Sci-fi Weapons, Vehicles and Equipment

Yeah they were. Did you even read some of the stuff I posted? They could take entire loads of Le Prieur rockets and it would FAIL to kill it. The airship would escape afterwards. The QF-1 if it managed to reach it (usually it didn't) wouldn't reliably burst against a Zeppelin. And if it did, it would fail to do anything meaningful.

One of the R-class Zeppelins, L-32 took THREE entire drums of incendiary ammunition from a fighter pursuing it BEFORE it finally was brought down. If that's not resilient, what is?

Now that's Moving the Goalposts mate.

I think it's just differing definitions of the term resilient.

In the sense that they required a greater amount of fire to down they were definitely resilient. The one shot down by small arms was reportedly shot multiple thousands of times, though that may be a bit of a tall tale. Compared to other aircraft they stayed up for much longer under fire.

On the other hand, they were considered to be extremely vulnerable at low altitude by every military that flew them. When you think about it, it wouldn't be that hard for a fully-manned garrison to shoot a huge and slow moving object a few thousand times. The reason basically all of the wartime development they underwent focused on increasing the altitude they could fly at is because low altitude is a very bad place for a military zeppelin to be.

Tom: No one moved goal post but showed you facts which you lack. Especially when the records of airship casualties show significant numbers of craft lost to everything from infantry small arms to single aircraft firing non-incendiary bullets to even one using nothing more than small 20lb hand tossed bombs. Not darts, not incendiary rockets or bullets, but one of the crappiest ever aviation bombs designed that had to be aimed and tossed by hand.

You also deliberately ignore the fact the German's themselves recognized the Zepplins were vulnerable and at notable risk to exactly what I just described. The fact is supported by the German's pushing for higher and higher altitudes to try and avoid and evade being engaged to begin with which the stated purpose was to avoid the reach of enemy fighters and ground fire as much as possible.

The P and R class Zepplins by the way max ceilings were in range of even the QF 1 pounder and its immediate successor the QF 2 pounder. Which is why the S class and above were intended to have higher ceilings as even light AA could reach their airships. That is also again discounting the several common larger caliber and longer range AA guns that were common by 1915. Even the Germans had an AA gun with reach higher than there Zepplins could fly, their early 88's in fact.

As for the rockets you might have had a point about airship durability if it wasn't for the fact that the rockets were so notoriously unreliable to the point they were almost as dangerous to the crafting firing them as anything else. They fairly constantly failed to detonate at all if they even left their launch rack or do something interesting like catch fire instead. Shouldn't be surprising given rocket technology for the military was almost the same as it was during the Napoleonic Wars. Again single airplanes even using generic ammo brought down Zepplins with nothing more than the few machine guns most carried at the time. The failure of the rockets does not indicate durability.

Your argument about their durability has no basis in any facts or history. It rather quickly becomes evident to even casual examination of Zeppelin causalities that they are not at all as durable as you imply by any measure. Very few hit by enemy fire ever survived to make it home. The few that made it home even fewer survived the landing. The majority were destroyed on landing or were already falling apart along the way due to extensive damage.

You also seem to be deliberately ignoring the fact that even small arms fire can do significant damage to an airship. A fact that should clue you in that your original argument just might be insupportable. Which also by the way I can practically gurantee Pom-Pom's had no trouble doing damage to Zepplin when they hit them. Even if they went through and through they would leave notably large sized holes in any variety of the bags found on airships of the era. Of course that is also ignoring the fact it was way more than just Pom-Pom's being fired at aircraft and zeppelins that came into range and quite a few hit by ground fire were noted to have suffered significant shrapnel damage as well as general punctures.

The point about the Raken Darts was they had one shot. There is by the way one recorded instance of it forcing a Zeppelin down due to severe damage a common occurrence with the craft which were hit by enemy fire in the first place. The biggest limitation of the Darts was not that they didn't or couldn't drop a zeppelin but they had exactly one attacks worth and that was it. The fighters rarely had capacity for even that when they did loft them because extra weight of any sort slowed down their climb rate and reduced their range. Two factors rather key to intercepts when attacking zeppelins in the first place.

In short your argument that the airships were very durable and somehow resisting even auto-cannon fire is not supported by real world facts by any measure.

edited 17th Apr '18 8:00:18 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Not too well-read on airships, but I do know that balloons were tough nuts to crack for a variety of reasons, starting with the fact that even with incendiary rounds, they were hard to set fire (the preferred strategy was to pour a long burst into the same spot and hope you ignited the hydrogen as it was escaping and mixing with the air).

Complicating factors included, ironically, the static nature of observation balloons. If it never moves, it's much easier to surround with every flavor of Anti-Air you can muster, plus providing air cover from friendly fighters. Balloon busting was considered an Airstrike Impossible sort of mission because it required you to willingly fly into a prepared ambush. Being captured when it was known you were using incendiary ammo was also pretty dangerous, as it was considered by many to be an inhumane weapon what with being burned to death being a Primal Fear.

