[Carl]

yes it does. the mission where you destroy the collossus they said the heat sinks were overloading.

[wEvil]

Yea but would a beam cannon need them?

would 24th century materials science have done away with the need for active cooling with a superior superconductive material?

would you need such a material to make a cannon "small" enough to be mounted on a 200m ship?

[Shrike]

There's no real reason why you couldn't make a beam cannon fit on a 200 m ship, after all, the SDI sats were much smaller than that.  Granted, they were lower powered, but combining helical or 'trombone' style accelerators, superconducting magnets and a fusion powerplant, I don't see why not.  Don't forget that FS2 beams do GIGATONS of damage, far more than is conceivably needed.  Plus, you only need really long accelerators when you're seriously pushing high relativistic speeds, ie scientific experiments.  Weapon-type peebees would fire much more particles at lower speeds (only C-fractional)

As for heatsinks, I honestly don't know... I would assume you'd need some, but whether it's as important as they are in FS2... I can't say.  It really depends on the technology used.

[The Claw]

 

Originally posted by Shrike:
Photons don't have charge!

If you had a powerful enough beam cannon....say, a particle accelerator going at .9 C, or a gamma ray laser, you could probably punch through almost any ship in your way.

I point you towards this formula:
hf=1/2mv2max+theta (greek letter-a zero with a line through it)
 This is the energy of a photon required to release a electron in a metal. Theta is the work function (or resistance to having an electron emitted). So photons DO have charge   (any particle with even a negligable mass, when moving, has energy, and since these photons would be emitted in a wave, they would always have energy).
 
 And who says Photon Beam Cannons use the visible part of the electro-magnetic spectrum?
 In theory, the photons could be set up with the right wavelength, frequency etc. and could be gamma rays, not visible light.

 

------------------
"Supernova, ya supernova, supernova goes pop
supernova, ya think it's over but the supernova don't stop" PM5K
Death:"Arnold Judas Rimmer... your life is over. You will travel with me to the-"
#knees death in the groin#
Rimmer:"Remember matey, it's only the good that die young"
"Do not fear the chickens. Become one with the chickens. Respect the chickens and... #BOK!# LEG IT!!!"
The Claw- Project Coordinator and modeller of Alternate Reality and official spare wheel of The Perfect Storm...

[This message has been edited by The Claw (edited 05-27-2001).]

[wEvil]

true...but a GASER (sniggers)
would require a helluva lot more energy to work...and you would require shielding to protect the crew 'cause X and G rays are more harmful.

Neutrinos might not have mass.



------------------
All your quantum physicist are belong to us!

[Shrike]

 

Originally posted by The Claw:

I point you towards this formula:
hf=1/2mv2max+theta (greek letter-a zero with a line through it)
 This is the energy of a photon required to release a electron in a metal. Theta is the work function (or resistance to having an electron emitted). So photons DO have charge   (any particle with even a negligable mass, when moving, has energy, and since these photons would be emitted in a wave, they would always have energy).
 
 And who says Photon Beam Cannons use the visible part of the electro-magnetic spectrum?
 In theory, the photons could be set up with the right wavelength, frequency etc. and could be gamma rays, not visible light.

You are wrong....photons do not have charge.  Check this link.  Photons have energy, but are chargeless...if they were charged, you could bend a laser with a magnetic field, which we all know you can't do.

[The Claw]

Actually, X and G rays shouldn't require any more containment than possible... you're forgetting the Subach HL-7 uses X-rays.
 So, if they can produce the energy and shielding to efficiently use X-rays in fighters, they can produce the aforesaid to use gamma rays on cap-ships, even though the step up between the two is rather large.

------------------
"Supernova, ya supernova, supernova goes pop
supernova, ya think it's over but the supernova don't stop" PM5K
Death:"Arnold Judas Rimmer... your life is over. You will travel with me to the-"
#knees death in the groin#
Rimmer:"Remember matey, it's only the good that die young"
"Do not fear the chickens. Become one with the chickens. Respect the chickens and... #BOK!# LEG IT!!!"
The Claw- Project Coordinator and modeller of Alternate Reality and official spare wheel of The Perfect Storm...

[wEvil]

there's a another niggle...

why are antimatter bombs in the FS universe so poxy?

I mean...if a nuke is about 7% Mass to energy, and matter/antimatter is 100%...

any comments?

------------------
All your quantum physicist are belong to us!

[The Claw]

Ah yes, sorry I was getting charge (ie electrons) confused with energy. What I said still stands tho, only I mean energy, not charge  
Well, Anti matter bombs were the most powerful in Freespace IIRC, the weakest anti-capship being salted fusion (basically a hydrogen bomb in that it uses a fission warhead to detonate the fusion ones, if i read it correctly), and the most powerful in FS2 Meson... it doesn't mean their weak. It means they are coming up against targets with higher hull integrety, and are only weak compared to the next generation of warheads.

------------------
"Supernova, ya supernova, supernova goes pop
supernova, ya think it's over but the supernova don't stop" PM5K
Death:"Arnold Judas Rimmer... your life is over. You will travel with me to the-"
#knees death in the groin#
Rimmer:"Remember matey, it's only the good that die young"
"Do not fear the chickens. Become one with the chickens. Respect the chickens and... #BOK!# LEG IT!!!"
The Claw- Project Coordinator and modeller of Alternate Reality and official spare wheel of The Perfect Storm...

[Starwing]

matter/antimatter reactions converte every reacting particle into a photon, with an energy of E=m*c² I once calculated this value for an electron, and this photon has really enough power to run right through ANYTHING, hardly interfering at all. Just think about it, gamma rays are very hard to block, because they don't cause much ionisation, compared to alpha or beta radiation. A M/AM weapon would probably only do damage at the impact itself, while the photons emerging from it would pass through the ship as if it wouldn't be there at all, without doing any signficant ionisation effects.

[Shrike]

If you only had a couple sheets of paper, yes... but the Gamma rays released by a M/AM reaction are so powerful that while each may take a lot of materiel to stop, when they hit, they release an inordinant amount of energy.

[The Claw]

Yeah, good point... so in theory the exact energy given to the beam would have to be varied between ship to ship... for example, what might have maximum effect on a juggernaught would have little to no effect on a cruiser, because it would pass straight through it.

------------------
"Supernova, ya supernova, supernova goes pop
supernova, ya think it's over but the supernova don't stop" PM5K
Death:"Arnold Judas Rimmer... your life is over. You will travel with me to the-"
#knees death in the groin#
Rimmer:"Remember matey, it's only the good that die young"
"Do not fear the chickens. Become one with the chickens. Respect the chickens and... #BOK!# LEG IT!!!"
The Claw- Project Coordinator and modeller of Alternate Reality and official spare wheel of The Perfect Storm...

[Shrike]

You'd have to find out the absorbancies versus high energy gamma rays for each materiel..... far too many variables and unknowns for us to figure that out from what we have in FS2.

[Starwing]

Or simply make it low frequency radiation. Heat has the strange habit to be absorbed to a very high degree...

[Shrike]

You don't have to make it that low.... 'soft' X-Rays or UV would do just fine.