[ds2 ft2] weapon power was Re: GEV and Grav Vehicles

On Thu, 2 Dec 1999, Laserlight wrote:

> While y'all are doing your maths--what power level and what units
> should we be talking about for beam weapons?

well, following the ground-combat thread, i looked up kinetic energies
of
tank guns; have a look at the following:

http://www.sarda.army.mil/sard-zt/ASTMP98/vol_i/sec4/sec4i.htm

i would put the kinetic energy of a round from a modern tank gun at
about
10 MJ. thus, for a laser to do the same job, it needs to deliver the
same
sort of power - 10 MJ of energy in a burst maybe 10 ms long, which gives
a
power of 1 GW. note that you'd be delivering a 10 ms pulse every 10 s,
so
you'd need a 1 MW generator linked to a 10 MJ accumulator.

> This is occasioned by finding a "Walk Softly and Carry a Megawatt
> Laser" button--would a  "megawatt" be the right order of
> magnitude--don't get a swelled head, here, Keith... : )    -- or
> should we be talking about gigajoules or teraergs or what?

more than MW, i would guess. it might be profitable to look at the
output
of an MTM - work out the mass, estimate the warhead size, and from there
have a guess at the energy output. we know an MTM does 2d6 damage, so we
can get an order-of-magnitude figure, at least. maybe.

peace,
tom