Extra drive problems

[Teleros]

my question was can such exist?

Presumably if you can fit the A-drive into a smaller size of ship, yes. You could have a 100m warp bubble with a 20m scout ship, which would save on materials, crew size etc.

a 100 meter diameter sphere requires 1,065 grams of negative energy to operate its' warp bubble. other sizes do not offer this comparatively minimal amount and are therefore harder and more expensive to operate

If larger ones are simply more energy intensive (or whatever), does that mean larger / smaller warp bubbles are not impossible, but merely (very?) impractical?

You answered it in the next question perfectly, actually. Wise investment as opposed to paranoid investment.

No but I mean, if you want to send a ship from star A to star B, what can someone else do to stop you? It's easy with blockades of course, but without them...?

A modern fighter, or even a flight of them, coming against an Aegis Cruiser for example: The fighter loses, the cruiser MIGHT be damaged.

The difference is that a starfighter can be armed with considerably more powerful weapons than a modern fighter can - nukes being the obvious example. Okay, so a modern fighter CAN use nukes, but dropping them willy-nilly on ocean-going vessels is a sure way of pissing off everyone. In addition, if weapons are powerful enough then no plausible physical armour will be able to stop (short of having tons and tons and tons of armour - ship size is now the problem).

And a minefield that covered a sphere 8 AU in diameter would spread out beyond the asteroid belt toward Jupiter itself.

If wormholes can be used for communications between mines, it might be easier to have mine launchers or clusters in specific areas, and then seed the rest of the solar system with dirt cheap sensor platforms. Enemies approaching near the mine launchers would be swiftly dealt with, whereas if they bypass them then they face the prospect of attack from several directions. Distance between sensor platforms would depend mostly on sensor quality and the speed of incoming ships (FTL or STL), because if it takes 10 seconds to send a signal from the Kuiper belt to Earth, but the attacking fleet can be at Earth before the signal, sensors that far out may as well be more widely spaced: they can't stop a surprise attack but can be used to locate ships trying to hide or avoid your system defence ships.

As for the ship size limits - I don't know enough about the physics or engineering problems. It's just that the nice round 100m figure seemed rather convenient.

[LordRamage]

Quote:
Presumably if you can fit the A-drive into a smaller size of ship, yes. You could have a 100m warp bubble with a 20m scout ship, which would save on materials, crew size etc.

A: Hmmm! Interesting idea, I like it.

Quote:
(a 100 meter diameter sphere requires 1,065 grams of negative energy to operate its' warp bubble. other sizes do not offer this comparatively minimal amount and are therefore harder and more expensive to operate)

If larger ones are simply more energy intensive (or whatever), does that mean larger/smaller warp bubbles are not impossible, but merely (very?) impractical?

A: Yes, that is my conclusion from available data, but Irather like your approach in the first quote above.

Quote:
No but I mean, if you want to send a ship from star A to star B, what can someone else do to stop you? It's easy with blockades of course, but without them...?

A: Ok, you can have interstellar stealth while you are FTL inside a warp bubble and perfect defense. Once youge tin-system the cheap sensor platforms you recommend below would be able to detect a ship in warp after it passed... Then, with sufficient density and size the weapons platforms can launch pursuing smart missiles at FTL speeds on interception courses. That will work because Hohmann did in fact get his math right.

Quote:
The difference is that a starfighter can be armed with considerably more powerful weapons than a modern fighter can - nukes being the obvious example. Okay, so a modern fighter CAN use nukes, but dropping them willy-nilly on ocean-going vessels is a sure way of pissing off everyone. In addition, if weapons are powerful enough then no plausible physical armour will be able to stop (short of having tons and tons and tons of armour - ship size is now the problem).

A: My point that planets have better and more point defense than a ship includes the fact that a ship has more better point defense than a fighter. And the larger target,world or ship, has better internal communications as well as better computing power.

Quote:
If wormholes can be used for communications between mines, it might be easier to have mine launchers or clusters in specific areas, and then seed the rest of the solar system with dirt cheap sensor platforms. Enemies approaching near the mine launchers would be swiftly dealt with, whereas if they bypass them then they face the prospect of attack from several directions. Distance between sensor platforms would depend mostly on sensor quality and the speed of incoming ships (FTL or STL), because if it takes 10 seconds to send a signal from the Kuiper belt to Earth, but the attacking fleet can be at Earth before the signal, sensors that far out may as well be more widely spaced: they can't stop a surprise attack but can be used to locate ships trying to hide or avoid your system defence ships.

