if the ship can accelerate that fast without having its engines go kablooey, why cant it do the same thing to a projectile?

plasma weapons in most games tear armor apart, cause it melts armor.

Well, if you're able to travel to other stars in a time frame which allows wars, well, you'll absolutely be able to accelerate a ball to 1'000km/s.

What I wanted the say was, that I consider it impossible to wage wars across more then one solar system effectively, so yeah, a civilization that could do that could probably do anything.



We're talking about primitive prototype rail guns fired on earth (air resistance, gravity, etc.) which reaches a velocity of 4km/s. This is quite amazing, but still not a miracle. So yes, I would argue that in the future it would be possible to accelerate a projectile to a 1'000km/s in a setting which is better for this style of gun. Although I'm unsure how the gun would survive the shot. (See below for my reason.)



Actually there would be no need to have such short guns, you can easily build large structures in space (provided you have a cheap method to bring the necessary materials in space). And it's not like the enemy could change it's course fast enough so you don't really need to move your gun around much for aiming.

As for the force:
v(muz)2DF/m)^.5
v(muz)=Muzzle velocity (Meters/Second)
D=Length of rails (Meters)
F=Force applied (Newtons)
m=Mass of projectile (Kilograms)
F=m*(v(muz))^2/(2D)
F=2'000'000'000N=2MN (huh, quite a lot)
Hmmm, I thought it would exert a lot of force, but I'm quite a bit surprised at how high it is. This would need some truly massive rails to survive a shot.
I have no idea at all, how we could be able to have rails that would survive the force of one shot.



Actually no. It doesn't really matter for this if a ship is in space or on earth. It would probably even far better in space than on earth.

A battleships that fires a broadside still needs the structural power to absorb the force of the shots. A ship in space would far insofar better as that it hadn't also to compensate the force which prevents it from moving back at the same time (inert water for the ship on earth), while the ship in space would be able to do that and then could use it's thrusters to move back into position.

BDUakito: Plasma weapons would be about as effective as guns that shoot clouds of steam...as in not at all.

Vandenburg: In SoaSE, ships travel through Phase Space to get anywhere (natural physics and speeds to not apply). However, note that no ships try to get anywhere on conventional drives = near useless like what we have today. My point here is that SoaSE physics in many ways still seem similar to what we know today.

Also, it would be extremely hard to hit any ship in space with todays tech weapons (unless it has a plot able course). Keep in mind that modern space combat would occur with massive distances. You see, any sub 1 degree change in course of the target (or change in speed) would mean massive changes in targeting info. You would never hit a ship doing evasive tiny course changes if it is at 100 000 km distance with missiles or standard munitions. Even lasers would have a hard time keeping a steady beam on the targeted ship.

Bah, we have had this topic so many times now...I feel like an old man.

no kidding...

at the accelerations we're considering the issue isnt the ship being quashed between it and another medium (water) the issue is that half of the ship has accelerated to high speeds (.2 m/s or greater, even with super materials that will apply a lot of pressure) whereas the other part of the ship is not moving (all things relative)
what do you think THAT does to the hull integrity of the ship?

keep in mind the railgun is simply an extension of a ship, immagine how the ship would be damaged from firing!

again, no matter how good the stuff, laws of physics apply.

Wrong! Rail guns and gauss guns are two totally different objects. Look it up on Wiki if you want, but basically rail guns are two rails with a third rail run across them, free to move, then put juice into the system. A gauss gun, AKA a coil gun, is a series of coils turned on / off in sequence to accelerate a projectile.

But if the rail are well braced to the ship then the whole ship can use its thrusters.

Another thing. how fast is your ship moving compared to its target? A head on charge would add a good chunk of speed to the orb without additional strain. The engines would definitely add to the strength of mass drivers. If the ship is approaching at 500km/s then it would only need to add another 500km/s to reach the same speed. This would also reduce the effect of mass drivers of fleeing ships. Talk about outrunning a bullet!

Ex if a ship was going 250km/s away from a 'motionless' ship then it would seem like the bullets are traveling 750km/s. Am I making any sense?

gauss implies all weapons platforms fired using the gauss field... I dont care what wiki says

you're talking relativistic movement, my only counter would be that I assume if they can move ships at 250 km/s (within the constraints of a gravitational system, we arent talking intergalactic sublight drives) then this entire conversation is moot as their tech is WAY beyond ours.

Fine, you do that. Personally, while I think your position has merit, I'll go with the agreed-upon terminology (especially since your the only person I've met who goes with the logical definition).

thank you.

now now, calm down a bit

We're perfectly calm -- SchematicNinja is insisting on using the logical definition, I'm stuck with the agreed upon definition.