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Nyrath

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Posts posted by Nyrath

  1. Orion Drive space battleship

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Orion Drive space battleship

     

    Absolutely. But then again' date=' the EMP effects alone of the orbital detonations involved might annoy more than just the hippies.[/quote']

     

    Not really. Since the push charges are relatively small, the range of dangerous EMP is about 170 miles in radius. You just have to have the launch site in a remote spot. Which you'd want to have for other reasons anyway.

    http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nuclearspace-03a.html

  2. Orion Drive space battleship

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Orion Drive space battleship

     

    The entire annual productiones of plutonium is only 20 tonnes' date=' most of which is not currently extracted, and the world stockpile of usable plutonium is only about 500 tonnes.[/quote']

    Of course a fast breeder reactor can convert the abundant non-fissile U-238 into fissile plutonium-239.

    The only reason there is a lack of plutonium is due to non-proliferation issues.

  3. Orion Drive space battleship

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Orion Drive space battleship

     

    We're not talking about a few tests' date=' though, right? How many detonations, of what size, would it take to get one of these monsters into orbit?[/quote']

     

    For a first generation 4,000 ton spacecraft, it would expend about 800 charges while boosting into a 480 kilometer high orbit. The charges detonated in the atmosphere are about 0.15 kilotons each, the charges detonated in space are about 5 kilotons each. The total amount of nuclear explosives expended is about three megatons.

     

    As a comparison, the Hiroshima bomb was about 20 kilotons.

  6. Orion Drive space battleship

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Orion Drive space battleship

     

    What on (or outside) Earth would we use them for?!?

     

    Ah, I was correct. It was intended to be a part of M.A.D. doctrine

    "The "Battleship" was the ultimate military version of this conceit. It was designed to carry thermonuclear firepower equivalent to three Polaris submarines as well as a variety of defensive weapons. Plans called for the Battleship to be stationed in a "Fail Safe" orbit around the Moon and only returned to Earth in the event of a "Doomsday" scenario in which case it would unleash nuclear death on America's enemies."

  8. Orion Drive space battleship

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Orion Drive space battleship

     

    Wait...500 20 megaton nukes? Is that a typo? Those would have to weigh at least 1000 tons or more.

    No, no typo.

     

    You don't understand. This is the Orion Drive we are talking about, here. It is the propulsion system above all that is optimized for moving huge payloads from surface to orbit. They had a design for a medium Orion ship that could transport an entire Lunar colony to the moon in one trip. The large model Orion could deliver 8,000,000 metric tons payload into low Earth orbit.

  10. Your Top Ten Science Fiction Writers, and then some.

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Your Top Ten Science Fiction Writers, and then some.

     

    Now if you like the Traveller RPG, run, do not walk, and find a used copy of The Shattered Stars by Richard S. McEnroe (1985, http://www.bookfinder.com is your friend).

    Gives incredible detail about the trials and tribulations of a free trader, along with a story including a grizzled captain, a skittish engineer lady who is a secret telepath on the run from an evil Psionics institute, a war-weary super-soldier who just wants to forget, a super-bomb that various factions are trying to get their hands on, and a rogue mega-telepath super villain.

     

    A pity that none of McEnroe other few novels were anywhere near as exciting.

  11. Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible?

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible?

     

    I will say this' date=' if trade was ever disrupted in the Star Wars universe, Coruscant would descend into utter chaos in very rapid fashion. Any numbers I throw out would be completely arbitrary and made up, but assuming they had three days surplus for the entire planet, on day four there is going to be trouble.[/quote']

     

    From Foundation by Isaac Asimov (1951)

     

    TRANTOR-...At the beginning of the thirteenth millennium, this tendency reached its climax. As the center of the Imperial Government for unbroken hundreds of generations and located, as it was, toward the central regions of the Galaxy among the most densely populated and industrially advanced worlds of the system, it could scarcely help being the densest and richest clot of humanity the Race had ever seen.

     

    Its urbanization, progressing steadily, had finally reached the ultimate. All the land surface of Trantor, 75,000,000 square miles in extent, was a single city. The population, at its height, was well in excess of forty billions. This enormous population was devoted almost entirely to the administrative necessities of Empire, and found themselves all too few for the complications of the task. (It is to be remembered that the impossibility of proper administration of the Galactic Empire under the uninspired leadership of the later Emperors was a considerable factor in the Fall.) Daily, fleets of ships in the tens of thousands brought the produce of twenty agricultural worlds to the dinner tables of Trantor....