A: WOW! I like that. :> It makes all sorts of story possibilities.

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As for the ship size limits - I don't know enough about the physics or engineering problems. It's just that the nice round 100m figure seemed rather convenient.

A: Yeah, and I like your first idea, bigger engine, smaller ship, same size bubble. But then Iask Why? Okay, it saves material and cost, but for the same engine (Most of the cost) you can build the larger ship and have more of everything when you get there. Just have different classes of ship for different purposes. And being standard, like WW2 Liberty ships, you can mass produce them more cheaply and faster. So I rather like the standard size multi-purpose mass produced design.

BTW: Where did my Post go??? It was truncated. Did someone manage to delete large parts of it? You quoted the missing parts perectly but still, how did that happen?

[Teleros]

My point that planets have better and more point defense than a ship includes the fact that a ship has more better point defense than a fighter. And the larger target,world or ship, has better internal communications as well as better computing power.

Are there any point defences against lasers, and how much firepower can fighters pack? For example, I flicked through the AotC ICS book again yesterday, and Star Wars has starfighter blasters or what have you firing kiloton-yield shots. Now, check this with someone more knowledgeable first, but I doubt there's much armour we can conceivably build for a 100m ship with real-world elements that can withstand laser beams that powerful. If I'm right, all those tiny, cheap fighters (or if you've the AI, unmanned drones) would be able to do some nasty damage to your big ships. Even if it takes 10 fighters to destroy 1 cruiser or something, that is almost certainly going to be a profitable exchange from the point of view of whoever had the fighters, both in terms of lives lost and money.

As a result, you have as I see it three basic choices as to how to avoid this situation (again, assuming I'm right about the problems developing armour against kiloton-yield lasers and such):

1. Unobtainium armour. Some material that can survive very high energy lasers and such.
2. Shields. Whether they're like Star Wars ones or David Weber's gravity "sidewalls" (literally bending laser beams around the ship, if I understand it correctly), this will work - but will mean it's less of a hard sci-fi setting.
3. Weaker weapons. This means less effective power generation (either everywhere or for reactors below a certain size), which will in turn have knock-on effects elsewhere in the setting.

[LordRamage]

Laser, plasma pulses and neutron beams all are problems, of them - neutron beams can't be stopped by anything, kill all life period flat instantly and you can use the ship or world thus cleaned out inside a half hour with no danger - just move the bodies. My choices are as you said plus the old David Weber "Treaty" approach that is enforced by the galactic superpower. It would be silly to field battle cruisers easily killed by a cheap, older model fighter with a single neutron cannon. But in fact, that would work according to all the science I can find. That sucks. :> Back to the Treaty - actuallly more of a threat than a treaty: Try this and I stomp you FLAT! :> ... but my hero works FOR the galactic superpower. At least it doesn't convert my tale into fantasy that way. Of course IF a ship is in danger or under threat they just raise their warp bubble and even if they don't go anywhere they are still in another universe and unreachable, lasers don't penetrate separate realities.

I actually prefer the Bussard Interstellar Ramjet as the engine of choice, but once again, good science says it won't work, not enough dirt in the big black empty... That's sad... :> Hehehehe

[LordRamage]

True, but it is at least a bit more likely to work. Still... Hmmm, good point. So, back to the original question? About starship shapes: Y'all like cylinders, sauchers, spheres, bullet shapes, cubes or what? :>

[Teleros]

A sphere's a good shape for engaging enemies in any direction (see Doc Smith's works), whilst something like the arrowhead design of a Star Destroyer can let you focus lots of firepower in front or split it between broadsides. Cylinders and similar might be better for broadside-dominated engagements, as they can't have as much forward / rear firepower (rather like Napoleonic warships).

A lot of this also depends on things like energy efficiency and radiators: if you've a 1GW reactor then even if it's 99% efficient you're looking at a lot of waste heat.

See Atomic Rockets for details of many of the problems involved in ship design.

