General Weapons of the future.

[Grav_Moped]

Gravity doesn't just end at 3 m, that is sort of the issue, if it's a G at your feet, it is going to be almost the same a km over head. Though I have thought of concentrated gravity weapons, such as in Roadside Picnic. Though probably a lot of future war would be like Tiptree's Screwfly Solution, pretty grim bio-warfare.

Liked 'cause you reminded me of something: "Airframe/streamlined" hulls don't need wings with optimized airfoil shapes -- you could use artificial gravity tech to keep airflow attached to the wing's upper and lower surfaces to reduce drag and/or prevent stalls until much later than ordinary aerodynamics allows. Something similar could explain "streamlined" hulls that actually aren't all that slick (which is to say, most of them).

Yeah, it's a handwave.

It also implies that if you're doing that, it could make walking on the hull (as in boarding attempts) a bit more interesting.

 

[Dragoner]

Liked 'cause you reminded me of something: "Airframe/streamlined" hulls don't need wings with optimized airfoil shapes -- you could use artificial gravity tech to keep airflow attached to the wing's upper and lower surfaces to reduce drag and/or prevent stalls until much later than ordinary aerodynamics allows. Something similar could explain "streamlined" hulls that actually aren't all that slick (which is to say, most of them).

Yeah, it's a handwave.

It also implies that if you're doing that, it could make walking on the hull (as in boarding attempts) a bit more interesting.

Even wilder stuff is in the works, like plasma actuator control surfaces, so that the traditional lifting body might become obsolete, esp if it is only used for interface travel.

 

[Condottiere]

Using repulsor beams to create pseudo solid wings.

I don't know, but you could cap the end with a solid tip to give the tractor dynamic something to grip on.

Thrust could be forcing air through a canal with increased gravity, but I suppose it would have to be directional towards the back.

 

[Condottiere]

For actual surfaces, maybe tile them with gravity plates, and I'll assume on the lower surface higher gravity to create high pressure through the accumulation of denser air mass, and on top zero gravity, which presumably lessens air pressure.

 

[mike wightman]

1. artificial gravity is not "real gravity" and so your 1g floor field is not going to extend beyond your ship
2. I've been reading a lot about plasma windows...
3. the most broken technology in Traveller is the grav focusing of lasers. If you can produce such "massive" artificial gravity sources to focus laser light then that same technology should be adaptable to other uses.
eg - suck air in, accelerate air using the grav focusing technology. Or how about inject water, accelerate water using the grav focusing technology and the reaction force moves your ship. Why not create some black holes for power storage while you are at it....

 

[kilemall]

I had explained my conformal plasma lift concept years ago in one of the ‘what does 1G mean for takeoff’ threads. In that case I envisioned using electromagnetic force to channel and create lifting body suited to speed and atmosphere.

For energy storage, grav tech enabling the creation of metallic hydrogen for the capacitors.

 

[mike wightman]

The thing is that creating a plasma window is very power hungry, 1kW per 1 cm of radius, not to mention you have to get the plasma to 15kK to start with.

But... 1 EP is 250MW so 2,500m radius.

Now it should be possible to add gravitics to the mix as well as manipulating the electromagnetic field controlling the plasma to make it a plasma bubble surrounding the ship.

This plasma would deflect harmful particle radiation (just like mentioned in the Beltstrike module). Make the plasma hotter and it becomes more viscous until ordinary matter has to exert a considerable force to penetrate it, so you get an energy shield of sorts, except it won't stop lasers.

Your idea for shaping the plasma to provide lifting and control surfaces is a good one, you can also use it contain atmosphere in the event of a hull breach or to make an open door way airtight as per the screen doors on the Death Star...

you could extend the plasma sheet to act as a radiator...

 

[aramis]

Liked 'cause you reminded me of something: "Airframe/streamlined" hulls don't need wings with optimized airfoil shapes -- you could use artificial gravity tech to keep airflow attached to the wing's upper and lower surfaces to reduce drag and/or prevent stalls until much later than ordinary aerodynamics allows. Something similar could explain "streamlined" hulls that actually aren't all that slick (which is to say, most of them).

Yeah, it's a handwave.

It also implies that if you're doing that, it could make walking on the hull (as in boarding attempts) a bit more interesting.

It's canonical in CT that there are deflector fields as part of Maneuver Drives.

(Ships under power are not affected -- part of the M-drive generates a low-power screen against radiation and
meteorite impact -- but a power faiiure during approach within a million kilometers of the gas giant would be fatal.)

 

[mike wightman]

And in the real world plasma windows can achieve the same results, which leads me to the conclusion that the classic Traveller m-drive generates a plasma window based screen around it.

 

[aramis]

1. artificial gravity is not "real gravity" and so your 1g floor field is not going to extend beyond your ship
2. I've been reading a lot about plasma windows...
3. the most broken technology in Traveller is the grav focusing of lasers. If you can produce such "massive" artificial gravity sources to focus laser light then that same technology should be adaptable to other uses.
eg - suck air in, accelerate air using the grav focusing technology. Or how about inject water, accelerate water using the grav focusing technology and the reaction force moves your ship. Why not create some black holes for power storage while you are at it....

The real bugaboo is that it's not big enough to compare with the knowable size of AG and IC, both of which are limited to (TL)-9 Gees. The needed gravity for bending light significantly within the confines of the turret is going to be at least 30+. And it needs to be a projected center, if not, it's going to only widen the field, not collimate it.

 

[Spinward Flow]

The needed gravity for bending light significantly within the confines of the turret is going to be at least 30+.

