Author Topic: Another physics question -- kinetic bombardment  (Read 9977 times)

Sir Chaos

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Re: Another physics question -- kinetic bombardment
« Reply #30 on: 01 July 2012, 17:18:32 »
Oups, I meant kph, not kps! :-[

I.e. I (should have) had about the same number you got. Which means that unless we both did something really wrong most droppers should be real slow in atmosphere!

But assuming you calculated it as a sphere like I did I can think of at least one thing that should make things better while it's thrusting - The engine exhaust should act somewhat like a tail, improving the aerodynamics. But even at such a low speed getting to orbit really isn't that bad, at normal thrust (1.5 Gs, 0.5 effective) speed would still be ~300 kph so it should get above the worst part in 15-20 minutes.

But to get back on topic I'm guessing a 1 million ton, 1 km warship would have a terminal velocity of about 1 kps. But how much it would brake before it hit the surface if it hit the atmosphere at 10 kps... :-\

1 million ton, 1 km? A million tons of armor is what... 100,000 cubic metres? Assuming your warship is 200 meters wide and 100 meters high, it has a surface area of 640,000 square meters, meaning that even if it consisted solely of armor, that armor would be a mere 16 centimeters or so thick - about 5.5 inches. And that´s a hollow shell with nothing but armor, no drives, no weapons, no nothing.
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A. Lurker

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Re: Another physics question -- kinetic bombardment
« Reply #31 on: 02 July 2012, 00:32:34 »
1 million ton, 1 km? A million tons of armor is what... 100,000 cubic metres? Assuming your warship is 200 meters wide and 100 meters high, it has a surface area of 640,000 square meters, meaning that even if it consisted solely of armor, that armor would be a mere 16 centimeters or so thick - about 5.5 inches. And that´s a hollow shell with nothing but armor, no drives, no weapons, no nothing.

You're never going to have a million tons of armor. The construction rules limit you ships no bigger than 2,5 million tons and amounts of armor that look basically like a tinfoil covering on top of everything else, if not an outright paint job. (The absolute most you can carry on a WarShip, assuming its internal structure is maxed out, is its maximum thrust x 0.06% of its total mass.) No, I think that's the whole ship...and yes, it has some decidedly balloon-ish aspects.

Sir Chaos

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Re: Another physics question -- kinetic bombardment
« Reply #32 on: 02 July 2012, 03:25:03 »
You're never going to have a million tons of armor. The construction rules limit you ships no bigger than 2,5 million tons and amounts of armor that look basically like a tinfoil covering on top of everything else, if not an outright paint job. (The absolute most you can carry on a WarShip, assuming its internal structure is maxed out, is its maximum thrust x 0.06% of its total mass.) No, I think that's the whole ship...and yes, it has some decidedly balloon-ish aspects.

I am aware of that - I just wanted to show how the ship is a big too big for its mass.

GURPS Traveller starship construction rules - the only ones I have that take both volume and mass into account - tend to make most ships mass about 0.25 to 0.5 tons per cubic meter (3.5 to 7 tons per 14 m3 "displacement ton"); I think that´s a pretty good ballpark estimate, which also happens to overlap with David Weber´s overall density for warships of 0.25 for his Honorverse novels.

Using the 0.25 figure, a 1 million ton warship would have 4 million cubic meters - say 500 meters long, 100 wide and 80 high. That´s 196,000 square meters of surface area.
With a max thrust of 5, that ship would have up to 3,000 tons of armor, which comes to, let´s say, 300 cubic meters - off the top of my head I´m arriving at something like 1.3 or 1.4 millimeters of armor for these figures.
And even with a density of 2, with every dimension half as long, you´d end up with 5-6 millimeters of armor.

And all that assumes that armor is only about 1.25 times as dense as iron.

I think this is the right moment for one these:   :o
"Artillery adds dignity to what would otherwise be a vulgar brawl."
-Frederick the Great

"Ultima Ratio Regis" ("The Last Resort of the King")
- Inscription on cannon barrel, 18th century

cray

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Re: Another physics question -- kinetic bombardment
« Reply #33 on: 02 July 2012, 08:52:34 »
I am aware of that - I just wanted to show how the ship is a big too big for its mass.

Yep. BT's ships are tinfoil balloons. The aborted deckplan project had endless empty space to deal with in plain JumpShips, to say nothing of WarShips.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

**"A man walks down the street in that hat, people know he's not afraid of anything." --Wash, Firefly.
**"Well, the first class name [for pocket WarShips]: 'Ship with delusions of grandeur that is going to evaporate 3.1 seconds after coming into NPPC range' tended to cause morale problems...." --Korzon77
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Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.

rlbell

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Re: Another physics question -- kinetic bombardment
« Reply #34 on: 02 July 2012, 11:22:40 »
Yep. BT's ships are tinfoil balloons. The aborted deckplan project had endless empty space to deal with in plain JumpShips, to say nothing of WarShips.

David Weber re-scaled his warships, maybe TPTB can rescale the spacecraft of the BTU
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Khymerion

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Re: Another physics question -- kinetic bombardment
« Reply #35 on: 03 July 2012, 08:53:38 »
Shouldn't be too hard... honestly.

I mean, if you can reign Webber's imagination in... who knows what you can do?
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St.George

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Re: Another physics question -- kinetic bombardment
« Reply #36 on: 05 July 2012, 05:14:48 »
Try "The Universe" on the history channel,,,the Warfare episode dealt with this question.Their comparison was a  VW sized  round shot from a Railgun in space at a planet(or moon) with "massive" devastating effects for the objects traveling at thousands of miles per hour.
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