[LordRamage]

You have a good point, in fact a double one. If you use the A Drive, you need an "engine" at each end... one for the forward field that destroys matter and the other that stretches out matter behind. That is the motive power of the A Drive. So, we have perhaps a dome forward and aft and a cylinder between. Now we have what you suggested and which fits perfectly with my requirements for a "Hornblower" style approach. The need for broadsides in effect allows that. Good point. I don't like wings but I see a need for radiators to dispose of waste heat. Maybe a series of real radiators as we use today perhaps in a twin pod design, one on each side. But that interferes with the guns. Okay, pods astern on either side, guns forward and amidships either side with perhaps some bays and turrets on doral and ventral sides to take care of up and down as well as either side. Now we have something that looks like a giant sized space shuttle but without wings. But it doesn't need a slanted nose or windows... that would be done by HUDs and holographic virtual screens. It certainly doesn't require a Sail - what some folks call a conning tower. :> But, if in fact we are limited to a 100 meter length for the A Drive, we are perhaps better off with a sphere - more room inside your ship. Ok, using the Bussard IR you can have a cylinder ship any size, ala' the Napoleonic period. And you don't have the separate universe problem effecting communications and navigation. But it also takes away a nice defense - you can't be hit inside a Warp Bubble and you can make extremely sharp turns without sending everything inside the ship crashing around uncontrollably. Ah! But that presents visual efects to show you are in fact moving. :> Ok, so now I need an effective defense shield system.... :>

[Stark]

In the 'lol predreadnoughts in space' game I made due to a conversation with Hawkeye a month or so back, I used the engine thing as the major distinction in machinery; older ships have non-reversible drives and thus need them at both ends for tactical maneovring (ships are weak to the rear due to radiator requirements) while later ships have fully reversible drive tunnels and are thus more efficint internal-space wise, faster and better laid out for the forward/broadside combat used.

Then again I'm not pretentious enough to think I'm writing 'hard' scifi and then handwave silliness. Older ships with poor cooling systems that operate 'open cycle' at high powerplant outputs = coal smoke lololol, not realistic.

[Teleros]

I don't like wings but I see a need for radiators to dispose of waste heat. Maybe a series of real radiators as we use today perhaps in a twin pod design, one on each side. But that interferes with the guns.

It also makes it easier to disable enemy ships. Take out their radiators and suddenly they can't dump all that waste heat anywhere near as quickly. In addition, your radiators will work best when they can maximise the surface area facing away from the ship (because you don't want any heat re-absorbed obviously ).

But it doesn't need a slanted nose or windows... that would be done by HUDs and holographic virtual screens. It certainly doesn't require a Sail - what some folks call a conning tower.

A good battery of sensors linking to a bridge deep inside the ship would be the best idea.

But, if in fact we are limited to a 100 meter length for the A Drive, we are perhaps better off with a sphere - more room inside your ship.

Remember the radiators too.

Ok, so now I need an effective defense shield system.... :>

Atomic Rockets has various ideas on this.

[LordRamage]

LOL! Okay, a sphere with effective, efficient radiators. How about a gizmo to send the excess back where they got the negative energy from... the Dirac Sea.

[Teleros]

Obviously handwaving away waste heat is best from the point of view of designing a ship, even if it is rather implausible. I think the Star Wars version converted the waste heat into neutrinos, as they barely interact with normal matter and so wouldn't affect the ship (noticeably), which means the neutrino radiator can be positioned within the ship.

One consequence of this technology though might be a means of protecting ships against heat rays and such. Depending on how it works, could this technology absorb and dump the energy from say a laser beam or a nuke? If the equipment is too complicated to be connected to the ship armour like that, or cannot absorb that much energy, then it may not work / be noticeable, but it's something to consider (even if the answer's just "no" ).

The only problem is that the more you do stuff like this the further into soft sci-fi you're delving. That's fine by me - I generally prefer soft sci-fi to hard - but not everyone will.

[LordRamage]

Well, as many folks have said, the story is the thing and details should not control a tale, but rather serve and add to it. I grew up on H. Beam Piper and EE "Doc" Smith. I rather like the added feature of a possible defense measure for the ship in addition to being a way to get rid of excess heat. Posit a device to convert the heat to something else and divert that something else back out safely. Ok, that's good and directly contributes to more than one need. A field generated about the ship as a defense could feed it's excess heat/power to that device and thus not overload. After all, we left hard science fiction back when we decided a ship COULD go faster than light... :>

[Ghost Rider]

Off to OSF.