The problem with an un-aerodynamic aircraft is not so much the heat (well, at hypersonic speeds the heat would be a problem too) as the drag. You already need insanely powerful engines for a jet fighters to go at these speeds ; a boxy aircraft just can't do that. The best solution in my opinion is to use some kind of force field to create a very aerodynamic bubble around your dropship. That way you can keep a purely functional shape for the aircraft itself, and as a bonus you're keeping the heat away from the hull.
On your second question : what do you mean by "completely atomize" it ? Vaporize it ? Break it down to molecular level ? ... wait, that's kinda the same thing
edited 2nd Apr '15 4:16:09 AM by Aetol
Worldbuilding is fun, writing is a chore
Essex
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
The idea I'm getting from your suggestion is something like.... say, Element Zero. Zap it with an electric charge and it does force-fieldy stuff. From there, it would also, I think, require some way to shape/manipulate/channel the field, perhaps by placing the Felkium (name I'm running with for this stuff, after its discoverer) at specific projector nodes around the ship which give the field the aerodynamic shape? I guess it would be a more interesting property than just... "this really tough stuff that you slap on your dropship so that it doesn't melt at Mach 5+".
At the same time, the slugs could be something less exotic. The point could contain a small chunk of it, plus battery hooked up to a simple electrical generator or... something... that delivers a charge (honestly, I have no idea how this works either), making it a forcefield-tipped slug. Or something. Improves penetration. At least that way, I don't have to go with an absurd heat resistance property to get it up to 1.32MT, make that more a function of the forcefield's ability to tank damage.
And well Atomize, as in.. umm.... I've actually been seeing it a lot on "power level calculating" forums where they calculate a feat's output. Depending on whether something is "merely" vaporized or atomized, the calculated output could be vastly different.
My main example for this "vaporization-atomization comparison" is this number crunch they did on Saber's Excalibeam here: http://www.narutoforums.com/blog.php?b=18307
Low end (Vaporization only): 5.135 MT
Low end (Combo of both): 58.65 MT
Low end (Atomization only): 79.62 MT
A quick look on The Other Wiki brings up "Enthalpy of Vaporization/Atomization", which apparently is... "Needed heat required to turn a given amount of a liquid substance to gas at a given pressure/Enthalpy change that accompanies total separation of all atoms in a chemical substance".
I guess in this sense, it's a difference between "turn it into vapor" vs "reduce it to atoms".
So the sense I'd go with is "reduce it to atoms".
You could say that forcefields can interpenetrate each other (sort of like how to soap bubbles can merge), so the phlebotinum-tipped slugs are required to penetrate them.
As for the atomization... is this stuff even made of atoms ? Mass Effect's eezo, for example, isn't. With the periodic table being complete and all, you don't have much room for believable unobtainum. Depending on what it is, the energy needed to break it down to its basic components could be anything (but most likely greater than if it was made of atoms) so I wouldn't worry too much about that.
edited 2nd Apr '15 11:23:54 AM by Aetol
Worldbuilding is fun, writing is a chore
Impossible Gender Forge
Exotic matter is a thing though. Negative mass man. Negative mass.
Essex
Ah, my bad for that. Sorry, it's almost 3AM over here. I meant, rather than the energy required atomize the unobtainium, as being the benchmark for the 1.32 MT output, I could instead make that figure the amount of energy required to overwhelm the forcefield protecting the slug.
So I guess we can just forget the atomization thing. Considering it takes 0.000000224 MT to atomize even a 200kg Tungsten slug, then atomizing the slug isn't even a footnote compared to the amount of energy needed to kill the forcefield protecting the slug. That is to say, the slugs are tipped with a field projector, but most of the mass is just plain kinetic penetrator stuff.
And well interpenetration would probably be a useful property, especially if it later spills out of UN/government control. I must admit that the unobtainium isn't even the focal point of the story, so much as it is a side effect of anomalous portals that occurred around the world between 1992 and 1997, so I haven't given too much thought to it.
I was just looking for a way to justify hypersonic classic box dropships that go into production in 2001.
