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Novalith Physics

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Novalith Physics

from Sins Forums

I am currently in a debate of what the technical issues for a novalith cannon, including the size of the round itself, how the physics of the round works (how it doesn't burn up in the atmosphere), and how it remains nearly undetectable with the speed that is it traveling.

Can someone please explain these?

I can give a full rundown of my theories, and the comebacks that I have endured...

My Theorized Size:

Novalith Cannon, a railgun type cannon, 2 KM in length, 600 M width, it is considered a superweapon due to the payload: a 250 MT Nuclear Warhead, this weapon can take out a large asteroid or average sized moon out with one shot, it would take out a planet in 2-5 shots, after the planet is hit it is covered in radiation making it uninhabitable for some time

The cannon fires the warhead at near light-speed, and is hard to detect, though if it is detected enough firepower may take out the warhead, but that will force it to detonate prematurely, the warhead is armed as soon as it is halfway to its target, making any premature destination inside USCC territory very rare, but still possible.

The cool-down time after firing is around 6 minutes, it takes another 5 to load and refire, a total of 11 minutes.

Seeing that this is under the classification of 'superweapon' I wish to limit it at one. (If I'm allowed 2 or 3, I won't argue)
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The First Arguement+My list:

Well, greg. It looks doable, though I admit that I am no admin. However, I have four things to bring up: Number one: Why use Nuclear warheads? 250 MT isn't all that much considering that most Antimatter torpedoes have a greater yield. Wheller has Gigaton yield weapons. Number 2: How large a fraction of the speed of light are we looking at here? Most factions use PD arrays to defend against incursions by way of fighters. And most particle beams can do .95c or better. A sufficiently fast computer will make a targeting calculation and destroy your shot. I've done it with wheller's MACs. Number 3: This would not be a viable weapon against planets. It's simple (elementary, really) physics. Once the shell impacts the atmosphere, the warhead will shred itself to pieces. It's like firing a .50 cal into water. The supersonic bullet cannot handle the forces of the fluid. At significant sublight velocities, this effect will only be compounded. Thus the 250 MT weapon will be so much radioactive dust. Point 4: How do you intend to make this difficult to detect? In order to do something like this, you'd have to have a cloaking field, and while that would protect your vessel from detection before firing, you'd still be susceptable to tachyonics, and other methods of detection, not to mention the fact that you'd have to take the cloak offline prior to firing. Oh, and the radiation from the shells would also tip people off. Just saying.
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1. Nuclear Vs Anti Matter, I cannot produce the amount of antimatter that everyone else can (yet, remember, my tech tree is the lowest as of now)
2. 99% the speed of light, if it went lightspeed, the thing would disintegrate
3. 250 MT may not see to do a lot, but if I were to have the Gigaton Nukes, I wouldn't be able to produce them (well not as many as the megatons), I may be able to do catastrophic damage with the gigaton system, but the megaton system is easier to produce numbers with (remember I work with numbers not bigger weapons)
4. Don't you think that before producing a weapon that is meant to hit planets, that i wouldn't have thought of atmosphere? The round travels 99% the speed of light, the atmosphere wouldn't really be and issue, it may burn up some, but the shells were made with hard enough materials, aerodynamic, and it wouldn't be like a 50 Cal hitting water, but just be one getting shot in air, there's some resistance but the speed vs resistance wouldn't affect it too much
5. I have never known of a Geiger counter that can detect radiation coming in at 99% the speed of light, plus there are other amounts of radiation in space due to stars, ships, and the like.
6. It is hard to detect, the shell is smaller than a Swallow Unmanned Interceptor, the likelihood that you have your motion trackers, or any type of radar, pointed at the round, is 990,000 to 1, if you do see it, it would be a really fast moving blip, about the size of a small asteroid or meteor, there were be radiation coming off asteroids and meteors too btw.
7. It isn't a ship its an aimable railgun, and yes its cloaked unless fired.
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And the final straw (This person won't give up)

Greg. It doesn't matter. It would still disintegrate on impact with the atmosphere. Watch Mythbusters. Aerodynamics have no effect. The bullet was aerodynamic. It's the speed. Going fom .99c in vacuum, where there are essentially no molecules, to .99c in atmo, where there are more will shred the thing to pieces. NO questions asked. Why do you think ships don't exceed high mach in atmo?

Second: Geiger counters Do detect radiation coming in at the speed of light, since gamma rays ARE EM, and DO travel at the speed of light. Besides, the sensors we are talking about here are much more sophisticated than a mere Gieger counters.

Third: The power requirements to lob a projectile at .99c are astronomical. Massively astronomical, unless you are running ZPMs, or something very much like, you won't have the power to do anything of the sort. if you can't even produce antimatter in quantity for power generation, then you won't have access to the technology required to lob a projectile that fast.

Fourth: If you are using a straight nuke it's gonna be heavy, and in order to release enough radiation to make a planet uninhabitable, it would have to be: the amount of radiation released would be astronomical, and Certainly detectable to normal sensors once fired, if not under cloak.
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Please Help!!!

 

49,675 views 58 replies
Reply #51 from Sins Forums Top

Theoretically, the cannon could launch a rail-gun missile NOT going near the speed of light (say, maybe 1/2 to 1/4 c) and then a split second later, the warhead would open an advanced phase space window, slowing it to not use phase lanes and go really fast. Additionally, when the projectile is about to hit its target, it could exit phase space right before impact and explode, not ramming the planet at near light-speed (which would in all likely-hood either destroy it, shift it's orbit, make it uninhabitable...permanently, or some combination thereof.)
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thats what i assumed

no one ever said the Novalith blast had to be a single stage affair...

