tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post5610351516230799643..comments2024-03-28T00:36:19.403-07:00Comments on Rocketpunk Manifesto: Space Warfare V: Laser WeaponsRickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16932015378213238346noreply@blogger.comBlogger122125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-74681244076742835502022-02-07T07:26:00.395-08:002022-02-07T07:26:00.395-08:00Scanners help telecommunications companies in at l...Scanners help telecommunications companies in at least three ways. <a href="https://surv3d.com.au/" rel="nofollow">3d laser scanning survey Sydney</a><br />technologyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18348521218869382728noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-59070827887482997572021-06-30T10:34:45.675-07:002021-06-30T10:34:45.675-07:00Whoops, looks like some spam slipped through your ...Whoops, looks like some spam slipped through your filters, Rick! <br /><br />Not a robot, just to clarify. I used to wish I was one... when I was like, seven. :)<br /><br />On topic: Using a laser cannon to make the other guy expend their propellant is a good idea... outside of a planet's magnetosphere. In a sufficiently strong field (IE, Earth's) one could deploy an electrified tether to change orbits. Whether that's an effective "dodge" depends on techlevel and laser effectiveness.<br /><br />The thermal issues will probably dominate laser usage and efficiency. As stated, any optics, mirrors, and heat sinks will probably not perform as ideally in the field as the lab models assume. That's why engineers laugh/cry at the promises made by the marketing department. <br /><br />One thermal issue that might be dealt with; Some drives work on Open Cycle cooling, where the heat is dumped as the ship thrusts. Such a drive might be ideal for a laser star or other vessel that runs hot. So you'd only need one set of radiators.Saint Michaelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-71138782205765661712021-06-29T21:12:38.099-07:002021-06-29T21:12:38.099-07:00Hey what a brilliant post I have come across and b...Hey what a brilliant post I have come across and believe me I have been searching out for this similar kind of post for past a week and hardly came across this. Thank you very much and will look for more postings from you Best <a href="https://ferlinwaffen.com/" rel="nofollow">Waffen kaufen deutschland</a> service provider. Ferlin Waffenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14821859045395566360noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-6398829364444931452019-03-10T09:28:23.196-07:002019-03-10T09:28:23.196-07:00Lidar scanner, Denver, Colorado is a good technolo...<a href="https://onsite3d.ca/" rel="nofollow">Lidar scanner, Denver, Colorado</a> is a good technology to do all type of video and camera leaning. This type of work is done by our organization. We are a dedicated worker. Visit us. samia87https://www.blogger.com/profile/11109758438815620341noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-78464393635759977162019-01-28T02:01:17.124-08:002019-01-28T02:01:17.124-08:00I am very enjoyed for this blog. Its an informativ...I am very enjoyed for this blog. Its an informative topic. It help me very much to solve some problems. Its opportunity are so fantastic and working style so speedy. <a href="http://laserwar.us" rel="nofollow">laser tag gear</a><br />Luck Cityhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11407845258757115722noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-43645362028776866742018-09-08T21:38:26.540-07:002018-09-08T21:38:26.540-07:00@James Jordan: that Atomic Rockets post violates p...@James Jordan: that Atomic Rockets post violates physics. For one, it erroneously assumes that the reflectivity of a material is constant no matter how powerful the incident laser. This is a false assumption, that has been known to be false for decades. See this pdf from 1980: http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a102005.pdf<br /><br />Atomic Rockets has a lot of quotes these days that are based on a freaking video game called Children of a Dead Earth. As such, Atomic Rockets is currently many things, but a reliable source of information is not one of them.E Shttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18171044768882320109noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-70886629188066149002017-08-09T08:52:20.042-07:002017-08-09T08:52:20.042-07:00I've oscillated for and against various NASA f...I've oscillated for and against various NASA faculties and am now pro-space over the long-term. Now, NASA is hackable by a dumb 2030 AI. But compared to Earth, at the Oort cloud and nearby stars it will be easier to stop robots from winning by blotting out the Sun, etc. You can watch payloads but technology is similar to a pandemic or hurricane and an unauthorized launch past GEO is a reasonable expectation. One solution is manufacturing (every few AUs or 50AUs) Grasers or X-ray lasers far enough away that diffusion limits their utility in attacking Earth. Ozone and/or O2 in ice near Earth could protect against Graser beam aimed at Earth and the ice could be melted by Lunar far-side lasers easily.