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Just in Time for the Holidays: Exodus: Empires at War: Book 5.

Posted by dougdandridge on December 20, 2013
Posted in: Alien Invasion, Antimatter, Armor, eBooks, Far Future, Fusion, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, Genetic Engineering, Genetics, Kindle, Military, Nanotechnology, Nuclear Weapons, Plotting, Quantum Physics, Robots, science Fiction, self publishing, Space Industry, Space Navy, Titles, Tropes, Wormholes, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . 6 Comments

Still not sure of the actual release date, but Exodus: Empires at War: Book 5: Ranger. will definitely be out before New Years Day.  Most probably by a day or two after Christmas.  Can’t narrow it down more than that, as sometimes things come up, or problems come to my attention at the last moment.  I already have the next three books in the series in mind, and hope to release them through the 2014 year.    To my mind this will be a long series, at least 20 books, and as new subplots develop that might turn out to be a conservative estimate.

Ranger is a book about Cornelius Walborski, the farmer introduced as a minor viewpoint character in books 1 and 2,  His role grew in ways I never expected, and I thought he needed a book of his own.  While trying to keep the series in some kind of chronological order, I knew the book had to come out early in the series.   The story follows Cornelius as he trains to become a regular in the Imperial Army, culminating in his augmentation and induction into the ranks of the elite Specops warriors of that Army, the Rangers.  It also tells the tale of the invasion and slaughter of the civilian population of a developing world in Sector IV, the main theater of combat in the Human/Ca’cadasan War.  It follows the efforts of a young girl forced to survive in the wilderness of one of the deadliest planets in the Empire.  The two main characters eventually come together, each aiding the other in their plans.

I received some complaints that my last book, Exodus: Book 4: The Long Fall, did not have enough space action, despite having almost a half dozen major space fights in it.  Some said that good Space Opera mostly concerned itself with spaceships and space battles.  Well, when I first put out the series I tagged it as Military Science Fiction, which does cover land warfare as well.  It was tagged Space Opera by readers on Amazon.  This book will be almost all ground action, the exception being some point of view scenes of the battle for the orbitals as seen from the surface of the planet.  That said, the next two books in the main storyline will concern themselves almost entirely with space action.  I realize that by the time the books are set in arrives, the Army will definitely be the secondary service after the Fleet, though there will still be a place for ground warfare.

Speaking of past books, the series to date has sold over 43,000 books across the four, mostly ebooks, but some paperbacks.  Book 3 made it to number two in Space Opera (all books) on Amazon.US, while book 4 topped out at number 1 on Space Opera, Space Fleet and Military Science Fiction on Amazon.UK, and number 2 Military Science Fiction and number 8 Space Opera on Amazon.US.  In order of sales, Amazon.US and Amazon.UK are the big two, followed distantly by Amazon.DE and Amazon.CA.  I hope that this book will do as well.

An now to the excerpt:

That’s it, thought Rebecca, looking at the rock formations on the side of the mountain and checking her position.  She had only seen the refuge from the air before, or on the ground right outside of it.  Nothing else she had seen on the mountainsides on the way here had looked familiar, not like this.

She lay there for almost an hour, using the field glasses she had packed to scan the area.  It looked unoccupied, which was how it should be, even if there were someone there.  A refuge that looked like it was occupied, especially from the air, was not much of a hideout.  She found a dark area on the mountainside, just behind the flat region that would have been the landing pad for her family.  It looked like a cave entrance.  They had planned to provide cover for that opening when they had started their habitation.  That it hadn’t been done was a sign that the cave hadn’t been inhabited.  Or had it?

Something moved, and she focused the glasses on that area, seeing a hunched over figure at the entrance to the cavern.  At this distance she couldn’t tell if it was human or Caca.  Caca meant the refuge was closed to her.  Human?  Maybe, maybe not.  She continued to study the figure, which stayed hunched down in a stance that didn’t allow her to see the number of its limbs.  She was also having problems with the scale.  Was it a less than two meter tall being, or one over three?

A second figure joined the first, and they squatted there, looking out over the area in front of the cave and beyond.  They were obviously talking, and one waved a hand at the open area, then looked up at the sky.

Come on, thought the child, the sweat rolling down her face as she continued to watch.  Move out where I can see what you are.

Almost as if in obedience to her thoughts the second figure stood up and walked out into the clear area, heading for the spring that was near the south end of the small plateau.  Rebecca almost whooped for joy as she saw the easily recognizable motion of a human walking.  She focused in the glasses and saw that the being only had two upper limbs, swinging with the walk, one holding an empty water container.

So, do I take the chance that they might let me in, or do I just go away? she thought.  Looking over her shoulder at the jungle behind her she shuddered.  She was surviving in that jungle, barely.  That could change any day now.  There had been some near misses in the last couple of days, and it would only take one hit by a native life form to kill her.  She glanced up at the sun that was beating down on her.  Clouds were gathering on the horizon, a sign that the afternoon deluge was gathering.  She thought it would be nice to be dry again.  The survival suit kept the rain off of most of her body, but the humidity went everywhere.

I’ll just be careful, she thought, getting up and moving back into the jungle to start working her way to the refuge.  It took several hours of hard going to work her way within earshot of the cave.  She was still a dozen meters down the mountainside, out of sight from the cave, conversely not able to see what was going on up there.

She climbed those last dozen meters, her muscles aching under the pull of gravity that wanted to deposit her at the bottom.  She could hear voices now, a couple of people talking.  She thought they were male voices.  The chances were greater that women would let her in.  Not that men wouldn’t, but as a, as of this day, thirteen year old with a developing body, there were other risks with men in a situation where societal norms had broken down.

