So I wrote a relativistic kill vehicle calculator

[Ariphaos]

Mass driver relativistic kill vehicle (RKV) calculator. Hope it proves useful.

I actually wrote this a bit over a year ago, and the discussion it was based on was some months before that. I look forward to seeing decent health care in the US... anyway.

I really ought to incorporate some of Kuroneko's better limits into the equation as my calculator makes it look way too easy, since it derives from the energy of the field rather than the differential over the projectile. A more general version might be useful to plot out mass drivers for hard sci-fi setups. In general, though, an actual relativistic projectile runs into one of two basic issues
1) If it's too long, the length of gun you need to accelerate the projectile becomes absurd
2) If it's too short, the intervening interstellar medium actually becomes an issue - either by deflecting it, or because saturating a significant region of space with them is no longer stealthy - their warmth becomes significantly noticeable against the cosmic background.

Even that ignores the difficulty of targeting them in the first place.

I know there are other proposed means of launching RKVs, but they're even more ridiculous, especially compared to just pointing your sunshine at them.

[RedImperator]

It would be easier to read if the numbers were displayed in scientific notation. My eyes glaze right over when faced with long strings of numbers.

[Ariphaos]

Ack, sorry. Did a quick exponential filter.

Since it doesn't actually store the numbers outside of what gets displayed, however, if you want values for insane velocities you will have to up the precision.

Edit: I'll make the units more consistent when less tired