That....Sounds ridiculously awesome. Someone seriously needs to get on this railgun technology in CC.

Fix'D.

Oh, and real railguns leave a wake of fire in their path because of their insane velocity.

Read as: you can make the round the size of a needle (well, hypothetically speaking, anyway, since needles are too light), and it'll still power through anything you put in front of it. Also, don't forget the plasma!

Darlos' Darkstorm has them.
As he has mentioned before.
Within a couple of pages.So like Splintex rounds for railguns?

This discussion needs additional Grif. Why cylinders? They'll only start thrashing around since they won't be stabilized by anything, and punch giant holes in stuff. While that sounds like a good idea, you must remember that they'll also slow down considerably, so you won't get any improvement over a standard round.

O hay, we have our own topic. I got something to throw into the air, Metal Gear. Mostly RAY.

I LEARNED IN 3RD GRADE THAT YOU CAN'T CRUSH IN EGG VERTICALLY IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND.

LET'S MAKE IT OUT OF VERTICAL EGGS.

Grif, where the bloody hell are you? You were supposed to call us all idiots and prove us wrong, then show us real science which would bring about a new level of awesomeness.

IT WILL BE EENVEENCIBLE!!!!

Oh hey a new thread. Probably better this way.

An article about lasers: http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airc ... erson.html
Might prove an educational read, though I'm not sure on the whole Archimedes history. Though I DO know he was generally pretty badass.

Oh yeah. Earlier I said 100kW lasers are necessary for weaponized lasers. Turns out thats just if you want to be effective against planes, tanks, ships, ect. Apparently getting just above 10kW is sufficient for dealing with smaller targets... like squishy peoples. So that should give a decent idea of the scale of power we're dealing with here, with 10kW being at "like a small bullet" and 100kW being at "like an anti-tank round."

That said, we wouldn't need too big of a flux compression generator to generate the amount of power necessary to make a man-portable laser weapon. Of course, I'm not 100% certain that one single pulse of a 10kW pulse laser would be effective, or if the above measurements assume that you're hitting them with multiple pulses over some short amount of time in order to achieve real damage.

Really though, this Dyson guy's a nut.

In asserting that a highly advanced alien race would require this structure in order to satiate massive energy needs, he makes the assumption that as civilizations advance, they inevitably use more energy. Although, as he points out, this has been historically true so far here on earth, I just don't buy that this trend could continue until something as insanely stupid as a Dyson sphere would be required. The potential energy that fusion power could provide alone far surpasses any imaginable demand for electricity that could exist here on earth. How many appliances would the average individual have to own in order to make such an immense structure as the Dyson sphere possible? I have no idea, but ♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥ tons more than will ever be the case, I'm sure. This leaves the obvious alternative that perhaps instead of individuals requiring exponentially more electricity, leading to the construction of this idiotic device, the sheer number of people who require power will increase. This assumption is based off the common misconception that population always increases as technology improves. Look at the population growth rate of almost any developing country and compare it to "technologically improved" nations in Europe and North America (I'll tell you right now - most of them are in the negatives), then tell me technology increases population.

@Darlos: When you get into the Megawatt range, I don't think its gonna matter if its in several pulses, or one concentrated burst. If it's 100 times the necessary power required to damage it, the target isn't gonna be alive much longer.

Dag, Ninjer'd. Curse you Toast.

@Rawtoast: I counter your population argument with the possibility of extending lifetimes. Birthrates may reduce considerably, but if like in the Cortex Command universe we live outside bodies, each person would live to be a considerable age if he so felt the need. Barring outside intervention that is. Also, what if, as we make space travel more economical, the old Manifest Destiny spirit possesses the world's people again? Talk about population explosion.

In any case, the most economical way to get power to our current knowledge is through suns, because they are concentrated, already burning, sources of fusion reactions. Creating a mini-sun on a planet would simply be adding a wasteful step to the process.

Would extended life times make much of a difference, though? Compare the impact of people being around for a bit longer to an exponential growth in population (and almost all population growth is exponential): with 3 children per family, two people make six people makes eighteen people etc. The growth itself grows. The impact of this sort of growth makes increased longevity petty. I don't think it's unimaginable either that extending life spans would reduce birth rate.

As for the Cortex Command-like situation, that would involve involve the least energy of any imaginable futures aside from extermination. "People" could just stay in virtual reality happy land for ever and ever, using up no more electricity than the computer I'm typing with right now. This is something I never really got about the main premise of the game: why does everyone need so many resources now that they're detached from the material world (as is stated in the intro)? Answer: it's a game, and it isn't meant to be taken seriously.

What do space travel, manifest destiny, and population growth have to do with eachother? Just to start: how is it manifest destiny of you're going somewhere where no one's been before. Compare taking the Alamo to taking a vacuum.

Look up the numbers on the surface area required for 100% solar energy and tell me it's more efficient.

