I saw that. Wonder what they will do next.

Robots that Mimic Termite behavior for building Now imagine automated builders working alongside a building 3d printing machine.

Stable Lithium Ion batteries It uses a polymer to achieve stability.

The injectable blood loss stop mini sponges have showed back up again Pretty cool though.

edited 14th Feb '14 12:31:10 AM by TuefelHundenIV

For those of you interested in very hard sci-fi point defenses:

The US Navy has got you beat.

Sure it ain't the most powerful laser ever built or undergoing testing, but it's the first to see official deployment in an official military capacity.

It gets even better, railguns aren't far behind.

I will be impressed with the lasers when they do more then set small rubber boats on fire or shoot down a slow moving target drone.

Screw the Laser put the Goal Keeper system on that bad boy. It uses the GAU 8 as a gun.

When lasers can do the equivalent of this in 3-5 seconds◊ I will be impressed.

Or we can go nuts and put the DARDO on it.

edited 17th Feb '14 8:31:59 PM by TuefelHundenIV

They're still working on that.

Why not make a twin or quad mount for the Mk 110 57mm? Better dakka than the old Bofors 40mm of old yet over twice the firepower per round. You'd only need to hit anything about once to bring it down.

DARDO is a dual 40mm. But I do like the quad gun arrangement. The Russians have two different CWIS mount set ups where the mount sports at least two 30mm Russian Auto Cannons. One version also has a missile set attached as well. The smaller of the two has the auto cannons mounted in an over under arrangement.

But as far as I know the DARDO system is the biggest purpose designed CIWS system in use. It sports a twin set of L70 Bofors 40mm guns and has a rather impressive rate of fire.

The US navy experimented with an electro thermal chemical 60mm Auto Loading Revolver auto loader CWIS type weapon called the 60mm ETC. They were working on fitting it to a CIWS type mount.

edited 18th Feb '14 9:26:05 AM by TuefelHundenIV

It's called Kashtan. It's the Russian answer to the SeaRAM gun/missile combo.

Anybody got any cool starship weapons for some good ol Space Combat?

:D

Depends on what you are looking for. There are all sorts of crazy ideas for starship weapons.

^ Everyone does those anymore. It's bland, unimaginative. Why can't people do creative things like a pink lightning ray that turns the other ship into a cloud of cookies?

Or using a warp drive as a gamma ray burst?

If said gamma ray burst then does things like create the perfect tasting mutant popcorn. After vaporizing and destroying everything else it was aimed at of course.

Looking for some awesome Kinetic based ship based weapons, Missiles, etc.

Plus some others that may be used with Element Zero.

:P

A kill vehicle that "talks" to the launcher. Most modern missiles have an IR seeker or radar seeker and can do "track-via-missile". They show what they see to the launcher and the launcher/radar adjusts the missile/kill vehicle's course.

There was the "king of kinetics": 4 small rockets attached to a SABOT round fired out of an M-1. Easy to do with a larger gun or rail gun. Add the ^^ above seeker head for more fun.

Kinetic weapons are great and easy to do.

Personally I like to start with how make the projectile move.

Starting with the bog standard chemical propulsion systems. You have rockets and missiles that we are all familiar with. All of which can be Kinetic Impactors or even delivering explosives. A popular one is a large kinetic weapon that carries a cluster of smaller impactors.

You could even in theory use cartridge based weapons with a fixed charge in a casing much like we have today. You would likely need to use a different propellant and the gun set up would need to be at least partially sealed to protect the mechanism end of the weapon.

I saw a suggestion once for a two part breech. You have a breech and firing mechanism that is inside the hull but inside a open and shut type seal usually at the back of the mechanism sliding airtight door. The barrel and the breech system are separated by a different airtight mechanism.

To load the system you sealed off the breech from the barrel. Opened the breech container and a round was fed in by hand or autoloader. The Breech is resealed and the barrel seal is opened up before the weapon is fired.

Of course this idea was for a "Space Battleship" which had more of a WWII battleship flavor.

Rail guns are a simple classic. As is it's related technological cousin the coilgun.

Next would be the projectile. It needs a shape that is going to deliver energy according to the needs of what your shooting at. The advantage of space is there is not atmosphere to resist round shape so projectiles can have any number of shapes to suit the needs of the shooter.

You need to do a lot of blunt damage but not rip into the ship you could basically just shoot cylinders or balls at the target. You want to penetrate the target dart, cone, or pyramid type shapes. Ammo gets easier to make because you can use very simple shapes if needed without concern for aerodynamics.

Now rounds designed to produce the most effect on impact may use specialized or unusual shapes. Like a round that has a geometric pattern that gives it a good stiff penetrating AP round. Or a round that is made to deform into a broader shape to deliver a lot of damage over a surface area.

