| Poll: Carter in POJ |
| I want to take Carter with me, using a Globex Time Gate before I rewrite history and start Erasing |
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9 |
81.82% |
| Carter doesn't have a Time Gate that can send his Globex DS through time, so he's left behind anyway |
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2 |
18.18% |
| Total: |
11 Votes |
100% |
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| Could Carter and the Sargent survive? |
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I'll copy my argument from my old Nuclear Super / Megaweapons / Adv. Units thread. Yes I recently updated it editing my post. Mostly because I realized that nuclear bunker busters (like super-RPGs) would kill a Dropship no matter what because the DS is right next to the epicenter of the nuclear explosion, but the Apostle is like a normal nuclear missile, detonating high in the air to damage a wide area. My old argument was therefore incorrect because it focused on whether or not Apostles could or would or should detonate right next to the Dropship when that wasn't their function because they weren't designed to be super-RPGs.
Here's the argument:
Firing a nuclear bunker buster type weapon at a Dropship, it WILL penetrate the DS's armor and kill it. See how MUCH rock is vaporized by the bunker buster in the animation? Yeah bunker busters may be a bad idea to eliminate bunkers deep in the earth, but they would be the ultimate unstoppable RPG.
However, if the Apostle is NOT a bunker-buster. It's your standard nuke. It's probably detonated a few thousand feet above the ground to destroy a large area (though some things (ex: Dropships, Crysentos) can survive). Since the Apostle does NOT detonate right next to the DS like a bunker-buster would, the DS can survive and shield its human occupants from too radiation with only 5-10% chance of deadly radiation poisoning per nuke with 6 ft of steel armor, so only 5-10% of Epsilon's crew would die (on average) per nuke, as they slowly die from the effects of radiation poisoning over the following week. Of course, Epsilon might have more shielding than this to protect its occupants better. Perhaps extra shielding in the inhabited areas.
The "special" nuclear missile in OOT 5.2 that was fired at the Quantum Gate and you and Blair's Dropship seems to have been intended to detonate right NEXT TO your Dropship and the Gate, acting like a bunker buster or super-RPG and destroying both your Dropship and the Gate, if the camera was following the path of the nuclear missile.
Fortunately, Bryce's super-armored-super-fast-recharge-Apostle structure at the end of OOT 5.2 fires NORMAL Apostle missiles at you (though MUCH more often than a standard Apostle structure). Therefore Carter and the Sargent were not destroyed by that missile because it was probably NOT more powerful than usual ... in fact it being so close to the ground it would probably only effect an area even smaller than a standard Apostle blast. The missile being "special" probably referred to it being a regular Apostle missile specially reprogrammed to detonate not high in the atmosphere but instead right next to a Dropship, thereby killing it in one hit.
So Carter and the Sargent could have survived, however with the super-fast firing of Bryce's Apostle structure ... they won't live much longer unless someone maybe from Cronos drops a Techton on top of the super-Apostle to cause it to go low-power and shut down for as long as the Techton Singularity is on top of it. Whether or not you and Blair can use the Quantum Time Gate sometime later to time travel to just after you left in OOT 5.2 and save Carter that way is another issue.
In the end ... unless Carter can get access to a Globex Quantum Time gate very soon ... there's no point in saving him since in that case you can't send him through any Quantum Gates and you won't be able to take him back with you as you try to rewrite history. And once you rewrite history just a little bit OOT 5.2 may cease to be part of the timeline so the Carter that helped you escape in OOT 5.2 will cease being part of the timeline too and whether or not you could save him now is no longer a meaningful question.
__________________
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
- "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost
This post has been edited 3 time(s), it was last edited by Hari Seldon on 04-03-2008 at 12:34.
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 04-02-2008 17:06 |
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I'm sorry but it'll take a long time to answer all of your questions, so please bear with this long post.
Why no nuking FTA Time Gate (Bryce didn't expect it), and no singling out Blair's DS for all the nukes (Bryce has an equally powerful grudge against Globex, since Globex critically injured him around BP 2.1).
Bryce (or any of the other FTA DSs) didn't even need a bunker-buster to destroy a normal Quantum Time Gate. A regular Apostle detonated high in the atmosphere still creates an 800-insta-damage sphere of death upon initial explosion, and that would destroy the 800-armor Q. Gate instantly with no possibility of repair. However, the Q. Gate in OOT 5.2 has 2000-and-some-odd armor ... so a normal Apostle won't kill it. However, Bryce's "special" nuke might who knows.
Bryce kept the Q. Gate secret, so those 3 DSs that came before him might not have recognized the significance of a shut-down Gate that most people thought had "not worked" in AT 1.1.
