Sci-fi Weapons, Vehicles and Equipment

Yep, which the Galactica could shrug off with considerable difficulty, and the civilian ships could not.

I'm a Galactica reboot fan, but the idea of "space-fighters" is basically space-fantasy.

I'm still waiting for a source to the whole "one scratch on the lens is a disaster" thing.

There are several ways in which laser range can be greatly extended, by the way. For one thing, you can combine beams from separate lasers, which would give them either greater power at the same range as before, or the same power farther away. It wouldnt perfectly double the range, because some power is lost due to imperfect aiming and so forth, so you cant combine lasers indefinitely, but it would work. Of course, that reduced the number of targets you can engage...

Another way is to deploy larger focusing lenses (or mirrors) out in front, between the firing ship and the intended target. If you use a 5 meter lens to put out a beam that eventually diffuses into a 10 meter patch, put a 10 meter lens between the laser and the target, to refocus the light. Again, that wont exactly double the range, due to inefficiency losses, but it would extend it. Of course, that huge mirror hanging around in the middle of the battle area itself becomes a target...

No perfect solutions, but there are options.

edited 16th Sep '14 8:56:11 PM by demarquis

@ Tuefen Hunden V: Exactly.

@ Demarquis: I already suggested that; we now have to take care of 100 small laser arrays instead of one big one.

A dirty/scratched lense is disastrous because all the energy that's supposed to go into the bad guy's hull is instead going into the grime and scratches on the lense. This causes the glass to absorb more energy than it can withstand, and it goes from a lense to a blob of molten glass.

edited 16th Sep '14 9:35:48 PM by dvorak

Now everyone pat me on the back and tell me how clever I am!

I know that for photography, dust, grime, and scratches on the front lens element do not have an immediately apparent impact on an image due to how the lens works. You get light aberrations, some weird coloring or other issues, but you don't end up with a huge gash in the middle of your picture, because anything on the front lens element is far too close for the lens to focus on anyways.

Mind you, my understanding of a laser has that same lens element being the back lens element, closest to the light source rather than closest to the target (or, in photography terms, the Focal Plane or "Film"), since cameras and lasers focus the light in opposite directions.

Yes, but a camera isn't attempting to focus titanic energies fit to liquify battleplate.

Now everyone pat me on the back and tell me how clever I am!

TuefelHundenV wow I have been upgraded. This new model shall crush all beneath his cybernetic feet.

De marquis: Like taira and the others I remember reading about it but I can't recall which of the bundle of sites it came from. It basically boiled down to the scratch producing a smaller lens than the original and having a smaller surface area for its focal plane was more prone to heat shock and/or heat damage and could potentially lead to a cascade style failure of the lens. I need to dig it up i know it is out there somewhere.

My best quick dig through at least Atomic Rockets it mentions the power of the beam being a concern for the lens by diffusion at the point it would issue from. It is mentioned in both the laser hand weapons and the regular space weapons but not in a direct fashion. You can find the points by searching for optics and/or lens.

I really can't recall where it was. Maybe someone should send a email question to Project Rho/Atomic Rockets and see what he has to say about it.

edited 16th Sep '14 10:47:44 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

Yes, I know the range was less than what the guns were capable of, but as you note, the fog made it difficult to spot ships over about 14km, so the longest viable engagement range was 14km.

Well, maybe your camera isn't trying to do that, but I have some lofty artistic ambitions for my application of the art of photography.

Compare to the Battle of Tsushima Strait, where the ships accurately traded fire at ranges well beyond the theoretical maximum effective range of their guns (or more accurately, beyond the effective range of their optical rangefinders, I'm guessing they had to eyeball it for the last few miles, which is where the Japanese sailors' greater experience with their guns paid off).

edited 16th Sep '14 11:46:56 PM by AFP

Randomly Interesting. A WWII OSS Weapon that basically used the rifle grenade pistol with a couple parts to fire darts and possibly grenades from a Colt 1911. It is really easy to switch between firing darts and firing .45 ACP I found it to be rather clever.

More then subs in space bit. Literally on the last episode of Yamato 2199 they had a "Space Sub". It could open up pockets in space and hide in parallel dimension. The ship had a sufficiently sci-fi periscope that peered up through a hole and they could fire "Torpedos" that would phase from one dimension back into reality. Like a torp coming from the depths to skim the surface.

Who watches the watchmen?

OK, it's from the 1980's, but I found this:

"When laser optics are exposed to continuous radiation or to pulse lengths long enough so that the damage level is determined simply by thermal heating, the mechanisms causing catastrophic damage are fairly clear. In particular, the role of surface defects should be predictable from an analysis of the standing wave pattern at the surface, the optical properties and shape of the defects, and simple heat transfer calculations. The conclusion drawn from such an analysis is that although dust and other surface defects may cause small isolated damage sites to occur, these sites will not grow under continued irradiation and produce catastrophic damage unless the defects exceed a critical diameter or are so closely spaced that they significantly affect the average absorption of the surface. Experimental evidence supports this hypothesis. Dust and other small surface defects are thus acceptable in reasonable concentrations on high power continuous wave laser optics provided that they do not exceed the critical size."

I linked to that site because it allows you to copy/paste the abstract, but it requires you to pay to see the article itself. This site gives you access to the full article for free, but doesnt allow copy/paste.

