RE: Asteroids in Space (was: RE: FT Taskforce and Fleet Actions)

Indy, 

Very nice. I appreciate your numbers.

However, something as small as a marble could cause a major 
problem when you start approaching Oerjan speeds.

At a movement rate of 30 (and I think that this would 
be approached if jump points are fairly far out), would be
30,000km/15 min. or 33.3km/second. Even at this rate it 
would take over 52 days to cross an AU (~150,000,000km).
So I would expect speeds to be much higher (constant
acceleration/deceleration).

At this speed even a marble sized rock could present enough 
of a danger to not be ignored. How many marble sized 
asteroids are there in the belt? Even in 2100, will we have
mapped ALL of these? And how will it keep updated as the
gravitational effects of planets, other asteroids, comets,
and ships effect it (let alone a collision that would send
it off at a new velocity and course)?

Now if you are relying on active sensors that have a range
of 72mu to identify something as large as ships, at what 
range would it detect a marble sized chunk of rock that is
not radiating EM (yes I know that detection and identification
are different, but what is the size of the characteristics 
that are measured to identify a ship)? How quickly would 
you be able to react? How quickly could a ship maneuver? 
How fast would you be willing to go?

---
Brian Bell
bbell1@insight.rr.com
ICQ: 12848051
AIM: Rlyehable
YIM: Rlyehable
The Full Thrust Ship Registry:
http://www.ftsr.org
---


-----Original Message-----
From: Mark 'Indy' Kochte [mailto:kochte@stsci.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2001 08:55
To: gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu
Subject: Asteroids in Space (was: RE: FT Taskforce and Fleet Actions)

Greetings, gang,

Below is a write-up I did on asteroids (specifically as they apply to
the
Sol system, but imminently applicable to just about any star system that
vaguely resembles ours - i.e., has a few gas giants and debris orbiting
the parent star) a few years ago in response to some questions about
asteroids on the gaming table. Since that time the number of asteroids
discovered has gone up, though not by a lot, and the number of
*significantly* *sized* asteroids hasn't really increased at all. So for
all intents and purposes, this study is quite valid for gaming in an