Planet Crackers

[Thlaylie]

Blowing up a certain planet currently infested by a particularly nasty virus referred to as primates with a micro colapsar weapon would make most sentients sleep better even if said virus believes the effect is "Space Opera."

 

[alex_greene]

Well, it's like that otherwise dire movie Independence Day, where the mothership happened to be one quarter the mass of Earth's Moon.

Why would they want to send down those disk ships to flatten cities with big energy beams? They could pinpoint them from orbit.

Or they could just settle in to a really close orbit with Earth, and just let gravitational stresses tear the planet apart. The equivalent of leaning on the thing until it breaks.

(I'm going under the assumption that the mother ship would have some sort of a mythical "structural integrity field" thing keeping it together, whereas the Earth doesn't).

 

[Thlaylie]

I think in the Death Star's case and the Independence Day Motherships, they did it because they can. It was a frightening demorilizing action that let those they oppressed know in no uncertain terms that the time of fork sticking had come.

 

[lastbesthope]

Why would they want to send down those disk ships to flatten cities with big energy beams? They could pinpoint them from orbit.

Maybe not, atmospheric attenuation may have been significant at higher altitudes.

LBH

 

[towerwarlock]

If you think about it scientifically, lasers and particle beams really do lose alot of power passing through an atmosphere. And as for the Independence Day aliens not using nukes, well, lets just say the radioactivity makes it hard to strip out the resources you need. Same way with using the mothership's own gravity field to mess things up.

Besides, there is one point you all overlooked:
BECAUSE THE WRITERS WANTED IT THAT WAY!

 

[Gaidheal]

The writers missed the mark, however, for hard scifi (if they ever intended to aim for it, of course and I am not saying they did) as all these break, in obvious ways to the technically inclined, real scientific principles that we're pretty sure are absolute and also miss much simpler, more elegant (and how we tech types love elegant!) solutions.

As for the weapons & atmosphere - igniting the atmosphere is more effective than blasting the cities anyway; win/win.

P.S. LASERs don't lose energy passing through the atmosphere (not significant amounts anyway) which is precisely why they are useful and invisible unless there is a LOT of particulation (smoke, etc). Orbital firing probably takes all these to extremes though, E.G. quite a large 'footprint' from what might have originated as a beam only centimetres in diameter, rather a lot of potential particulates to pass through and 'light up', etc.

 

[GJD]

P.S. LASERs don't lose energy passing through the atmosphere (not significant amounts anyway) which is precisely why they are useful and invisible unless there is a LOT of particulation (smoke, etc). Orbital firing probably takes all these to extremes though, E.G. quite a large 'footprint' from what might have originated as a beam only centimetres in diameter, rather a lot of potential particulates to pass through and 'light up', etc.

Yes they do. The higher the energy input, the greater chance of "blooming", ionisation, or simmilar, of the atmospher due to partial absorbtion and heating around the beam. The cloud of ionised atmosphere then beginst to absorb more energy from the beam, turning it more opaque (to the beam, that is) which means the cloud them becomes further energised, absorbing more of the energy from the beam etc...

G.

 

[Infojunky]

So let me get this straight "Planet Crackers" aren't a spicy, salty snack food served in better starport dive bars across the sector....

 

[GypsyComet]

So let me get this straight "Planet Crackers" aren't a spicy, salty snack food served in better starport dive bars across the sector....

On the contrary. That's exactly what they are.

 

[captainjack23]

So let me get this straight "Planet Crackers" aren't a spicy, salty snack food served in better starport dive bars across the sector....

On the contrary. That's exactly what they are.

Generally served with NearC on the Rocks !

 

[alex_greene]

P.S. LASERs don't lose energy passing through the atmosphere (not significant amounts anyway) which is precisely why they are useful and invisible unless there is a LOT of particulation (smoke, etc). Orbital firing probably takes all these to extremes though, E.G. quite a large 'footprint' from what might have originated as a beam only centimetres in diameter, rather a lot of potential particulates to pass through and 'light up', etc.

