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

----- Original Message -----
From: Aaron Teske <mithramuse@njaccess.com>
To: <gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2001 2:16 AM
Subject: RE: Asteroids in Space (was: RE: FT Taskforce and Fleet
Actions)

>
> At 12:15 PM 8/7/01 -0400, Ryan Gill wrote:
> >At 9:58 AM -0400 8/7/01, Mark 'Indy' Kochte wrote:
> >Never be able to.*  THerefore the easiest solution is to assume
> >>that ships are composed of alloys that can *take* this kind
> >>of punishment in day-to-day space travel (after all, we ARE
> >>talking about ships surviving MT missile hits, where MT missiles
> >>are supposed to have the destructive power equivalent to nukes ;-).
> >
> >One issue is whether or not the detonation of the Nuke is point or
> >proximate to the ship. If it strikes the ship and detonates, then I'd
> >expect these ships to be pretty stern stuff. If they are detonating
> >proximate to the ship, then it isn't as big an issue. You don't get
quite
> >the shockwave in space as I understand it. There isn't an atmosphere
to
> >compress to make that wave. You do of course have nice thermal and
> >radiation effects though.
>
> Well, you've got to get *something* out of it, or the Orion propulsion
> system wouldn't be much use.	Although, to be fair, that relied on
bombs
> exploding within tens of meters to fifty meters of a solid plate,
generally
> coated with graphite... I'm not sure how thick the plate needed to be,
or
> the graphite, and (of course) how that would relate to FT era starship
hull
> and/or armor.  The Starflight Handbook is, not unsurprisingly, not the
> greatest source of information on how to *destroy* starships.... ^_-
>
> Anyone know more on this?
>					   Aaron
>
>
I was reading a sight that had a link to the facts about space flight
(the
sight was the one that has a collection of SF quotes, can`t remember the
adress now). Anyway, it was going on about orion and in a series of
tests,
they had a plastic disc suspended above the nuke, and it suvived the
detonation (was rather far away). For orion they proposed this to go
with
the nukes to aviod wasting too much energy from the explosion. The plate
would also only lose a couple of mm of material from a nuke detonated
within
a couple of hundred meters, so antiship nukes would have to be VERY
close to
have any effect.