Bryce DOES fire at the Q. Gate with his bunker-buster since the camera started flying straight at the Q. Gate before Epsilon flew next to it and deployed to prepare for long-range transport ... Bryce's just a little late with his missile ... I get the feeling that Bryce is surprised and perhaps didn't see the Q. Gate before it came online (but now he does so he does NOT fire his bunker-buster at your DS, but instead orders it to fire on the Q. Gate since the Q. Gate can't evade his missile so his missile WILL hit and stop you if it's not too late ...).
Perhaps since Bryce is not in the sector he can't see a depowered structure on his long-range sensors like how the long-range sensors in FC 3.1 were fooled by cloaking the Martyr.
I think that everybody tries to kill Carter and his Sargent BEFORE attacking you, unless your DS happens to be closer because Bryce hates you all equally much. Carter (or at least Globex in general) caused Bryce to be critically injured sometime between BP 2.1 and BP 2.2, or at the earliest the end of AT 1.3. Hence Bryce's insane grudge against Globex and Bryce's diabolical Globex-annihilating plans. Blair is a traitor and Bryce appears to hate traitors a lot, too. Again, I think that Bryce was surprised by the FTA Time Gate for some reason and therefore wasn't thinking ahead to focus on preventing you from going through it by killing you or the Q. Gate.
In the end ... perhaps people like Bryce just get careless when they have vastly superior forces, are winning bigtime, and then are about to use a Time Gate to ensure ultimate victory by erasing their enemy from all of history, a Time Gate that his enemy Globex couldn't possibly use ... that's Bryce's preconception ... and it's true ... Globex couldn't possibly use the FTA Time Gate ... until Blair's arrival in literally the final hour changes all that. Bryce has one hour (approx. length of time of OOT 5.1 mission judging by what Carter says at the end of OOT 5.1) and then perhaps one more hour (about how long it takes to play OOT 5.2) to realize that his preconception that Globex can't use the FTA Time Gate is no longer true. And Bryce isn't good at letting go of his preconceptions. He won't let go of his grudge on Globex, and somewhat insanely labels the FTA Council as traitors in FOS 4.1 because anyone who is not his friend is his enemy. Bryce was not the type of man to let go of his preconceptions (that Globex can't use an FTA Time Gate), and Bryce failed to empathize with his enemy Globex because he hated them. Both of those prevented Bryce from looking at the situation from his enemy's point of view until evidence slapped him in the face ... an FTA Time Gate activating ... and then Bryce tried to stop you and Blair but it was too late.
We can't save Carter, but what about other people trying to save Carter, by helping us to save Cater?
First, who might want to save Carter? Globex is dead, SDF is irrelevant since FTA can kill SDF Destroyers just like you and Blair did in OOT 5.1 now that FTA has super/megaweapons, only the FTA Council might want to help Globex and save Carter, right? Might the Council still be alive?
You USED to be able to save the council transports and take them with you  . When FOS 4.1 had just come out, if you saved the 7 Council Transports from Bryce ... Blair suddenly had 7 Gammas appear next to his DS and he flew away in a V-formation with them, to the CLOAKED BASE to the north ...
I commented at the time that the Council Transports just appeared next to the DS and that didn't make a whole lot of sense. You never heard a Transport Gate going off, you never saw them fly in ... and they never even said a word, even just a "Thank you."
However, if you don't let Bryce's Farseers destroy the Council Transports now ... all the Transports do is disappear. However, since there might still be a cloaked base to the north (obviously not an FTA one), then the Council Members STILL might have been saved if their disappearance was due to them cloaking or something, and just like cloaking the Martyr Stellar Transport that pretty much stops the attacks on them  .
Interestingly enough ... Blair never says that the Council members died ... and even Carter just says that's what Bryce told everyone at the court marshal and that Carter got the real story of what had happened in FOS 4.1 from a Globex commander that was at the scene. If the Council members were assured death no matter what the alternate ending, I would assume that their death would be stated in a less ambiguous way.
What would have happened to the Council between FOS 4.1 and OOT 5.1? How did they survive?
Everyone was busy hunting down you and Blair, it was "all that anyone was talking about," Carter said (OOT 5.1). And "an entire fleet" was trying to hunt Blair down (Carter in OOT 5.1).
Globex has a cloaked base near Prometheus (Carter said in OOT 5.1). The FTA Council was going towards the Globex city of Prometheus in the first place. Also, if you look at the Saltus Map, FOS 4.1 was DEEP in Globex territory (the Globex cities are all on the right side of the continent)! Wow ... Blair must have been quite brave to fly over there! And everyone on Epsilon was hardly breaking a sweat at the very beginning of FOS 4.1. Then again, maybe this is an SDF-enforced rescue protocol, like how international treaties say that the Red Cross should be treated as a non-combatant in warfare. Blair did say that he was "just following standard procedure" (FOS 4.1) and Blair's confusion at Globex telling Blair to leave is even more understandable if Blair was following an SDF-enforced rescue protocol.
