?

cthia wrote:Can plasma capacitors supply the energy requirement of an MA graser?

Both the Silver Bullets at Beowulf and the graser torpedoes in Oyster Bay were based on plasma capacitors. The Silver Bullets had solar panels to serve as trickle chargers, since they needed much more endurance.

Jonathan_S wrote: Tractor beams might have grav signatures that are visible to FTL detectors at sufficiently close range.

It cannot be very strong, because the spider drive is almost invisible and that works with arrays of tractor beams strong enough to grab the Aplha Wall.

tlb wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote: Tractor beams might have grav signatures that are visible to FTL detectors at sufficiently close range.

It cannot be very strong, because the spider drive is almost invisible and that works with arrays of tractor beams strong enough to grab the Aplha Wall.

D'oh. I overlooked the obvious.

So yeah, no need to worry about tractor beams getting detected unless you're so close you can't even use your drive without detection.

Thanks for straightening me out

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:Can plasma capacitors supply the energy requirement of an MA graser?

Both the Silver Bullets at Beowulf and the graser torpedoes in Oyster Bay were based on plasma capacitors. The Silver Bullets had solar panels to serve as trickle chargers, since they needed much more endurance.

The graser torpedo had a fusion reactor, hense it's massive size.

cthia wrote:Can plasma capacitors supply the energy requirement of an MA graser?

tlb wrote:Both the Silver Bullets at Beowulf and the graser torpedoes in Oyster Bay were based on plasma capacitors. The Silver Bullets had solar panels to serve as trickle chargers, since they needed much more endurance.

Theemile wrote:The graser torpedo had a fusion reactor, hense it's massive size.

Where did you find text to support that? I cannot find it in Mission of Honor and Storm from the Shadows does not mention torpedoes at all.

I will recheck UH, because I am confident about the solar panel to keep the charge up; but that will be a manual search and may take awhile. If the Silver Bullets use plasma capacitors, then I would expect the same to be true of their predecessors in MoH.

On page 586 out of 773, with a page header of "Silver Bullet Q-12 Beowulf System, the text in the second paragraph says "Panels in the radar-absorbant skin slid open, deploying the solar panels designed to sustain the charge in its plasma capacitors as long as possible".

If the plan is ‘I’ll fill the capacitors on my super stealthy weapon with 20 million degree plasma and then it will attack 6 months’ then either there a problem or David hasn’t told us about the MA having developed the stasis field.

kzt wrote:If the plan is ‘I’ll fill the capacitors on my super stealthy weapon with 20 million degree plasma and then it will attack 6 months’ then either there a problem or David hasn’t told us about the MA having developed the stasis field.

The whole idea of using plasma as something that can be contained and maintained over long periods of time is something that we have discussed before, without any answer. Magneto-hydrodynamics may give a way of extracting energy from plasma, but the hottest plasma will need to give up the most energy to power the mechanism that confines it. This confinement has to involve gravity plates; otherwise any hot, electrically neutral, matter will burn through the container walls. Trying to use a container that can endure the heat without a power source, will just result in the container walls conducting heat away from the plasma.

All in all, a mega-Farad electrical capacitor would provide less brain strain than a plasma capacitor.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:Can plasma capacitors supply the energy requirement of an MA graser?

tlb wrote:Both the Silver Bullets at Beowulf and the graser torpedoes in Oyster Bay were based on plasma capacitors. The Silver Bullets had solar panels to serve as trickle chargers, since they needed much more endurance.

Theemile wrote:The graser torpedo had a fusion reactor, hense it's massive size.

Where did you find text to support that? I cannot find it in Mission of Honor and Storm from the Shadows does not mention torpedoes at all.

I will recheck UH, because I am confident about the solar panel to keep the charge up; but that will be a manual search and may take awhile. If the Silver Bullets use plasma capacitors, then I would expect the same to be true of their predecessors in MoH.

On page 586 out of 773, with a page header of "Silver Bullet Q-12 Beowulf System, the text in the second paragraph says "Panels in the radar-absorbant skin slid open, deploying the solar panels designed to sustain the charge in its plasma capacitors as long as possible".

