Re: Fw: Weapons for Newtonian based FTIII

In a message dated 97-05-08 02:17:53 EDT,  it was written written:

<< The maths exercises are necessary, now, during the *design* stage 
 of a game, to prevent the maths exercises *later*, during force
 design, which is when they can be detrimental to fun, and break 
 the game.
 
 The physics exercises are necessary too, because glaring 
 inconsistencies are detrimental to the suspension of disbeleif.
  >>
I strongly agree soooooooooooo! ====>>>

Here are some basic maths for sand casters:

Given a sphere of sand 2,000 meters in diameter ( 1km radius) and
putting the
sand density at 10 gms per cubic meter ( 1/3 oz.)  this works out to a
volume
of 4.2 billion cubic meters and a mass of 42,000 metric TONS (2,200 lb.
for
the unscienced. )  [[ V = 4/3 x PI x Radius cubed ]]  A lot more than
WWII
wet Navy aircraft carrier ( Essex = 35,700 tons)! Now scale this up any
way
you want to for FT - Now just how many km in a 1" sphere of sand?
Remember
this is an inverse cube problem!  
   Example - 100km radius sphere at say only 1 gm per cubic meter = 4.2
billion metric tons of sand.	
   One may argue about the density needed create damage ( these
spaceships
are already shrugging off micrometeorite damage so there has to be a
minimum
density to the "sand"  to do damage) but any "reasonable" estimate says
this
still requires a lot of mass to achieve any size sphere that has been
mentioned.

   Do the numbers - how many mass points is this weapon? And what
weapons
will you sacrifice to put this on? Any reasonable sized sphere (in
practice
more of a thick pancake) will be very heavy and very "thin"  so the
damage
would have to be low. 

   I really don't think this is a feasable weapon for a warship. But to
put a
positive note to this - let's say I take 3 large cargo ships fill them
with
"sand" stand them out a ways from something fixed and small ( the
geostationary orbital ring where all the communications satilites sit -
22,400 miles up for Earth )  give them an escort of warships and I think
you
might have a scenerio!	 One side has to protect the the cargo ships
until
they dump sand at a predetermined speed and time (matching orbit -
reverse
direction to sats), and the other side gets points for each cargo ship
they
force out of the dump window ( less sand lowers # of HITs on the
satellites.)
 This is a low tech weapon to be used by those who have few warships. As
a
special weapon it should be difficult to use and limited in targets -
that's
what makes a good game! 

Second point - space stations and other ships are bad targets they can
or
should be able to move out of the way ( downer! ) On the positive side
here
are some of the many targets that a small sand caster would be able to
hit:

1. Communications ring ( 22,400 mi. for earth ) Hundreds of individual
sat's
couldn't be moved in time! { or at a Lagrangian Point?}

2. Mining operation on large asteriod.

3. A small moon installation. A lot of chemical separations require
gravity
to work.

4. Large Array Telescope in orbit ( optical or radio) or in free space
away
from lights (read sun here.) Are they using this for military
intelligence?

There are others which I leave to your imagination.

To end my essay I would like to say that I am trying to be positive, and
add
to the discussion on sand casters and not just talk about how they won't
work. I would just like to keep this in the Newtonian Universe.

A Newtonian
Tom Hughes