So what will the FTA Council do now if they're alive?
I have one question for you. If you were able to save the FTA Council from those Farseers in OOT 5.2 and they are still alive, let's count their friends:
- You and Blair (disappeared recently into hemispherical transport gate)
- Gen. Carter and his Sargent (only Globex people who know about Time Gates, probably imprisoned or killed by Bryce sooner or later)
Bryce might have disappeared into a hemispherical transport gate as well.
If you were the FTA Council and you had 50 years to kill until you could meet the only friend you probably have left (Blair) - you hope - what would you do? Blair already saved himself ... the only person who needs / needed help is Carter! Hmm ... modify the Time Gate blueprint the Council probably already has (It wasn't as secret a project as the stuff in Outpost 11, and the FTA Council had the Apostle design from Outpost 11, so why not have the less secret stuff, too?) to work with Globex units ... work on that for 50 years ... deliver that and all FTA temporal level 2 designs to Blair at the beginning of POJ so Blair can survive in the future (and maybe defeat Bryce) ... yeah I like it. The FTA Council might not try to save Carter by itself since it needs both time to get all that advanced technology worked up and a Dropship to use it. The FTA Council might not be able to acquire a Dropship if they're in hiding from Bryce's cronies and why risk trying to acquire one, getting caught, and then losing everything, if Blair will show up with his legendary ability to survive anything (everyone 50 years in the future knows his exploits from FOS 4.1 to OOT 5.2)?
The other benefit to this is that if you save the FTA Council in FOS 4.1 they might help you out in POJ and have that Globex Time Gate so you can save Carter (if he didn't die in OOT 5.2). If some people in FTA's opinions of Bryce changed over those 50 years so at least some of FTA likes you and Blair better, then some FTA person (whether it's the Council or not) might help you out in POJ, but perhaps not had the time or resources of the FTA Council so not have made a Globex Time Gate so in that case you can't save Carter! If you investigated the Purple Strike Force in AT 1.3 (and maybe don't kill it? Let it damage your DS then change its mind?) and repaired the Globex base in AT 1.2 then there might be 7 Council transports instead of 5 in FOS 4.1 (more help for you in POJ if you save the Council in FOS 4.1). Since after all in that situation the Council would look upon Globex and the purple strike force the most favorably and so more Council members would decide to go to the Globex city of Prometheus. The benefit of all this is that the choices you make in QL:IT may effect POJ. Every choice. You make some choices Carter can come with you ... other choices and he can't ... You decide! You rewrite history, after all! By the way my signature is not an accident ... I think that writing history based on the choices you make (even in QL:IT) is really cool.
__________________
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
- "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost
This post has been edited 22 time(s), it was last edited by Hari Seldon on 04-29-2008 at 09:34.
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| 04-03-2008 12:49 |
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| quote: | | we rewrite history... nothing happens... |
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Actually ... I don't think that POJ will be some time loop-esque rehash of QL:IT where we repeat every event in QL:IT to prevent a temporal paradox. Miles has said before that the difference between future and past will "start to lose their meaning" in QL:POJ.
Miles:
| quote: | ... this really is a matter of perspective
POJ will have maps in which you start out in 2153 ... and need to venture to 2103 (ie: what can be considered as "past" given your starting time period) ... (for those who are not sure, 2103 is the date in which all of QL:IT missions take place)
of course some people will argue on what exactly is "future" and what is "past" ... so for most of the game, each location/time period will be referred to by it's year/date .. or, simply as the "adjacent time period" ... (which is probably the best term to describe it ... since after playing QL long enough, the words "past" and "future" will start to lose their meaning) :)) |
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http://www.quantumlegacy.net/forum/thread.php?threadid=821
Everything that I talked about in my previous post was about the 50 years between OOT 5.2 and the beginning of QL:POJ.
Rewriting history does NOT happen between OOT 5.2 and the first level of QL:POJ ... rewriting history happens when you and Blair leave that desert 50 years in the future to go back to the past and begin changing history.
I'm merely taking the 50 years between OOT 5.2 and QL:POJ from the point of view of someone who is not time traveling (perhaps the FTA Council, though it's remotely possible that they time-traveled since they are FTA units, too, and can go through an FTA Time Gate).
__________________
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
- "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost
This post has been edited 4 time(s), it was last edited by Hari Seldon on 04-28-2008 at 09:34.