     

    Its dependence upon the outer worlds for food and, indeed, for all necessities of life, made Trantor increasingly vulnerable to conquest by siege. In the last millennium of the Empire, the monotonously numerous revolts made Emperor after Emperor conscious of this, and Imperial policy became little more than the protection of Trantor's delicate jugular vein....

  13. Your Top Ten Science Fiction Writers, and then some.

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Your Top Ten Science Fiction Writers, and then some.

     

    When it comes to inspiration for a Planetary Romance campaign, an interesting choice is the Northwest Smith stories of C.L. Moore.

    http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?9373

    Northwest Smith is a rogue. A little Han Solo, a little Indiana Jones. There is some Film Noir, some Cthulhu mythos, grizzled men wearing faded gray spacer's leathers with their heat ray pistol in a well worn holster. The deserts of Mars, the swamps of Venus, lithe white limbed women, and eldrich horrors.

  14. 10 Sci-Fi Weapons That Actually Exist

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: 10 Sci-Fi Weapons That Actually Exist

     

    I'm trying to remember the story where lunar secessionists simply used a mass driver to fire red hot bars of steel at the incoming warships. A big ol' lump of steel' date=' moving at high speed would be a difficult thing to deflect: it has no electronics to fry, no skin to puncture with a laser, isn't going to vaporize from a near miss with a nuke, and would be hard to deflect with a smaller, faster-moving missile. The "red-hot" is actually redundant, but you'd likely get it via radiative forcing anyway if you used a mass driver.[/quote']

    As others had pointed out, this is Sir Arthur C. Clarke's EARTHLIGHT, which as one of the most cinematic "spaceships attacking a fortress" battle scenes I have ever read. Check it out.

     

    The fort threw a bolt of molten metal with a sort of mass driver. This is because the force fields around the attacking spacecraft were only Energy Defense, they had no Physical Defense. In Doc Smith terms, they had Ray Screens but no Repulsors.

     

    And as already pointed out, DARPA is looking into this as project MAHEM.

    http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2008/04/science-fiction-inspires-darpa-weapon.html

  15. Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible?

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible?

     

    That is to say' date=' a world with nothing but rain forests, nothing but beaches, etc.[/quote']

     

    No.

     

    A world is a world. At the very least the poles will tend to be colder than the equator. SF author Larry Niven summed up this fallacy with the flippant quote "It was raining on Mongo that day..."

  17. Humans nearly went extinct

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Humans nearly went extinct

     

    This is mentioned in Science Now for yesterday (19 Jan 2010). Statistics on the genetic variability in modern humans suggest that 1.2 million years ago the breeding population of humans worldwide bottomed out around 18' date='500 (an uncertain number, but certainly no larger than 26,000).[/quote']

    And then, just before humans became extinct, a large black Monolith appeared before Moon-Watcher.

  18. Your Top Ten Science Fiction Writers, and then some.

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Your Top Ten Science Fiction Writers, and then some.

     

    Well, my top SF writers is a different list from my top SF writers who have Star Hero material.

     

    http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/18596-SF-Novels-for-Star-Hero?p=364243#post364243

    http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/18596-SF-Novels-for-Star-Hero?p=364368#post364368

    http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/18596-SF-Novels-for-Star-Hero?p=365136#post365136

    and add The Witches of Karres by James H. Schmitz

  19. 1962 Nuke Test jeopardized Apollo program

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: 1962 Nuke Test jeopardized Apollo program

     

    I was going to say this sounds like it might have been partial inspiration for the original 'Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea' movie (story redone in a later episode of the TV series)' date=' where the Van Allen belts catch fire and pose a major threat to the world. THEN I notice that the movie was done two years earlier. Interesting.[/quote']

    Obviously the writer has precognition.

    Or the US military saw the movie, and decided to try it. ;)

  22. Orion Drive space battleship

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Orion Drive space battleship

     

    THAT is gonna scare the hell out of the "ANYTHING NUCLEAR IS EVIL!!!" crowd. Which is fine by me. ;)

     

    And it did.

    When the Battleship concept (including a scale model) was shown to President Kennedy in 1963, JFK was reportedly so freaked out that he immediately cancelled the project altogether.

  23. The furture is now buddy ; phaser now

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: The furture is now buddy ; phaser now

     

    Yes, but I'd advise you not to. With such things it is dangerously easy to blind yourself permanently. The gentleman who made the phaser in the videos has a carrying case with a combination lock on it, to keep them out of the hands of the untrained.

     

    Having said that, there is an easy hack to increase the power of your average laser pointer, but I'm not going to tell you how. Google if you must know.

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