jmccarroll
Assault Tripod
" The only good Martian, is a dead Martian "
Posts: 328
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Post by jmccarroll on Jan 31, 2020 14:50:56 GMT
More on the naval then the ground war.
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Post by easye on Jan 31, 2020 20:52:31 GMT
This part was eye opening to me....
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Post by boxholder on Feb 1, 2020 1:25:06 GMT
An excellent article and a very good technical read. Interesting data point, but we need to be careful when extrapolating weapons performance.
Can the black smoke really be effective at 20km range? Disperson of the gas balls in flight by wind might severely degrade the effectiveness.
Heat rays will have the problem that afflicts all beam type weapons, even today's lasers. The beam spreads with range degrading the effectiveness. Look at the 3rd of Mr Washburn's books for a demonstration as they try to develop protective armor.
Pointing and tracking at those kind of ranges can reduce fire combat to a crapshoot. Somewhere I seem recall reading that at the Battle of Jutland (WW-1) less than 1/2 percent of shells hit any target. And that was fought at much less than 20 km.
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Post by madmorgan on Feb 4, 2020 21:16:01 GMT
Good discussion. One question about the heat ray and range - as it is a straight line 'ray', wouldn't the curve of the horizon reduce its effective use??
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Post by boxholder on Feb 5, 2020 0:33:55 GMT
Curvature of the earth does not attenuate the strength of the ray. It just makes the target harder to hit, because at extreme range all or part of the target is below the horizon. It cannot hit what it cannot "see" no matter how much energy you pour into the beam.
What eats into the effectiveness is the divergence, the "beam spreading" of the ray. As range increase the beam spreads and it is a square law. That means that doubling the range cuts the energy intensity on target by 4 fold. Increasing range by 10-fold reduces beam energy on the target by 100x or down to 1% of that at the reference range.
The other limiter on Earth is interaction with the atmosphere, particularly water vapor. It can really soak up lots of energy and that interaction can make the spread tremendously greater (thermal blooming). You may be able to engineer your way out by selcecting the right frequency or enlarging the optics,, but you will waste some energy as you try to select a frequency that does not absorb in the air.
The Martians might not have encountered the absorption problem, because the atmosphere is only about 1/3 as dense as Earth and it is vey dry.
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Post by madmorgan on Feb 18, 2020 9:55:23 GMT
Thank you - great physics making our game that much more interesting
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