She climbed the last meter, looking over the rocks while exposing as little of her face as possible.  There were now three people at the entrance, all male.  A fourth male was returning from the spring, a full water container in his hand.  She studied the men, still not sure what to make of them.  That they were using the refuge her family put together went without question.  That would not be a problem, since her family had not come, but she still needed it.

She saw another man come out of the cave, this one in partial light battle armor, the type the planetary militia wore.  That gave her a bit more hope.  If they were militia they would surely have an officer, or at least an NCO, in charge.  With that thought she scrambled up the last bit of slope and rose into sight.

The men at the cave all jumped and pointed, and some weapons made their appearance.  They calmed a bit as they saw that she was just a child.  She didn’t like some of the looks that came across the faces of the group.  They made her distinctly uncomfortable.

“Where the hell did you come from, girl?” asked the oldest looking of the men, one wearing the torso covering of light battle armor and a partial helmet.

“From the jungle,” she said, her eyes looking for a way out, just in case this had been as bad a decision as it was now looking.  She looked back at the man.  “This place was my family’s.  We set it up when the aliens came.”

“And where is this family of yours?”

“They didn’t make it.  Are you militia?  My father is a reserve officer.  Is there any way you can contact him?”

“We were militia,” said the man with a sneer.  “Until those sons of bitches wanted to throw us away trying to slow them down, for no damned reason.  Now we’re on our own.”

Deserters, she thought with a shudder.  What the hell did I get myself into?

“How old are you, girl?” asked another of the men, moving toward her.

“Ten,” she said, lying, hoping that they would decide she was too young for whatever game they wanted to play.

“You look a lot older than that, girl,” said the older man who seemed to be in charge.  “We don’t have any women here.  And you sure could fill the bill.”

Thoughts of gang rape started to go through her head, and she started to back toward the place where she had climbed onto the small plateau.

“You stop right there, girl,” said the man, pulling a pistol from the holster at his side.  “We won’t hurt you, not really.  You play with us, we’ll make sure you’re protected and fed.”

Rebecca knew about sex.  She had learned about it in biology courses.  And she knew she was too young, and didn’t want to have anything to do with it at her age.  She would become a sex slave to these men, all of them using her whenever they wanted.  Her internal nanites would keep her from getting pregnant, and protect her from disease.  Still, the idea of being used by these deserters was not her first choice, or her last.

“Stop,” said the man, pointing the pistol at her.  “If you take another step I will shoot you.”

And he doesn’t know I’m wearing a military class survival suit, she thought, looking at the pistol, then at the nearby rocks.  They also don’t know what kind of weapon I have.

With that last thought she dove for the ground.  Something smacked into her suit, which went rigid from the impact.  Rolling over she came to a stop behind the rocks and pulled her particle beam pistol from its holster.  A flick of her finger and the weapon’s accelerator started humming and whining.

“Come out of there and you won’t be hurt,” yelled the leader.  “Make us come for you and it will go hard for you.”

I can imagine, she thought, checking the pistol and seeing that the proton charge was up to full acceleration.

One man came around the rocks and caught the particle beam in the chest.  The nearly relativistic particles ripped into his body and vaporized kilograms of tissue, dropping him into a smoking heap on the ground.

Rebecca stared at the man for a moment.  She had never killed a human.  She had of course killed a Ca’cadasan, and many animals, but never another human being.  She thought that she should have felt shock.  Instead it was rage that was the dominant emotion.  Rage that these people had made her a killer of her own kind.

“Fuck you,” she yelled out, looking around the rock and leveling her weapon at the cave mouth.  A quartet of shocked looking men stood there, some pointing weapons her way.  A couple fired, the worst thing they could have done.

The girl pulled the trigger on the pistol and held it down, swinging the beam across the mouth of the cave.  Three men went down with catastrophic wounds while the other ran into the cave.  The beam tore into the rock, shattering large pieces that fell into the mouth.

“This is mine,” she yelled, still holding the trigger down even when the weapon stopped firing.  “I will be back, and I want you gone.”

She wasn’t sure that was the truth, but in her anger she wanted to panic them.  She looked down at the pistol, afraid that she had broken something, and was relieved to see that the blinking light indicated that the proton pack was empty.  She only had one left, and she cursed herself for a fool for letting her anger rule her.

Rebecca slipped back over the lip of the plateau and started down the slope.  Her shoulder blades cringed at the thought that the men might come out of the cave and shoot at her from above.  Her suit might protect her from a few shots, but with enough there was sure to be a hit to her head, or a penetration of the suit.

She reached bottom without incident, saying a prayer of thanks before she realized what she was doing.  Stopping for a moment, she looked back up at the mountain, wondering what she was going to do now that the refuge was closed to her. I could wait and see if they leave, she thought, rejecting that idea as soon as she had it.  They might never leave, and she wasn’t sure she could force herself into another firefight.  Having to fire back was one thing.  Starting a battle in which she intended to kill other humans was quite another.

Rebecca shook her head, knowing that waiting here was not the answer.  But where to from here?  She checked the map and saw that there were several villages and a minor town within five days walk.  There was no guarantee that they were intact, or that she would be able to shelter there if they were.  Seeing no other option, she took a compass reading, set her location on the inertial navigation device, and started on her way.

Writing Space Warfare: Part 3: Fire Till The Barrels Melt.

