Re: [GZG] Futuristic batteries

Well, the story quote says it's a simple rupture, which would tend to
suggest that it may not take a car crash... and even if it did, would
you really want to equip an entire platoon with these things, with the
awareness that any artillery shell that hits too close to them is going
to basically set off a chain reaction that'll wipe out your platoon,
your buddies' platoon sitting next to it, and so on down the line until
you've got enough space between one unit and the next to avoid having
the next one go off with it?

This sort of reminds me of optional rules I've thought of for Full
Thrust where magazine or fighter bay hits (i.e. threshold failures)
should perhaps be just a little bit more painful than the loss of a
system.  These have been just about every naval captain's worst
nightmare for centuries, whether it was the powder rooms in sailing
warships, or the spectacular magazine and/or ordnance hits that
destroyed several British battlecruisers at Jutland, the Hood in the
Denmark Strait, the Arizona at Pearl Harbor, the Yamato at Okinawa, or
most of the Japanese carrier fleet with a whole air wing's worth of
ordnance sitting on or near its flight decks at Midway.  Throw that
together with maybe a little more spectacular results when a ship is
destroyed (e.g. maybe a power core explosion should actually hurt other
ships nearby and/or fighter screens), and maybe that'd be a more
effective deterrent to overloading on missiles, fighters, or bunched up
ship formations than trying to tweak the point defense rules.

E

-----Original Message-----
>From: Mike Stanczyk <stanczyk@pcisys.net>
>Sent: Sep 12, 2010 2:39 PM
>To: gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
>Subject: Re: [GZG] Futuristic batteries
>
>On Sat, 11 Sep 2010, John Atkinson wrote:
>
>>> I was thinking more of Larry Niven's molecular-distortion battery:
>>> "I saw the white flash of a molecular-distortion battery rupturing
among
>>> the explosions, a big one near full charge.  Not many near that
would
>>> survive."
>>
>> If it's that dangerous, they wouldn't be in common usage except for
>> applications where they had NO choice whatsoever.  No one is going to
>> want effective hand grenades in the flashlight his kids take camping.
>> And that would be something that WOULD have a centrally located
>> manufacturing process (presuming, of course, they are rechargeable)
>> because of the safety/security considerations.
>
>Your point is well taken, but I think it's a matter of relative danger.
>We don't see what it takes to force a md battery to critical failure. 
>It could be harder than a car-crash.  We drive cars with 15-20 gallons
of
>gas around all the time.
>
>John, have you given any thought about the mini fuel cell technology
that
>might make it into consumer technology?  It would be like a ethanol
powered
>flashlight...
>
>Mike

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