KE weapons in trek low tech super weapon or lark?

[SapphireFox]

A while back I was reading a fic that used Kinetic Energy Weapons against shielded opponents and I thought to myself that what if a younger/new race from Trek still used projectile weapons as their main weapons unlike... well everyone else in Trek. After reading Lord Wong's page on Feddie shields http://stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech/Shields/index.html it seemed to me that they were dare I say vulnerable to physical impacts and the like. After doing my best to research projectile weights for the various calibers and a bit of math research I have the calculations for use and perusal.

Mac energy calcs
48” MAC
Mass Kilograms: 80000
Velocity Meters/Second: 87839190
Kinetic Energy Joules: 308628931994244000000

406mm/16in Rail gun
Mass Kilograms: 1200
Velocity Meters/Second: 87839190
Kinetic Energy Joules: 4629433979913660000

203mm/8in Rail gun
Mass Kilograms: 150
Velocity Meters/Second: 87839190
Kinetic Energy Joules: 578679247489207500

127mm/5in Rail gun
Mass Kilograms: 30
Velocity Meters/Second: 87839190
Kinetic Energy Joules: 115735849497841500

Average Muzzle Velocity: .293C

Calc formula
KE = 1/2 (M * (V * V))

What I would like is to determine if they would be effective ship to ship weapons (I believe it highly likely)
and more importantly what the tactics and strategic implications of their use and users would be.

With luck I might get enough ideas for a fic of my own, so any help would be appreciated.

[Gil Hamilton]

Mac energy calcs
48” MAC
Mass Kilograms: 80000
Velocity Meters/Second: 87839190
Kinetic Energy Joules: 308628931994244000000

Hrm. Let's see. If it fires a sphere 4 feet wide, that's 1.22 meters across, so a volume of 2.42 m^3. The density of that round if it was completely solid would be 80,000/2.42, so 33100 kg/m^3. Convert that to g/cm^3 that's... 33.1 g/cm^3.

Uranium has a density of 18.9 g/cm^3. Huh, what is the geometry and material of that slug?

[SapphireFox]

Hrm. Let's see. If it fires a sphere 4 feet wide, that's 1.22 meters across, so a volume of 2.42 m^3. The density of that round if it was completely solid would be 80,000/2.42, so 33100 kg/m^3. Convert that to g/cm^3 that's... 33.1 g/cm^3.

Uranium has a density of 18.9 g/cm^3. Huh, what is the geometry and material of that slug?

Depleted Uranium slug with a base of ferromagnetic material for the magnets to push against. Think of a rather long sharpened cylinder of DU being pushed by another cylinder of iron acting kind of like the wading of old black powder firearms.

[RedImperator]

Dude, seriously. Learn to use scientific notation, or at least put some damn commas in those numbers.

[SapphireFox]

Dude, seriously. Learn to use scientific notation, or at least put some damn commas in those numbers.

Fine, if commas and scientific notation make it that much better for you I will oblige you.

Mac energy calcs
48” MAC
Mass Kilograms: 80,000
Velocity Meters/Second: 87,839,190
Kinetic Energy Joules: 308,628,931,994,244,000,000 or about 3.08X1020

406mm/16in Rail gun
Mass Kilograms: 1,200
Velocity Meters/Second: 87,839,190
Kinetic Energy Joules: 4,629,433,979,913,660,000 or about 4.62X1018

203mm/8in Rail gun
Mass Kilograms: 150
Velocity Meters/Second: 87,839,190
Kinetic Energy Joules: 578,679,247,489,207,500 or about 5.78X1017

127mm/5in Rail gun
Mass Kilograms: 30
Velocity Meters/Second: 87,839,190
Kinetic Energy Joules: 115,735,849,497,841,500 or about 1.15X1017

[Eleas]

Fine, if commas and scientific notation make it that much better for you I will oblige you.