Posted by dougdandridge on December 4, 2013
Posted in: Acceleration, Antimatter, Armor, eBooks, Far Future, Fusion, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, Kindle, Military, Movies, Nanotechnology, Near Future, Nuclear Weapons, Plotting, Quantum Physics, science Fiction, self publishing, Space Industry, Space Navy, Space Program, Tropes, Websites, Wormholes, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

First off, lets ‘s start out with the proposition that this is about Space Warfare in Space Opera and Military Science Fiction.  Not everything is going to obey every law of physics as we know it now.  It is assumed that methods of generating enormous amounts of power and getting rid of excess heat will be found.  And that processes that generate huge amounts of waste heat will become much more efficient over time.  And example could be the laser.  Modern lasers generate large amounts of waste heat, one thing that makes laser pistols impractical at this time.  if 99.9% of the energy could be put into the beam this would no longer be a problem.  And if we don’t solve those problems in the future?  Then none of this stuff will happen, but it still makes entertaining reading today.

So, what about weapons in space combat?  Almost anything goes if it’s well thought out.  That said, there are some fallacies perpetrated in books and movies (mostly movies).  As said earlier, I grew up watching Star Trek.  In the original Trek the weapons carried by the Enterprise were not only really powerful, they were also fast.  As in faster than light.  Starships battled at hyperlight velocities and shot with weapons that didn’t miss.  If you want to use such weapons then the model still works.  You need something other than a normal light beam though, because those only travel at the speed of light, which, while it’s still fast, has its limitations.  Let’s look at this from a historical perspective.  Watch some movies about battles between ships in World War 2.  They’re moving while firing.  The ships turn this way and that, vary their speed, anything so they won’t be hit.  If a torpedo is coming in they point the ship at the weapon and hope it misses the reduced target.  The reason for this is they are dealing with unguided weapons that take time to get from gun to target.  Study some of the weapons profiles and you will find guns firing at targets on high arcs that take a half minute or more to reach the target.  Said target is trying to avoid being hit, and has time to do so.  Most times the shooter will try to bring rounds in to bracket the target, hoping for a hit or two.

Now let’s bring this out to space.  One ship fires a particle beam traveling at point nine five light.  The other ship is probably going to see it coming on its sensors and tyry to move out of the way, but do they have enough time?  At really close range, no, they don’t have enough time to do anything about it.  From particle beam to ship in a fraction of a second is not enough reaction time.  Same with rail guns firing high kinetic energy projectiles.  Even worse with light beams, because you can’t even see them until they hit. You can try random maneuvers to make them miss, but unless you can move your entire enormous ship a half kilometer of more in less than a second this really isn’t going to accomplish much more than a hit to another part of the ship than what was aimed for.  Now let’s move the action out to a light minute, eighteen million kilometers. You still can’t see that light beam coming, though you can maneuver at random, making your ship harder to hit, since they are actually firing at the ship they saw a minute ago.  The particle beam can be seen a little sooner, about three seconds before it hits, but again, the ship could be maneuvering randomly.  The rail gun projectile might be seen a half minute or more before it hits.  None of these weapons can be guided onto a target that moves after the shot, with the possible exception of the rail gun projectile if it happens to have some kind of terminal guidance and propulsion system.  Firing at random location might generate a hit, but enough?

Now move the ships out to a light hour from each other and you have a problem an order of magnitude greater.  The chance of a hit is just about nonexistent.  Add to this the spread of the beam weapons, which go from points of ravening energy to spots kilometers in diameter.  This may generate more chances for a hit, but the damage will be attenuated at best.  As Larry Niven pointed out in his Known Space series, shine a spread beam on a target long enough and you will heat it up.  Enough?  And with the ship trying to get out of the beam?  So at long ranges beam weapons are not really a viable weapon.  This goes for plasma weapons, shotgun blasts of ball bearings, you name it.

These leave guided weapons, whether called missiles, torpedoes or whatever.  At first these don’t seem like viable weapons either.  Play Star Fleet Academy, in which some of the ships have missiles, and you can see how useless fragile slow moving guided projectiles can be.  Beam weapons take them out with one shot.  Give a beam weapon thirty seconds and they can take out thirty weapons.  Again, Weber got this right.  His missiles are large, robust weapons that use advance jamming technology to hide their true position, while using the gravity fields generated by his propulsion tech to protect themselves.   They are fired in waves because not all will make it through.  And he uses a bomb pumped x-ray laser (or possibly gamma ray) at the end to achieve the hit to the ships protected by the same gravitation field.

I decided to use this model, with variations, for my naval combat in Exodus.  Missiles are fired at long range and build up acceleration to relativistic velocities.  They can correct their targeting on the way, while juking, bobbing and basically jamming the hell out of enemy sensors, making them essentially unhittable by long range beam weapons.  As they get closer, into engagement range by the weapons of the vessel they are attacking they drop decoys travelling at the same velocity, and maybe employ their own beam and projectile weapons to knock out counter missiles.  Now in my novels I make the direct hit the optimal attack.  If you do the math you will see why.  A hundred ton missile traveling at point nine five light will generate enough kinetic energy to make a gigaton warhead seem redundant.  A hit would be catastrophic.  So why even include that gigaton antimatter warhead?  Because if a missile misses it flies off into space, unable to turn around and reacquire.  So the next best thing is a hocking big explosion as close to the ship as possible.

