251100+ entries in 0.163s
mircea_popescu: that's
the point here. a 10 gram pellet
that got accelerated for 200kJ is now moving at 5km/s
ben_vulpes: you're providing all
the angular speed by virtue of being in orbit!
mircea_popescu: think what speed you'd have
to have
to bother me angularily at
that distance.
ben_vulpes: no way it spins fast enough
to
track and pop something coming straight up.
ben_vulpes: i
throw it up. straight up. just in
time for your railgun
to go sailing
through a relatively stationary cloud of shrapnel.
mircea_popescu: no,
the point is,
the dust in
the rings of saturn doesn't enter spontaneous fusion because it all moves ~the same direction and ~the same speed. so sure, leave it
there, it'll make a nice bing sound as it hits
the outer casing.
ben_vulpes: what materials strengths issues do i suffer in heaving
them up
there?
ben_vulpes: i'm seeing buckshot in orbit where a
target will pass in
the next 2 seconds.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform it means
that
they never hit you with a speed in excess of say 100m/s. and if
they do, it's goodnight
mircea_popescu: note however
that rubish is mostly stationary, and ships move kinda slowly. whereas railgun allows very fast pellets.
ben_vulpes: if one's
to consider
the orbital-kinetic weapon, why bother accelerating
the pellets when one could simply ballistically heave
them into
the path of
the enemy sats?
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform supposedly
this is a battlefield far, far away.
mircea_popescu: and your 100kw won't actually allow you
to make a laser strong enough
to cut al alloy or w/e
ther fuck i use.
ben_vulpes is more
than happy
to slowly melt panels and controllers
mircea_popescu: well... you gotta aim more precisely
than i do ; and light-matter interaction is much weaker
than matter-matter
mircea_popescu: let's agree
that a hit means an interaction which delivers 1MJ ; let's agree we start our engagement 1mn km apart.
ben_vulpes: ho ho ho okay i see where
this is going
mircea_popescu: now
then. you happy with 100 kW per each of your 15 zergs ?
ben_vulpes: i am more interested in
the "never get close enough"
☟︎ mats: 'paris gun'
topped at 80mi
mircea_popescu: i fire
them at a rate of
three a minute, meaning each 10 gram pellet acquires an energy of 200kJ
mircea_popescu: alright. i shall employ
this
to accelerate 10 gram pellets ; at
the usual loss of 99.99% i will
then have available 10kW for my pellets.
mats: its not a
typical artillery piece, depends who you ask i guess
ben_vulpes: you're far better at
the fudgestimations, so plz
to lead
mircea_popescu: ok. so for
the interdictor : can i have 1 MW of power ?
mats: mircea_popescu: iirc V-3
topped out at ~100mi...
mircea_popescu: 200mi is not long range artillery. railroad artillery of ww2 vintage shot
that far.
ben_vulpes: 15 identical sats beat
the crap out of a single sat with one finnicky fucking railgun on it.
mircea_popescu: you could actually make bullets shoot 10x as fast as
they do now. it's not worth doing.
mats: public info sez ~200mi at
this
time
ben_vulpes: have another bird in
that hemisphere at
that
time!
mats: mircea_popescu: what's special about
the railgun IS NOT
that it is better
than other precision guided projectiles, but rather it is very-long-range artillery, with really small payload, and no rocket motor
mircea_popescu: em is very expensive.
think : i want
to shoot a ship 5500 km away. how do you em it ?
ben_vulpes: mircea_popescu: em is going
to be a far simpler engineering challenge.
ben_vulpes: no contest but
that stationkeeping cost grows steeply, quickly.
mircea_popescu: ben_vulpes expensive ; yes. but comparable
to
trying alternative weapon systems. whereas on earth - not comparable.
mircea_popescu: space encounters also have much easier a
time hitting
targets.
mircea_popescu: spaceships suffer very much from
the problem of
transformers discussed ealier - no practical way
to armor
them.
mircea_popescu: ben_vulpes
the "interdictor" is
this item which has a railgun, a supply of pellets, and a huge array of solar panels etc
to power
them.
this item can
then shoot fast pellets
towards any other ship, crippling it.
