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Ares
Clan Jade Falcon
Star Colonel
Joined: 20-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 737
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 Posted: 25-May-2002 21:33 Post subject: vacuum combat |
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In a vacuum, how is it possible to fight? First, how do fusion engines work in a vacuum (or regularry, for that matter). I'm not sure about today's rocket motors either, I always though you had to have oxygen as a fuel for fire. How can AC shells or LRMS fly, theres no air, and no atmosphere at all for them to fly through. And how do lasers work in this case, wouldn't the extremely cold tempature nullify the effect or something? How do they work regularry for that matter?
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I have the right to remain silent. Anything I say will undoubtedly incriminate me.
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Raven!
Clan Snow Raven
Galaxy Commander
Joined: 04-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 1326
Location: United States
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| Posted: 25-May-2002 23:28 Post subject: vacuum combat |
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Umm O2 is a propellent, but not all that is needed. Any many chemicals can hold their own o2 and be very unstable, making them great space proppellents. AC shells would fly better without an atmosphere and would move in nice straight lines.
Missiles would also fly better, with no resistence, and go further. They would need thruster nossels rather then fins to manuver, but thats easy to do.
Lasers would be made more effective. The cold armor would be brittle and the sudden burst of heat would cause it to explode far more readily in real space.
How a fusion engine work. A fusion engine works by making high energy plasma and venting it out of thrusters to push a unit through space. Therefore they need fuel.
Everything would work better in space because there would be no resistence from an atmosphere. Things would move in straight lines and life would be good.
I can give you more later, but right now i'm very very tired and I don't have a physics book handy.
Raven!
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Vampire
Free Worlds League
Lieutenant Colonel
Joined: 05-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 912
Location: Spain
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| Posted: 26-May-2002 05:39 Post subject: vacuum combat |
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Go to the library and read a physics book for kids. Honestly, if you don't know, then you must have been taught physics at high school, or slept through them.
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Memento audare semper
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Old Dog
Capellan Confederation
Sang-wei
Joined: 24-May-2002 00:00
Posts: 299
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| Posted: 26-May-2002 06:02 Post subject: vacuum combat |
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Even I got this one, and my lats science course was in fifth grade. Booo, American Education System!
I just hope that my techfoibles from designs and the like aren't so glaring that everyone feels the need to jump up and down on 'em. Worse, I don't know diddly squat about actual military foo, how modern armies work, or anything. Whatever you read when I post something is just made up out of my noggin.
Scary, huh?
-- Old Dog, Cosmic Canine
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Nightmare
Lyran Alliance
Kommandant-General
Joined: 03-May-2002 00:00
Posts: 2214
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| Posted: 26-May-2002 08:24 Post subject: vacuum combat |
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Don`t worry, many people with real military service behind them don`t know how the army works either. That is, beyond whatever rank and duty they had. Most people are content to do their own work and not worry about what the rest do.
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A tree fall in the forest, and no one is around, and it hits a mime. Does anyone care?
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Old Dog
Capellan Confederation
Sang-wei
Joined: 24-May-2002 00:00
Posts: 299
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| Posted: 26-May-2002 11:05 Post subject: vacuum combat |
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Yeah, but I'm wanting to be a Battletech writer. I should probably try to brush up on this stuff. Otherwise, you might somesomething like this:
Your mission is to go into the city, grab some fuel thingies, blow up the thingamajigger, then tipetoe through this minefield so that they can't follow you.
After the buyer was done laughing, he'd set the book on fire, then grab a pitchfork and come after me. Which would be a lil' bit bad. 
-- Old Dog, workin'-on-it woofer.
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Ruger
Lyran Alliance
Hauptmann General
Joined: 04-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 1863
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| Posted: 26-May-2002 11:21 Post subject: vacuum combat |
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Quote:
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On 2002-05-26 06:02, Old Dog wrote:
Even I got this one, and my lats science course was in fifth grade. Booo, American Education System!
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That is a joke right? I had to take sciences right up through the time I graduated high school and then on into college...
Ruger (hey...I just woke up not too long ago, I'm 26 as of today and my sense of humor hasn't quite gotten up yet...)
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Ares
Clan Jade Falcon
Star Colonel
Joined: 20-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 737
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| Posted: 26-May-2002 15:18 Post subject: vacuum combat |
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well, I'm only in 8th grade and my science teacher this year got into a nasty car accident and we didn't learn this like we were supposed to. By plasma, you guys mean what? And how does a fusion engine work on a vechicle and not a jet, and i can see JJ's on mechs working like that, but i mean the mech itself? How does it interact with myomer (and what is myomer, anyways?). Finally, ferro? What is ferro stuff, like ferrocrete and ferro-fibrous armor? Ferrous stuff is iron right now, so i'm confused.
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I have the right to remain silent. Anything I say will undoubtedly incriminate me.
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Old Dog
Capellan Confederation
Sang-wei
Joined: 24-May-2002 00:00
Posts: 299
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| Posted: 26-May-2002 16:46 Post subject: vacuum combat |
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Not a joke, nope. Everything I know has been picked up from sources out of school. Southern schools, overall, are the worst in the nation. Underfunded, understaffed, and under-appreciated. About two-thirds of the high school goes through the industrial program, IE, classes for farmboys and future car mechanics, or the Home Ec program, with cooking, sewing, and domestic tranquility classes.
Scary, huh?
So, if y'all ever wonder why I'm kinda screwy, now you know.
Man, I wish this state could pass a budget. 50th in the US in taxation, 50th in school funding, and the people are going nuts outside the courthouse to protest a new tax, so the state doesn't go bankrupt.