Once you decide on your basic weaponry comes the fun part, figuring out the tactics of naval engagement.  I figure that the best attack profile with missiles was at the longest range possible, allowing the missiles to build up to the greatest possible velocity before impact.  Also, the faster they are going the harder they are to hit with defensive weaponry.  Missiles fired at close range, unless we’re talking extreme close range, will be fairly easy to take out, and this would be the realm of the beam weapons.  Missiles fired at a closing enemy would have the advantage of the closing speed, up to the limits of relativity.  Firing at a receding enemy would be more of a problem, as the missiles must get up to and past the speed of the enemy, and would be easier to target with a reduced closing speed.  Also the speed of the firing warship must be taken into account.  Firing missiles the same direction the ship is traveling is good, as the missiles already have the velocity of the shooting vessel in their favor.  Firing missiles behind the ship is bad, as the weapons must first decelerate to change directions.  But sometimes a bad choice is the only one.  In my books I also go into the other advantages and disadvantages of taking different shots, including the use of the hyperspace I have formulated for interstellar travel.  I won’t go into those here.

The last thing I want to touch on is stealth, used so often in military scifi and space opera.  Everyone has seen the cloaking devices on Star Trek.  The enemy ship disappears from sight, with no way of being found, except a slight visual distortion.  I really have never understood how the Enterprise computers couldn’t look for that distortion and find the ship.  Now this technology seems completely possible even in the near future, with light bending fields that I really don’t understand.  And other techniques can be used to absorb active sensors like radar.  But what about the heat?  Big ships using big engines and big weapons produce a lot of heat.  Even if ways are found to offload that heat that are much more efficient than today, that heat still radiates out and can be seen.  The engines could be throttled down to almost nothing, same with the weapons. But there would still be heat, unless a way in found to offload it into some kind of heat sink.  Not impossible, and you just have to find a way to make it work in your story, something I have already done, with limitations.

That all I have on this topic for now, not that it’s all I have thought of on the subject.  I guess if you want to see how I handle space combat in its entirety you’re going to have to read my books.  I don’t claim to be the ultimate thinker in this area.  I just come up with ideas that seem to work in my Universe.  To me, the most important part of all of it is consistency.  If it works one way it should always work that way, unless you can introduce other elements that change the equation.

 

Infantry Weapons of the Future: Starship Troopers and Beyond: Part 2

Posted by dougdandridge on June 11, 2013
Posted in: Alien Invasion, Antimatter, Armor, eBooks, Far Future, Fusion, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, Kindle, Military, Movies, Nanotechnology, Near Future, Nuclear Weapons, Plotting, Quantum Physics, Robots, science Fiction, self publishing, Space Industry, Space Navy, Space Program, Titles, Tropes, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

In part one of this blog entry I discussed projectile weapons, which may still be a factor in infantry warfare for many centuries, maybe even into the next millennia. Nothing at all like our projectile weapons, they will instead use magnetic propulsion to achieve the great velocities needed to penetrate future armor. They may also be explosive, or have the capability to explode on contact. Shaped charges or superhard penetrators may aid in armor penetration. So what about other explosive shells? We use grenades today, both thrown and propelled. In World War 2 the rifle grenade was a fixture of many battles, allowing the infantry to use explosive charges against both other troops and armored vehicles at range. And today the grenade launcher is commonly used, firing a small shell with much greater range and accuracy than a thrown object. A couple of years ago I saw a grenade the size of a twelve gauge shell, fired from one of those shotguns using a drum magazine. That is the way I think I will go, with smaller grenades that can be fired from devices built into rifles, or possible rapid fire from a dedicated launcher system. The explosives we use today will not suffice, and we will either have to develop more powerful chemical explosives, or something else. One possibility is antimatter. Now before anyone freaks out about the use of antimatter, remember, in very small quantities it is not the continent destroying bomb of Star Trek. One atom of antihydogen, an antiproton, combining with one proton, would not even be noticeable. And it can be scaled up from there, until we could have any possible charge, from a firecracker up to a large conventional bomb. Of course there is the danger inherent with antimatter. It takes power to contain antiprotons in a magnetic field. Ammo sitting around might go off spontaneously if it runs out of power. Some kind of warning device would have to be incorporated.
In Exodus I use a crystal matrix battery as a power source, feeling that chemical batteries would not suffice for storing the energies needed for emergency functioning of large military vessels and vehicles. These same batteries, or whatever they come up for real to solve the problem, could probably be rigged to release all of their energy in a burst, like a grenade. One advantage to this might be the programing of the grenade to go off with a particular force. A small charge for a single target, like that needed to stun a single soft target such as a terrorist. Or maximum charge against hard targets or groups. Hand grenades might still in use, with the same programmed charge as the propellant grenades. They won’t have the range of the propelled weapons, though being thrown by a soldier in a strength enhancing armored suit might give it quite a bit of range. Will weapons like mortars be practical as organic support weapons? We can already track them on radar today, and methods are being developed to knock incoming shells down with lasers or sound, so they may become obsolete. Or, using some futuristic countermeasures, they may be able to get through to the target.
We have drones today that can loiter in the air for hours before seeking a target. In the future drones may be the answer to indirect close support weapons, though being nowhere near the size of what we use today. Drones the size of birds could be used for surveillance, and then sent in to attack when needed. Or better yet, insect sized pizzoelectric drones could saturate an area, sending back the sights and sounds of the battlefield. And when needed they could be vectored in to a target, in dozen, hundreds or thousands, they could provide a satisfactory assault on a target. Infantrymen could carry containers of insect or smaller drones to release when needed. The major problem with the smaller robots would be vulnerability to EMP, background and aimed, so the small robots would probably be carried in shielded containers until needed.
What about blade weapons? Not swords, though Larry Niven had a contraption called a variable blade that was a strand of monomolecular wire held in a stasis field, capable of being deployed a meter or a hundred meters from the handle. Other writers, like Ringo, use monomolecular blades (the boma blades of the Posleen) that can actually cut through armor. I don’t think a blade weapon would be of much use in normal combat, but might be useful in close in situations or as a last resort. Maybe mounted on the armor itself, like the blade weapons of the alien hunters in the Predator movies.
Which brings us to the topic of light amp weapons, lasers. Lasers have been used and misused in science fiction for decades. Thought by some to be the death ray of ancient scifi, they can be an effective weapon, with limitations. In some past TV shows lasers have been shown to be disintegration beams. Lasers basically put photons into an object and generate great heat. It’s a hole burner, though it can also be used to cut things up. In space, lasers suffer from a limit of range, as the beam does spread over distance, and spreads greatly over great distances. Also, at range, it takes time to get to a target, time in which the target can move. In close in combat neither is a problem. On the surface of a planet or the corridor of a spaceship it is beam of destruction that hits instantaneously. Modern lasers generate quite a bit of waste heat, and hopefully this problem will be solved in the future, with efficiencies approaching ninety-five percent or more. Lasers can be generated in many frequencies, across the spectrum, visible and invisible. Gamma ray and X-ray lasers would be very powerful, and would bypass some of the defenses that visible light lasers might face. Of course, lasers are invisible, unless there is a lot of dust or debris in the air, such as would be encountered on most battlefields.
Light amp could vaporize a target, a topic which will be discussed more in the section on energy weapons. Enough energy could turn soft tissues into superheated steam, and even burn bone, leaving little more than some seared chips behind. Of course the question would be, why bother? In most cases killing the target will be enough, and a soldier may want to conserve energy. A burst of light strong enough to burn a hole in the target would probably be enough. Why waste the power? A heavy weapon might use a continuous beam to burn through multiple targets, or sweep through a charge, sort of like the final protective line fired by modern machine guns. But cutting the enemy into two pieces should be enough, unless they have a very unusual biology.
The limitations of light amp? For one, even though the beam is invisible, in an atmosphere with a lot of particulate matter the beam is very visible. Even with a short burst there would still be a line linking target with firer, a shout of here I am. With a long burst it would be like a neon sign. And particulate matter, be it dust, fog or rain, would also absorb some of the beam. Lasers work best in clear atmosphere or no air at all. This might not always be the case, as some of the work the Navy is doing shows that some forms of laser may penetrate clouds just fine. The targets may have their own forms of defense to limit the usefulness of lasers. Reflective materials can defeat the beams, maybe only for a short time, time enough for the target to get to cover. Light bending fields could also defeat lasers, such as the fields being tested for practical invisibility today. Even if they don’t totally stop the beams, they may attenuate the effect enough to provide survivability for a target wrapped in sophisticated armor. If they’re just wearing red shirts? Well, then they probably get burned really badly.
Part 3 will discuss other energy weapons, like particle beams, and hypothetical weapons that act on matter in various ways (can you say disintegration beam?)