<br />Earth can be patrolled by quantum-entangled microwaves against weapon R+D but for example, the smartest 3 Canadian Provinces have announced Crown funding of robotic or AI R+D without considering broader WMD consequences.Phillip Huggannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-41071107737031700042017-04-26T13:31:35.550-07:002017-04-26T13:31:35.550-07:00Question, what about slanted armor? Atomic rockets...Question, what about slanted armor? Atomic rockets says slanted armor can diffuse any laser no matter how powerful. I find this hard to believe. At what ranges might a MW-TW laser effect slanted armor?<br /><br /> What about x-ray lasers, or mythical gamma lasers? Would a high powered x-ray laser be effected by slanted armor? I don't see gamma rays giving a crap nugget about slanted armor as they fry all biologics and electronics on your ship.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07108588437209065384noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-88703102489296059262015-03-09T07:36:47.413-07:002015-03-09T07:36:47.413-07:00along comes the cruiser armed with a casaba howitz...along comes the cruiser armed with a casaba howitzer and blows up a laser wielding capital ship the length of a football field with a single, well placed shot. or the missile frigate and it's long range fusion warhead equipped missiles. or the railgun toting destroyer, a single shot from which does about as much destructive force as a tomahawk cruise missile.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-87140399079992530232013-04-22T17:55:24.290-07:002013-04-22T17:55:24.290-07:00The use of mechanical arrays, even active/adaptive...The use of mechanical arrays, even active/adaptive optical ones is so jejune. Try a plasma window and use scalar RF. More powerloading at a less environment senstive bandpoint.<br />It gets you the beam agility of a phased array with the multilevel phase and charge loading of a 'disruptor' (tune to the nanno-resonant properties of individual atoms) weapon that has range equivalent to the radar you use to point it.<br />None of you mention the obvious problems of how to make your ships. I would suggest plasma sublimation of large asteroids with the fuse formed hulls being twice as dense when recooled and shaped via charged magnetic fields, also a scalar device possibility. Regardless, there will be some pretty hard 'up thru the gravity well' lofted payload limits on practical naval architecture for a long time.<br />Modern pulsed-impulsive laser weapons use both color (as frequency) stacking to get beyond the energy loss problem of burning through your own refractive plasma knockoff and something called 'X-wave' compression which is to say tucking in the lateral edges of the PEP so that it doesn't go lossy to self attenuation.<br />Both techniques -greatly- magnify the target-face retained power of pulsed weaponry.<br />Finally, you might want to consider the viability of boosted killer eggs that DON'T impact. But instead function somewhere between the level of an Excalibur (SDI system based atomic warhead satellite whose beryllium rods focussed X-Rays into multibeam DEWS).<br />And CAPTOR. A captive torpedo system which the USN used to control approaches to ports and the like. Could be laid like a mine but with vastly larger area coverage.<br />Since I don't see 30km/sec speeds as being likely in the near future of propulsion design (especially in NEO conditions) and I -do- believe in the black-constellation concept of stealthy small objects in space, it seems obvious to me that you put your throwaway guns ahead of your sensors as a screen and let them fire on the threats as they fly past in a moving beartrap fashion as the enemy flies up the vector in response to your approach. Indeed, did I want to take a world rather than just glass it, I would never come closer than a moon's shadow while I deployed sacrificial, non-capital, assets to reduce the defenses.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-29430482247668077342012-12-07T21:11:09.819-08:002012-12-07T21:11:09.819-08:00Apologies to commenter Luigi for totally missing y...Apologies to commenter Luigi for totally missing your comment. Genuine comments to older posts were being lost in a sea of comment spam, which is why I had to go to Captcha.<br /><br />I don't really know enough about FELs to judge the dual use idea, but I suspect there would be engineering problems, probably serious ones. <br /><br />On reflectors I tend to agree with Byron.Rickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16932015378213238346noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-43916023597687397582012-11-30T00:41:18.879-08:002012-11-30T00:41:18.879-08:00Now, onto the problems with the retroreflectors th...Now, onto the problems with the retroreflectors themselves. Even if the problems described above could be overcome, there are significant issues with bouncing the beam back at its source. Quite simply, you can't put enough power back there to do anything of note. Taking the best-case scenario, that of a flat mirror perpendicular to the beam, the intensity when it returns to the firing ship will be only one-fourth the intensity at the target. If the target can maintain an optical surface under the impact of the beam, the target will have no difficulty doing so. Also, this is a set of ridiculously optimistic assumptions. The reflectors used on Apollo were corner reflectors and are used on many reflective objects. They do an excellent job reflecting in the general direction of the beam, but it's nowhere near precise enough for what you describe. It might somewhat dazzle them at