Coolant [Spaceships]

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

The hypothetical Daedalus probe, for ex, if it struck a habitable world at its cruise speed of .12c, would be a monster. We're talking many hundreds of gigatons, at least. Probably more power than the combined arsenals of both superpowers at the height of the Cold War (about 60 gigatons IIRC).

Of course if you have a power plant that will get something up to planet cracking energies in less than a lifetime, it's not much of a threat to an equally capable target who have prepared for it. With that kind of energy to work with they can emit a radar pulse that will image it light-days out, which they use to target the beam weapon that will flash it to plasma in milliseconds at that same range.

You really do need to ignore the other things a civilization could do with vast energies to make it a center stage threat, probably starting with all the other more efficient ways we haven't thought of yet you could apply vast energies to devastating planets.