On 9 Mar 2012 at 13:24, roger wrote:
> Leonard, you are right ships would need shielding from the wash
> of a stars radiation, but would a ships hull "skin" do this? Much
> like a car's body protecting it's passengers from a lighting strike?
No. The hull (or shielding between the hull and the crw, cargo and
equipment spaces) *has* to be able to stop the high energy protons
from solar flares, as well as the particle radiation in the radiation
"belts" of gas giants or the crw & passengers will rapidly acquire a
*lethal* dose of radiation. Might not do the cargo any good either
(depending on what it is) and likely won't do non-rad hard
electronics any good either.
The required shielding needs to be *light* elements, preferably stuff
with lots of hydrogen. So LH2 may help. Water, some plastics, that
sort of thing.
Note that for flare shielding above earth's magnetic field it takes
several *meters* of water. Or a meter or more of some plastics
(polyethylene?)
You don't want heavy stuff like lead because they high energy
particles will create *multiple* lower energy particles when they hit
a nucleus. These result in *higher* radiation doses!
Cosmic rays are an issue as well, but much longer term.
Flares and solar "storms" tend to include masses of plasma with
trapped magnetic fields. Those can give EMP type effects. So you'll
need some degree of shielding against those too.
> I'm thinking that a focused EMP burst would be more like a
> millisecond bullet rather than a continuous wave of energy. I also
> think the pulse could be focused much like the X-ray rods on a space
> nuclear missile focuses the energy of the blast down a narrow beam.
Alas, EMP is not likely to be focusable. It's a temporary (hence
"pulse") spike in the magnetic field. And magnetic fields can't be
*externally* focused to any great extent.
Also, you'll either need a huge amount of energy (because the ship is
so far away) or you'll have to be almost on top of the ship.
Neither is exactly subtle.
The huge energy version is going to have a *very* detectable
signature at hundreds or thousands of times the range it'll do damage
at.
The "almost on top of the ship" is very hard to pull off. There's an
*insane* amount of space out there. So if they device can kill the
ship at 100 miles, the odds are *trillions* to one against the ship
being that close. Especially since they'd be trying to *avoid* space
junk.
> In Brilliant Lances a PAW can force s system reset to a target ships
> computer effectively shutting down a ship for a one or two 30 minute
> period. I'm thinking that this might be a mild kind of EMP, a side
> effect of the weapon?
Charged particles hitting you in those numbers tends to create all
sorts of electrical effects, which can disrupt stuff.
Getting hit by a CPAW beam has some effects similar to a lightning
strike. And others that are very different.
NPAW strikes won't have the "lightning" effects as much. But either
way the blast effects will tend to mess stuff up anyway.
--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com