Ohoh, the whole argument of this however stands and falls with the true size of "the dam". I understand the complication of fine tuning at already heavy energy amounts. It is basically how a fly can make movements of for us unthinkable millimeter precision, while I still struggle to not hit a centimeter besides the right key on the piano when moving fast. So of course when something is gushing over the ledge of an already massive energy dam(the thick armor), it is (statistically) going to be a proportionally equal massive overflow burst, totally blasting the crew. You say that this dam is of that enormous dimensions for space ships, but with the really light weighted Aurora ships, how thick can it really be?
For test I have a high-density duranium armor of 4 layers, constituting 1600 tons in total on a 12.5kt craft. We must translate that into conventional armor to be able to relate, as physical properties of high tech armor are measured in steel equivalents anyway (through the layer common comparison), so 1600 T2 armor is around 5400 tons worth of conventional armor. For this matter I assume that duranium is not only durable as 3.4 times conventional, but also absorbs just as much. Let's further assume the conventional armor is equivalent to steel, which is 8 tons per m³, so we got ourselves virtual 675 m³ to coat the design with.
(again: it does not matter that high-d-duranium would only need 200 m³ for this, as it generates the same effect) If the craft has about 50% free inner space for corridors, quarters and anything filled with atmosphere, then we can project a real density of 4 tons per cubic meter of inner space. The leftover 7100 tons thus provide us with 1775 m³ to build the ship with.
I am going for spheric design here, just because it is the absolute optimum for this case as this form conserves the highest amount of mass while presenting the least amount of surface area (so armor is saved ideally). Any other design will be worse in that relation, so the armor will always be thinner from that point on. A sphere of 2450 m³ would have a radius of 8.36 meters (V=4/3*pi*r³), and 27.55% of that is our conventional armor equivalent - 2.3 meters.
Ok, that
is pretty thick by earthly standards. Let's look up the actual absorption power of steel. I found one halving per 2.5 centimeters. That results in a reduction of the factor 2*10^-28
...
All is not lost - Untreatable deadly dose is 10Sv, which is 10 J per kilogram of body weight. The human body is pretty exactly 1 ton per cubic meter, and we have 172 on board with 70 kilograms average each, so that equals 120k joule of precise radiation to kill them all (in some time). Since you will need to flood the whole inner ship (1775 m³) to be sure however, and only 12 m³ are humans, you will for real need about 178mJ of a hit, which is an initial attack of 88,187 weka Joule (10^30), or in other words 300 peta joule ..and then another 300 peta joule for every joule you had... .....ahh...äh...uh-huh .. uhm...well
I guess that is pretty solid cover then, damn. Honestly wouldn't have thought that a meter steel could protect you
this good. I guess I proved your point then... , ah well, was worth knowing.
Anything that makes it through this cover by radiation alone, will indeed most likely just blitz everything living inside away.
Assuming the approximations I made here were good enough: Myth of "Radiation Weaponry" -
...Can we call those enchanted radiation warheads now already?
///
I am pretty sure that other limitations exist for those reasons too, like the restricted laser range... . Refraction in space is actually not all that great, so you could probably easily shot even an infrared laser to 1,5m kilometers without it losing significant power.
What I actually came to say was that the laser thing bothered me a bit, so I thought and eventually calculated how big the dispersion in open space actually would be. Stunning result, I greatly misjudged, and Aurora is actually much extending the capacities of physics here. With the given tiny lens sizes of 10 or 15 cm and such, you would not be able to shoot further than lame 37 kilometers at
extreme max. before frying your own mirror lense... . And even if you had material that could resist for more, your energy would just blur so much out that it would simply be very ineffective use of resource. To actually get to the range of the 10cm laser of Aurora (30k km) you would need a focal of around 4.3 meters, and then it would still be not optimal with the energy being spread out for about the same size on the enemy hull.
So I thought Aurora restricted too much, but instead it liberates from the shackles of physics quite a bit. Lasers may be superb PD in reality, but otherwise it appears better to stick to matter based weaponry.