You could always use the same shorthand Mike uses on his site. As per your post, that would be

• 3.08E20 J for the 48” MAC,
• 4.62E18 J for the 406mm/16in Rail gun,
• 5.78E17 J for the 203mm/8in Rail gun, and
• 1.15E17 J for the 127mm/5in Rail gun.

Unless my fingers slipped at some point.

[SapphireFox]

You could always use the same shorthand Mike uses on his site.

Whatever works as long as people can understand it and feel comfortable with it.

[Uraniun235]

That's a lot of energy. How is the ship firing the weapon going to cope with the recoil?

[Soontir C'boath]

Dude, seriously. Learn to use scientific notation, or at least put some damn commas in those numbers.

Fine, if commas and scientific notation make it that much better for you I will oblige you.

It makes it better to read for everyone. I think a point you are missing is that when you get to such high numbers, there's no use in knowing the exact numbers in say the billions if it's 10^18 since its negligible.

[SapphireFox]

That's a lot of energy. How is the ship firing the weapon going to cope with the recoil?

I don't quite know for certain what super tech would be necessary for absolute recoil compensation but I can try and make educated guesses.

First is super strong materials and magnetic recoil breaking equipment.

Second would be since this is in Trek try and use the magic SIF fields and other such treknobable to cope.

A third idea would be to try and shunt the recoil through a casing or gas that can be ejected out the back of the weapon rather than primarily through the mount itself.

Possibly a combo of one and three.

Question. Does magnetically accelerated projectile have that much recoil or is the acceleration energy primarily accounted for with the electrical power necessary to power the weapon. I'm not quite sure what kind of recoil a magnetically accelerated projectile would impart upon the mount.

[SapphireFox]

Dude, seriously. Learn to use scientific notation, or at least put some damn commas in those numbers.

Fine, if commas and scientific notation make it that much better for you I will oblige you.

It makes it better to read for everyone. I think a point you are missing is that when you get to such high numbers, there's no use in knowing the exact numbers in say the billions if it's 10^18 since its negligible.

Fair enough I will keep it to scientific notation where applicable.

[Temujin]

That's a lot of energy. How is the ship firing the weapon going to cope with the recoil?

What about something that operates like a recoilless gun?

[Temujin]

Actually, railguns are currently being discussed in this thread.

[Coalition]

Mac energy calcs
48” MAC
Mass Kilograms: 80,000
Velocity Meters/Second: 29%c
Kinetic Energy Joules: 308628931994244000000

406mm/16in Rail gun
Mass Kilograms: 1200
Velocity Meters/Second: 29%c
Kinetic Energy Joules: 4629433979913660000

203mm/8in Rail gun
Mass Kilograms: 150
Velocity Meters/Second: 29%c
Kinetic Energy Joules: 578679247489207500

127mm/5in Rail gun
Mass Kilograms: 30
Velocity Meters/Second: 29%c
Kinetic Energy Joules: 115735849497841500

What I would like is to determine if they would be effective ship to ship weapons (I believe it highly likely)
and more importantly what the tactics and strategic implications of their use and users would be.

Translating the energy needed into TeraJoules gives me:
48” MAC - Kinetic Energy Joules: 308 628 932 TJ
406mm/16in Rail gun - Kinetic Energy Joules: 4 629 434 TJ
203mm/8in Rail gun - Kinetic Energy Joules: 578 679 TJ
127mm/5in Rail gun - Kinetic Energy Joules: 115 736 TJ

Given the Joules, you select a firing rate, and use that to calculate the power needed:
At one shot per minute, you need the following levels of power:
48” MAC - Kinetic Energy Joules: 5.1 million TeraWatts
406mm/16in Rail gun - Kinetic Energy Joules: 77,000 TW
203mm/8in Rail gun - Kinetic Energy Joules: 9600 TW
127mm/5in Rail gun - Kinetic Energy Joules: 1900 TW

What was Enterprise's total power generation again, ~900 TW? So your weakest weapon, firing once per minute, requires twice the power of Enterprise?