long range, but that's about it. Corner reflectors have the advantage of reflecting no matter what direction the signal comes from. Other possibilities (such as the aforementioned flat mirror) do not, which means they need pointing capabilities on par with the laser itself, and have to deal with higher energy fluxes than the laser optics. Combine this with the issues described above, and I find it vanishingly unlikely that we'll see such things.Byronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07778896782683765138noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-46706149485429299132012-11-30T00:34:18.158-08:002012-11-30T00:34:18.158-08:00This is basically a version of mirror armor, which...This is basically a version of mirror armor, which has significant practical problems. The first and simplest is that the mirroring only works against the first shot. Any mirror is not a perfect reflector, and will absorb some of the incident energy. At long ranges, this might be useful, but as the range closes, even that small amount of energy will be enough to melt the outer layer of the mirror, which in turn will destroy its reflective properties, leaving the vessel exposed to further shots. A normal mirror might have a reflectivity as high as 99.9%. A rough calculation suggests that for an aluminum outer skin, the beam intensity would have to be on the order of 40 MW/m2. Any other materials would require significantly higher intensities. This suggests that a pulsed beam would be more effective than a CW laser. The above calculation was based entirely on blackbody radiation, and ignores any number of complications. The author is unfamiliar with the response of reflective materials to laser radiation, but it does not seem outside the realm of possibility that the reflectivity could be significantly impaired by much lower rises in temperature. It is also unlikely that 99.9% reflectivity could be maintained on an operational spacecraft. This number reflects the maximum for conventional mirrors under laboratory conditions. The outer hull of a warship is far from the lab, and has to deal with things like solar wind and micrometeorites, which would likely limit the practical reflectivity to 99% at most. While it might be possible to put some form of protective covering on the armor and jettison it before battle, that limits the tactic to once per mission, and would require considerable effort to implement.<br />One might point out that the laser has to be focused by a mirror, and that the same mirror should be capable of being used as armor. The problem with this suggestion is that the mirrors used for lasers are not conventional mirrors, but dielectric mirrors. A dielectric mirror is made of numerous thin sheets of dielectric material, and is optimized for a particular wavelength and direction. Over that narrow band, reflectivity could be as high as 99.999%, but the mirror is significantly less reflective against any other incoming light sources. To use this type of mirror as armor, one would have to know the exact wavelength of an opponent’s weapons, and be able to control the direction on an engagement. Both of these are unlikely in practice, as any power will undoubtedly use slightly different wavelengths on different craft to defeat these tactics, and it is unlikely that one could control the engagement well enough to keep the enemy in the proper zone, certainly not likely enough to be worth the expense of fitting dielectric armor to a spacecraft.<br />(Excerpt from my space warfare paper).Byronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07778896782683765138noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-64658751088652705842012-11-29T14:35:52.780-08:002012-11-29T14:35:52.780-08:00Now, I'm no expert, but if we have mirror dron...Now, I'm no expert, but if we have mirror drones to redirect the mothership's laser, why don't we just use them to reflect the <i>enemy</i> ship's laser back at it? We even have reflectors on the moon specifically designed to reflect ranging lasers back to the source of the beam's emission.<br /><br />To use this strategy effectively though, you'd have to know exactly when and where the enemy is going to fire far enough ahead of time to get the drones in position. This is all but impossible. <i>However</i>, you do know what the enemy is going to be shooting at: namely, your ship. So if you cover your ship's hull with reflectors, you won't need to know exactly what part of your ship they are going to shoot at; it doesn't matter, because the laser beam will be reflected back at the weapon it was fired from. <br /><br />So, essentially, the enemy ship will take out their own lasers, and you are free to slice them to pieces with your own laser without fear of retribution.<br /><br />Of course, the enemy will figure this out eventually, and cover their own ships in reflectors too. Which means that neither ship will be able to shoot the other without first destroying the enemy's reflectors. Otherwise, they would just end up destroying their own laser.<br /><br />The easiest way to take out the reflectors would be with kinetic weapons. But, putting these on your ship would give the enemy something to shoot at. Even if you put it in a gun port, all the enemy ship has to do is target the port and wait for you to open it to fire the missiles, and then quickly fire their laser into the port. So we need some other method of delivering the kinetic weapons/missiles to the enemy ship. <br /><br />This is where the lancer fighters would be handy: cover them with reflectors to protect from enemy fire, fly towards them, and launch the missiles at (relatively) close range to keep the enemy from having time to shoot them down.