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| 04-04-2008 15:17 |
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Yeah detonate the A-bomb right next to (within a few dozen feet of) the DS and not high in the air and the A-bomb would be like a nuclear Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG). A nuclear super-RPG so powerful that it's practically unstoppable and would kill even Dropships in one hit. Lighter atoms, for example the ones in rocks, have higher specific heat (are harder to vaporize) than heavier atoms, for example metal atoms. A current nuclear bunker buster is basically just like a nuclear RPG that hits the ground instead of some above-ground target. So we can use nuclear bunker-busters as an example of what effects nuclear RPGs might have not on the ground, but instead on an above-ground target. I'll do that analysis below:
| quote: | | Of course, the heat from the explosion is not evenly mixed, but is confined mainly to a small cavity of vaporized rock and steam that expands and vents to the atmosphere. Because the mass density of soil or rock is roughly 2000 times greater than air, the radiation and high temperatures that are usually associated with a nuclear blast have a much shorter range in a buried explosion. In fact, nearly all of the neutron and gamma radiation are absorbed within just a few meters of the explosion.3 Furthermore, although the initial temperature can exceed a million °C, the heat available to vaporize a cavity of rock extends only to a radius near 2W1/3 m, and the heat necessary to melt rock extends only to about twice that distance. |
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http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-56/iss-11/p32.html
"The temperature distribution outside of the contained 1.7-kiloton Rainier test 90 milliseconds after the explosion. Although rock located beyond several radii of the area vaporized by an underground blast is thoroughly crushed or fractured, very little of it is heated much above ambient temperature. Hypothetical stockpiles of chemical or biological agents well beyond the cavity would not be sterilized because all but the closest regions (within one to three times the initial cavity radius) are insulated from heating."
http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-56/iss-1...ns/p32cap7.html
Therefore the vaporized rock from the nuclear bunker buster is only in a volume of 3 m^3, and the significantly heated rock is in a 3 m * 3 = 9 m radius (see the above graph, at 9m on the x-axis the heating is off the chart), which is 29.5 feet. A Dropship does NOT have 30 feet of armor, even part of it's ceramic which is rock-like. Perhaps a really heat-resistant ceramic would be many times better than standard rock and work out (ex: space shuttle tiles), but ceramic is brittle and so would tend to shatter from the nuclear explosion's shockwave (1313 paste contains fire paste, and is very resilient and so may be an exception although since Troy Hurtubise isn't releasing the formula for either his invention may die with him. I trust SOME of Troy H.'s inventions, but some of the recent ones I definitely will never believe, no matter what).
What type of armor hardly matters against nuclear RPGs anyway because the modified nuclear bunker buster (aka. nuclear RPG) I was just talking about are only about (for example) 5 kilotons! The Tsar Bomba was 100,000 kilotons! Make the modified nuclear bunker buster (aka. nuclear super-RPG) just a few times bigger than 5 kt and no matter what armor the Dropship has (except perhaps that energy shield in BP 2.1) it won't be enough! 30 ft of steel armor is bad enough, but needing several (or many) times more than that is absolutely impractical for an aircraft-carrier-sized ship (the Dropships are that size in QL) no matter what engineering you try to throw at it! The armor would end up being totally impractical to the point of taking up all of the interior space in that aircraft-carrier-sized ship long before the nuclear RPG can't practically be made more powerful.'
Here are a lot more details about nuclear bunker busters:
Nuclear Bunker Busters (Fed. Am. Scientists)
Here's information about what large-nuclear weapons do when detonated in the ground (basically what a very large nuclear bunker buster might do):
Operation Plowshare (Wikipedia)
But the Apostle seems (as I said) to not have that super-RPG option. The Apostle missile is only your standard aerial detonation nuke.
Except for, perhaps, that "special" missile at the end of OOT 5.2, which would have killed both your DS and maybe the Q. Gate at the same time (if only it had arrived a little sooner) since it seemed to be aimed at the Q. Gate but also aimed at the point where your DS was going to touch the Q. Gate for the Transport. With your DS and the Q. Gate so close to each other and so close to the nuclear RPG's detonation point, both might have been destroyed (if only the nuclear RPG had arrived a little sooner). In that way the nuclear RPG is assured to hit the immobile Q. Gate, but has a chance to destroy Epsilon at the same time and kill 2 birds with 1 stone.
__________________
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
- "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost
This post has been edited 27 time(s), it was last edited by Hari Seldon on 04-14-2008 at 05:08.
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| 04-07-2008 13:10 |
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Well ... SDF Destroyers are big enough that without sacrificing too much of their interior space they might be able to have thick enough armor that they might survive a few hits from nuclear HEAT missile. But Apostles aren't nuclear HEAT missiles, they're aerial detonation. The closest thing to a nuclear HEAT missile for SDF Destroyers is the Farseer Uplink, and that's actually about right for a nuclear HEAT missile! Two hits in the same area by a nuclear HEAT missiles might bring down something with the armor of an SDF Destroyer.