Realistic Energy Weapons?

Posted by dougdandridge on November 8, 2012
Posted in: Acceleration, Antimatter, Armor, eBooks, Far Future, Fusion, Future Warfare, Kindle, Military, Nuclear Weapons, Plotting, Quantum Physics, science Fiction, Tropes, Writing. Tagged: , , , , . 1 Comment

Energy weapons, ie lasers, particle beams, plasma beams and disintegration rays, seem to be the most misunderstood of weapons. Which is probably why they are handled so poorly in TV and movie science fiction. Lasers were used in several 60s TV shows in a manner that is not consistent with the way they really work. In Lost in Space lasers, with very visible beams, simply splashed off their targets like colored water and the victim was killed or not. No holes burned into the creature, which is what a laser would do. In Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea the laser beams were invisible, probably more due to budget than an attempt at accuracy. And they disintegrated their targets completely. Most portrayals of lasers showed visible beams, no matter the medium they traversed, when in reality the beams are invisible unless something like smoke or moisture gets in the way. Phasers were probably the most well known beam weapon, and Star Trek was never very consistent with them. In one show they are blue, in another red. They were regularly shown to be hyperlight weapons fired from one faster than light spaceship at another. But in one episode they were shown to be slower than light, demonstrated by a hyperfast being stepping out of the way of the phaser blast. In the original series they were said to turn matter into energy, resulting in the target glowing, expanding and disappearing. Then I guess someone told the producer that turning a ninety kilogram object into energy would be the same as tossing forty-five kilograms of antimatter at the same amount of matter. Lots of heat, radiation, and a blast wave that would destroy a good portion of a continent. Not the kind of thing you would want to fire at someone standing twenty meters away. Later is was said that the phaser burned people to death and moved their body to another dimension. I guess the dimension of burned dead people. Wouldn’t want to live there during a war in our galaxy, as there would be bodies appearing all the time. Then it was said that phasers vaporized their target, which is supposed to mean that they heat the victim to the point where they turn to vapor that dissipates through the air. But they don’t show vapor. In one Deep Space Nine episode a man is vaporized while kneeling on the floor. He disappears and leaves a few scorch marks on the carpet. There are many other bad portrayals of energy weapons, and I have researched the concept to make sure that mine don’t join them. They may not be perfect, but I believe that they are more realistic.
First off about laser beams. They are more like invisible sword blades than anything else, and they burn holes or cut through things. Now unless the timing is perfect, they will either not completely penetrate the target, or they will penetrate the target and beyond, meaning walls, windows and other people are all at risk. What about vaporizing someone with a laser beam? It would be possible if enough energy was pumped into the target. More likely parts of the victim would be vaporized while other parts fell to the floor charred or possibly even intact. But let’s say the entire body of a hundred kilo human was turned to vapor. This would take a lot of energy, as every gram of the person would have to be converted from liquid or solid to gas state. And the room would be filled with superheated steam, as at least part of the body would rise to these temps. Not air you would want to breathe, or even contact your skin, as severe damage was sure to follow. In fact the air temperature could rise to the point where objects in the area burst into flame. Also, there may be some bleed over that strikes other objects in the room to their detriment, unless the wide angle beam is perfectly shaped to the body it is destroying, which would seem impossible.
Now if I understand it properly, a particle beam could kill or destroy in several different ways depending on the strength of the beam. It doesn’t take that much energy to kill by penetrating the body with hard radiation. A higher energy level would cause heating of the target to above laser beam temps, and could result in anything from charring of the surface while killing internal cells, to vaporization. Again there would probably be some heating of nearby objects leading to their melting or flaming depending on their material. And some beam that didn’t hit the target would cause collateral damage to the area. Plasma weapons mostly depend on the high heat of their substance to cause damage. If a beam or bolt is superheated to let’s say ten thousand degrees, and puts a gram of plasma on the target, then it would heat a hundred kilogram body ten degrees. Not that it would distribute the heat over the entire body. The area hit would probably be vaporized and a hole burned into the target. A 100,000 degree bolt would cause a hundred degree rise, and of course adding more mass to the plasma would also increase the damage. If enough energy was pushed into the target to vaporize it or cause severe burning, then collateral damage could also be expected, just as with lasers and particle beams. Antimatter beams in atmosphere have a lot of associated problems and would probably not be the weapon of choice, though they could cause some spectacular damage. Electron beams could also be used to raise body temperatures to the point where the meat cooks, but would probably not be capable of vaporization.