I'm thinking of the SOL satellite in Akira, with that rapidly dwindling spot of light from above, followed after a few seconds of blinking in confusion and staring upwards into the beam by a titanic bolt of holy hellfire and obliteration.

At least at TL 18, with the development of the disintegrator spinal mount, the Referee can have fun along the lines of the Wunderland Peacemaker, Larry Niven's disintegrator weapon that only fired once, and which resulted in Canyon.

 

[Infojunky]

So How classy is NearC? Stoli or vodka in a plastic jug?

 

[alex_greene]

So let me get this straight "Planet Crackers" aren't a spicy, salty snack food served in better starport dive bars across the sector....

And they come in handy, sturdy little glass jars, just right for grabbing in one frantic lunge across the bar to smash into the face of the man attacking your character with a pool cue ...

 

[Gaidheal]

GJD "Not significant" was the key phrase there, as I noted, if this were actually untrue LASER would be a useless technology (in its present applications), although you're quite right about the feedback loop once you start to bleed enough energy into a given volume of gas, dust, etc.

 

[GJD]

GJD "Not significant" was the key phrase there, as I noted, if this were actually untrue LASER would be a useless technology (in its present applications), although you're quite right about the feedback loop once you start to bleed enough energy into a given volume of gas, dust, etc.

On the contrary, you can lose SIGNIFICANT amounts of energy through thermal blooming - that's one of the things that's keeping HEL development back. As soon as you start putting out the kind of energy needed to do any significant damage, you get blooming. Scribble blinding lasers and battlefield AMS systems are relatively low energy systems compared to anything like a "planet cracker" or even an ortillery system (although a dropped rock would work better for ortillery - cheaper and harder to stop once it's inbound.

ABM systems get around this in a variety of ways, two-phased tuned lasers that ionise the air and then send a tuned beam down the ionistaion path - but this is erratic and only works if you can create a continuous tunnel, or lower energy over longer time, which requires more accurate tracking to keep the energy delivery on target, or looser focus which means you have to have a wider spread, which means lower energy density and thus a higher input to get the same return.

G.

 

[GypsyComet]

So How classy is NearC? Stoli or vodka in a plastic jug?

Its named for the blue-shifted vision and apparent time dilation experienced by the drinker. Vodka is optional.

 

[alex_greene]

So How classy is NearC? Stoli or vodka in a plastic jug?

Its named for the blue-shifted vision and apparent time dilation experienced by the drinker. Vodka is optional.

That, and the fact that when you've drunk enough that gravity is no longer opposed, you get the distinct feeling that there's a planet rushing towards you at near light speed.

Which, coincidentally, it usually is.

 

[Shiloh]

GJD "Not significant" was the key phrase there, as I noted, if this were actually untrue LASER would be a useless technology (in its present applications), although you're quite right about the feedback loop once you start to bleed enough energy into a given volume of gas, dust, etc.

The point about the current applications is that they are relatively low energy, so don't start the whole bloomin' (did you see what I did there? You probably have to know Rightpondian quite well... I don't think I've heard you Yanks use it, at least in poplier Kulcha ) process off in the first place. "Bloom" absorption is a bit of a vicious circle of positive feedback: the more energy you put in, the worse the bloom, so the more energy gets absorbed and the bloom gets worse... [recursion, it's a bitch].

If you're talking milliwat or even whole watts in astronomical lasers, you won't get much bloom.

 

[captainjack23]

So How classy is NearC? Stoli or vodka in a plastic jug?

Its named for the blue-shifted vision and apparent time dilation experienced by the drinker. Vodka is optional.

That, and the fact that when you've drunk enough that gravity is no longer opposed, you get the distinct feeling that there's a planet rushing towards you at near light speed.

Which, coincidentally, it usually is.

....that's no moon !
............Oh wait, nevermind, ...it is.
........Damn.[CRUNCH]

 

[Jeff Hopper]

I thought Near-C Rocks was a heavy metal band known for covering KISS tunes...