Though the more I think about it, the more I might be able to include it in the lore... Since the very first portal happened back in late '66, with the next instance being '92, and then increasing in frequency until '97, when they just stop. Actually might even make the '66 portal the point of divergence: Stumbled on an initial sample, studied it over the next 30 years, so that by the time the mass portal appearances occur in the 90's, the theory, testing, and base techs would already exist, allowing larger production because of more widely available resources. And they already know what to do with it.
Ah, I do apologize if I'm jumping around too much... I hope I'll make more sense by the time I get up.
edited 2nd Apr '15 12:01:34 PM by Essex
Essex
Wouldn't know what isotopic(?) number to give it though. Considering its synthesis was the incidental result of Reality Warping, it might not even be an element as we know it. Err... yeah my fail at chemistry is showing.
On another note, I was wondering what the field would have to be made of in order to be susceptible to damage by a magical/energy attack. Particles, waves, Pure Energy? Well okay, it's hit by magic, so that's probably something I shouldn't worry about, but they obviously have to have been able to overwhelm it during experimentation. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to estimate the energy involved to have been 1.32MT.
I'm sorry, I'm still caught up in this MT stuff. It's just that I want to avoid having to resort to Power Levels and Random Power Ranking in my story.
edited 3rd Apr '15 4:04:14 AM by Essex
Trans Siberian Anarchestra (it/they)
What kind of energy is it susceptible to? If the weapons we're familiar with aren't effective you'll be wanting to avoid thermal, chemical, and kinetic... :P
The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable
Essex
Thermal, I'd say. Kinetic too, I guess. Hit it hard enough and it should fail.
Just... it has a really high threshold. So "hard enough" is a relatively tall order. I'm writing that they used it in 70's underground nuclear testing, and it takes a Mk 41 bomb to cause the field to fail. The amount of unobtainium used in the slug that gets atomized later on, is of course, smaller. I'm assuming from this point on that the amount of unobtainium is directly proportional to how much heat the fields can handle.
So at the very least, with knowing how much it takes to crack a shield with a given amount of the stuff, using a given bomb yield, it would be possible to extrapolate downward, and from there get a pinpoint on "at least 1.32".
Keeping mankind down to 20 Minutes into the Future levels, though. So I decided to give it a couple of caveats to limit its use away from "guys running around with ME kinetic barriers":
1) It vaporizes any organic matter it comes into contact with. At least until tech improves to allow for solid fully enclosed envirosuits, using them as personal shields is not really all too stellar an idea. What if you accidentally fell over and hit your head against your shield? Bzzzt.
2) The interpenetration thing. If the tech gets out, and everyone and his grandma has Depleted Phlebotinum Shells - a logical extreme, given the stuff is extremely rare, 948 tons overall - then personal shields are useless, and such.
3) As I said, extremely rare, it's better off being used in bigger things. Like aircraft.
Does the field react violently with carbon, or water, or something else commonly found in living organisms ? Then it will also react with non-organic instances of the same stuff. Does it behave like harmful radiations ? It will probably irradiate objects around it.
Overall, it really depends of the hardness of your setting. If it's soft, you just need to know how it behave and stick to it. If it's hard, then you'll need to consider whether it makes sense scientifically, and maybe throw in some Technobabble.
Worldbuilding is fun, writing is a chore
Essex
... yeah, I totally set myself up for that, didn't I?
I don't suppose there's any specific "dumb" way for inanimate material to differentiate simple "organic components" from "functioning living cells/tissue", is there?
Like maybe bioelectricity running through our bodies?
As for my setting, it's... I guess Science Fantasy. On the one hand, it stars totally fantastical Magical Girls who can magically direct megaton-yield magical explosions resulting in a highly efficient energy delivery (like a nuclear shaped charge or something). They also run on weaponized Power of Friendship and Power of Trust. They're fighting against a viral Heartless that originated from an Eldritch Location, invaded the verse's equivalent of heaven (where the Mentor Mascot and maaagic comes from), and ultimately moved on to earth.
On the other hand, there's the muggles who have teeth and aid in the fight against The Heartless with a combination of conventional weapons, some sciencey phlebotinum as their high-end stuff, and the fact that they're a global organization backed by a superpower UN, with all the logistics (and phlebotinum) that entails. Like hypersonic dropships to give them a reaction speed of minutes - kind of important given the viralness of the Heartless - a constellation of Kill Sats, and a more advanced version of IONDS that maaagically figures out the yield equivalent of magical attacks in order to grade what they're up against.
