Black Vacc Suit
- Thread starter ChalkLine
- Start date
The reason I posted this was a player of mine asked how the vacc suit in 'Marooned' lasted in usefullness for over a year, so we investigated a self powering vacc suit that had a tiny onboard compressor in the PLSS. Left in sunlight the suit charged itself, filled the tanks with oxy and cleaned its own filters.
After this, you start to wonder what other 'black' equipment there is out there. Could you have a Black Laser Carbine that slowly recharges itself enough to provide a few shots, very useful for survival kits at high TLs. How about a Black Handcomp/Comm. Perhaps all armour and survival suits are Black with power outtakes to things like NVGs, MapChips and so on.
The ultimate Black item in a survival kit would be a BlackBot that carries your stuff!
After this, you start to wonder what other 'black' equipment there is out there. Could you have a Black Laser Carbine that slowly recharges itself enough to provide a few shots, very useful for survival kits at high TLs. How about a Black Handcomp/Comm. Perhaps all armour and survival suits are Black with power outtakes to things like NVGs, MapChips and so on.
The ultimate Black item in a survival kit would be a BlackBot that carries your stuff!
Another alternative:
A small roll of Photovoltaic Film with a universal connector that allows it to plug into any electrical device. It comes in 3 sizes Small (a 1 foot square), Medium (a 1 meter square), and Large (a 10 meter square). A standard part of any survival kit.
A small roll of Photovoltaic Film with a universal connector that allows it to plug into any electrical device. It comes in 3 sizes Small (a 1 foot square), Medium (a 1 meter square), and Large (a 10 meter square). A standard part of any survival kit.
wordserpent
SOC-9
How effective would this Black Vacc be against lasers?
I think we's have to be carful if this technology were used in other armors because of physical trauma. How would the solar energy conversion material hold up against bullets and melee weapons?
It is certainly a great idea though.
I think we's have to be carful if this technology were used in other armors because of physical trauma. How would the solar energy conversion material hold up against bullets and melee weapons?
It is certainly a great idea though.
Captain Midnight
SOC-12
It's going to depend on the amount of energy the coating can handle in a very short time. My guess is that unless you've managed to somehow get the coating able to handle power levels that are several magnitudes of order higher than solar cells, laser shots will blow through it. I know MT has rules for solar cells at different TLs (don't have the books at hand, though), but they never provide vast quantities of energy. As an analogy, think of pouring water down a bathtub drain. It can handle minuscule flow rates just fine, and will do OK with most rates you can provide by hand... but if you dump 10,000 gallons out of an airplane onto it, it's going to be totally overwhelmed.
There's also going to be a question about just how fast the switch to reflective material can be managed. The material is unlikely to be psionic enough to tell that energy in excess of its absorbent capacity is approaching it, and so the first shot is going to arrive before any switchover to reflection can be accomplished. It would certainly be possible to have a reflective surface underneath the black coating, which could be revealed when the outer layer is penetrated, but that's a different concept than what was proposed.
David Drake wrote about man-portable laser weapons that used solar cells to recharge single-shot batteries in his "Piet Ricimer" trilogy; while he makes it plausible, he's not a scientist. It allowed the feel of what he was trying to get across, which was setting the world of Sir Francis Drake in an SF milieu, but he handwaved the technology.
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