Cities of the Underworld: A-Bomb Underground showed one of the few buildings that survived the aerial detonation of the bomb at Hiroshima and that still exists today. The thickness of what protected that bunker might be practical for SDF Destroyer armor.
About FTA weapons? I checked the Official QL Guides and FAQs for info about the names of FTA and Globex weapons and I'll explain them below:
FTA
Blade Scout
Primary weapon: Flak cannon
"FlaK is a German contraction of either Fl(ugzeug)a(bwehr)-K(anone) or Fl(ug)a(bwehr)-K(anone) (hence the capital K, nowadays one word) meaning anti-aircraft gun ..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/88_mm_gun
"... by 1943/44, the German 'Flak' defences were equipped with efficient radar. This would give precise data of enemy aircraft position and height, etc. This information was processed through a 'Predictor' ( the American called it a 'Director') which combined this information with other factors such as muzzle velocity, ambient temperature, wind direction, etc. This would determine a coinciding position for shell and aircraft; giving the necessary bearing, fuze setting and gun elevation. This is obviously very complex and 'dead-time' was a constant problem ; that is the time taken for the gunner to set the fuze by hand, load and fire which will nearly always vary.
The 'proximity fuze' moved the game ahead considerably. To put it very simply, the fuze contained its own tiny 'radio transmitter'. The fuze sends out a signal as it flies through the air; detonating upon receiving an 'echo' back from a target. Again, this is based on the radar concept."
Another person disagrees that true proximity fuses were developed by the Germans in WWII and explains how flak guns work (an exploding shell that creates shrapnel)
"A true proximity fuse or variable time fuse was never developed by Germany despite extensive efforts to do so. Allied planners estimated that German FLAK would be about three times more deadly if they had proximity fused shells
When the flak batteries pinpointed an aircraft the guns were fired in salvoes designed to burst in a sphere of 60 yards in diameter in which it was hoped to entrap the target. Each gun, usually of 88mm calibre, could project a shell to 20,000ft and could knock out an aircraft within 30 yards of the shell burst. However, the shrapnel from the explosion was still capable of inflicting serious damage up to 200 yards."
http://www.ww2f.com/weapons-wwii/12214-f...truly-work.html
Flak Turret
Primary Weapon: Twin flak guns
Appears to be similar to WWII Flak Towers
Interceptor
Primary Weapon: Twin plasma disruptors
They look like two mini-versions of the Gamma's plasma torpedo, but yellow color not green.
Plasma weapons are akin to a "hot steam" weapon, just hotter. How effective would shooting hot steam at someone vs. a laser or a projectile weapon be? Not too effective I would think (for more information click the hyperlink at the beginning of this paragraph).
Advocate
Primary Weapon: Plasma cannnon
Looks like a mini-versions of the Gamma's plasma torpedo, but yellow color not green.
Turbine Copter
Primary Weapon: High-temperature plasma torpedo
Looks like a mini-version of the Farseer Cannon projectile except red color not yellow.
Gamma Cruiser
Primary Weapon: Plasma torpedo
Looks like a green plasma ball
Hazard Chopper
Primary Weapon: Radioactive Explosives
Appear to be similar to dirty bombs
Hazard Beacon
Primary Weapon: Hazard materials
Appears to be a larger version of the dirty bombs that Hazard Choppers use. Is a nuclear land mine, like the Blue Peacock and the MADM.
Black Condor
Primary Weapon: Disruptive torpedo
Appears to be similar to EMP Bombs
Futureweapons TV show: EMP Bombs
Farseer Cannon
Primary Weapon: Long-range plasma bomb
Looks like the cannon used in the High Altitude Research Project (HARP), but is not a design to fire small satellites into orbit around the earth. Is a weapon, more like Project Babylon except it's smaller, shorter range, and can turn to fire at different targets.
Farseer Uplink
Primary Weapon: Long-range plasma bomb
An uplink that orders many nearby Farseers to fire on the specified area. The effect is similar to Project Thor except these projectiles aren't dropped from space, and don't have homing capability.
__________________
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
- "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost
This post has been edited 10 time(s), it was last edited by Hari Seldon on 04-17-2008 at 16:59.
