What's the most energy efficient weapon in space? Does this change based on the distance of the battle? Can someone give me some hard numbers?
Laser vs Mass Driver
Proton Torpedo you fucking tard.
Kindness is the best weapon both on earth and in space.
SIR ISAAC NEWTON IS THE DEADLIEST SON OF A BITCH IN THE GALAXY
Depends on the technology you want to imagine.
Kinetic energy weapons are effective at whatever distance, but they can be dodged. Are you allowing terminal guidance? Point defenses? Counter-missiles?
Relative efficiency of your weapon? If your mass-driver can convert, say, 90% of the electrical energy input into KE (reasonable for ordinary electric motors) your ship has to dissipate the 10% of heat energy left over. And you're in a vacuum.
Lasers have MUCH lower efficiencies.
rp-photonics.com
30% down to 0.1%
Reflective coatings on the enemy ship? Force shields? Relative velocities?
And, of course, the usual "energy beams don't form glowing lines in vacuum" complaint.
>And, of course, the usual "energy beams don't form glowing lines in vacuum" complaint.
they do if they are powerful enough.
Phasers are a particle beam, not a laser. They fire a stream of technobabble particles called nadions that disrupt atomic forces.
Photo, please.
In a GOOD vacuum.
>There are enough gas molecules in the vacuum of space to ionize and produce light on the scale of a man-made laser.
>These gas molecules somehow dont give off any light even though they are constantly being bombarded by relativistic particles and high energy gamma rays
Curious. In which series was that "explained"?
Caption incorrect. Should read "I..............am..............not..............a,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,plebe" or I won't believe Shatner said it.
A really fast moving solid object that homes in on your enemy.
"somehow don't give off any light" because they're not being pumped with any energy.
Cosmic rays, individually, are quite powerful.
But they're so few and far between that you get more juice from moonbeams.
If you're supporting , still awaiting photographic evidence. A glowing line between two spacecraft (or in a hard vacuum chamber) will suffice.
it's photon you uncultured fuck
Okay, so lasers>>>projectiles>>>missiles?
How do particle beams compare to lasers in terms of efficiency and/or use?
>50kg slug of Nickel-Iron
>Accelerate it to 92% speed of light
Someone please do the math to show how much destruction would result.
I'll second this, though considering a simple baseball accelerated to c would cause a nuclear explosion (what-if.xkcd.com
Obviously there really is no reason not to have all three weapons.
>torpedo style weapon loaded with antimatter launched at high speeds
>rail gun style weapon launched at extreme speeds
>Laser/particle weapon at light speed
Each is useful depending on what you are doing.
>Each is useful depending on what you are doing.
Can you give some examples of when each one would be best?
>What's the most energy efficient weapon in space?
Social propaganda.
And how many spaceships can it destroy?
SHUT IT DOWN!
Well, that's pretty metal.
You don't need to destroy them when they bend to your will.
All of them.
Very impressive. What's the fire rate on that thing?
9000 make it so per minute
Why is Veeky Forums filled with brainlets? Calculating the energy of that is literally high school physics. It would be pretty comparable to the strongest thermonuclear bombs we have built.
You if your so smart than you do the math for and posted the results
>It would be pretty comparable to the strongest thermonuclear bombs we have built.
50kg at .9c would have literally entire global nuclear arsenal tnt equivalent
>the most energy efficient weapon
anti-matter
tnt equivalent doesn't really do it justice though
something moving at 270,000km/s would impact the earth so hard I'm pretty certain it would incinerate the atmosphere and every square inch of the surface and probably even create enough of a shockwave to trigger the kind of volcanism that would shatter the continental crust to bits
you wouldn't really get this by just setting off all our bombs somewhere at once
what velocity would I need to tip a fedora to destroy the earth?
Is pair creation a thing that can happen in VERY high energy beams?
You know, like in pair instability supernovae?
>What velocity would I need to tip a fedora to destroy the earth?
What is the mass of the Fedora? I'm going to need it's mass to determine how much damage it will cause at 0.999999999999% c.