<br /><br />As has already been pointed out, the best counter to the lancers would be more lancers with missiles. Since the lancers would be smaller, the missiles would need to be more accurate in order to hit them, meaning that they would need to adjust their course more, requiring more fuel. Missiles can also be dodged, especially by a maneuverable fighter. This means that in order for a missile to be able to hit a lancer before running out of fuel, it would have to be launched at closer range, potentially resulting in something similar to a dogfight as fighters attempt to avoid missiles and get a good firing solution on their opponents. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-60200998776541517732012-05-05T15:26:05.317-07:002012-05-05T15:26:05.317-07:00IMHO, an intriguing trick to save mass may be to u...IMHO, an intriguing trick to save mass may be to use the same components of the fusion rocket for the laser.<br />For example the relativistic electron beam of a Robert Bussard's QED rocket may be also used for a free electron laser. Instead of a massive solid undulator the ship can turn the plasma plume of the rocket in a very long plasma-ripple undulator preciding the FEL electron beam with short high frequency electron pulses.<br />This QED-FEL has no lens and mirrors, is focalized via magnetic nozzle field, uses the same propellant of the rocket ad it is regeneratively cooled.<br /><br />I've made some research on Internet as an amateur SF writer, but I'm not an expert like you.<br />Do you tink in may work?<br /><br />Thanks for attention<br />LuigiAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-35577772675840469102012-02-19T14:41:01.935-08:002012-02-19T14:41:01.935-08:00Another question: A ship armed with a centerline r...Another question: A ship armed with a centerline railgun is a gunship, a ship armed with lower-powered lasers for point defense is an interceptor, and a small (probably drone) ship with a short-range unguided kinetic shell for avoiding that point defense is a lancer. What is a ship that's armed with a high-power laser designed for long-range anti-ship firing called? A beamship?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-82091739389707880252012-02-19T09:00:16.196-08:002012-02-19T09:00:16.196-08:00"Purple vs Green:
So the problem from how I ..."Purple vs Green:<br /><br />So the problem from how I can see it is given lasers that are effctive out to 1/2 a light second or more, the fact they have "limited range" compared to kinetics is a non-starter given the actual likely relative closing speeds of any weapon that has a longer range than they do (such as a missile or other kinetic weapon) <br /><br />Making the Laser the winner in the purple vs green (which one is which?)debate. <br /><br />Unless you can make a suitably faster kinetic."<br /><br />But this goes back to the eyeball frying contest: If I can get my laser unshuttered and targeted on your laser, the second you're shutter twitches I'll fry it (think the hollywood gunfighters each waiting for the other to move, but one already has his gun out and aimed). Then I can drop a torp out: either you get slagged by the massive kinetic impact, or you unshutter to kill its guidance. At which point I kill your laser and can destroy you at leisure. And while your laser can fire at half a light second, I can theoretically (with enough fuel/powerful enough engine) fire kinetics from across the star system: in enough quantities to overload your laser's ability to stop them.<br /><br />That being said, to those who argue that a laser can't do anything about the mass of a kinetic missile, that's true, but that mass can't do any good if it doesn't hit. The laser can fry the guidance system/receiver (if the ship itself relays commands to the missile). Then it's a simple matter of nudging the thrusters and watching the missile harmlessly fly by.<br /><br />If you forced me to take sides in PvG, I'd pick missiles. However, it's similar to discussion after WWI about the airplane: some said it would fight wars by itself, making armies and navies obsolete, and others said they couldn't make a significant difference, basically providing another form of reconnaissance and not much else. Both were wrong. Aircraft did make a significant impact on how wars were fought, but they did not replace conventional ground and naval forces. It will be the same way with lasers and missiles: both will have their proponents, but at the end of the day ships (or at least fleets) will carry both to take advantage of the strong points of both weapons.<br /><br />On an unrelated note: earlier in the thread, someone mentioned that the size of the lens/mirror would limit the power of a laser routed through a turret, so a fixed lens would be more practical for anti-ship work. Would it be possible to mount an external mirror over a fixed lens, that could be adjusted to direct the laser beam to its target and get the equivalent field of fire as a turret?<br /><br />-TDAAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-61544131518780340352012-01-12T18:46:39.049-08:002012-01-12T18:46:39.049-08:00Welcome to another thread!
