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Re: [GZG] How much acceleration do you need to dodge beams and other weapons?

From: Tom B <kaladorn@g...>
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 02:15:14 -0500
Subject: Re: [GZG] How much acceleration do you need to dodge beams and other weapons?

I've been looking at fighter accelerations as well when trying to
determine a reasonable time/distance scale.

Assuming accelerations sustained of no more than 6Gs for fighters
(even that's one heck of an acceleration to maintain for several
minutes), the scales that seem to work best for fighters having
reasonable first turn movement (on the order of 9-12 MU before any
factoring in of catapults) are:

MU = 10 km
Turn = 60 sec
Ship Thrust = 0.33 G/thrust
Earth Obital Speed (8.3 km/s) = 50 MU/turn
Earth Radius = 635 MU (6347 km)
Earth Circumference = 4000 MU
LEO Radius = 835 MU (8347 km)
LEO Circumference = 5246 MU
LEO Period = 105 turns

or

MU = 100 km
Turn = 180 sec
Ship Thrust = 0.33 G/thrust
Earth Obital Speed (8.3K km/s) = 15 MU/turn
Earth Radius = 64 MU
Earth Circumference = 4000 MU
LEO Radius = 84 MU
LEO Circumference = 525 MU
LEO Period = 35 turns

LEO here = 2K km.

@10 km/MU, LEO distance of 2K km would be 200 MU. In this scale, you
won't see the planet.

@100 km/MU, LEO distance of 2K km would be 20 MU. In this case, Earth
might appear on the board as a slightly curved surface on one side of
the board and the ships would be orbiting between 2 mu and 25 mu (200
km to 2500 km) off the surface. In this time/distance scale, the
acceleration due to gravity would be towards the board edge at 3
MU/turn.

Even in this scale, if you're in a Geosync orbit at 350 MU above the
surface, you won't see the planet. At that point, if my math isn't
failing me, you won't even bother to represent the pull of gravity
because it is negligible (or perhaps even actually zero, depending on
what orbital radius you choose). (My math could be wrong here...)

Just as a check, I compare some of these LEO figures I calculated for
the scales to ISS orbital data:

Average orbital height about 337 km about earth (circumference
therefore about 6347 + 337 =  6684 km)
Circumference of Orbit = pi * Diameter = pi * 2 * radius
Circ(ISS Orbit) = 42K km (roughly)
I read somewhere an orbit took 91 minutes. (15.78 orbits per day).
If that's the case, the speed on the orbit track must be about 7.7
km/sec.
In the 60 second scale, that's 46 MU/turn (461 km/turn). In the 180
second scale, that's 13.8 MU/turn (1384 km/turn).

These sync up roughly with my original figures with the main
difference being the IISS is 337 km up, not 2000 km up.
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