How to kill blobs?

[Endie]

Lastly, doesn't most AA missiles use flaking efect? Noone stops you from putting an engine and proximity detonator on that nuke-grenade, you know and at least you won't have to go for direct hit. (plus, in an environment without atmosphere, evading incoming kinetic missiles doesn't seem like hard thing to do) 

Flak works if you can aim it, to an extent. You have a much better chance of hitting something that way. But just exploding flack in the sky, hoping to knock down a plane -- not so much,

These days that's true, but my father worked on the guidance systems for the wonderfully-named Sea Slug SAM, and that worked through putting something vaguely close with a big enough explosion that it would knock anything nearby out of the sky.  Basically, flak guided to within a sub-hundred-metre space of the target and with a big warhead. All three beam-riding modes were improved with time, but at first they seriously considered just sticking a nuke on the end of it and firing it into the Russian bomber stream somewhere mid-North Sea.

It was also rather efficient.  Dad has always joked about it, but it turns out that at the time it had a fairly high chance of killing the target with a single shot: over 90%.  It just should have been scrapped by 1970 or so.  As it was, we had County class ships equipped with it in the Falklands, and I'm sure that the Chileans at least still used it until only a few years ago.

[DraconianOne]

Been avoiding this thread because I wasn't playing EVE.  Now I'm playing again, I read it.  Wish I hadn't bothered.

However, while I'm here, I thought I'd better chime in with observation of some factual inaccuracies that need to be corrected.

[stuff]...788 food calories.  Holy shit, the raw power of a couple of Big Macs.

On average, a Big Mac contains about 575kCal so 788kCal would actually be the raw power of 1.3704 Big Macs and not "a couple".  Therefore, as Grunk would say, YOU FAIL!




You may carry on.

[WindupAtheist]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

[ajax34i]

As for pumped lasers, I was actually imagining lasers, not just channeling the bomb's energy through a few orifices.  As in, the bomb explodes, and sets off an initial blast of gamma radiation, which hits the back end of multiple laser mediums, which cascade-amplify it forming a laser of some sort. 

Although, the lasers wouldn't neccessarily have to be arranged as spokes; you could probably put 6 tubes together to form a cylinder (like a revolver's 6-pack) and detonate the nuke in vacuum in the middle, and you'd have a directional 6-beam laser.  Presuming that the radiation from the explosion doesn't destroy the setup.  You could actually feed nukes into the middle and have a repeat-shot nuke-pumped 6-beam laser.

[Morat20]

Not *strictly* true. You can bomb pump with conventional explosives, too, depending on desired effect. For example, a non-nuclear EMP device. It's not really the same thing, I know.

You can learn everything you wanted to know about kenetic bombardment in this helpful wiki page. The only thing stopping us from deploying something like it right now is cost per kg to LEO.

I suspect it's our current treaties regarding militarization of space -- unless Bush pulled out of those when I wasn't looking.

DoD has a very nice launch system, since they do all their own launches. If they wanted a kinetic system, it'd be in place. It'd certainly be better than pouring money down ABM. At least "Rocks fall, everyone dies" has a chance of working.

[Furiously]

I have the high ground Anikan!

[Endie]

I have the high ground Anikan!

+1 to hit bonus.

PS My favourite bit of those three shitty movies was just after that, when Princess Pregoo asks Obi Wan how Anekan is, and he just gives this acting-school-pained-look-into-distance-3 that says "I chopped all of your husband's limbs off and when I left him he was slowly sliding into a caldera of magma".

Or maybe it was "nooooooo".

I refuse to apologise for the derail in a thread that has already jumped the tracks and gone cross-country twice.