In which I post about a TL9 solar system

[Say, it isn't that bad!]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

That is still a superscience system because you are talking about an electrostatic system capable of deflecting 100+ GeV intensity relativistic iron nuclei. For a comparison, a TL9 fusion reactor would likely have electromagnetic or electrostatic fields that are barely capable of containing 20 MeV particles, and they have the advantage that they only have to protect a few square meters. For a system to cover the hundreds of thousands of square meters of a SM+13 system would require TW of energy (around 10 MW per square meter). By comparison, a generous interpretation of a SM+13 fusion power plant has it producing 40 GW (20 GW per power point), which would be around 5% the required energy levels.

So a thing I forgot to factor in is that, since electromagnetic/electrostatic fields are measured by diameter rather than surface area, increasing the SM by +1 should increase the PF by +100%, not +50%.

It doesn't need to bring them to a halt, just shove them aside a bit. So, math.

Let's say 400,000 square metres, which gives us 632m of room to play with. That's not going to work with a SM+13 hull.

Alright, SM+14, we have 1,264m of room to work with, and a 700m hull. That gives us a radius of 632m to avoid 350 metres. A little trigonometry says that's a 33.63 degree deflection, and we need 55 GeV to deflect it.

Still not enough. SM+15, we have 2,528m of room, and a 1,000m hull. We've got a radius of 1,264m, and need to adjust by 500m. 40 GeV to deflect it, and a single power point (judging by the beam output of a Major Battery) is probably 3TJ (1TJ output at 33% efficiency). With an increase of in diameter 4x over SM+13, we'd need 4TJ.

I think that's "close enough for napkin math"; with that, electromagnetic / electrostatic shielding is restricted to SM+15.