But we've never seen any indication of that. Even when ships in a fleet accelerating "in system" have had dialog with someone on a planet, there's been no obvious "waiting" or adjustments needed to the data flow *other* than in the case of light-speed-limited methods imposed by actual *distance*. Yet the people talking on the ships at an appreciable percentage of c *should* have been talking far slower than their planetbound counterparts.

Remember, the impeller drive works via direct gravitational action on the actual "fabric", if you will, of space. Time dilation occurs because of the mass increase of the moving object as it's velocity increases changing the shape of space-time. It's quite possible that the impeller drive "flattens" that out, in which case time dilation wouldn't occur.

As far as time dilation goes, we know from Honor of the Queen that ships under Warshawski Sail do experience time dilation. There would have been no issues with time dilation on communications in that situation, because all ships in the convoy were going at the same velocity.

As far as ships go, most of the time ships in-system aren't going at velocities high enough to impose significant factors of time dilation. Also, I'd assume that in such situations, it's not a stream of data, it's a recorded burst, and that there are a standard set of compensation methods for transmissions when one (or both) end has a noticeable amount of time dilation.

On another subject, most "high energy" applications require non-material methods of handling. For example, in nuclear fusion research, it's not any material casing that holds the plasma, it's a magnetic bottle or torus. You don't see solid shells on the surface of stars. The energy levels are just too high.

Also, as someone else noted, elements of higher atomic number don't deal well with high energy. Only a certain number of electrons can 'fit' in each orbital shell, and as the number required to balance the protons in the nucleus increases, so do the number of shells. And just like planetary orbits, the farther out one orbits, the less energy is needed to achieve escape velocity. So higher atomic number elements would be even less stable than lower ones.

The only possible exception would be neutronium, where the matter is *so* compressed that all the electrons have been physically pressed down and fused with the protons in the nucleus so only neutrons remain. Hugely dense. Unfortunately, it would also be opaque to the laser or graser beams you were trying to produce. Not to mention impractical for engineering; a ship made of neutronium would be very massive - probably enough to distort the orbits of nearby satellites and other ships in planetary orbit.

So some sort of energy lens would be required. Gravitic would be the most logical, since it should affect *any* beam, no matter what it's wavelength.

In reverse order.
It's stated flat out in the books (and/or Word of Weber somewhere) that they use gravitic lensing.

I know that. But somewhere in this thread folks started questioning why not using some kind of (theoretical) actual material parts.

The point I was trying to make is that given high enough energy applications, *no* physical material, theoretical or actual, has the properties that would allow it to be used; and only fields of force, like, in this case gravitic lensing, would possibly work.