I can't find it. I know we discussed the fusion reactor for come time, So David might have said it on here, or else I'm just losing it. A lot of conversation from 3+ years ago are falling off the board, so it's difficult to find discussions from back then.

We had deduced that the size of the device was so large because it had a small starship fusion plant powering the spider and graser. , and ther was alot of discussion about this back then. Remember, these are so large they had to be carrier externally on 5 Mton podlayers, and each could only carry 3 devices.

I took the Silver bullet panels as keep-alives, to keep a capacitor capable of firing up the reactor topped off until it was needed.

cthia wrote:Can plasma capacitors supply the energy requirement of an MA graser?

tlb wrote:Both the Silver Bullets at Beowulf and the graser torpedoes in Oyster Bay were based on plasma capacitors. The Silver Bullets had solar panels to serve as trickle chargers, since they needed much more endurance.

Theemile wrote:The graser torpedo had a fusion reactor, hense it's massive size.

tlb wrote:Where did you find text to support that? I cannot find it in Mission of Honor and Storm from the Shadows does not mention torpedoes at all.

I will recheck UH, because I am confident about the solar panel to keep the charge up; but that will be a manual search and may take awhile. If the Silver Bullets use plasma capacitors, then I would expect the same to be true of their predecessors in MoH.

On page 586 out of 773, with a page header of "Silver Bullet Q-12 Beowulf System, the text in the second paragraph says "Panels in the radar-absorbant skin slid open, deploying the solar panels designed to sustain the charge in its plasma capacitors as long as possible".

Theemile wrote:I can't find it. I know we discussed the fusion reactor for come time, So David might have said it on here, or else I'm just losing it. A lot of conversation from 3+ years ago are falling off the board, so it's difficult to find discussions from back then.

We had deduced that the size of the device was so large because it had a small starship fusion plant powering the spider and graser. , and ther was alot of discussion about this back then. Remember, these are so large they had to be carrier externally on 5 Mton podlayers, and each could only carry 3 devices.

I took the Silver bullet panels as keep-alives, to keep a capacitor capable of firing up the reactor topped off until it was needed.

This earliest quote about torpedoes from RFC that I could find in the Forum is dated April 2014; but there he was talking about the power requirements of energy torpedoes (which is not helpful in the context.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:Can plasma capacitors supply the energy requirement of an MA graser?

tlb wrote:Both the Silver Bullets at Beowulf and the graser torpedoes in Oyster Bay were based on plasma capacitors. The Silver Bullets had solar panels to serve as trickle chargers, since they needed much more endurance.

Theemile wrote:The graser torpedo had a fusion reactor, hense it's massive size.

tlb wrote:Where did you find text to support that? I cannot find it in Mission of Honor and Storm from the Shadows does not mention torpedoes at all.

I will recheck UH, because I am confident about the solar panel to keep the charge up; but that will be a manual search and may take awhile. If the Silver Bullets use plasma capacitors, then I would expect the same to be true of their predecessors in MoH.

On page 586 out of 773, with a page header of "Silver Bullet Q-12 Beowulf System, the text in the second paragraph says "Panels in the radar-absorbant skin slid open, deploying the solar panels designed to sustain the charge in its plasma capacitors as long as possible".

Theemile wrote:I can't find it. I know we discussed the fusion reactor for come time, So David might have said it on here, or else I'm just losing it. A lot of conversation from 3+ years ago are falling off the board, so it's difficult to find discussions from back then.

We had deduced that the size of the device was so large because it had a small starship fusion plant powering the spider and graser. , and ther was alot of discussion about this back then. Remember, these are so large they had to be carrier externally on 5 Mton podlayers, and each could only carry 3 devices.

I took the Silver bullet panels as keep-alives, to keep a capacitor capable of firing up the reactor topped off until it was needed.

This earliest quote about torpedoes from RFC that I could find in the Forum is dated April 2014; but there he was talking about the power requirements of energy torpedoes (which is not helpful in the context.

Yeah, I did the same search. nothing helpful.