☟︎ mats: pages 4-5 have
the relevant information if you don't want
to read
the whole
thing.
ben_vulpes: getting
the bb into
the right spot with
the right delta v either means shooting it from
the orbital platform or letting it accelerate itself, no?
ben_vulpes: mircea_popescu: newtons 1st, see quadcopter/shotgun
thread
mats: sure, just putting it out
there.
mircea_popescu: mats it hasn't been understated by me, last we discussed
this.
mats: also important
to note
that railgun (lack of) durability has been highly understated,
the rails can currently handle ~400 shots, with plans
to
take it
to ~1000
ben_vulpes: y'actually are going
to want lasers or microwaves in orbit
mircea_popescu: (the outer space idea being
that you get up
there a
thing with immense rtg / solar panels, and a supply of bb shells. because far from heavy grav fields (as per definition of outer space) all shots are guided by default - you just gotta get close enough. fast flying bb projectile hitting
the other ship is ~doom.)
mircea_popescu: actually, it's only suitable in outer space fights, and even
there very dubious.
mats: where
the railgun
tech is now, its only suitable against land-attack
mats: i recognize
that existing
tech/tactics work well against railguns,
they're not faster or longer range weapons
than SM-2
mircea_popescu: they dun really have
the proper buckshot-lattice firing devices up and running, but nature will
teach all.
a111: Logged on 2016-10-17 04:36 ben_vulpes: mats:
those are pure kinetic countermeasures?
ben_vulpes: wake me up when
they coat benches along feral ave with it
ben_vulpes: eh, it's a mass-produced plastic
thing at
this point
a111: Logged on 2016-10-17 04:32 asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: 'invisible' is not
the word, object above absolute zero is 'visible', just not
to any device
that doesn't also fire at pigeons.
mircea_popescu: no.
this is jules verne stuff. dun work as per 1800s maffs.
a111: Logged on 2016-10-17 04:30 ben_vulpes:
the point is
that deployed systems have a hard upper bound of inbound
targets
they can handle, and
there is no such hard upper bound
to how many inbounds can be lobbed at
them, much less any sort of constraint on btc/lobbed body.
mats: >The Florida
test will place a static floating
target at a range of 25
to 50 nautical miles from
the
test ship and fire five GPS guided hyper velocity projectiles (HVP)
mircea_popescu: ben_vulpes of
the
total energy available
to
the projectile, some % is given at launch and some % is given in flight. if you got a bullet (100-0) ballistics dun work. if you got a missile (0-100) ballistics work
ben_vulpes: they'll just go for
the ballistic approach
mircea_popescu: it's a dynamic pressure problem - on
the bottom it's high on
the
top it's low, your projectile
trajectory curves badly.
mircea_popescu: nono.
think. railgun is a direct fire superfast projectile. if its
target is not
taller
than 1m above "waterline", both
the "ground effect" of flying so close
to water and
the actual wave/spray will make your
trajectory impossible.
mats: railgun doesn't change
the 'kill chain', yes - you still need
to detect, identify,
track
target, communicate
this information
to
the firing platform,
then launch
the weapon
mircea_popescu: (railgun is not useful as ballistic fire, because well, air friction ; as short range direct fire it has
the obvious problem : your firing platform kinda has
to be afloat
too.)
mircea_popescu: this is ~already
the logical
trend ; and used in some applications (the ones where idiots and imbeciles weren't involved)
mats: on land you'd use passive, reactive armors like ceramics, composites, ERA, i don't
think a ship could in practical
terms carry it
mircea_popescu lolz at
the notion of a railgun array. because slow
to fire and not really directionable.
mats: ben_vulpes: railgun promises
to be interesting
ben_vulpes: so i know
that salver is a dish and
that salivate is
to drool, and was dead convinced
that "slaver" was "to drool" but congugated
a111: Logged on 2016-10-17 04:01 mats:
this cycle, 'nazi' is a catch-all word used by
the unimaginative and slow
mircea_popescu: any of
them whipped
today ? any of
them dead from whipping
this morn ?
mircea_popescu: slavers my foot. any of
them naked ? any of
them work when dun feel like it ?
ben_vulpes: mircea_popescu: cascadia slavers for
the clinton dirt
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform we're not discussing
the aspie 14% fantasy here. usg dun got no money nor any workers.
a111: Logged on 2016-10-17 03:50 asciilifeform: if
the d00d weren't a zhirinovsky-style muppet, he'd be recruiting good old-fashioned brownshirts just about now.
ben_vulpes: look my ex employees bike
trip from vancouver
to mexico is more impressive
than usg defence contractor
turds