These weapons will have recoil. If you shove an object one way, you will get shoved the other way. Recoilless guns mainly use a rocket engine firing the shot. If you want the launcher to truly have no recoil, you'd have to fire an equal amount of energy out the other end of the ship (lined up with the first barrel, so the ship doesn't spin).

What you could go with instead, is smaller shells, fired at higher velocities (eventually the particles are small enough to be a particle beam, rather than a cannon. The advantage of faster shots is you get an effectively larger range for them. However, a beam weapon (firing at c, effectively) will still outrange your weapons. So you'd have shorter range than any other Trek power out there, effectively.

For tactics and ship design, smaller vessels would be built around the accelerator, like the Ion Frigates from Homeworld. They would be giant spinal mounts. Aiming the ship would be critical. So lots of working between helmsman and tactical. Smaller vessels might be like the older PT boats, where the boat had a powerful weapon, but they had to be pointed at the target exactly, and they had to get close. Larger vessels might have turret mounted weapons, or a spiral particle accelerator for wide arcs.

The other detail is if they use power at those levels, you'd expect to have a good logistics setup, to supply fuel and ammunition to ships underway. The larger vessels might have a small ammo manufacturing center on board, to keep their magazines topped off from a nearby asteroid.

[Temujin]

I was thinking of a spinal weapns mount. But with that, couldn't the impulse engines just be used to offset the momentum (assuming we're ignoring all that mass lightening tech).

[Temujin]

Well the FASA RPG and starship combat games had early ships being equipped with something similar called an accelerator cannon. Aside from that, I don't recall any other instances. However, we have seen that ramming attacks and kinetic attacts against Borg shields, albeit on a personal level, have been tremendously effective.

If they do work, the only reason I can see for ST powers not using them is some high minded technological snobbery.

[montypython]

Well the FASA RPG and starship combat games had early ships being equipped with something similar called an accelerator cannon. Aside from that, I don't recall any other instances. However, we have seen that ramming attacks and kinetic attacts against Borg shields, albeit on a personal level, have been tremendously effective.

If they do work, the only reason I can see for ST powers not using them is some high minded technological snobbery.

There's still the issue of ammunition consumption and supply, plus energy conversion issues (EBWs may consume less energy than kinetic weapons for a given output).

[JGregory32]

Can you please post the URL of the fic you mentioned in the OP?

On the issue of the effectiveness of KE weapons against trek ships, looking at available evidence they should do much more damage but with significant trade-offs.
While it is true that Trek ships are very vulnerable to KE damage the effective range of KE weapons is much less than beam weapons. KE weapons are also much slower than beam weapons.
There is also the recoil issue that would need to be addressed.

KE weapons would make a great short-range ship killer, the problem is getting close enough to use them effectively.

[JGregory32]

BTW a 1,000 kg object moving at 100,000 m/s does 5E12 J. According to the impact examples page this is enough to do serious damage to Star Trek ships.
Play around with the numbers a bit to find the best ratio of velocity to mass of the anti-Trek ship killer.

[Temujin]

Well the FASA RPG and starship combat games had early ships being equipped with something similar called an accelerator cannon. Aside from that, I don't recall any other instances. However, we have seen that ramming attacks and kinetic attacts against Borg shields, albeit on a personal level, have been tremendously effective.

If they do work, the only reason I can see for ST powers not using them is some high minded technological snobbery.

There's still the issue of ammunition consumption and supply, plus energy conversion issues (EBWs may consume less energy than kinetic weapons for a given output).

Well the Accelerator Cannons took the place of the photon torpedo launchers, which have similar issues with ammunition consumption and supply. I also wouldn't expect a race to not rely on a beam weapon of some sort in addition to kinetic weapons.

