Ringworld

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2002-08-31 02:24pm

It will be fired on and destroyed by the defense systems. You know, the ones in place to prevent just such a catastrophe?

Oh, and melting the ice caps on the maps will have almost no effect in the greater scheme of things. Also, The Ringworld Throne explicitly states that there have been at least 3 protectors on the Ringworld since long before Louis Wu was born.

Graeme Dice · Post by **Graeme Dice** » 2002-08-31 07:07pm

Howedar wrote:It will be fired on and destroyed by the defense systems. You know, the ones in place to prevent just such a catastrophe?

You mean the ones that didn't fire on the planetoid that already ran into it and just about caused a hole to suck the atmosphere out? Or the hole that already exists and causes the eye storm?

Just how powerful do you think those x-ray lasers are anyways?

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2002-08-31 10:33pm

They didn't fire on the planetoid because it was coming up from underneath, so that when it penetrated it made a big-ass mountain. The eye storm was caused by unknown means; however, every observed time something flew around really freakin' fast above the Ringworld, it was fired upon by the meteor defense.

You want my arbitrary guess on meteor defense yield? Well lets see, these events are caused by solar flares lasing. This image gives a wild-ass guess as to the size of a solar flare. http://umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/eit/images ... _earth.jpg
Lets say, just to be really freakin' nice, that the flare is a sphere 3x the diameter of Earth (clearly much smaller than the one in the picture). Since said plamsa lases, it can be surmised that this plasma acts like the gas inside of a gas laser. The laser in the 747 Airborne Laser is roughly megawatt-class. Assuming that the lasing cavity is the size of the entire 747 fuselage, this would be a lasing cavity volume of roughly 2000m^3 (roughly 6m interior diameter, about 70m long). This would be a power density of roughly 500w/m^3. The size of our hypothetical flare would be a sphere some 36,000,000 meters in diameter, for a volume of 2.44e22m^3. Assuming the same power density as our comically oversized ABL 747 lasing cavity, this would yield a power of some 1.22e25 watts (delivered over at least seconds, as shown in The Ringworld Engineers). Thats a fucking high yield laser.

Granted, I have made a great many assumptions, but it would be a much greater assumption to assume that I am overstating the power of this laser by more than a few orders of magnitude (recall the size of the 747 lasing cavity I assumed).

Sooooo, to answer your question I'd have to say a low end power of about 1e25 watts.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2002-08-31 10:57pm

Howedar, with all due respect, that is a drop in an ocean compared to a 4th Empire Planetoid's shield array. IIRC, their combat planetoid's vaporize Earth type worlds. These things are incredibly powerful.

That being said, this massive laser would not penetrate a Netherese Prismatic Sphere spell.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2002-08-31 11:37pm

You forgot Gallactic Patrol Lensmen

anything who can focus and transmit a super nova so that it only effects one planet, or who can rob anything of it's innertia have to be considered pretty damn powerful.

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2002-08-31 11:57pm

I'll ask again.

What the hell is the Irken Empire?

Graeme Dice · Post by **Graeme Dice** » 2002-09-01 01:13am

Howedar wrote:They didn't fire on the planetoid because it was coming up from underneath, so that when it penetrated it made a big-ass mountain. The eye storm was caused by unknown means;

Nope, it was caused by a hole in the floor and the air being sucked out as described by the book.

Faram · Post by **Faram** » 2002-09-01 04:19am

Cyril wrote:I'll ask again.

What the hell is the Irken Empire?

5sec + Google = http://www.revolutionsf.com/article/309.html

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2002-09-01 09:39am

Many thanks.

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2002-09-01 03:54pm

SirNitram wrote:Howedar, with all due respect, that is a drop in an ocean compared to a 4th Empire Planetoid's shield array. IIRC, their combat planetoid's vaporize Earth type worlds. These things are incredibly powerful.

That being said, this massive laser would not penetrate a Netherese Prismatic Sphere spell.

You'll notice that I said in my first post that anyone 4thE or over could destroy the Ringworld pretty easily.

Graeme Dice wrote:Nope, it was caused by a hole in the floor and the air being sucked out as described by the book.

Let me rephrase. We don't know how the hole was caused, as when asteroids impact hard enough to puncture the scrith (ie Fist of God), they stretch the scrith enough to fuck up the landscape for thousands of miles, which was not seen in the vicinity of the eye storm.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2002-09-01 04:12pm

Howedar wrote:
SirNitram wrote:Howedar, with all due respect, that is a drop in an ocean compared to a 4th Empire Planetoid's shield array. IIRC, their combat planetoid's vaporize Earth type worlds. These things are incredibly powerful.

That being said, this massive laser would not penetrate a Netherese Prismatic Sphere spell.
You'll notice that I said in my first post that anyone 4thE or over could destroy the Ringworld pretty easily.

???

Then why were you disagreeing with Graeme?

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2002-09-01 04:26pm

Because the planetoid was to crash into the surface instead of shooting, my understanding was that he was referring to a bog-standard rock planetoid of the type that you'll find in any self-respecting asteroid field, not a 4thE planetoid.

Whoops.