Warships in a Small Ship Universe.

[aramis]

A bit more than rifle bullets at the 3000km/sec that a 1G Earth-Jupiter trip could get up to on a Book 2 style journey (The maximum Earth-Jupiter distance is roughly equivalent to the 1B km journey listed on Book 2 P10). 0.1g at that speed will give you an impact energy on the order of 5x10⁹J. That's roughly equivalent to the explosive yield of 1,000kg of TNT.

Typical in-system dust is more like 9e10, not 5e9. But trips of 10AU aren't going to be normative. It's cheaper and safer to jump those.

3-4 AU is about the norm for two habitable worlds in system.

 

[wbyrd]

The problem with Alpha/Beta is that, at the speeds ships travel, their penetration is much enhanced, and there's the secondary radiation cascade to deal with - both particulate and non. Add to that that the microscopic physical impactors are effectively high powered rifle bullets...

And the inert gas? it's gone the first time you hit a pebble. Aerogels won't even significantly slow that from what i've read.

the gas buffers were to absorb radiation, and help dissipate the energy of a small impact. I only understand in broad terms.....the nice man from NASA only referred to it as a mix of inert gasses. he didn't have time to go into more than broad strokes.

they were talking about missions using fairly slow ships in the inner system...they seemed to be more worried about radiation than impacts. even in the dirty lower orbit of earth impacts are very rare.

 

[aramis]

the gas buffers were to absorb radiation, and help dissipate the energy of a small impact. I only understand in broad terms.....the nice man from NASA only referred to it as a mix of inert gasses. he didn't have time to go into more than broad strokes.

they were talking about missions using fairly slow ships in the inner system...they seemed to be more worried about radiation than impacts. even in the dirty lower orbit of earth impacts are very rare.

Yep, Radiation is the killer issue. There are two ways to block the high energy beta - one is thick metal; the other is thin metal, plus certain fluids. The problem comes from interplanetary flight at even ion drive speeds (which are SURPRISINGLY fast by comparison to anything else we've lofted past orbit) requires being ready to stop high power bullets of rock or metal. (27000 km/h is 7500 m/s ... and that's orbital speed in LEO. impacting a polar orbiting chunk of debris while in equatorial orbit gives a roughly 10600 m/s relative velocity and 5 or so megajouls per dust grain... so relatively random impacts with the force 10x that of the 12.7 mm APDS round, on a 10th the area...)

Fortunately, most of the dust is in equatorial orbits. (so is most of the space junk. What isn't is a major issue.)