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| 04-08-2008 17:30 |
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First NO practical armor (with the exception of the massively thick armor that might be able to be supported by an SDF Destroyer) can survive being close enough to a nuclear fireball, you have to fall back on countermeasures
"Incandescence is the release of electromagnetic radiation, usually visible radiation, from a body due to its temperature. Black body radiation is the incandescence of a theoretically perfectly black object, which is described by relatively simple mathematical equations."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescence
"In physics, a black body is an object that absorbs all light that falls on it. No electromagnetic radiation passes through it and none is reflected. Because no light is reflected or transmitted, the object appears black when it is cold."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_body
So basically calling an object a blackbody is a way to simplify its light emmision by throwing out any possible light that goes through it or is reflected by it as irrelevant to finding out how hot the object is by what light the object is giving off, itself. Now time to tell you how hot a nuclear fireball is:
"The fireball from a nuclear explosion reaches blackbody temperatures greater than 10^7 K (10,000,000 K), so that the energy at which most photons are emitted corresponds to the x-ray region of the electromagnetic spectrum. For detonations occurring below 30,000 m (100,000 ft) these X-rays are quickly absorbed in the atmosphere, and the energy is reradiated at blackbody temperatures below 10,000° K. Both of these temperatures are well above that reached in conventional chemical explosions, about 5,000° K. For detonations below 100,000 feet, 35 percent to 45 percent of the nuclear yield is effectively radiated as thermal energy."
http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/thermal.htm
Go down to the section entitled melting points and you'll see that NO element in the ENTIRE periodic table can survive 10^7 degrees Kelvin (about 999,700 degrees Celsius)! At best they can survive around 3500 degrees Celsius, and both some of the most powerful chemical explosives (about 5,000 degrees Celsius) and the reradiated light/heat from the nuclear bomb (about 10,000 degrees Celsius) is above that! Although 5,000 degrees Celsius is so close to the 3,500 for carbon that perhaps thick armor would stop even that conventional bomb ... but even so practically thick armor won't stop a nuke if it's close enough!
Though, as I proved with bunker-buster nukes in a post above ... those extremely hot temperatures do not necessarily penetrate thick materials. The initially vaporized rock from a 1.5 kt nuclear explosion is only 3 m in diameter. Still, as I proved in my nuclear super/megaweapon thread, if the nuke is detonated several dozens of meters from the enemy ... 12 feet of steel armor could stop enough of the radiation (neutrons, gamma rays, and all that) to cause only ~10% of the crew to die from radiation poisoning ... but as I proved in my posts above about nuclear bunker busters, no practical armor could stop the heat from a several kt nuke a dozen or few meters away (and it's obvious that NO practical armor would shield from the flood of radiation from a nuke at that distance)!
Here are the countermeasures:
In conclusion NOTHING the size of an aircraft carrier (the size of a Dropship in QL) can have enough armor (the armor required is impractical) to survive being right next to a nuclear explosion ... no matter WHAT the armor is! As I proved in my previous post about nuclear bunker busters, a powerful nuclear bomb being a dozen or few meters from the outside of a DS and exploding would be unstoppable! The best defense a Dropship could have against that would be electronic countermeasures (ECM) and/or an active protection system like TROPHY and the second-best would be some kind of dozens-of-meters-wide balloon that inflates around the DS to act like Slat Armor convincing the nuclear RPG to prematurely detonate.
TROPHY active protection system
Videos:
Fox News - TROPHY (video)
YouTube: TROPHY Active Protection System (video #2)
Ok, what can armor survive aside from not surviving against nukes?
I don't know what a Dropship is made of but if we look at the melting points of all of the elements we'd have a start. Then we can compare those to a real system, like the space shuttle thermal protection system. I'm sorry I couldn't find a convenient list of melting points and specific heat capacities of various armors. However, the heat that the armor fails at often seems to be lower but at best roughly close to the heat that the pure element melts at. For example the space shuttle's reinforced carbon-carbon tiles, the most heat-resistant parts of the shuttle can withstand over 2000 degrees Celsius with a special anti-oxidative coating (usually silicon carbide) protecting it from oxidation (like rust) in our corrosive atmosphere (made vastly more corrosive by those high temperatures), while elemental carbon can withstand 3500 degrees Celsius before melting. Although, the graphite form (not the diamond form) of carbon burns at somewhere below 1,300 degrees Celsius, which is a temperature much lower than the above 3000 degrees Celsius before graphite melts, however a contributor to that burning in that case was Wigner energy, which probably lowered the required temperature input from the environment (1,300 degrees Celsius) since the graphite was actually self-heating some (by releasing the Wigner energy). Also, stuff CAN burn in the presence of oxygen well before it melts. Take wood, for example, it's carbon-based so it would melt at around 3000 or 3500 degrees Celsius but burns at temperatures obviously WAY lower than that, while in the presence of oxygen.
There are several technical terms that is very helpful to understand when you're investigating a heat-resistant material. Please read the above link - it's a great link!
To help you when you read the above link I've listed what the abbreviations of the scientific units mean:
K = kelvin
m = meters
m^2 = square meters
W = watt, yes I'm serious that's what heat transfer rate is measured in!
