Neutrino Hose

[quintin522 (OP)]

I read about this in a book series called,"Tour of the Merrimack"

Basically it was a weapon/cleaning device that would fire/generate neutrinos in a stream, with the density of the neutrinos spewing forth being so great that it could cause physical harm. They would still go through the hull, but on contact with organic matter it would tear cell walls, in the same manner as radiation. Except radiation can't go through a ship nearly as fast as the neutrinos can. And because of the neutrino density, it wouldn't just punch wholes through the cell wall but blast it straight off. If you anything about biology, you know what that would do to a person.   It can only be used as a short range weapon, otherwise the neutrino hose wouldn't be able to concentrate the neutrinos enough to cause harm

If Steve ever decides to implement a system which has crew deaths and such, this would be a viable weapon. I see it being used in the same manner as assault shuttles for boarding ships, but instead of it dropping off a marine company, it could instead land/match speed and fire the hose, killing off part of the ships crew, leading to the ships efficiency going down. Of course, the shuttle would be very vulnerable (with the neutrino hose being very prone to explode). But if it has enough time to work, it could kill everyone on board the ship, leaving it free for the taking.

What do you guys think?

[Venec]

And it would be handy weapon for that pesky Star Swarm, since their ships are organic in nature. I like it

[Andrew]

Pseudo science rubbish, similar to the book

[Shinanygnz]

Like TN elements  

I've never liked the idea of crew killing weapons.  If you can mount it on a shuttle, you can mount it or a bigger, longer range version on a ship.  Just makes every battle end up with a captured ship, assuming you have enough crew left yourself to man it and your own.

Stephen

[Steve Walmsley]

At the moment, Aurora only tracks crew casualties for background and story-telling purposes. There is no penalty for undermanning. There perhaps should be some penalty, plus a penalty for the loss of the bridge. I may add that in a future version so I'll come back to crew-killing weapons at that point.

Steve

[ShadoCat]

Pseudo science rubbish, similar to the book

I agree.

A single neutrino has a 1 in upteen millionth chance of interacting with matter (the more dense the element, the bigger the chance of interaction).  It would take a lot of neutrinos to affect a human.  Since the hill and ship components are heavier elements than flesh (they are, i believe, heavier than anything on the current periodic chart), the ship's components would likely be the most affected.

If you want to kill people, I'd hit it with slow neutrons and hope that the armor is thick enough to cause a cascade but not so thick that it can absorb the cascade.  Another crew killer would be something that shakes the ship like the tractor-repulsors in James White's Hospital Station series.

[The Shadow]

Pseudo science rubbish, similar to the book

You mean like tractor beams and cloaking devices?

That said, I can't think of any reason why a stream of neutrinos would particularly affect organics.

[Andrew]

Cloaking devices
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaking_device

Tractor beams are no problem if you have gravity manipulation technology which seems to be a given for the background , this only requires 2 magic technologies for the game Transnewtonian fields(gravitics) and Jump Drive ,, although that may only be one.
Neutrino's on the other hand are a known piece of science and do not do what the OP wanted, and the book is the only militristic science fiction I have dumped on a charity shop before finishing so anythingit things is a good idea is clearly really bad.

[The Shadow]

Cloaking devices
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaking_device

OK, granted that further progress with metamaterials could make a ship invisible to radar and maybe even visible light.

But you're not going to be able to mask a ship's thermal emissions forever;  the heat has to go *somewhere*.  A heat sink will work for a while, but then it's done.

And given that "EM" sensors are really gravitic... good luck imagining a metamaterial which could shield against *that*.

I do agree with you, as I said above, that there's no reason to think neutrinos would work in the way described.

[Andrew]

Cloaking devices
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaking_device

OK, granted that further progress with metamaterials could make a ship invisible to radar and maybe even visible light.

But you're not going to be able to mask a ship's thermal emissions forever;  the heat has to go *somewhere*.  A heat sink will work for a while, but then it's done.

And given that "EM" sensors are really gravitic... good luck imagining a metamaterial which could shield against *that*.

I do agree with you, as I said above, that there's no reason to think neutrinos would work in the way described.

The heat issue is a big one and there is a distinct possibility that there will be no practical stealth in space as ships are too hot to hide against the background. The most likely way of doing aomething about this is directed heat discharge , so you can radiate the heat away from the people looking for you, the stealth materials above may be good for that , or you may be able to manage something with thermal superconductors.  In game the heat pretty much comes from the engines so you maybe able to do something with gravitic fields holding shrouds in place to block visibility of the heat from the directions you do not want to be seen.
Gravitic emissions are easy to deal with as they are created by modulated TN Fields I can intefere with and block them with modulated TN Fields which channel the deflected TN energy away from the detector. (I am allowing TN Fields as the magic tech of the background so I can use magic TN countermeasures to deal with magic TN Sensors)

[praguepride]

I think there could be several ways to block thermal scans.

1) Umbrella effect: if you have a wall of perfect coolness in front of you and all the heat behind, then the thermal dectors would just hit your "invisible wall" and not be able to detect the heat behind you. Obviously something would need to be done about heat trails etc. but assuming the enemy thermal scanners aren't omnipotent, any kind of electronic subterfuge could be used. Look at stealth bombers vs. thermal scanners.

2) Super-coolant: true the heat has to go somewhere, but what if it is contained within the ship itself? the exteriors would need to be super-cooled but anything inside could be hot as hell as long as the exterior is the same temp as surrounding space and doesn't permit the thermal scnaners from penetrating

3) Space can't always be a consistent temperature, can it? With stars and planets, and comets, and ships, there have to be residual heat signatures everywhere, right? Masking teh ship as "background thermal energy" works, right? Isn't that how cloaking works right now, by significantly reducing the signature of the ship?

