Reply DeleteĪ simpler solution to protecting your laser is to shoot off the beam from the side. This may look more like ERA "bricks" on a Russian tank than a CIWS gun mount. A "Kirklin Mine" as described in Atomic Rockets, is simply a small metal plate fired in the path of an incoming kinetic energy round, and the kinetic energy of high speed space travel is enough to destroy or severely damage the missile. If you are not keen on mirrors, turn the arrangement around but the / becomes a diffraction grating instead of a mirror, which is much more difficult to damage than a mirror.Īs per our host, I would see any large spacecraft carrying secondary point defense weapons, but once again, the space environment makes it different.
If you have enough fighting mirrors, the main optics can be hidden and which mirror is going to be used can be randomized to prevent an "eyeball frying contest" (as Rocketpunk Manifesto described laser vs laser combat).
#Rocketpunk manifesto space warfare generator
The laser generator shines out of the point, to the beam spreader mirror (the /), which can redirect the beam at a target or hand it off to a drone mounted fighting mirror. The V is the spacecraft itself, with the wide end pointed at the enemy. I envision Laserstars working with optical lasers to actually look a bit like this: > / Protecting the laser optics will be an important part of the equation, but there are a number of ways to do this. There won't be any submarines in space, but I'm not convinced the mass savings of a point defense laser system are worth it.Īn ideally protected battleship will have dedicated escorts as well, but one of those will effectively be welded in place.īattleships have coilguns lasers and armorĪnd destroyers just have lasers Reply DeleteĪ laser "mauler" to take down incoming kinetic energy rounds at extreme range might be what you are thinking of, but the space environment changes a lot of things. A modern AEGIS cruiser has some of the greatest diversity in armament in naval history. Ships have mounted secondary batteries since the introduction of torpedo boats, and these have only gotten bigger since the introduction of aircraft. In addition to the Lens, laser generator and thermal hardware you mentioned, the escort will need it's own power source, propulsion, avionics, and crew. I'm still not convinced that ships will only have one weapon system, even if a laser requires extra hardware, it's still cheaper to mount that extra hardware than to build a whole separate ship to serve as an escort. So you say that point defense is best handled by craft mounting smaller pellet guns and capable of more rapid rotation? Sword battleships and dagger escorts? I also reply to comments on older posts as promptly as I can. I enjoy answering these questions, and never hesitate to do the same in the future. Instead of an 'anti-submarine destroyer' today, we'll have an 'anti-missile destroyer'. A 'destroyer' can pop up from the evolution of a warship designed only to destroy incoming missiles.
Therefore, you might have a warship entirely dedicated to mounting a huge laser, and another equipped only with defensive weapons. In other settings, you can easily open up the supply of uranium and have Casaba Howitzers slash warships to pieces of thousands of kilometers away.ģ) As explained in 'A Constellation of Warships', specialized spacecraft are the best way to design them. On the level of modern nuclear weapons, and there's some politics behind the scenes: uranium is strictly regulated, and all warships use low grade thorium for fuel. and you end up with a particle beam weapon.Ģ) In this setting, casaba howitzers are very expensive. This means you can only use small quantities. It would burst apart under the magnetic pressures of acceleration, unless you held it very still. When we compare it to the 1:1 mass/charge ratio of an electron, an ionized pellet is not really comparable. They suffer from the square-cube law, meaning that the surface area they present decreases in proportion to their volume as they get bigger. Ionizing the pellets will provide an extremely poor mass/charge ratio. The pellets will not be limited by their Curie point, but will have instead the much more robust limit of melting temperature. 1) The coilguns will have to rely on inductance.
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