Explaining Kinetic Weapons in Space Combat

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Spacedock delves into the details and practicalities of kinetic weapons in space warfare.

THE SOJOURN - AN ORIGINAL SCI-FI AUDIO DRAMA:

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Produced by Daniel Orrett. Owner/Executive Producer at Spacedock.

[Spacedock]

Check out #TheSojourn Florencia Class Breakdown mentioned in this video over at this link!

[angmordagnithil]

"The most obvious example is Mass Effect's mass effect... which affects mass."

Genius.

[TheAchilles]

Technically there are lower tech kinetics than chemical kinetics. Ballistas, catapults, trebuchets, bows, the humble sling, and the even humbler human arm are all technically kinetic weapons

[nightraven]

those glowing balls fired from Alliance Dreadnoughts are also Disruptor torpedoes, specifically designed as a "Screw your Kinetic Barriers, this is gonna hurt you no matter what." weapon.. So long as it hits, as it employs super-massive projectiles with incredibly heavy mass from mass effect fields, and they detonate with violently shifting mass effect fields, tearing the impact region apart.

[billmcgee]

Another issue with kinetics, as the Gunnery Sergeant from Mass Effect 2 explained, is that if the rounds miss, they'll keep going until they hit something, possibly something the person that fired them doesn't want them to hit.

[TheAchilles]

Also, the way you talked about heat dispersion made it sound like that's somehow uniquely a kinetic problem. Arguably, direct-energy weapons would have EVEN MORE waste heat to worry about

[martylawson]

Getting rid of heat in space is only hard if you have to reject it at room temperature. If your gun is happy operating at 1000C, it'll cool almost as fast in space as it would cool on the earth. (T^4 scaling is very powerful) So most weapons would be made from high temperature "super alloys" to skip the need for radiators.

[ItsJustVirgil]

I’ll be honest, I always thought the effects on the back of the PDCs in the expanse was the chemical propellant of the round being fired, and not it’s own rocket system; kinda like a recoilless rifle here on earth, just a bit more optimized.

[sergiosaunier]

As usual, The Expanse kicking ass in regards to technological accuracy.

[christophergroenewald]

That scene from Mass Effect 1 was most likely a pair of torpedos. They were fired on converging trajectories. Which is a key feature of the Javelin ship-to-ship Disruptor torpedo, which is designed to collide with each other just before impact. Multiplying the energy released. The use of these weapons would make sense in this situation as at the range they were fired from would be too close for the Cruiser to line up it's cannons. As for why they look like energy balls, it's for the same reason that slugs look like energy bolts. The game's age meant that the animation team didn't add a visual model of it's projectiles. So all you see is a glow

And yes. That was an Alliance Berlin-class Cruiser. Not a Dreadnought. ME1 actually didn't have a Dreadnought model

BTW, I also like how the ambiance is the soundtrack from Virmire in ME1

[joshuaaxford]

While I was aware that there was a difference between coil and rail guns, I did not know the details. This has helped me understand why halo UNSC ships have both and differentiate between them

[crackedjabber]

One thing I've never seen in the realm of cooling is just dumping the heat into your ammo. A 100kg ferrous slug can absorb something like 55Mj of heat energy before it goes liquid, and even more before it turns into a gas. So you could sink the heat into a coolant bath that happens to be where the ready ammo is stored, and then lob that near molten blob at the target. It takes heat from your ship and moves it into (and possibly through) the enemy ship. Then move the next round into the coolant bath reducing the temperature of the coolant as the ammo is moved into firing position. If you really really need to dump heat, you can let a few rounds sublimate into gas between you and the enemy ship. Nothing makes detection easy like trying to scan through a blob metal vapor between you and the target.

[RamdomView]

6:10 Magnetic saturation means that there is a limit to the amount of magnetic force can be applied to a material.

[tuxedotservo]

Presented for consideration: the Reaper main gun from Mass Effect.
It looked like a laser, but it was actually molten metal, accelerated to something like 1/4 light speed (I remember seeing the number, but can't find it offhand).
They term it a "magnetohydrodynamic" weapon.

[natzo]

There is concept called Helical Railgun, which combine coil guns and railguns. I also remember an idea of a round designed with a core that upon impact triggered a fusion reaction.

[clockworkowl]

In hypervelocity(km/s range) collision, thick slab of metal armor behaves like they're liquid, rippling and spalling heavily.
IRL hypervelocity protection against small debris is called whipple shield, which is multiple thin aluminium sheets with space between them. As the material near impact site have enough energy transferred to them to rip electrons right out of the atom, they are vaporized into plasma. Ideally, as the debris hits the first layer, vaporizing itself along with small part of the shield, the resulting plasma is spread across larger area and fails to penetrate the second layer. This is obviously not going to help with freight train sized monstrosity hurled from a spinal gun, or traditional m/s speed projectiles. Depending on technology level, this may make chemical gun drones viable.

Overpenetration was problem in WW2 naval and it will be problem in space warfare since if your projectile exits the back of your target, it means it has kinetic(and chemical if it's naval AP shell, which had HE fillings anyways to tear into the good stuff) energy that is not transferred to the target. You want your shell to penetrate once, expend all energy and stay in there. Good historical example would be Battle off Samar, where the virtually armorless destroyers, escorts and escort carriers from US side had been mistakenly identified as larger classes and had AP shells shot at them from an entire battleship taskforce. One DD may have had direct hit from *Yamato* and kept going, carriers had hits but only one was sunk(not counting the first Kamikaze victim after disengagement), and sinkings happened largely after the Japanese switched to HE. Not to say you can shrug off a hole blown through the entire structure, but will do less damage over limited area than it should have.

[vaniellys]

The amount of Stargate, Halo and The Expanse shots with ME1 music made this a very nice video to watch !

[The_Sci-Fi_Slut]

Omg I never new The Expanse had those tiny rockets on all their PDC's. That's an amazing little detail.

[diamondflaw]

The Heavy Mass Cannon in Sidonia always feels so satisfyingly stupid big even if not super effective against their specific enemies.

[shinyagumon]

I love this quasi series about different spacecraft components.

It's so informative.