Re: One question that's plagued me about Full Thrust

PsyWraith@aol.com  said:

> It is probably more a case of preceived practicality that would make
human
> forces choose particle beams over railguns.  Railguns, while powerful,
have a
> distinct lag between firing and impact allowing the target a chance to
dodge
> whereas particle beams are lightspeed weapons.  Railguns useful for
space
> combat are rather long and unable to be turret mounted (in the FT
universe at
> least)(or make use of multipule emitter arrays for the same weapon
which is
> probably one other way beam weapons get their multpule arcs) and would
> require multipule weapons to cover the open arcs.  Higher accuracy
with
> ability to cover multipule arcs with the same weapon would be high
incentives
> to pursue particle beam technology for space combat and leave railguns
> relegated to ground combat.

Rail guns have to be long to accelerate the round to sufficant 
velocity to cut the travel time down.  There have been preposed ideas 
to wrap the rail gun into a circle but this has the problem of 
containing the round at high velocity. (You begin to need too much 
power  to prevent the round from flying into the side of the cannon)

Oneway of covering more possible locations of an enemy ship is to  
"raster" the projectiles. (set up a geometric patern and sweep back 
and forth and up and down to cover the space) But as mentioned you 
still have to have a high velocity round to cut down on the possible 
area the enemy can be in.
Spinal or fixed mount rail guns fit right in with the "real" world.
(As a side note. I always thought that the ESU Battleship, and 
BattleDreadnought mounted wing tip rail guns anyway. That or 
Mega-AA'a. They look to be big,powerful guns mounted there anyway :)

Randy
"Creative Financing is the key to any venture. Right John?"
R. Hood (Ret.)