Isn't that how "stealth" planes work now? By being built to reduce their image on radar/sonar etc. so they're indistinguishable from background noise?

[The Shadow]

Andrew:  Thermodynamics says that any attempt at "directed heat discharge" is going to produce more (undirected) waste heat.  The second law can get really annoying at times.  Eventually it warms up, and then you're back where you started.

The problem with masking a ship as "background energy" is ship drives produce a LOT of energy.  For all practical purposes they're very hot point sources - basically small stars.  They're hard to miss.  Sure, an asteroid warmed by the sun has a thermal signature - but a very, very different one than something that can turn on a dime at 6000 km/s (or whatever).

OK, now for an actual suggestion.  (If you can make your ship smaller, you can probably also build a warp drive.  Jump points?  Who needs 'em?)

We don't even have weaponized versions of tractor and repulsor beams, for that matter, though perhaps we should.  Shlock Mercenary style "gravy guns" would make an interesting addition to the beam weapon stockpile.

[Andrew]

"The Andrew:  Thermodynamics says that any attempt at "directed heat discharge" is going to produce more (undirected) waste heat.  The second law can get really annoying at times.

Holding shrouds in place faces the problem that the shrouds themselves will heat up and produce a thermal signature - though, true, perhaps a more diffuse one if they're really big.  (More diffuse, but then also larger in area - somewhat of a wash.)
.

It has been a long time since I studied thermodynamics , but by careful design of your material structure I am certain you can greatly increase thermal radiation from part of an object without having to expend any energy which would leaf to more waste heat.  
A good start to a system would be to have high efficieny radiators on the various surfaces of the ship , linked to a central heat sink via thermal superconducting links(I beleive you can manage thermal supeconductors with some variations of industrial diamond ). You then selectively select which radiators are active as you need to hide you emissions from some aspect of your vessel. Obviously there is going to be a limit to how much you can radiate from each aspect and it likely that you are only going to delay having to dump heat from all aspects.
The Drive shrouds are I agree also less than perfect you can pick a fairly thermally reflective material but you are still going to get warming OTH I don't actually consider that given the mechanics Aurore ships can actually be using reaction drives so you may not have a drive plume to worry about(the names suggest they do but the behaviour of ships movement proves they are not reaction drives) given that the heat signature from drives probably reflects more the heat generated by the power reactors of the drive (probably means the extra powerplants for beam weapons should increase a ships thermal sig, but as that would only be while firing weapons it is probably more trouble than its worth)

"We don't even have weaponized versions of tractor and repulsor beams, for that matter, though perhaps we should.  Shlock Mercenary style "gravy guns" would make an interesting addition to the beam weapon stockpile.

No problem with that would actually be similar to the Starfire Force beams or imploder lances from the vorkosigan books

[The Shadow]

It has been a long time since I studied thermodynamics , but by careful design of your material structure I am certain you can greatly increase thermal radiation from part of an object without having to expend any energy which would leaf to more waste heat.

To an extent, yes.  The ideal radiator would be a fractal surface with very high surface area, extending well out from the ship.  ie, really easy to shoot off.  And like you say, they are way too maneuverable.  (Not to mention that they are "trans-Newtonian".)

They presumably still have to produce lots of heat, though - the changes in kinetic energy have to powered somehow.

I suppose a TN drive might work by an Alcubierre warp-drive model (with superluminal travel precluded due to blueshift problems.)  Basically, your "engines" would produce a warp field around your ship, and the whole space-time bubble moves.  (The ship itself is stationary with respect to local space.)  The energies involved would be... immense, but I guess that's why you need sorium fuel.

I think I like this model - it explains the reactionless travel, and it explains why higher tech levels let you move faster and more efficiently.  On the other hand, while it might make thermal cloaking easier, ordinary ship movement would show up like a beacon on gravitic (ie, "EM") sensors.

You can maybe explain a cloak by nipping off your spacetime bubble a bit from local space - but that would also limit your ability to see the outside world.  And it might also run into some blueshift problems, I'm not sure.

[Hawkeye]

I think there could be several ways to block thermal scans.

1) Umbrella effect: if you have a wall of perfect coolness in front of you and all the heat behind, then the thermal dectors would just hit your "invisible wall" and not be able to detect the heat behind you. Obviously something would need to be done about heat trails etc. but assuming the enemy thermal scanners aren't omnipotent, any kind of electronic subterfuge could be used. Look at stealth bombers vs. thermal scanners.

2) Super-coolant: true the heat has to go somewhere, but what if it is contained within the ship itself? the exteriors would need to be super-cooled but anything inside could be hot as hell as long as the exterior is the same temp as surrounding space and doesn't permit the thermal scnaners from penetrating

3) Space can't always be a consistent temperature, can it? With stars and planets, and comets, and ships, there have to be residual heat signatures everywhere, right? Masking teh ship as "background thermal energy" works, right? Isn't that how cloaking works right now, by significantly reducing the signature of the ship?

Isn't that how "stealth" planes work now? By being built to reduce their image on radar/sonar etc. so they're indistinguishable from background noise?

I´d like to quote the Atomic Rocket site for re. this discussion

Code: [Select]

So you know, university Physics* is essentially three years of this discussion among like-minded enthusiasts.

Done with supercomputers, access to the textbook collections of five continents and thirty languages.

On four hours sleep a night.

With no sex.

You're not going to find the loophole these guys missed. *Whis simply says: There is no stealth in space!