I tend to think that b...Welcome to another thread!<br /><br />I tend to think that by the time we can build lasers in this class at all, we will be able to adequately solve the fire control / precision aiming problem. <br /><br />But this is by no means a given, and anyone who wants to avoid uber-lasers in a midfuture setting can reasonably do so by invoking devils in the details.Rickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16932015378213238346noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-69026131618304142172012-01-10T15:33:32.543-08:002012-01-10T15:33:32.543-08:00"Our laser discussions (here and elsewhere) d..."Our laser discussions (here and elsewhere) do tend to leave out the niggly little details of maintaining sub-microradian alignments in an environment that is a LOT less placid than the Hubble."<br /><br />I've browsing the comments for just this. It may or may not be a problem when technology has also progressed enough to deliver the kind of lasers discussed here, but it does seem to be a problem: you'd better have pretty good stabilisation systems on your laser mount, otherwise the merest vibration in your ship will play hell with your fire control.<br /><br />fire control systems are a critical aspect of modern warfare that is even more overlooked than logistics - this goes as far back as WWI where you can't really understand the maneuveurs of both sides during Jutland if you don't know about the differences between German and British FCS.leridanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02831735654564441964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-24366943114093655362011-04-05T11:10:43.628-07:002011-04-05T11:10:43.628-07:00(SA Phil)
So the more-Dakka approach.
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On th...(SA Phil)<br /><br />So the more-Dakka approach. <br /><br />---<br />On the other hand-<br /><br />How fast could you realistically get a missile in a Mid-future scenario? <br /><br />What if you gave it a really long intial "push" with a high-power particle beam? <br /><br />Essentially if you had a relatavistic missile/smart bullet With a final stage that allowed it to "steer" it would be in the Laser's threat window for a very short time.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-36016774004919379232011-04-05T10:08:57.666-07:002011-04-05T10:08:57.666-07:00I am not sure which is purple and which is green!
...I am not sure which is purple and which is green!<br /><br />Here is my <a href="http://www.rocketpunk-manifesto.com/2009/09/further-battles-of-spherical-war-cows.html" rel="nofollow">most recent take</a> on kinetics v lasers. Short form, kinetics are most effective when deployed as a massive swarm of individually small target seekers. None too flexible, but could be cost effective as a defense.<br /><br />A laserstar does indeed have honking big radiators, but so does any spacecraft with a high performance drive engine. But lens/mirror drones might still work out if they don't need a 'main drive,' but are simply deployed from the laserstar as it closes for action.Rickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16932015378213238346noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-79735247735097021192011-04-05T09:24:54.540-07:002011-04-05T09:24:54.540-07:00(SA Phil)
Thanks for the welcome.
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Purple vs G...(SA Phil)<br /><br />Thanks for the welcome.<br />---<br />Purple vs Green:<br /><br />So the problem from how I can see it is given lasers that are effctive out to 1/2 a light second or more, the fact they have "limited range" compared to kinetics is a non-starter given the actual likely relative closing speeds of any weapon that has a longer range than they do (such as a missile or other kinetic weapon) <br /><br />Making the Laser the winner in the purple vs green (which one is which?)debate. <br /><br />Unless you can make a suitably faster kinetic. <br /><br />--------<br />Remote Mirrors and lenses <br /><br />I imagined the laserstar was some massive Heat Radiator with a spacecraft strapped to it. <br /><br />Thus the a flying lens/mirror would have higher acceleration and delta-vee. They could just let it melt after/as it did its duty.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-32173981018924473342011-04-04T16:33:46.170-07:002011-04-04T16:33:46.170-07:00Byron - Really the answer is above my pay grade, b...Byron - Really the answer is above my pay grade, but my guess/understanding is that the pulse rate would be high, in the kHz or higher, so that the energy per pulse would not be that enormous.<br /><br />SA Phil - Welcome to the comment threads, by the way! I don't know of an inherent reason why you couldn't mount a refocusing lens/mirror on a drone. But depending on propulsion tech (etc.), it might end up more cost effective and flexible to simply mount a laser on it as well.Rickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16932015378213238346noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-49904757815819657332011-04-04T15:18:25.141-07:002011-04-04T15:18:25.141-07:00(SA Phil)
So what are the practical limitation o...(SA Phil) <br /><br />So what are the practical limitation on these Mirrors and Lenses?<br /><br />Could your drones be Lenses or mirrors? Allowing your big GW Laserstar to effectively fire farther (smaller spot)?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-85084761174450437372011-04-04T14:27:13.567-07:002011-04-04T14:27:13.567-07:00I have one more question about this topic, even th...I have one more question about this topic, even though it's been dead for a while.<br />Why do we assume that the generators for CW and pulsed lasers are the same? Yes, it may be 1.5x as energy-efficient to use a given pulsed laser, but what if the pulsed generator is twice the mass and cost?<br />I would think that pulsed lasers would be bigger, simply because they have to handle a lot more energy at once. I'm not sure about this, and Luke may shoot me down, but I thought it needed to be said.Byronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07778896782683765138noreply@blogger.com