[SapphireFox]

Translating the energy needed into TeraJoules gives me:
48” MAC - Kinetic Energy Joules: 308 628 932 TJ
406mm/16in Rail gun - Kinetic Energy Joules: 4 629 434 TJ
203mm/8in Rail gun - Kinetic Energy Joules: 578 679 TJ
127mm/5in Rail gun - Kinetic Energy Joules: 115 736 TJ

Given the Joules, you select a firing rate, and use that to calculate the power needed:
At one shot per minute, you need the following levels of power:
48” MAC - Kinetic Energy Joules: 5.1 million TeraWatts
406mm/16in Rail gun - Kinetic Energy Joules: 77,000 TW
203mm/8in Rail gun - Kinetic Energy Joules: 9600 TW
127mm/5in Rail gun - Kinetic Energy Joules: 1900 TW

What was Enterprise's total power generation again, ~900 TW? So your weakest weapon, firing once per minute, requires twice the power of Enterprise?

Interesting... Apparently these weapons have a rather large energy drain at full power. So the ships of the "Younger/New Race" will have to have more power output on whole than the Galaxy's single Matter/Anti Matter reactor. Not that big of a problem if I take a moment to think about it. I always intended for the "Younger/New Race" to be much larger, slower, and less treknobabbley (ie perceived as more primitive) than Alpha Quadrant standard. So then I have them put multiple reactors on board like modern carriers have. Assuming the reactors have less output then Feddie standard (less efficient, more durable, less advanced) ~750 TW max output each... say a "Younger/New Race" 550m Frigate with four of their reactors giving it a total max output of 3000 TW possessing a 127mm/5in spinal mount this allows it to have a refire rate under a minute while still having an acceptable amount of energy for ship board functions. Another piece of tech is special capacitor banks say four per spinal mount bordering near the mount along the barrel allowing them to "precharge" a limited number of shots say one per bank for use in combat. Given the rather dramatic jump in TW needed for the larger calibers the number of banks would drop to two for the 406mm/16in Rail gun and one for the 48” MAC.

These weapons will have recoil. If you shove an object one way, you will get shoved the other way. Recoilless guns mainly use a rocket engine firing the shot. If you want the launcher to truly have no recoil, you'd have to fire an equal amount of energy out the other end of the ship (lined up with the first barrel, so the ship doesn't spin).

I'm not too sure about trying for a completely recoilless rather than trying to reduce/negate an acceptable amount of recoil. I'm thinking of using a super dense gas or liquid to be injected behind the barrel to be ejected through nozzles behind the turret by the recoiling barrel both slowing the barrel down and the ejected material acting like a rocket motor negating some of the recoil to the turret mount. In spinal mounts the recoil is negated by the engines during firing.

What you could go with instead, is smaller shells, fired at higher velocities (eventually the particles are small enough to be a particle beam, rather than a cannon. The advantage of faster shots is you get an effectively larger range for them. However, a beam weapon (firing at c, effectively) will still outrange your weapons. So you'd have shorter range than any other Trek power out there, effectively.

Possibly but it might be easier to deflect smaller and smaller shots at speed. Chucking a 30mm projectile at .4c + might be longer range but the grain of rice or smaller at more than .9c strikes me as not effective in Trek if the deflector dish deflecting particles at warp speed is to be believed. If that is the case then micro shoting tiny rounds might be deflected by the dish performing its proper function. It makes sense up to a point where the mass is able to be deflected by the dish. (redirecting more mass would take more energy up to the point where the enemy can not redirect the mass enough in time.)

For tactics and ship design, smaller vessels would be built around the accelerator, like the Ion Frigates from Homeworld. They would be giant spinal mounts. Aiming the ship would be critical. So lots of working between helmsman and tactical. Smaller vessels might be like the older PT boats, where the boat had a powerful weapon, but they had to be pointed at the target exactly, and they had to get close. Larger vessels might have turret mounted weapons, or a spiral particle accelerator for wide arcs.

Makes sense to me and I had planed for the largest weapon avalible per ship size to be used as a spinal mount. The same logic applies to the turrets on larger ships smaller weapons then the main gun can be turreted up to a certian size based on how much recoil a turret mount can take. I doubt that that we would see the 406mm/16in size in turret form save for starbases or the hugest most insane dreadnoughts.

