09-27-2013, 09:25 AM | #11 | |
Join Date: May 2013
Location: Ellicott City, MD
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Re: Potential Pitfalls for a Superscience Technology
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As for interplanetary weaponry? Well, let's say somebody wants to kill every living thing on Earth. Attach a K-Sink (or two, if such a thing can work) to Vesta and/or Ceres. Either of those scoring a direct hit on the Earth will end life as we know it, and there is basically nothing you could do to stop them. |
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09-27-2013, 10:10 AM | #12 | ||
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Potential Pitfalls for a Superscience Technology
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EDIT: I feel I should note here that the shield your nuke likely had to get through probably wrecked the detonation mechanism, giving you just a really expensive dirty bomb... and if any missiles managed to get through, they probably wouldn't need to be nukes to take out the ship. If you instead opted for proximity detonation, the vast majority of the energy that would normally hit the ship would be absorbed by the shield, meaning you just made yourself a war criminal with minimal, if any, gain. Good job. Quote:
Note the above ignores the idea of only being able to tether to whatever is proportionally closest, in which case you could probably only tether the sun, which wouldn't be of any use for killing Earth. Last edited by Varyon; 09-27-2013 at 11:42 AM. |
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09-27-2013, 10:22 AM | #13 | |
Join Date: May 2013
Location: Ellicott City, MD
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Re: Potential Pitfalls for a Superscience Technology
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You could also tether to smaller asteroids for no purpose other than to slow your doomsday dwarf planet of choice, which will cause it to "fall" in towards the Sun, again, with everything mathed out to intersect with the Earth. |
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09-27-2013, 11:14 AM | #14 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Potential Pitfalls for a Superscience Technology
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Certainly, throwing something like Ceres at an inhabited planet would be an interstellar crime in excess to merely using a nuke, but while governments might be able to restrict access to fissionables, an extremist group with enough funding could probably manage something like this. Of course, it should require a lot of time, planning, and personnel to get the ball rolling, which would make it an interesting plot or subplot (with the PC's being the Only Ones that can stop it, for whatever reason). |
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09-27-2013, 01:00 PM | #15 | |
Join Date: May 2013
Location: Ellicott City, MD
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Re: Potential Pitfalls for a Superscience Technology
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If you want to make the extremist group REALLY organized, they could be claiming to move Vesta/Ceres closer for the purpose of profitable mining, and then make the doomsday adjustments as close to Earth as possible. |
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09-27-2013, 01:40 PM | #16 | ||
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Potential Pitfalls for a Superscience Technology
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In terms of setting, it's because of fear of radioactive contamination. Radioactive things are considered to be Bad, so people don't use fission. It's not that it can't be used, it's just that the legal consequences rarely justify the attempt, particularly when cheap solar-panel and Shield-tech generated energy is available. For reference, ships typically rely on large capacitors for energy. Very large warships carry fuel cells to recharge their capacitors, while large non-combat ships have solar panels. A previous concept of this setting had some very large ships using fusion reactors that required Psis to keep them going, but I'm not certain I want to maintain the Psis. Quote:
Of course, getting to/from Ceres actually wouldn't be that expensive in this setting, as the space drives get 150 mps per tank of hydrogen fuel at 0.1G. Time would be more important, although with the defenses planets have against ships slamming into them you can probably approach a planet at a decent clip, using your K-Sink to slow down at the end (or be annihilated if you fail to). Our theoretical miners/terrorists might find it difficult to convince anyone to let them move Ceres (or whatever massive planetoid they've chosen), although if they're that well organized they might be able to bribe their way through. |
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09-27-2013, 01:47 PM | #17 | ||
Join Date: May 2013
Location: Ellicott City, MD
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Re: Potential Pitfalls for a Superscience Technology
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09-27-2013, 02:34 PM | #18 | ||
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Potential Pitfalls for a Superscience Technology
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(While we're using Sol system for our examples, in this setting Sol actually exists within a hyperspace "bubble," cutting Earth off and relegating it to background status. Everyone that characters will interact with are the descendants of generation ships that made the slow trek out of this void. You don't even need a disaster, just statistics blown out of proportion and distorted over a long period of time). Quote:
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09-27-2013, 02:35 PM | #19 | |
Join Date: May 2013
Location: Ellicott City, MD
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Re: Potential Pitfalls for a Superscience Technology
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Throw in rumors from time to time during the campaign, then either go for it or don't. |
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09-27-2013, 03:16 PM | #20 |
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Plugerville
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Re: Potential Pitfalls for a Superscience Technology
You mentioned 'blade' shields.
What is to stop someone from using one of those to provide heat to their power plant? Presumably if you have multiple blades on one satellite, they do not fully enclose the reactor... |
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space opera, spaceship |
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