Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl
Coolant avoids both forms of WMD while allowing for a pleasing delta-v. A spacecraft with one component of water could achieve a delta-v of 500 mps while a spacecraft with ten components of water could achieve a delta-v of 7,000 mps. Of course, there may be some abuse still, so changing the duration of coolant to one hour per 1g of acceleration may be better (it still gives 20 mps and 280 mps respectively). At that point, spacecraft can get up to an acceptable delta-v without worrying about WMDs.
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You do realise that at ~3 km/s (~2 miles/second) an object has kinetic energy equal to the chemical energy a lump of TNT of the same mass releases? That means that at 20 mps a 100 ton shuttle impacts with about 10 kilotons of energy. Any spaceship that can traverse interplanetary space at a half-reasonable speed and which is of a decent mass is a WMD, if it follows physical laws as we understand them.
If I was designing a setting from scratch that had fast space travel I'd consider wormholes or other FTL jumps that started in planetary orbit, so spaceships wouldn't need vast delta-vee to travel quickly, and/or inertialess drives that don't retain pre-engagement vectors (though they have other issues, I'm sure), and just throw out hard physics.