The point here is that energy weapons on settings designed to cause massive catastrophic destruction of a physical form also bring their own problems to the equation. But instead of making such weapons a problem to the storyline; they introduce elements that the author can use to make the story more interesting. Instead of destroying a body and leaving no evidence, they leave behind a tale of their use. What could be a bigger mystery than a story in which a body is vaporized, not even leaving the DNA behind, but the room shows that something big and nasty was used here to commit murder. In my opinion thinking about the science behind the device can only make the story better.
Now an excerpt from Exodus: Empires at War: Book 2, coming out at the end of this month:

“Nothing,” said the dark man as he pulled a heavy pistol from under his coat. He quickly set the charge and pointed the weapon at the Prime Minister. He waited until the man turned with bottle in hand. The count’s eyes went wide as he saw the pistol, and his mouth silently formed the word no.
The dark man fired the heavy military laser on a wide beam, holding the trigger down for two seconds as it pumped eight hundred megawatts of energy into the Prime Minister and the wall behind him. Clothing flared to ash and flesh flashed to vapor. The bottle in his hand burst in a fireball of burning alcohol and glass vapor. The man’s bones caught fire, much of it turning to superheated powder. The wall behind the Prime Mister caught on fire as paint vaporized and an old painting flashed to ash. The liquor cabinet ashed under the heat, said ash blown into the air as the bottles within exploded.
The dark man stepped back from the heat as he lowered the pistol, shielding his face with his other hand. Before him were the remains of the Prime Minister, some blackened pieces of his major bones and ash that was swirling around in the flames. Alarms sounded through the otherwise quiet house. The dark man took aim at the floor and fired another long burst, destroying the bone fragments and turning the hard rock that had been hidden by the carpet into lava.
The job completed, the dark man shook his head and faded back into the shadows. He did not kill for pleasure, though it had been a pleasure to eliminate this loose end. If he tarried there would be others that would see him, and he would be forced to kill again.

For Every Reaction

Posted by dougdandridge on July 17, 2012
Posted in: eBooks, Far Future, Fusion, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, Military, Movies, Near Future, Nuclear Weapons, Plotting, Quantum Physics, science Fiction, self publishing, Tropes, Websites, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Just the other day I was sitting down and doing the kind of nerd stuff I do as a science fiction writer. I was thinking about having particle beam weapons as one of my possible armaments for my military science fiction series Exodus. I had already incorporated lasers and magnetic rail-guns into the mix, and was using particle beams on my ships. I thought of a description in Star Trek in which phasers were described as particle beam weapons, and thought it would be really cool to use something like that in the story, though they wouldn’t disintegrate objects like in Trek, merely vaporize them, with all the attended superheated steam and ash that would fill the area (something else they tend to ignore in most literature and movies). I looked up particle beams on the net, trying to find a description of what they would do to a living creature, and found nothing. I still figured they would put a lot of heat into whatever they hit, since fast moving particles convert kinetic energy to heat energy. So I just figured I would do the equations and see what happened. I started with a gram of matter flung from the weapon at 1/10 light speed, using the formula ½ M(Kilograms) x velocity (meters) squared. This gives a result in Joules, and about 4.184 joules equal one calorie, the energy needed to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree centigrade. I figured it would take about a thousand degrees to vaporize a body, which would be an energy input of about a million calories, or 4.184 million joules. I plugged in the figures and came up with an energy of 450,000,000,000 Joules (yes, that much) which was about as much as 450 lightning bolts, a lot more than I would want to stand close to. So I toned it back to a tenth of a gram and a hundredth light speed. This comes to 900,000,000 Joules, quite a difference but still just a bit too powerful. But things are looking up for a weapon that is actually usable and carries enough matter for many uses. What about a twentieth of a gram and a hundredth light speed? Now we get 4,500,000 joules, just what we need to vaporize a hundred kilogram body, and a weapon that makes mathematical sense. Or does it? We have to look at the recoil of the weapon. Recoil you ask? Yes, recoil, because according to Newton’s laws there is an equal and opposite reaction to any action. And the twentieth of a gram speeding out of the barrel of our weapon at one hundredth light speed (30,000,000 meters per second) will cause a force of 1,500 meters per second on our one kilogram weapon, probably too much to handle with a naked hand. It would accelerate the 100 kilogram body holding it at 15 meters per second, or about 1.5 gravities. Quite a kick, but still doable. In Refuge I use a normal space propulsion called grabbers, or Ether Paddles, that could also be used for recoil compensation, so I will go with this weapon for some applications in the story.