Just one question Spiral... Particle... Accelerator... the heck is that??

The other detail is if they use power at those levels, you'd expect to have a good logistics setup, to supply fuel and ammunition to ships underway. The larger vessels might have a small ammo manufacturing center on board, to keep their magazines topped off from a nearby asteroid.

Indeed the larger the vessel the more likely the capasity for manufacture basic needs. Smaller vessels would be paired with larger Underway Replenishment Ships to manufacture various ammo types and act as a tanker ship to replenish fuel and act as a repair/salvage/construction tender to see to the needs of the fleet. These ships would be used much like simmilar ships the modern navies use today.

[SapphireFox]

I was thinking of a spinal weapns mount. But with that, couldn't the impulse engines just be used to offset the momentum (assuming we're ignoring all that mass lightening tech).

Thought of that. As for the mass lightening tech I want the "Younger/New" race to use a minnium amount of Treknobabble tech as possible yet still be effective in universe.

[SapphireFox]

I went on for some length here, but it is an important concept in these discussions. Using a lot of digits is you claiming to be much more sure than you can possibly be, and that's bad form. Everybody should understand that it is all just guesswork, and the numbers should to reflect that.

The fact that it makes everything simpler is just a nice bonus

I really apreciate the help thanks!

What I would like is to determine if they would be effective ship to ship weapons (I believe it highly likely)

Consider this: if kinetic weapons were so likely to be effective, why don't starships already use them?

Yes, yes, I know, everyone in Star Trek is terminally retarded. (Or the obvious out of universe answer that it wouldn't look as cool on the tv.) But, you could just as well say that they don't work as well as you think they would.

I think that most Trek races perceive KE projectile weapons as primitive and possibly barbaric considering they can't be set to stun and that such weapons leave big gaping bleeding wounds on people rather than cauterizing the wounds. I think attitude and perception play more of a role in their lack of use but that is just my opinion.

[SapphireFox]

Can you please post the URL of the fic you mentioned in the OP?

Back Home It's a mega crossover primarily starting as a Tenchi Muyo/Babylon 5 crossover set in modern times. (fic starts in 2003) I think its very good and starts getting really good after chapter 10 but it gets a bit rather "Earthwanky" later on, just read it you will see what I mean. The author's site has a lot of related in universe information that makes it seem to be a more fully fleshed out world so I recommend a look at the info there sometime while you check out the fic.

On the issue of the effectiveness of KE weapons against trek ships, looking at available evidence they should do much more damage but with significant trade-offs.
While it is true that Trek ships are very vulnerable to KE damage the effective range of KE weapons is much less than beam weapons. KE weapons are also much slower than beam weapons.
There is also the recoil issue that would need to be addressed.

KE weapons would make a great short-range ship killer, the problem is getting close enough to use them effectively.

True there are several cons compared to beam weapons but I think at the closer ranges Trek ship to ship fighting seems to occur that the power of the KE projectile cannons would be very effective. On the subject of range Back Home also presents another KE weapon that might not present as much technical problems yet still be effective. That is the KE missile take a 55 meter long missile make it a large weight probably mostly made of depleted uranium strap on a ion or impulse engine on the back a guidance system for direction and launch at a long range. The engine accelerates the missile continuously until impact, dependant on range it might achieve an even more significant fraction of the speed of light before impact than the rail weapons. I think ~.4c or .5c is reasonable or if you strap on the impulse engine on it whatever fraction of C full impulse is.

[SapphireFox]

I also wouldn't expect a race to not rely on a beam weapon of some sort in addition to kinetic weapons.

That presupposes that they possess energy weapons or if they do that they would be effective enough to warrant use in combat.

I doubt that they will possess anything more than a weaponized laser even after being exposed to the other Trek races there are limits to reverse engineering after all. Any energy weapons would be inefficient small scale/yield weapons used as secondary weapons on light ships.