If you put enough force behind it you could shoot whatever you want really. You could even shoot lengths of wire.

Now what the round is made of will matter still. Such as the difference between two rounds of the same shape made of lead vs one made of steel with a tungsten carbide tip.

Now heading over to warheads. Chemical explosives still work in space but they work differently. The heat is short lived and the blast wave is pretty much non-existent. You use the explosive to usually propel shrapnel or fragments at high velocity. Now if there is atmosphere for the explosive to work in that is different. Like say the interior of a ship. So a round penetrates into a target and a second later explodes giving of heat, a shock wave in the internal atmo, and spraying shrapnel and fragments everywhere.

You could set your targets insides on fire with say a flammable agent that is like burning oxygen gel or something.

There are energy warheads like a shell with anti-matter warheads or plasma charges. Not all that realistic but still fun. There are also micro nukes.

Finally what do you shoot it out of/ Do you fire it out of a missile launcher, tubes in the ship, a turret, does something say spin using centrifugal force to launch the projectile etc.

A personal favourite are Shaped Nuclear warheads. They are theoretically possible. They direct more of the nuclear weapons energy more densely over a given area. An interesting description of a "Daisy Chained" of shaped nuclear warheads that went off in succession did serious damage to a Bersker ship in the Berserker Series by Fred Saberhagen

edited 20th Feb '14 5:08:25 PM by TuefelHundenIV

@Kesseler satellites:

Perhaps I'm thinking too small scale, but I imagine that they would behave in much the same way as a modern IADS does - relying upon synchronisation, connectivity, etc. to co-ordinate responses to potential "break out" attempts.

For example, an observation satellite may detect signals consistent with an attempted launch of a missile designed to enter the planet's orbit (obviously some extrapolation would be needed on the satellite's part to discern if the missile is indeed intended for exo-atmospheric travel or something else). It would alert other nearby satellites and feed them as much information on the target as possible. These satellites would then put systems in place to destroy the missile.

Depending on how aggressive these satellites are (and just what they're capable of), they may even pre-emptively destroy suspected launch sites for rockets, space-planes, etc. Nothing's going to dissuade a plucky country from pursuing a space programme like their brand spanking new launch pad getting whacked by a tungsten rod from on high.

Of course, I could be talking out my behind, but those are my thoughts.

Flanker; Actually that is more or less what happens but the folks on the ground have a hard time discerning which body does what because of multi layered nature of the obstacle. That and many of the upper level satellites seem to be obscured or masked by something until they are needed. They know there are communications satellites and are very certain there are spy sats as well. They know there are armed satellites. Some have kinetic weapons others a type of energy weapon I am thinking particle beam or powerful lasers.

That and the studying the Kessler Network hasn't been going on for very long and only a handful of attempts to breech it have been made. A couple of incidents involving a orbit to surface counter fire on a land based laser system on two occasions first with kinetic impactors then with a powerful weapon of which I am undecided what it should be. I was toying with a orbit to surface stealth package that drops precision nuclear warheads or maybe even a seriously powerful FAE type weapon. I am thinking hyper sonic glide munitions after re-entry is made.

The network is a multitude of satellites of varying types whose purpose is to keep earth bottled up for as long as possible. indefinitely would be nice but they know sooner or later they will find a way past the network.

Another shot at a individual HUD unit for troopers

edited 24th Feb '14 8:39:07 PM by TuefelHundenIV

So we're trying to be UNSC Marines? (Because that thing looks almost like the helmet and eyepiece thingy from the first Halo game.)

I thought that the halo eye piece resembled the eye piece from the piece of future soldier kit that was supposed to accompany the OICW or even the Apache crew mans eye piece.

And here I thought the original inspiration were the Space Marines from Aliens. Not the OICW project that almost nobody knew of in 2000.

Even better the HUD stuff is actually fairly old. They have been chasing that tech for a few decades at least.

So I came up with a world where they don't use bullets and whatnot. Instead their "magazines" don't hold any sort of physical ammunition, but instead Krypton gas that turns it into plasma compressed into a solid form about the size of a bullet, and then magnetically accelerated at sub-relativistic speeds.

Any ideas to add to it? How it would be taken apart? Cleaning? Charging handle? Remedial actions?

A smart idea. May I also suggest the latter seeding the ex-launch site with mines and other delightful toys to deter reclaimation/repair efforts? Of course, it would have to occur some point prior to detonation, but you want to make getting to orbit more hassle than it's worth.

For more entrenched silos/underground command centres, perhaps something akin to a bunker-buster that detonates a shaped nuclear warhead at the correct depth?

As an alternative to the gliding hypersonic munition, what about Project Pluto in miniature? Now you can have your (heavily irradiated) cake and bomb eat it too!

@Tac-Fox: Babylon Five did it with the PPG; Phased Plasma Gas.