The magnets used to propel whatever object is being fired experience an equally strong repulsive force from the object (since the object must itself have a magnetic field in order to be propelled by the EM force).
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the slug doesnt have to have a magnetic field itself... just magnetically reactive... and i never said the blast is fired with enough force to achieve .99c. it could be fired to .25c where a second stage 'rocket' propulsion takes over, aided by a phase drive to increase its speed to some level of c.

and btw, no one has commented on the rest of my theory...

Reply #52 from Sins Forums Top

the slug doesnt have to have a magnetic field itself... just magnetically reactive...

Do you have any idea how magnetic fields work? No magic is involved. If the physics you propose were true, that you could accelerate a projectile magnetically without imparting recoil or force on the propelling magnetic assembly, we would have cracked that pesky perpetual motion machine problem centuries ago. There is no workaround to the physics of recoil. And BTW, when a slug is accelerated by a magnetic field, it HAS to have a magnetic field itself, otherwise it doesn't accelerate. (And I grant you, then it wouldn't have recoil either, but it wouldn't called a gun, it'd be called "that big fancy piece of sculpture we wish we could shoot something out of".) By applying the magnetic field to the object to accelerate it, the object in turns has a magnetic field of its own in one way or another, if this didn't happen it wouldn't accelerate.

And no one has pointed it out, but I think people may be thinking a little too... classically in terms of relativistic projectiles hitting a planet. We know cosmic rays (relativistic single particles) produce interaction with other particles... various fissions and fusions. Now think, if something composed of many tons worth of relativistic particles hit the atmosphere/ground... the equivalent of trillions of runs of particle accelerators would happen on the planet in an instant. That produces a LOT of isotopes, many of which will have short half lives thus producing a mix of radiation for a period of time. I could see having a weapon that is composed of billions of bb's that break up on the way to the target planet and relativistically scorch the atmosphere and stab the planet's crust. Traversing the atmosphere going directly downward isn't going to stop or significantly break up anything you can see with your naked eye that's moving at any single digit fraction of c. (I mean that you can see BEFORE it's going that fast.) There just isn't enough time for that to happen. But if you can accelerate something to relativistic velocity, you don't need a nuclear warhead to scour a planet with radiation.

But I would say by what we see in the game, that it's a projectile that travels via phase space and detonates in the atmosphere, antimatter makes sense just because it's used everywhere else in the game, antimatter could generate a direct-kill burst of ionizing radiation over one hemisphere, and that would be followed by isotopes the ionizing radiation created breaking down and creating other radiation for a while making the planet unhealthy to live on. A more traditional nuclear device of the scale required to hurt a whole planet like that might be harder to build than using antimatter, keeping the amount of fissionables required close together enough to use as a weapon that powerful would be... ridiculously complex in engineering if you didn't want it to melt down, but still wanted it to actually explode when you wanted. Sure, the game has antimatter and phase space, but access to those lead to possibilities that make engineering large amounts of destruction easier than assembling massive thermonuclear bombs. (Analogy: Lewis and Clark's air rifle was fast firing and very effective in it's day, and still is dangerous, but while we could copy it today, we would have a much easier time making a far simpler and far more powerful M14 or other modern rifle for our troops now.)

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Reply #53 from Sins Forums Top

Very interesting. However, given the manual says it is fired through phase space means it definitly must be a missile. It also cant be moving at anything less thant lightspeed because of the relativly short time needed to strike even distant targets. firing clean across a small solar system takes <1 minute. Lightspeed stuff like radio takes 3 minutes just to reach Mars orbit from Earth. And, even firing interstellar (something you arent supposed to be able to do but you can anyway) it takes <5 minutes. And at lightspeed that would take YEARS

 

Oh, and also, whoever said a 60 tonne antimatter warhead would destroy a planet, WRONG. To overcome the gravitational binding energy of an earth-type planet takes 10^32 J. If we assume 100% matter-energy conversion in a warhead you need approx 10^19 kg of antimatter, or equivalent to the mass of Mars' moon Deimos, which is a 19 km wide asteroid

 

And hey, if we accept that it does go through phase space, then a KE weapon makes no sense. In SINS, when anything drops out of phase space it STOPS DEAD. Therefore a kinetic impactor would be like dropping a big lump of iron from the upper atmosphere, not even nuke-scaled. This makes a nuke or AM warhead far more likely.

Also, i'd say it would be a nuke, because we have seen the TEC use nukes but we have seen no AM warheads before. AND it is described as releasing radiation that makes the place inhospitable. That measn persistent radiation which you just wouldnt get with AM bombs (which are mostly x-ray and gamma-ray radiation), whereas a nuke gives you lots of lovely akpha-particles and fission products hanging around

Reply #54 from Sins Forums Top

If you check the "Fire Novalith Cannon" ability the Novalith has, it does say its a nuclear device.

Reply #56 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting InfiniteVoid, reply 54
If you check the "Fire Novalith Cannon" ability the Novalith has, it does say its a nuclear device.
End of InfiniteVoid's quote

i KNEW it said it somewhere, i just couldnt remember where, good on ya

Reply #57 from Sins Forums Top

yup, it really does say its a stonking great nuke

 

btw Rezonator i really like you pic

Reply #58 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Battlestar_Freedom, reply 57
yup, it really does say its a stonking great nuke

 

btw Rezonator i really like you pic
End of Battlestar_Freedom's quote

haha, thanks

you'd be surprised what you find on the net... then again, maybe not =P