Ω = ohm
ρ = density
c = specific heat capacity, also can be abbreviated as c with subscript p
λ = thermal conductivity
s = second
I believe that the only 3 things relevant to figuring out what is the best heat-resistant armor are:
melting point - Whether the material buns in the presence of oxygen at a temperature far below its melting point (for example, wood, which is carbon-based) is a related issue but can usually be solved by a simple anti-oxidative coating on top of your heat-resistant armor (ex: silicon carbide coating on reinforced carbon-carbon shuttle tiles).
heat transfer coefficient
thermal shock resistance
Melting Points
Here are the melting points of the elements. The image below gives you an overview, but the previous link gives specific numbers for each element, not just a vague color shading.
http://www.webelements.com/webelements/p...lting-point.gif
Heat Transfer Coefficient
Well, the heat transfer coefficient is different depending on what material is used and which shapes and thickness (etc) it is! I won't find a convenient table of that, so I'll talk about specific heat capacity
Something with a higher specific heat capacity takes more energy to heat up than something with equal mass and less specific heat capacity. So elements with higher specific heats can be thinner armor but still protect from heat just as well as elements with less specific heat capacity. So carbon fiber (made of mostly carbon) armor is more heat-resistant than an equal mass of steel (made of mostly iron) because carbon has a higher specific heat than iron (see picture below). Carbon fiber also has a lower thermal conductivity than steel, which is a bonus so what's inside the armor doesn't get cooked regardless of the armor remaining intact. Heat transfer coefficient takes into account all of this but taking into account all that (and other things) is so complicated I don't know how to do the calculations for the heat transfer coefficient yet.
As you can see, specific heat capacity actually decreases with higher atomic weight (another example).
http://www.standnes.no/chemix/periodicta...at-capacity.htm
Thermal Shock Resistance
I don't have any data to give you, except my general impression that I haven't known many armors to fail because of thermal shock. The space shuttle tiles do fine ... metal tank armor is more melted through than anything else by shaped-charge warheads (ex: RPGs), and the ceramic armor designed to resist this does not shatter too much too fast due to thermal shock when hit by an RPG, or else it wouldn't work very well.
__________________
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
- "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost
This post has been edited 66 time(s), it was last edited by Hari Seldon on 04-18-2008 at 15:22.
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| 04-12-2008 00:43 |
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As far as I can tell, mixing elements won't increase the melting point of the whole above the melting point of the most heat-resistant element in the mix. All mixing elements, changing the shape, changing the porousness of the material, etc. seems to do is decrease the heat transfer by, for example crating porous foam instead of solid plastic, that creates a better insulator than solid plastic just because it's "fluffed" ... but that doesn't increase the melting point of the plastic inn the foam itself one bit.
So look here at the highest melting point of all the elements that I gave above and those are (my best guess) the upper limits of how much any armor that Epsilon may have could possibly take.
The highest melting point of all the elements is Carbon, at 3500 degrees. Though as I mention in the quote below, Carbon burns in air at a temperature significantly lower than its melting point, so ... you need an anti-oxidative coating on top of the carbon to prevent that.
So Epsilon's armor might be able to take at most heating to 3,500 degrees Celsius. How much would Epsilon's armor heat?
Let's say Epsilon's armror has the highest heat transfer coefficient (Hydrogen's 14.30 J g^-1 K^-1).
Carbon melting point in Kelvins = carbon melting point in Celsius + 273
Carbon melting point in Kelvins = 3,500 C + 273
Carbon melting point in Kelvins = 3,773 K
Joules of energy per gram of armor required to melt this quasi-Unobtainium armor = 14.30 J / (gK) * 3,773 K
Joules of energy per gram of armor required to melt this quasi-Unobtainium armor = 50,050 J / g
Joules of energy per gram of armor required to melt this quasi-Unobtainium armor = 50.05 kJ / g
Let's choose which of the densities of the elements we want to use for our Unobtainium . Depleted uranium is used in the M1 Abrams Tank's armor, and that's the densest armor I know of, so let's use that.
Density of U-238 = 19.1 g/cm^3 (see 1, 2).
Let's make our armor 12 feet thick (3.66 meters).