I guess given all these elements, it's actually pretty soft (or at the very least in the middle), with maybe some veneer of hardness in that I'm at least trying to avert Power Levels and Random Power Ranking. I guess you could call it a pet peeve of mine at the moment.
Can your phlebotinum be magic-based ? If so, go crazy. Singling out "living matter" is perfectly fine when magic is involved.
If you want to keep the muggle side strictly sciencey, on the other hand, then as I said you'll need a more scientific behavior, and some non-organic things will probably be affected as a side effect.
Other considerations : if the fields destroys organic matter, does that mean the dropships kill the grass and sterilize the soil wherever it lands ? For that matters, what is stopping the field so the crew is unharmed ? And couldn't this phlebotinum be used to make "clean bombs" that only kill people ? Or to sterilize medical equipment ?
Worldbuilding is fun, writing is a chore
Essex
I guess there's nothing preventing it from being magical phlebotinum. Maybe even black boxing how it does things, like an SCP. They can probe and test it all they want, even figure out how to make it run, but not how it runs. Would give me less of a headache writing it up too.
Probably would kill grass, yeah. I'm assuming, though, that the field is only active so long as a current is running through the phlebotinum. From there, it's assumed to have an on/off switch, so an automation system would probably deactivate the field once the landing gear opens up. Otherwise, we end up with crop circles/triangles/whatever aerodynamic shape the bubble happens to be. And that would require coverups and whatnot. There's an active masquerade going on, because negative emotions make people susceptible to infection. Telling everyone that an alien invasion is going on is not a good idea for their emotional well-being.
I'm picturing the field to be a hollow bubble thing, or even I guess just a membrane that takes the shape of whatever it's programmed to. Knowing how to manipulate its shape is a must, of course. So if the shield is down prior to take-off, soldiers can board. Once the landing gear retracts and it's clear of the ground and ready to fly fast, shield goes up, thrusters/scramjets/some kind of efficient hypersonic propulsion sets to maximum, and away they go.
Shield would probably go down once it drops to landing altitude, allowing for anything from a conventional landing, to Fast-Roping where the situation calls for it.
Clean bombs would make for a very effective means of gaining control of a fortified location, yeah. A consideration there would be if it can be tweaked to "phase through" non-living matter and thus kill everyone in a building without damaging it. Since in its default state, it would definitely deflect particles/projectiles (possibly also making it useful as an alternate micrometeor shielding for spacecraft).
Really liking the sterilization idea. Given how I think phlebotinum feels more alive when integrated into the wider verse. I'd imagine tight control over the substance though, seeing how it's rarer than Rhenium.
Arent we describing radioactivity?
Essex
You mean if the stuff is radioactive? Didn't occur to me, no...
If you mean that the effects sound similar to radioactivity, well... I'm not sure if radiation can be turned into a forcefield...
edited 4th Apr '15 9:17:56 PM by Essex
I poked around a little, and it seems like your problems would be solved through Gundam Seed era Phase Shift armor and positronic interference.
The former is a material that, already quite resistant, becomes even more so with an electric field. I'm not sure I understand the science just right, but the idea seems to be either "reactive armor without the 'reactive' part", or simply increased durability with power (by forcing the individual particles to stay in place, come hell or high water, so long as there's a current). Thus, the amount of force required to atomize it is for when it is fully powered, not when it is unpowered. I think the real-world term is "piezoelectric"? (Aetol, does this ring any bells? I'm running on physics invented by non-physicists here...)
The later involves creating an air-free area in front of your craft, by firing there and either forcing atmosphere out of the way - or by straight-up disintegrating it into light. This has to be timed to how fast the craft is flying at the moment, of course.