The idea of this exercise is to see if certain weapons are feasible. It also points out a problem that is ignored by many writers and most screen writers, who seem to live in a world in which there is no equal and opposite reaction to the actions they portray. First let’s look at some examples from real life. Watch a film of a World War 2 battleship firing its main guns in a broadside. The Missouri was a good example, 50,000 tons of warship, firing 9 one ton shells. The ship actually moves sideways in the water in reaction to the guns firing, even against the resistance of the liquid. For another example watch a main battle tank like the M1A1 Abram fire its main gun. The entire seventy ton tank rocks backward just a bit. Of course this is ignored in many books and movies. I remember reading a book years ago about a high tech helicopter unit that used magnetic rail guns to fire high velocity rounds that could totally wipe out any armored vehicle made. Sounded like a great weapon, but the author didn’t mention anything about recoil effects, which could and would affect the forward velocity of the helicopter. Hell, the way he described the weapons they might have knocked the chopper on its ass. And remember the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, Eraser. They had a mag-rail weapon that could blow a van ten feet into the air. And Arnold was walking forward firing two of the weapons, one under each arm. He should have been thrown through the air like he was holding two forward pointing rockets. These are just a couple of many examples where writers don’t know or just simply ignore the laws of physics. Seems to me that they could write a better story by using the laws of physics to their advantage. Maybe that’s just me, but I intend to do as much of it as I can in my own stuff.

Trafalgar in Space, Part 4.

Posted by dougdandridge on June 1, 2012
Posted in: Acceleration, Antimatter, eBooks, Far Future, Fusion, Military, Movies, Nuclear Weapons, Plotting, science Fiction, self publishing, Space Industry, Space Program. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

In the last blog we discussed the use of electromagnetic fields, force fields we know are possible, in the defense of a space vessel.  What about other forms of defense.  Of course there are point defenses, which could be laser, particle beam, or projectile, that try to take out an enemy missile or kinetic energy weapon as it closes.  We have some of these today on ships, the 20mm Gatling gun CIWS that is intended to knock down low flying cruise missiles.  A space ship might have a bunch of these for close in defense, or fewer lasers with a much longer range that cycle from target to target.  A good film example of close in defense was the Battlestar Galactica minseries, in which Galactica blazed away at incoming Cylon fighters and missiles and formed a literal wall of steel around the spaceship.  In a space battle even the main beam armament could be used in a pinch, as it should be at least as accurate as the secondary weapons.  Shot gun blasts of small particles or ball bearings could also form a screen, using the missiles’ own speed to destroy them.

Interceptor missiles should also be highly evolved, though they would still have some trouble getting through the defenses of the incoming attack missiles.  They may carry their own ECM (electronic counter-measures) package.  If they don’t hit the target they would probably explode at closest approach, sending a stream of projectiles from what had been the body of the missile or ones carried for the purpose.  Of course, at the speeds the incoming missiles will be traveling, the best strategy might lie in numbers, and quick cycling counter missile launchers, or cells with thousands of missiles, might be necessary to defend a massively expensive ship.

What about the hull of the ship itself.  I personally think that armor would be a good idea, possibly with self sealing capabilities to battle punctures of the skin.  The thicker the armor the better, until it reaches the point where it impedes maneuverability due to too much mass.  But the longer it takes to penetrate into the machinery and crew spaces of the ship the better.  Armor would probably be better than anything we have today, denser, with greater tensile strength.  And I could see a skin incorporating nanotechnology that would change its reflectivity depending on what wavelength of light is striking it.  Maybe not fast enough to prevent any damage.  But any reduction is a plus.  And nanobots and regular bots could fight a battle of hull integrity versus weapons damage that might decide the battle in the long run.  The strength of the ship’s hull under the armor is also of great importance.  Unless we have some kind of force fields that hold the ship together like in Star Trek (and even if we do) it would make sense to have a robust hull that can take multiple lickings and keep on putting a hurt on the enemy.

Damage control would also be an important part of a ship’s defenses.  Unless the vessels are taking each other out with one hit ship killers, which might happen sometimes but probably not often, or one side was laughably superior to the other, the ability to repair damage might be as important and giving it out.  Redundant systems and the ability to take local control of engines, maneuvering engines and weapons, may make the difference between living and dying.  I don’t think that rerouting all circuits to B is going to do it.  We’re talking cutting things, running new wiring, maybe even running ducts from an engine to a new port, everything needed to keep in the fight.

