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Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lA fellow player
while looking over the IF ships for an upcoming game..
Had a question, would it be possible to have the warhead hit a ship, and
await detonation by command? This would allow U to hit a ship or other
target, and give them a reason to surreneder when U ask them to?
Just a Lurker here on the Digest, But maybe I have a good idea or 2..
:-)
DOCAGREN
> Had a question, would it be possible to have the warhead hit a ship,
I always think of heavy missile warheads as being bomb-pumped laser that
fire from a few hundred km away. If you picture it the same way, then
"no."
If on the other hand you picture a missile warhead as being, oh, a sticky bomb
or a nano swarm or something else that makes physical contact with the target,
then "yes". Pick whatever PSB gives the result you want.
> I always think of heavy missile warheads as being bomb-pumped laser
I always thought of MT missiles as a large nuke (50 to 100 MT range, afyer all
the ruskies did detonate a 50 mt bomb once and using the layered warhead there
is no limit on the size possible). The dammage was due to the effects of the
explosion itself (did post a liink once to the effect of a nuclear detonation
in space).
Of course, this raises the effect of a MT missile being able to effect more
than one target at once, ut it also allows a bomb pumped x-ray laser
missilewarhead varient for the MT missile. I would propose some vareint of the
MKP packs as used by the KV to represent the armour piercing effect of
the lasers (after all, a x-ray laser with the energy of a nuke behind it
would definately be counted as having enough energy to go through any armour
you care to place).
How about this. MT missile laser warhead.
When gets within 6MU of target, detonates firing a hegehog pattern of
x-ray
lasers in the front arc.
Targeted ship rolls a D6. On a 1, the lasers miss. On 2-5, take a K4 hit
(including reroll). On a 6, take 2x K4 hits (including rerolls).
Cost=? (no idea).
Somebody care to run average dammage Vs standard MT missiles? I think this
would be more powerfull than a normal warhead, but how much would determin the
tweeking required. Or we could keep it this powerful, after all, with the old
ship design rules, the MT missiles were a lot more deadly than at present (the
hull DP`s have increased but the dammage of the MT missile warhead has not
increased).
This has raised another idea for the MT missiles. With the nuke warhead, how
about allowing dammage to increase the closer to the target the missile is?
Say at 4MU, 1D6, and going up by 1D6 per MU closer it is?
BIF
[quoted original message omitted]
Thought you might like to read this. From a article taking about using nuke
interceptors against enemy missiles.
The question then becomes: What would a low-yield nuclear weapon
exploded in space 100 kilometers, 200 kilometers, or 500 kilometers above the
surface of the earth, do to its target? It would clearly do nothing to the
earth and very little to the space environment.
The weapons effects of a nuclear device detonated in a vacuum are very
different from those of a bomb exploded near the surface of the earth. Blast
and shock require a medium such as air or water to produce and propagate
them. But space is a near vacuum.
The large thermal fireball associated with a nuclear explosion comes from
bomb X-rays heating a large volume of air to luminescence. But there is
no air in space, so no fireball develops.
A nuclear weapon in space has exactly two ways to destroy a target: soft
X-rays and neutrons. The X-ray flash of a nuclear blast in space is very
short, and the X-rays comparatively low in energy. But the instantaneous
power in the radiation is enormous. When low-energy X-rays hit the outer
skin of a warhead they stop, and their energy heats up a very thin layer of
material. That sheath explodes away from the reentry vehicle, producing an
intense shockwave that travels through the warhead. The shockwave is so
intense that it is likely to destroy the structure of the intercepted nuclear
weapon. In addition, plasmas may form on the powered electronics in
the reentry vehicle, causing them to fail from "system-generated
electromagnetic pulse."
The effect of X-ray photons depends on how "soft" the warhead is. Soft
warheads are vulnerable at a radiant energy input of around 3 calories per
square centimeter. (For comparison, desert grass bursts into flame when it
experiences a thermal input of 6 calories per square centimeter.)
Weapons designers can harden a missile, but only at the cost of making the
nuclear warhead heavier and significantly reducing its range. It is likely
that hardening warheads to 100 calories per square centimeter is the outer
range of what an entry-level missile and nuclear power can achieve.
The effect of X-ray photons also depends on how close the interceptor
detonates to the incoming warhead. Estimating X-ray radiant energy in
space is not difficult. By definition, 1 kiloton is the release of 1 trillion
calories of energy. In a vacuum, roughly 85 percent of the nuclear yield
appears in the form of X-rays. (In fact, only about half of the energy
release is in the soft X-ray region, and hard X-rays penetrate too
deeply
into the skin or body of a warhead to produce an explosive "blow-off"
and internal shock. Nevertheless, for the sake of this article and to be fair
to
nuclear proponents, we have used the full X-ray yield to determine the
range of effectiveness.)
A 1-kiloton interceptor has a surprisingly long range against a soft
warhead--somewhat more than 1.5 kilometers, or about a mile. The same
weapon would be effective at only 250 meters against a "fully hardened"
reentry
vehicle.
> From: "john tailby" <John_Tailby@xtra.co.nz>
> atmosphere so there isn't any blast wave. You might get a better effect
> david smith wrote:
soft
> X-rays and neutrons.
The best figures I've manage to find suggest that a conventional nuclear
warhead converts its destructive
energy into 80% soft x-rays, 10% gamma rays, and
10% neurons.
An enhanced radiation weapon AKA "neutron bomb"
puts out 20% soft x-rays and 80% neutrons,
but these are best guesses. The US military
is very tight-lipped about such details.
One kiloton produces about 4.18 x 10^12 joules of energy at ground zero. If
the distance between the target and ground zero is x meters, figure the
surface area of a sphere with that radius (4 * pi * r^2) and divide the amount
of joules by that to get joules per square meter irradiating the target.
In Ronald Reagan's SDI program, they assumed that a flimsy Soviet missile
could be mission
killed by subjecting it to about 100 mega-joules
per square meter.
If my slide rule is not lying to me, a 400 kiloton
warhead produces 360 kilotons of x-rays/gamma rays
and 40 kilotons of neutrons.
360 kilotons = 1.5 x 10^15 joules
If the warhead goes off one kilometer away from a flimsy Soviet missile, the
surface area of a sphere 1 klick in radius is about 1.26 x 10^7 square meters.
1.5 x 10^15 joules / 1.26 x 10^7 m^2
= 1.19 x 10^8 joules/m^2
= 119 mega-joules/m^2
So a 400 kt missile at a range of one kilometer can barely scrag a flimsy
Soviet missile.
Nuke notes:
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3x.html#nuke
Armor notes:
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3y.html#armor
> On Saturday 15 April 2006 23:51, david smith wrote:
One article I saw many years ago suggested a 1MT burst 300km above the US
would affect the entire US with EMP. A search has turned up:
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq5.html#nfaq5.5
Obviously, if "low-yield" is significantly lower than 1MT, then
the EMP effect is going to be less, but it may be more than nothing. As well
as taking out land based electronics, it could block radio and take out
satellites.