Re: Expanding Shields

Excerpts from FT: 3-Apr-97 Expanding Shields by Phillip E. Pournelle@nps

> Aarons thoughts on the expanding shield were similar to my own.
>   It does remind me of the Langston field or the Black Globe Generator
>  Traveller ripped off from Niven and partner.  

Oh, is *that* what this is!  I'd heard a reference to a BGG, but figured
it was some kind of play on the "black globes" that many games use to
refer to unknown sensor contacts....

>That field absorbed energy
>  and then attempted to disapate it over time.  If it got overheated
you
>  could get localized overheating where the radiant energy would damage
>  the hull of the ship underneath, or general overheating where the
>  entire field would collapse and vaporize the whole ship...

Well, I don't think they got any total collapses until they layered the
ships with superconductor, but that's another story....

>   By the way, the Langston field was discovered in the First Empire of
Man 
> after the CoDominium collapsed.  Mote In God's Eye takes place in the
Second
>  Empire of Man.

Urf, yeah.  Sorry, I just tend to think of all those books as the "CoDo
timeline" or something to that effect....

>   That is where the Moties created the expanding shields...

Hmm, yeah, I guess that does show a basis for expanding shields... of
course, I don't think any ship could fire out of the shield except the
one controlling it; the ships had to open "holes" so that their shots
weren't absorbed by the shield.  Not to mention, a ship could fly inside
the shield, and then open fire on the ship inside... at least, I think
they could....

Later,

		    Aaron Teske
		    Mithramuse+@cmu.edu