[wEvil]

How does it work?
Does it need "ammunition"?
Can it physically be mounted on a small scale?



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[Darkage]

It doesn't need ammo it's energy bassed

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[wEvil]

a beam of pure energy would have a hard time pushing the amount of damage they apparently do.

I don't know how much damage a LASER or MASER does, but a sort of system to focus EM energy doesn't seem to be possible.

Or is a beam cannon just a large-scale particle accelerator?

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[Darkage]

I think a bullet makes more damage than a laser.Yeah the beam is a large-scale particle accelerator.

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[Nico]

During the cold war, the USA designed a project, I only know the name in french, but its funnily translated by starwars. One of the elements of this project was the use of large lasers to shot down russian nukes fired against the USA. Do you know he size of an ICBM? That's large. A laser of this kind could shot them down in no time. Lasers can be really powerful. Remember than many industrials use them to slice metallic elements. The only other efficient alternatives are diamond cuters ,high pression water jets, and ,I think, plasma torchs (don't imagine using them as weapon, their range is ridiculous).

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[wEvil]

over a large distance the particle function of light breaks down and the laser beam loses its' coherence, starwars was retired exactly because the laser weapons were ineffective.  And an ICBM rotates to maintain its' trjectory, making it hard for a laser to "burn" through the casing.

I can imagine a laser working in close quarters, maybe as an AAA weapon, but the wattage would have to be rediculously high to build a hotspot up on a fighers' hull fast enough to burn through.

In atmosphere this diffusion effect is even more pronounced.  

Look what they're reduced to using now - small interceptor missiles..(that don't even work...*cough*)

[Nephilim]

There is a difference between a laser and phaser and what other else you want to call it. Mostly ignored by Sci fi stories like Freespace.
First, a laser travels indefinately, u aim it at the egde of the universe, it'll go to the edge of the universe, i'll give an example when though...
Second, the starwars program was canceled do to budget cuts not laser ineffiency, to simply cost the USA to much money to put that up there. in that time peroid, just to launch something into orbit cost upwards of 200million dolars, and they wanted a mass launch of these things?
Third. FS Beam weapons are purely fictional, the only way they would truely work is if they were mass drivers or partical base, [v] leaves that one open, and my argument doesn't lie there    
Back to the laser in 1, Have you ever seen a one of the proposals for geting into orbit and travelling the stars? A disk shiped device is mounted on a huge laser which fires at it's underbelly heating up the atmosphere underneath it propellig it up to space.
2, sail type device, A focused laser it targeted on a spacecraft to propell it to the stars, this laser has INDEFINATE range.
To sum it up, FS 2 beam weapons, are not lasers    
But this is Sci fi so anything goes    

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[This message has been edited by Nephilim (edited 05-24-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Nephilim (edited 05-24-2001).]

[QXMX]

Speaking realistically (we are here right), the beam cannons could not be lasers because then you wouldn't be able to see them.  Maybe if they were flooded with plasma, making a powerful laser/plasma cannon combo, which might be possible

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[Carl]

the Captain of the Spamtik call it a " photon beam cannon" though even though it must therefore have something to do w/ photons, it is not necissarily a laser. need i remind you this is tech 300 years ahead of us. we may not even be able to understand it with our current understanding of physics.

[wEvil]

Given the amount of cash plowed into research on this by our weapons-mad govornments if there was a LASER based weapon capable of mass destruction they would have discovered one by now.

[Carl]

it can go threw shields which fighter lasers cant seem to do (completely)

[wEvil]

I would imagine the fact a beam applies damage continuously for a few seconds creates a hole in the shield where it cannot be recharged fast enough.

I won't pretend to know how a shield works or would work
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[C.M.Stone]

STARWARS = Strategic Defence Initiative
They did come up with a laser capable of shooting down an aircraft at altitude, but it was a massive piece of equipment built on the ground. I'm sure it would have taken a LONG time to micronize it enough to make it fesable for space launch(unless they built it sectional and flew it up in pieces).  There are several reasons for the cancellation of the program.  One of which is the treaty signed by the biggies, US, Russia..etc(not sure who all they were) I think it was tied to a treaty having to do with non-proliferation.  Budget and other things surely contributed to the program being dropped.  But they can and have built very powerful lasers.

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[phreak]

SDI/StarWars lasers release about as much energy as 50 lbs. (~23kg) of High Explosives.  Basically if they could hit the engines/fuel tanks they could make the ICBM go boom.

[Styxx]

Israel uses laser-based anti-missile defense systems. These lasers are mounted on two trucks (one for the laser and one for the power source), and are deployed near the frontiers.

They are adjusted to shoot down relatively low-altitude unidentified projectiles, and are highly effective against cruise missiles and alikes - mainly due to their extremely short response time and high refire rate. This cannot work on long range, though, simply because the atmosphere is too much of a barrier, and causes the laser to dissipate rather quickly.

[Shrike]

If you want my opinion on what beam cannons would most likely be in real life, it would be neutral particle beam weapons.  Accelerate a beam of deuterium atoms with an added electron giving them a charge for the magnetic fields to grip, then once you get to the muzzle the extra electrons are stripped and you now have a beam of relativistic, neutral particles.  Depending on how fast and how dense the beam is, you could saw through starships like there's no tomorrow.

And yes, it would require 'ammo', deuterium beam mass.

[wEvil]

would such a weapon work on heavier atoms?

we can accelerate a uranium atom to an appreciable speed, but how about accelerating a bunch of them at once?

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[morris13]

 

Originally posted by wEvil:
would such a weapon work on heavier atoms?

we can accelerate a uranium atom to an appreciable speed, but how about accelerating a bunch of them at once?

It doesn't even have to be heavier atoms, it can be big chunks of metal or anything else that can be moved by an electromagnetic charge.
Something to remember is that the energy that gets delivered by anything is equal to mass times velocity. Now a photon doesn't have much mass, but they're moving VERY VERY fast, so a laser DOES have physical impact. There's even a kind of spacecraft drive based on the use of lasers as a propulsion system. A powerful enough laser beam could push something into orbit, or to another star system for that matter, if it were big enough.
The only reason that ANY energy weapon should be visible is because of energy  'leaking' from the edges. That said, with the kind of energy output that beam cannons are capable of, even a 1% leakage would easily account for the beams being as visible as they are.

[Shrike]

Except in space there shouldn't be a 'leakage'

[Shrike]

 

Originally posted by morris13:
It doesn't even have to be heavier atoms, it can be big chunks of metal or anything else that can be moved by an electromagnetic charge.

Then it's not a beam weapon any more.  It's a linac projectile cannon (or railgun/gaussgun/massdriver/etc)