True, but that's going to be a controlled and LIMITED volume of space (under 1m³) ... rather than being something "large" (like the entire interior and exterior of a starship). One of those cases where if you focus 1 ton of G-force onto 1kg of mass, you wind up with 1000G of acceleration.

For the turret application, you just need to be able to "focus" the G-force "sufficiently" in a highly specialized application under relatively constant environmental conditions (weapon use). Contrast that with needing to manipulate G-force in a grav vehicle and/or maneuver drive application, in which the environmental conditions can vary WIDELY and the "orientation" of application can also need to vary WIDELY as needed to achieve maneuverability in a controlled fashion. It's a specialized versus generalized use case differential.

 

[mike wightman]

If you create a point source or even a region a few mm across with 30 g (the sun is only 28 g) then you have created a black hole...

 

[Dragoner]

That has always been a point about grav weapons, where are they? Though I know that isn't what GDW was trying to do.

 

[mike wightman]

There is an awful lot of space magic in artificial gravity plates and acceleration compensator fields...

I can "understand" how damper technology is handwaved to work, and the idea of warping spacetime using a vast amount of energy to generate a "singularity" that allows access to "jump space". At a stretch I can accept null grav modules counteracting local gravity or "pushing" against the spacetime curvature that we perceive as gravity.

But the idea of generating a localised field effect that mimics gravity and is tunable, while there is also a field that can be manipulated so fast that acceleration within the field's boundaries is maintained as just a perceived "downward force" has me stumped. I can not think of where to begin explaining gravitics except perhaps some sort of Higgs field handwavium.

It can't be gravitons because:

there is no experimental proof for them but plenty against,

the gravitons would extend beyond the ship

 

[Spinward Flow]

If you create a point source or even a region a few mm across with 30 g (the sun is only 28 g) then you have created a black hole...

Not for long ...
Black holes at that size evaporate pretty darn fast ...

 

[whartung]

There is an awful lot of space magic in artificial gravity plates and acceleration compensator fields...

Thankfully, they appear to make great heat sinks as well. Best to put all the magic in one place so that your Magician-2 crew member can maintain it all.

 

[whulorigan]

I can "understand" how damper technology is handwaved to work, and the idea of warping spacetime using a vast amount of energy to generate a "singularity" that allows access to "jump space". At a stretch I can accept null grav modules counteracting local gravity or "pushing" against the spacetime curvature that we perceive as gravity.

But the idea of generating a localised field effect that mimics gravity and is tunable, while there is also a field that can be manipulated so fast that acceleration within the field's boundaries is maintained as just a perceived "downward force" has me stumped. I can not think of where to begin explaining gravitics except perhaps some sort of Higgs field handwavium. . . .

The gravitons would extend beyond the ship.

I think part of it can be handwaved as spin-off that most certainly will arise from having a Unified Field Theory, which Traveller most certainly has:

From AotI (annotated), p. 241:​

Consolidated Theory. More properly, the Consolidated Theory of Gravity, from which the concepts of jump drive, gravitic and maneuver drives, antigravity, lifters, artificial gravity and inertial compensators all stem.​

Perhaps under such a higher-order Unified Field Theory * , gravity, the nuclear forces, and the Higgs mechanism can be made to interact in a way that is exploitable. It may be that unification gives rise to certain "spin-off" forces/bosons that are related to but not the same as gravity which nevertheless interact with mass (e.g. such as spin-1 gravivectors or spin-0 graviscalars, which have rest-mass like Weak-bosons, and therefore transmit forces with limited force-range).

* (Note: I personally like the term "Hypergravity" , but that is just me)​

I imagine inertial compensation could simply be a computer-moderated gravitic "counterforce" to the operation of the maneuver drive and/or change in momentum. That would of course require that the interior compartments of the ship be surrounded by grav-plating like a "cage".

It can't be gravitons because:

there is no experimental proof for them but plenty against,

But General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are both experimentally established Theories, so at some point those two theories need to be able to "talk" to each other, so to speak. The current frustration with unifying those two theories will eventually require something to "give" somewhere, or be replaced by a radical new theory that encompasses both while approximating the observed experimental results of both to high degree of precision.

 

[whulorigan]

Thankfully, they appear to make great heat sinks as well. Best to put all the magic in one place so that your Magician-2 crew member can maintain it all.

Using the M-Drive to spread waste-heat to the masses of the all of the gravitating bodies in a star-system with which it is interacting is one way to possibly handwave the problem. Or conjecture some type of interaction with J-Space.

 

[Spinward Flow]

surrounded by grav-plating like a "cage".

Graviday Cage anyone ...?

Field strength is measured in Gravids, rather than Farads.

 

[mike wightman]

A gravitic heat sink has been my explanation for a long time now.

As to unifying quantum mechanics and general relativity it is about time the emperor's new clothes were brought out of the wardrobe.

Quantum mechanics describes interactions of the very small very well, but there are some rather big holes in the theory that are conveniently ignored because you can 'just shut up and calculate' - and as an explanation it defies human understanding.

Similarly there are problems with general relativity, beyond the lack of a quantisational theory - there is a very good chance that 'gravity' or rather the curvature of space time can not be quantised - trouble is the loop quantum gravity theorists and the string theorists get grants for researching loop quantum gravity and string theory etc.

It is probably going to take an insightful genius to tip it all over in much the same way as Newton, Leibnitz, Maxwell, Einstein, Dirac and many others were able to go beyond the scientific dogma of their time.