"I don't know what a Dropship is made of but if we look at the melting points of all of the elements we'd have a start. Then we can compare those to a real system, like the space shuttle thermal protection system. I'm sorry I couldn't find a convenient list of melting points and specific heat capacities of various armors. However, the heat that the armor fails at often seems to be lower but at best roughly close to the heat that the pure element melts at. For example the space shuttle's reinforced carbon-carbon tiles, the most heat-resistant parts of the shuttle can withstand over 2000 degrees Celsius with a special anti-oxidative coating (usually silicon carbide) protecting it from oxidation (like rust) in our corrosive atmosphere (made vastly more corrosive by those high temperatures), while elemental carbon can withstand 3500 degrees Celsius before melting. Although, the graphite form (not the diamond form) of carbon burns at somewhere below 1,300 degrees Celsius, which is a temperature much lower than the above 3000 degrees Celsius before graphite melts, however a contributor to that burning in that case was Wigner energy, which probably lowered the required temperature input from the environment (1,300 degrees Celsius) since the graphite was actually self-heating some (by releasing the Wigner energy). Also, stuff CAN burn in the presence of oxygen well before it melts." - my previous post
__________________
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
- "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost
This post has been edited 4 time(s), it was last edited by Hari Seldon on 04-19-2008 at 04:56.
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| 04-18-2008 15:28 |
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| quote: | | This is starting to sound like a chain is only as strong as its weakest link |
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Yeah, I was thinking the exact same thing (wish I found some way to find out for sure about that).
... I just found something out. Carbon has a vastly different melting point depending on its structure. Diamond (which is made up of pure carbon) is said to to burn at about 1320 Fahrenheit, or 715 Celsius and melt at 1200 & 1500 degrees Fahrenheit (649 & 816 degrees Celsius) in Earth's atmosphere (Lasting Forever)! Graphite (which is also pure carbon just in a different configuration) has a melting point of 3,550 Celsius (Carbon). That's a big difference in melting point and diamond and graphite are both 100% carbon just different configurations!
Gahh ... this is so complicated. Now I know that the melting points of the elements can change depending on what structure they have ... so some nanotechnology might possibly suddenly find something like carbon nanotubes that is stronger than anything we've seen before (and carbon nanotubes certainly are stronger than any other configuration of carbon we know of).
| quote: | | In the 1980s a carbon atom arrangement called Carbon 60, or Buckminsterfullerene, was discovered that turned out to be twice as hard as diamond. |
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http://www.automotivedesignline.com/news/174402376
| quote: | | The carbon nanotube is the strongest and stiffest material known. |
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http://nanopedia.case.edu/NWPage.php?page=nanotube.strength
Ok for me almost all bets about maximum strengths of materials are off (there must be some upper limit - the strength of chemical bonds in general (nanotech won't give you new chemical bonds, just new combinations of them) but I have no idea how to figure out what that true upper limit is). I have no idea what the upper limit of melting point is. I can't predict how strong armors will get ... but I still know that the Tsar Bomba had a luminosity of 5.3 x 10^+24 joules / second (see Black Hole Power Station thread), and the record-holding highest melting point material tantalum hafnium carbide does not have a melting point that much higher than carbon's, and my previous post calculated that to melt carbon you need to put in only 50.05 kJ / g of originally zero-degrees-Celsius carbon to melt it
Let's compare 5.3 x 10^+24 joules / second to 50.05 kJ / g
50.05 kJ / g
= 5.005 x 10^4 J / g
= 5.005 x 10^7 J / kg
2.1 x 10^17 J Tsar Bomba explosion / (5.005 x 10^7 J / melt a kg of originally zero-degrees-Celsius carbon)
= 4.20 x 10^9 kilograms of carbon melted if it absorbed all of the energy released by the Tsar Bomba
So even though nanotechnology and advances in materials science help make stronger materials ... armors are far behind atomic weapons. I don't know if they'll ever catch up ... tantalum hafnium carbide is only a few hundred degrees higher melting point than carbon and that's not the billions or trillions of times increase in melting point needed for armors to catch up to nuclear weapons.
| quote: | | But since the dropships are computer manufactured they would have equal shielding right? Unless the glass... |
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Since the Dropships (and other units and structures) are manufactured at the quantum level they'd probably have some awesome nanotechnology in them (if you can manipulate things at the quantum level, building nanotechnology is easy !). Other than that I don't know, except it's rather odd that the FTA units have so much transparent windows on them - modern tanks don't have windows! Globex is better, but their Crysentos unit has a lot of glass or something in the front (and that's their most highly armored unit, right up there with the Globex Dropship!) ...
The only elements left to be discovered are the heavier elements, and as you can see in that melting point periodic table, the trend is that the heavier an element is the lower its melting point so ... even when we discover new elements ... besides, I've heard from various sources that the heavier elements have shorter and shorter half-lives so they radioactively decay so fast that you can't even use them for one second before practically all of it is radioactively decayed into lighter elements. Here are two references about that:
http://www.periodictable.com/Properties/A/HalfLife.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability
So the "yet-to-be-discovered" element Anith-Racarin sounds like sci-fi Unobtanium to me.
__________________
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
- "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost
This post has been edited 19 time(s), it was last edited by Hari Seldon on 04-24-2008 at 18:02.
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| 04-19-2008 03:56 |
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button. Use it. Love it.