The math is much too dense for me, but from what I can gather, the energy field in a typical scratch is 1.2 times that of the undamaged lens, or less, depending on the depth of the scratch (most such scratches, according to the authors, are much less than that). See page 258.

I'm no space engineer, but that sounds manageable to me. At the very least, it should be possible to predict when the critical threshold has been exceeded (by an automated scan of the lens) and swap out the lens when it has been degraded too much.

Only in that particular engagement. As mentioned, Tsushima was fought beyond their effective sight range. Hell, in the Mediterranean theatre an RN battleship fired on a Regia Marina battleship and scored a hit at 36 km. The Regia ship was technically out of effective range.

The technology between 1917 and 1943 with the latter example hadn't changed that much. Hell in the Mediterranean theatre many of the ships serving were vets of 1917.

@demarquis

If the laser wasn't meant for anti-ship purposes, then no the effects would merely be a loss of efficiency. As it stands there's so much power involved that any smudge that will absorb energy won't just burn but outright explode.

It sounds like even a high energy laser could survive small scratches just fine it is the larger or deeper ones cause by something like a debris strike or hard grating would be the issue rather then minor wear and tear scratches.

Who watches the watchmen?

Yes, only in that engagement, in other engagements the range is pushed to the absolute maximum at which hits can be expected, even beyond in some cases. The fact of the matter remains, no navy in its right mind closes range to anything much less than the maximum viable, not unless they already have victory in their pocket.

Major Tom: One major development between WWI and WWII was the use of ship-born radar (well, radar in general, really). This gave a huge advantage to radar-equipped ships, especially when combined with the US Navy's quite capable gunnery computers. Many gun mounts only required their crews to keep feeding shells, with the gun automatically tracking and firing at whatever aiming point the computer fed it.

It's been stated elsewhere on the page that a ship could be constructed by attatching two subs together and giving them spin. Why not stick three or four together like that? They would also need to flip the silos to the outside. The spin would serve several purposes-generating artificial gravity, reducing exposure to damage, and putting spent weapons on the other side of the ship to be "reloaded", not unlike the principle of having multiple barrels and actions to give each one adequate time to load.Another thing suggested was to make them modular, "like trains". Perhaps having several modules that can be attached to the basic, missile-armed subs forming the tail-end. This configuration would, however, leave a hollow section in the center, which could maybe be filled by a spare magazine or something ("or something" could be all sorts of handy gadgets and nasty suprises), capped off by an armor plate or Whipple Shield.

edited 17th Sep '14 10:51:26 PM by dvorak

Now everyone pat me on the back and tell me how clever I am!

You have just described my favorite space ship arrangement- it's generally called a "propeller design" and is often proposed for space stations- less often for ships. There are some weaknesses, though; I wouldn't go into battle with modules under spin- lose enough support wires and half your ship goes careening in one direction, the other half in another. Plus, you really don't need artificial gravity during a battle. But in general, it's not a bad design. I would use if for long-range transportation. Once the "ship" arrives at it's target area, you would deploy the modules separately to form the "fleet". After the battle, the modules can re-attach to each other, and either head for the next mission or stick around and act as a base for further operations.

Wires? I had imagined thick steel girders and support struts, attached with heavy-duty rivets or temporary welds, with modules only able to be detached once the ship reached a friendly dock.

Now everyone pat me on the back and tell me how clever I am!

Tell that to Taffy 3. And the crew of the San Francisco and company who were up against the battleship Hiei at Guadalcanal.

Hell, tell that to night battle tactics in general. Both at sea and on land.

That was more optics than gunnery though. Many older ships in WW 2 were still using many of the same guns they were using in WW 1.

Radar helped them see further I'll admit that, but it alone didn't increase the ballistic range of their guns.

Also wasn't radar more used for anti-aircraft purposes overall rather than anti-ship usage? I know the Axis navies had a hell of a time trying to counter radar guided guns in their air raids and defending themselves from the same. (The Japanese were better in that regard than either the Germans or Italians.)

edited 17th Sep '14 7:33:42 PM by MajorTom

Radar was used to help detect and track the enemy even in bad weather conditions such as rain or fog. They were also integrated into Gun Fire Control Systems for the big guns rather early in WWII.

Who watches the watchmen?

Maybe I missed something, but Taffy 3 was trying to open her range, and San Francisco and the other American ships were taken by surprise, resulting in very short engagement ranges.

edited 17th Sep '14 10:54:30 PM by MattII

Taffy 3 was both trying to open her range and close it, depending on which part of the task force you are looking at. The jeep carriers were booking it trying to get out of dodge, and the destroyers and destroyer escorts were giving the Imperial Japanese Navy an old fashioned Banzai charge in order to buy the carriers some time to escape. They ultimately ended up causing some disproportionate damage, with one destroyer escort (the Samuel B. Roberts, IIRC) managing to close to inside of a Japanese cruiser's minimum engagement range, leaving the larger ship no choice but to take the beating she was about to receive (many many many 5 inch, 40mm, 20mm, and 50 caliber rounds fired into her superstructure from knife-fighting distance). It didn't sink the cruiser, but it did cause considerable damage and set her bridge on fire before any of the Japanese ships were able to put enough damage on the destroyer escort to put her out of the fight.

Now that is a big middle finger to the big guns.

Who watches the watchmen?

So maybe under Very Specific Circumstances, we'll get a Standard Starship Scuffle instead of a subhunt-meets-artillery duel.

Now everyone pat me on the back and tell me how clever I am!