Goobers.
-- Old Dog, the not-so-brainy beagle.
PS: Did I mention that my last science textbook, back in fifth grade, was from before men walked on the moon? And this was in the *80's*!
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Ruger
Lyran Alliance
Hauptmann General
Joined: 04-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 1863
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| Posted: 26-May-2002 16:59 Post subject: vacuum combat |
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Quote:
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On 2002-05-26 16:46, Old Dog wrote:
Not a joke, nope. Everything I know has been picked up from sources out of school. Southern schools, overall, are the worst in the nation. Underfunded, understaffed, and under-appreciated. About two-thirds of the high school goes through the industrial program, IE, classes for farmboys and future car mechanics, or the Home Ec program, with cooking, sewing, and domestic tranquility classes.
-- Old Dog, the not-so-brainy beagle.
PS: Did I mention that my last science textbook, back in fifth grade, was from before men walked on the moon? And this was in the *80's*!
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Good grief, I'm glad I went to a private school instate of one of South Carolina's public schools...no wonder I could sleep through each and every one of my college level physics and chemistry classes and still pass them with A's...
Ruger
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Raven!
Clan Snow Raven
Galaxy Commander
Joined: 04-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 1326
Location: United States
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| Posted: 26-May-2002 17:33 Post subject: vacuum combat |
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Quote:
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On 2002-05-26 15:18, Ares wrote:
well, I'm only in 8th grade and my science teacher this year got into a nasty car accident and we didn't learn this like we were supposed to. By plasma, you guys mean what? And how does a fusion engine work on a vechicle and not a jet, and i can see JJ's on mechs working like that, but i mean the mech itself? How does it interact with myomer (and what is myomer, anyways?). Finally, ferro? What is ferro stuff, like ferrocrete and ferro-fibrous armor? Ferrous stuff is iron right now, so i'm confused.
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Hmm. Not a lot to work with. Ok. Lets start from the top.
Physics and chemistry both agree on a few things, one of them is that there are many basic things that don't change no matter what. For Phsyics this is forces of nature, like Gravity. No matter where you go Gravity will work pretty much the same. I go to Africa and drop an apple on Talen, it will still hit talen on the head, just as if I did it in California.
Chemistry also has some basics, such as Matter. Matter is what the world is made up of, like Atoms. And they have states: Solid, Gas, Liquid, and, finally, Plasma.
Solid state atoms are those atoms which have very little activity. Think of a group of students in a class. They are bored to tears and pratically asleep, they would be in a solid state.
But as the class comes nearer to completiation and the bell is about to ring, they get a little ansi, some might back up books or put jackets on. This is energy, or activity. More active atoms then solid are known as Liquid, its still pretty thick, but there is more activity then if the atoms were in solid state.
Then the bell rings and the class is let out, Everyone runs for the door and crams out into the hall, this is a period of High Energy. This is the atom in the gaseous state, bouncing around all over the place.
However, the kids all get out into the hall and are pushing and shoving to get where they need to be. There is a lot of energy, but not a lot of movement. This is Plasma. Plasma is like a liquid or solid, but has a far higher energy state and is the forth stage of matter. This is what spaceships use in BattleTech for propulsion, and is what our Star is made out of.
To make plasma we need a fusion engine. This is again, what stars do. The gravity of the star holds all the atoms together, but they have a lot of energy in them, but can't move (like kids in a crowded hallway). So instead they get more and more impacted on each other and heat up (ever notice how the temp in the hall is higher then in the classroom even though there is supposedly air control?). Then, once the temperture gets hot enough, the various atoms fuse together. When they do this it releases a lot of energy creating light, and heat, and other various useful things.
BattleTech engines use this process to create power. On land this power runs energy through fibers and makes them contract like muscles to move a BattleMech, or turns gears to move treads on a tank. However, in space with nothing to push against, and no resistence anywhere at all you need to generate your own forces. Again, like gravity. Thats why astronaughts can float in space, they aren't creating their own gravity, and they are to far away from another source to use it.
So what the Fusion engine does is it creates plasma by putting a lot of energy into a gas which has no place to expand too. Then it vents this plasma in a powerful blast that propels the ship away from it. Jump jets work the same way. The plasma blast is so powerful that it creates more force to push the Mech up then a regular rocket explosion would do.
Now Myomer I mentioned above, and i'll get into that too. Myomer is a specale set of metals and chemicals that when exposed to energy constrict, and when the energy is cut off, relax. They act just like organic muscles, but are FAR stronger. Where our arms could lift maybe 100 lbs, a set of the same weight and size myomer muscles could lift 1000 lbs. Its because the materials are stronger then what we have for our own muscles. The fusion engine has the power to make a LOT of these myomer bundles constrict at once, meaning that mechs can have a far more powerful lifting force then gears or hydraulics. A lot faster too.
And finally your last question. Ferro. Ferro is Iron, or steel. For ferrocrete, what it is, is iron mixed in with concrete to make a very strong building compound. For Ferro-Fiberous armor what it is trying to tell you is that the armor is a weave of metal, like Kevlar, rather then molded iron plates, like what tanks use today. They were just being fancy with their jargon.
Anyway I hoped all that helped. I'm just a Poli Sci major, and i'm sure i have some major misunderstandings about the technology, but it might help. But go look it up in the library at some point, i'm sure you'll be able to find a lot of what I'm talking about there, but more clearly explained.
Raven!
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Ares
Clan Jade Falcon
Star Colonel
Joined: 20-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 737
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| Posted: 26-May-2002 18:06 Post subject: vacuum combat |
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that cleared up all of it, thanks Raven
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