And in any case, as soon as enemy aircraft showed up, it was common technique to start cranking the winch to bring the balloon back down to the ground where it could be camouflaged and hidden.

edited 17th Apr '18 8:37:23 PM by AFP

The static balloons were somewhat better off but they weren't any tougher. The aerostat variety didn't have the advantage of moving. Though I recall most of the aerostats were also comparatively smaller than the Zeppelins which literally got building sized and could sometimes hang heavier gondolas than the ones that needed to moved around and needed the fuel and oil for the engines. It is a toss up honestly. The aerostat were as you noted a lot easier to defend and could be winched down in a pinch but were not exactly mobile either.

Airships seemed like they were paradoxically ahead of their time and the times didn’t have the technology available to make them completely useful.

How much would a better envelope material help? I mean, if you had internal fire barriers made out of aerogel, could you prevent all the hydrogen from igniting?

Hydrogen requires oxygen to combust. You can reduce the rate of consumption by limiting the surface area of the gas that's exposed to air. You can build the interior in a cellular layout that isolates individual cells of gas from others. There are quite a few tricks.

edited 18th Apr '18 7:58:44 AM by Fighteer

What do you think of a pistol which can double as a laser gun and also a gun which can create shots made out of different substances and elements like mercury, ice, venom and even acid?

I think that if you have the tech to pull that off, you've basically solved science and should start figuring out how to do more productive things with your super technology.

Well, it's some sort of alien technology and the latter function happens when capsules containing the elements are inserted.

Well, mixing a projectile weapon with a laser weapon seems impractical, since the engineering requirements are fundamentally different. That's my first take. Getting it to fire gel capsules is relatively trivial.

Limiting exposed area of a gas is basically useless if a gas is under any pressure. It'll expand and diffuse freely. Cellular designs were used on Zeppelins before to some effect but once the hydrogen caught fire the other cells failed from the heat.

I keep thinking that with modern materials we can find something flexible enough and heat resistant enough that the cells don't pop under the heat and pressure but can't find one that fits the bill.

It could launch the solid projectiles by rapidly expanding a propellant with the laser.

So basically an ETC gun using a high-powered laser instead of a plasma cartridge?

I think if you want a weapon that has both a gun and a laser the over-under solution would be best. Sort of like Deckard's gun from blade runner, have the gun on bottom and the laser on top.

You are aware that airships dont use flamable gas anymore?

Bel: Modern air ships are by comparison a lot safer. Better fabric materials, better rigid materials which includes composites, plastics, and metal alloys. Use of helium while not as strong in lifting power as Hydrogen is close enough and it won't burn. Digitized control systems help as do modern navigation systems. They have a lot better fire resistance than the older ships though accidents can still happen.

However they still have trouble with weather and the majority of losses post WII and mishaps are from weather. It helps that balloons are rarely used in warfare outside of use as aerostats and weather balloons. Though some want to bring them back as people and cargo haulers which might work as long you don't expect speedy delivery and stricter weather limitations than modern heavy lift aircraft.

edited 18th Apr '18 1:43:04 PM by TuefelHundenIV

I was thinking more of propellant that simply expands from the heat without combusting. Combustion is an option too, there have been experiments with laser-ignited propellant for artillery, but when that's the main energy source the laser itself doesn't need to be very powerful, so it makes less sense to use it as a weapon.

edited 18th Apr '18 1:41:01 PM by ManInGray

They've found a good niche for surveillance. The PTDS aerostat over Kabul is probably the most famous. Supposedly the locals are so afraid of it that they act differently when it's up, thinking it can see through walls or track them 24/7.

They definitely work well for carrying OP/LP and similar kit on the aerostats. Though there was one that broke loose in the states and the cable it trailed caused some small scale disaster as it knocked out power lines.

Pink diamond radio only a few atoms thick. More neat than anything else.

Methods for defeating drone swarms using microwave emitters and lasers tested ina field exercise.

Sounds like the microwave emitter has some good promise given it was hitting multiple targets at once.

If artificial wetware becomes the norm in the future (NOT dystopian at all) and certain genetic engineering and medicine becomes extremely common, would it be too much of a stretch to say younger children of say the 27th century would learn at a faster rate than ours today?

Like I'm having thirteen year olds in my verse (and these thirteen year olds are NOT special or unique in the verse) have the equivalent intelligence/education of a semi-hard working college graduate. The more gifted high school freshman (14 years old and up) would be more like Ivy-League.

The whole idea is that 27th century life and occupations need to remember and retain a lot of knowledge at a moments notice so everyone is "upgraded" where their memory recall is stronger, and their capacity for learning is greatly extended.

This goes for military forces as well, so there's no "dead weight", in terms of crew efficiency.

I'm trying to balance humans still having to work hard, and technology making everything easier and faster

So long as it's just used to allow kids to remember more, should be fine. Everyone wants better memory and arguably this is a fine option. So long as it isn't total designer babies.

As long as the children don't mature emotionally at an unrealistic rate, having them become increasingly capable of learning and retaining knowledge seems reasonable. I'd love to see how you justify the need for labor though.

edited 22nd Apr '18 1:31:04 PM by Fighteer

More knowledge and complexity creates opportunities for more specializations in the workforce.