...Alternately, just have the craft equip a sabot and/or conical shell during hypersonic atmospheric flight. Being relatively un-aerodynamic means that it's going to be an ass and a half to gas up - and the issue is never cost so much as the logistics of resupplying anyway.
edited 7th Apr '15 10:41:53 AM by DeusDenuo
Essex, how rigorous do you want to be with your shields? Are you happy to handwave some elements? If not, you might want to consider whether your shields experience Newtonian reaction forces, and if so, how they respond to them, and—if they do experience reaction forces—how thrust is generated from within them.
This is a side-note, but:
, "applied mechanical stress".
It's possible that the term has been applied to the process that you describe, admittedly, but my impression, at least, is that the above is the standard use of the term.
My Games & Writing
"Converse Piezoelectric Effect", then? ...Ugh, I'm completely out of my depth here. This has to have been studied in the real world...
Piezoelectricity is reversible, so piezoelectric materials can both generate an electrical charge in response to applied mechanical stress, and deform themselves in response to applied electrical charge. Increase their resilience, on the other hand... You could imagine a composite material, a combination of a piezoelectric material and some material that becomes more durable in response to pressure. Something like that.
edited 11th Apr '15 8:01:12 PM by Aetol
Worldbuilding is fun, writing is a chore
Essex
Yeah, I remember having read about piezoelectricity some years before. They were supposedly planning to use it for a new less-than-lethal ammo that tazes targets. Not sure what ever came of that idea.
Using it in conjunction with the material somehow... well, my primary concern I guess is the aerodynamicness. As you said, the logistics. Did a bit more reading on hypersonics and apparently, the main problem is how these things tend to eat up so much gas that it's not funny. A lot of hypersonic plans are talking about sub-orbital-capable craft in conjunction with hypersonic-friendly aerodynamic designs, mainly because there's no air up there. Does that mean it would save up on fuel that way?
All this suddenly makes me wonder about power sources. If the shields run on electricity, what would be the most power-efficient means to charge them up? Hook them up to a regular generator? Or compound them in something piezoelectric like quartz and then squash it to generate power? (My fail at science is showing here, I'm sure...)
As to the Newtonian-ness... on the shields... well... I have no idea how to handle that. What should we expect if they do react to Newtonian forces? You mentioned something about thrust, and that suddenly interests me.
However, to answer your question: (Warning, long post incoming!)
Newton's First and Third Laws of Motion tell us, in brief, that:
- Bodies will tend to continue in their current state of linear motion—whether moving or still—until acted upon by an outside force, and
- When body A imparts a force upon body B, body B imparts an equal but opposite force upon body A.
The Reactionless Shield
Thus—if my evaluation is correct—if a body is moving, impacts another body, and somehow doesn't experience reaction forces, then it should keep moving regardless. In essence, the body becomes an "unstoppable force" when moving, and an "immovable object" when still.
Now consider a ship moving slowly, using a shield that doesn't experience reaction forces, and hitting a wall—what happens? The ship isn't imparting enough force to damage the wall, but the shield doesn't receive the reaction force that would have stopped it, and so continues regardless. I'm honestly not sure of quite what would result, but my best guess is that the wall loses. The same would presumably happen to a ship falling to—and thus through—the ground.
Provoking a Reaction
Now, let's have the shield experience reaction forces as per usual. This brings up another question: what happens to the ship when the shield suddenly stops moving as a result of hitting something?
Presuming a sufficiently strong impact, if the shield conveys its reaction force directly to the phlebotinum that produces it, then either that phlebotinum tears free, or, if it's sufficiently secured, significant damage is done to the ship.
If the shield doesn't convey the reaction force to the phlebotinum, then the ship continues forward, potentially either hitting the shield, or, in the case of a one-way shield, hitting the obstacle on the other side.
One option here, again if my evaluation is correct, might be to have the shield convey the force of impact over time, creating a "spring-like" effect: the ship moves within the shield when the shield accelerates, but is rather less likely to hit it on a sudden stop, and is somewhat protected from sudden impacts.
The "Thrust" of the Matter
Now, on to the matter of thrust. As I understand it, most thrust is produced, essentially, via Newton's Third Law, above: the engine pushes something out the back so that the something pushes it forwards in turn.
So far, so good.
However, if your shields are impermeable in both directions (that is, both from the outside in and from the inside out), then the exhaust presumably hits the shield behind the ship, imparts a force to it, which is transferred back to the ship, at the least slowing it down, perhaps even preventing flight entirely.