The last part of the defense would do with the most fragile part of the ship, the crew.  Crew will be absorbing radiation, working in vacuum (or having vacuum imposed upon them), and being shaken around severely.  Nanotech would help, especially with the radiation repair, but it still gets me how many scifi works show a crew fighting the ship in shirt sleeves, when any second the nearest wall might blow out into space.  So it would make sense for the crew to be in environmental suits of some kind no matter where they are in the ship during a battle.  Add some body armor, because you also don’t want shrapnel killing them at a time when everyone is needed.  And augment the suits with some strength enhancement, because they may need to pick up massive things or move in shifting gravity.  And some kind of propulsion, so if they are blown out into space or into a large room in the ship they are able to get back.  It doesn’t really have to be the powered armor of Heinlein, but at least something that reflects the tech of the time.  David Weber portrays this in his Honor Harrington series, at least as far as environmental suits and armor is concerned.  Doesn’t always protect the crew, but it does so often enough to warrant its inclusion in the protection.

Trafalgar in Space, part 1:

Posted by dougdandridge on May 23, 2012
Posted in: Far Future, Fusion, Military, Nuclear Weapons, Quantum Physics, science Fiction, self publishing, Space Industry, Space Program, Uncategorized, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

Science fiction has portrayed all kinds of space warfare, most based on Earth naval warfare of one time or another.  Despite what is out there, I really don’t think we’re going to see the future equivalents of men-of-war going broadside to broadside against each other (Star Wars), or a reenactment of the battle of Midway, with tiny fighters striking at massive carriers (Battlestar Galactica).  So what will a battle in space actually look like, and what weapons and defenses will be used.  Now in this blog I will be discussing ships and weapons of the far future.  I don’t think we will be doing much more than shooting slow missiles and lasers at each other in the near future.  So this will consider warfare in an interstellar age with some assumptions.  One is that we will still have to obey the laws of physics, though we may be able to circumvent some of their effects, like inertia.  And we will not have light amp weapons capable of going faster than light, so I will assume that most battles will take place at slower than light speeds.  I have no idea how we will finally get around the light barrier, and if we even can.  How we do it will have an effect on how we fight in that other realm, and I will eventually have an entry about those possibilities as well.  But for this essay I will concentrate on fighting between slower than light vessels within a solar system, and the possibilities and pitfalls of different weapons systems that might be used.

First, a note on hiding in space.  It is really really hard to do.  Sure, you may be able to use light bending screens, which we are near to deploying today, to make the ship invisible.  They might even be able to absorb radar and lidar and not show up on those systems.  But ships with huge drive systems and powerful weapons have to generate a lot of energy, and they will radiate heat like small stars.  Unless they have something between them and the enemy like a planet or asteroid they will be detected.  I have some ideas on how to circumvent this detection that I will talk about in a future blog.

So let’s talk about beam weapons, starting with the favorite of science fiction that’s being developed for contemporary warfare, the laser.  Lasers work by emitting a beam of coherent light, meaning that all the photons are the same wavelength.  This wavelength can be visible light, xrays, gamma rays, or any wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum.  On striking the target the photons are converted to heat energy, either melting, burning a hole or causing other mechanical damage, depending on the makeup of the target.  On Earth lasers have captured the imagination of the military because they are instantaneous strike weapons, meaning that an almost immeasurable time passes from shot to strike.  They cannot be dodged or avoided.  In space, over long distances, they are not instantaneous strike weapons.  In fact, they take time to traverse long distances, and they tend to spread from thin beams to spotlights over the distance.  Lasers travel at the speed of light, 300,000 kilometers a second.  Meaning if the target is 300,000 kilometers away the beam takes one second to reach a target that may have moved within that time span.  And at longer distances the time is greater.  At a light minute, 18 million kilometers, it takes the beam one minute to strike at where the target was one minute ago.  With luck the target will still be there.  And it will have spread so that it no longer resembles the thin beam it was on leaving the weapon.  This doesn’t mean it useless, it can still pump damaging heat into the target.  And traveling at light speed it can’t be detected until it actually hits.  But over very long distances, say many light minutes, the laser is not a very effective weapon.  By spreading the beam or firing multiple beams in a pattern the chance of a hit is increased, but the power of the weapon is attenuated if used in this manner.  Another word about lasers.  Sometimes they are portrayed as super weapons capable of destroying a good sized asteroid in one flash.  Actually saw a movie where a fighter jet with an underwing laser destroyed an asteroid.  Look up the energy needed to melt a cubic kilometer of rock, or to burn through a kilometer straight in and your jaw will drop.  So I’m afraid that spaceships will be firing on each other for at least a measurable period of time to cut through hull armor, or pump enough heat into the interior to make the inside uncomfortable, then longer to make it unlivable.

Particle beams use the mass of a fast moving beam to impart energy into the target.  Charged particle beams tend to spread over distance as the particles push each other away.  And antimatter particle beam adds the explosive power of the antimatter to the damage, but have the same problem as the charged matter particle beam, in that the particles are repelling each along the way and the beam spreads.  They can also be deflected by a magnetic screen, and the more spread they are the better the deflection.  An uncharged particle beam doesn’t suffer from the spread problem and won’t be deflected by magnetic fields, but cannot of course be made of antimatter.  And as all particle beams are traveling slower than light, they can bee seen coming in on radar or lidar, giving the target time to dodge.  I think they will eventually be more powerful than lasers, able to cause much more damage to an armored hull.  But the weaknesses will always be there.  Over a long distance they will be seen coming, giving from many seconds to minutes to maneuver out of the way.  But close in they could be deadly.  Now other beam weapons might be possible, though we don’t know of any other possibilities at this time, with the possible exception of microwaves, which might fit in with the laser catagory.  In the next blog I will talk about weapons other than beams.