If the shield permits objects (and thus engine exhaust) to exit, then thrust works—but we hit another problem: since air can get out but not in, and since the ship is moving forwards, the ship presumably leaves behind all of the air that was within the shield, producing a vacuum.
Of course, if your ship can handle the pressure differential then this might not be a problem; indeed, for a space-going ship this might not be a noticeable issue at all.
To avoid this, however, one might "poke holes" in the shield, either directly or by shaping it appropriately, producing one or more intake- and exhaust- vents. This should work, but does presumably incur a vulnerability in your shields: after all, you now have holes through which objects can penetrate.
edited 15th Apr '15 8:16:45 AM by ArsThaumaturgis
My Games & Writing
Essex
Oh, man. You just powered up my Complexity Addiction. I'm really intrigued now. ![[lol]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lol2v12_4863.png "[lol]"){kind=small}
See, I'm mainly picturing something like the Skyranger from XCOM Enemy Unknown or Halo's Pelican, with thrust vectoring and the like, with regards to general shape and propulsion. What say we go with the one-way shield. Say the ship is designed to make use of a ramjet, either built-in, or attachable. And say that, through computer-guided manipulation and emitter node placement (the ship is covered with several nodes on key locations), we can shape it in a way that it has a funnel that leads into the ramjet intake, while keeping the rest of the shield in an aerodynamic form. And unlike the Death Star exhaust port, it would at least have a screen/mesh/little holes protecting the intakenote and preventing any wise guys from doing a trench run on it.
Granted, it still has something of a vulnerability, especially if it's debris/shrapnel from an exploding missile that's small enough to get through the mesh, but since the shield's main purpose in this case is to allow for hypersonic flight, it probably shouldn't encounter anything too dangerous while in transit, unless you send specially designed planes to hunt it down.
Also, being a gunship/dropship, it would be plated in some strong stuff anyway. It would probably be more practical to switch the shields off once it reaches its destination.
Alternatively, instead of switching off the shield entirely, we can go with active shielding. Adding sensors and some automation to each emitter node will allow them to function as independent emitters, bringing up a shield only when something at high velocity is detected, and only raising the shielding in their given projection area. Once the potential threat has been blocked/stopped/etc, the shield drops again.
This way, the ship can continue to fly, while the shield can be used for more than just aerodynamics, but also in a protective fashion while in a combat zone. Of course counter-technologies would be to develop a projectile slow enough to not trip the velocity sensors, but carry a payload deadly enough to pierce the plating, but you'd have to balance making it fast enough that the pilot wouldn't be able to evade the projectile in time even if he picks up the projectile visually.
Am I thinking this through correctly, or is my ignorance showing?
edited 17th Apr '15 2:07:18 AM by Essex
Essex
Umm... guys? Anyone...?
Ah, sorry about that—I do keep meaning to come back to this, but keep not getting around to it. ^^;
I want to stop and give your last post some proper thought before attempting a response, which I simply haven't gotten to yet. :/
My Games & Writing
I'm having trouble with defining some Minovsky I'm working on. Specifically an Unobtainium used to justify how a "classic box dropship" designed in the mid-late 1990's, and going into production in 2001 (the story is an Alternate History) can fly at hypersonic speeds without melting in the process from being relatively un-aerodynamic in shape.
From preliminary research, it says here going hypersonic isn't the problem, since they've been studying it since the old days (This
and the Space Shuttle being good examples).
From what I've read, an obvious issue is heat, so it should have crazy high heat resistance to allow it to do this sort of thing on a regular basis without wearing out. Now that I think about it, they could probably also use it in railguns, since normally you'd have to replace the rails with each shot.
Also, because of a specific plot point, it has to take at least 1.32 Megatons to be able to completely atomize a 200kg slug of the stuff. According to some numbers I crunched, this is apparently over 5.89 million times the amount of energy to do the same thing to a 200kg slug of Tungsten (do correct me if I'm wrong).
... I guess that's where the unobtainium part comes in.
That's really all I have worked out for now.
Is there anyone who can help me out with this?
Thanks.