Then go build solar panels on the very outskirts of our solar system, muuuuch farther away from the sun, and tell me the Dyson Sphere makes sense. Hey, that's another point: why build more solar panels farther away when you could just build fewer much, much closer?

you would need a dyson sphere sized construction in order to generate the power required to build a dyson sphere (assuming you've got some way to convert energy to matter, which would be as required)

Ringworld's "ring" is built out of a material dense enough to block 40% of neutrinos; a ♥♥♥♥ IMPOSSIBLE amount. it's a purely fictional material, and utterly impossible to current understanding of nuclear physics. something one AU wide would require constant outward force (basically, being made of a solar sail) to maintain the "spherical" shape, and the tensile forces applied would be literally ridiculous.

apes and angels comes to mind in regards to CC's universe
in summary: any alien civilization we encounter will be astronomically ahead or behind of us; the possibility of two civilizations encountering each other at a "similar" stage of cultural progression is minuscule.

along with that, Clarke's Third Law: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
being unable to fathom the energy requirements of a future civilization doesn't mean that they don't exist
what if a society invents faster-than-light travel/communication, but it requires investing so much energy that it'd be more efficient to just launch something there at exactly c? the advantage would be worth the power required, and Dyson is perhaps conservative: who's to say power generation stops at fusion? exploiting the fabric of spacetime could have just as many ramifications. again, there are very likely civilizations among the trillions of galaxies that are millions, if not billions of years old. in the last ten thousand years human civilization has changed so radically that the next ten thousand are an utter crapshoot to predict. now, talk about timespans THOUSAND OF TIMES longer than that
energy requirements are a universal constant, because think about this: banging sticks together > lashing horses together > using dead, compressed plant matter as fuel > pure electrical input?
we just don't know, and there's no reason to say that energy requirements will not spike suddenly for some unforeseen technological advancement.

on lasers: ten kilowatts of energy with minimal dispersion would probably be enough to impart a few thousand watts directly into the target surface. a maser at that scale would probably fry someone's brain; who knows about other forms of lasers, but it's not going to be pretty in any event.
http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123154924
100kW laser, tested from an airborne platform
there's video (somewhere, I remember seeing it) of this thing frying a truck engine within three inches, while flying regularly

flechette railguns would be an interesting technical experiment, but I can't see them being useful for bombardment or direct attack unless A: it was a large-scale projectile that only "seperated" on the downward trajectory or B: railguns somehow become low-level portability weapons.
however, flechettes in an orbital, mass-based weapon platform have a whole new meaning. I believe something the size of a crowbar (out of tungsten) explodes with about 5 kT of energy (with the 9 km/s reentry velocity)

railguns are a decent technical experiment, but modern materials have serious issues with the barrels getting worn, specifically, they're a one-shot basis, and that's gonna be their biggest issue. ramping up power is secondary. naval bombardment is the most likely candidate, but won't be used too much until accuracy is better than "smart" munitions

antimatter is a ♥♥♥♥ waiting to happen
any logistic distribution requires some kind of storage facility
storing more than a few atoms of antimatter anywhere at once is going to cause a disaster at some point
distributing it to individual soldiers is a terrible idea (tactical nukes never worked out, imagine tactical antimatter), and even an artillery-scale system wouldn't work well. the investment of time and energy required would only make it worth using as a massive-scale utter annihilation weapon

rditto, you seem to not understand the energy scales involved here
modern armor-piercing systems do not use "explosives" per se to penetrate anything; they use explosives to force copper at massive speeds into a target
a railgun can completely forgo the explosives because the actual round will have more than enough energy to penetrate ANY target that isn't meters thick. a few inches of steel against a moderately sized railgun (at current, relatively low power levels) is a comical sight. the projectile will actually ignite the steel with the sheer amount of energy imparted. killing a tank with a railgun is a simple matter of hitting it
killing a person with a railgun is a simple matter of proximity
I can almost guarantee you that more energy would be released inside a tank when a railgun projectile hits it then if you threw a hand grenade inside it

on modern AA systems:
things like the Patriot are really given a bad rap in popular culture
picture taking a .22 revolver, and then hitting a .50 caliber slug in mid-flight without knowing where it's going to come from
now multiply the speed by three times and make it so you have to hit a particular PART of the .50 round
AA "guns" (or CIWS, technically) are typically massive bullet spammers designed to put a literal wall of lead between the point defended and the projectile entering. be that a plane, missile, or even mortar rounds, the technology is there to do point defense using nothing more than large, fast, bullets

also, railguns have no use for AA
the setup time involved is less than economical, even with "scattering" rounds
how many times do you see planes attacking in a close enough formation to be hit by the spread that would have to be tight enough to ensure hitting the actual target
hell, in the '50s they tried to make nuclear AA missiles
again, just because we have a "gamechanging" technology doesn't mean that we have to use it for everything
missiles revolutionized AA, but railguns are a step backward; they're just higher velocity guns

oh man rawtoast
"Look up the numbers on the surface area required for 100% solar energy and tell me it's more efficient."
look up the numbers on the efficiency of current photovoltaic panels that convert only visible light and a smidgen of infrared

then compare that to the per-second energy production of the sun across the entire EM spectrum (I am pretty sure it's something like enough to power the entire US for a couple thousand years)
rawtoast, would you be happy in a simulated world with "graphics" no better than crysis? what if our hypothetical future cousins decide to model an entire universe, in realtime. the energy requirements would be tremendous, but every person in the world could have access to the ultimate escapism.
what if computer modelling entirely surpasses real world experimentation? what happens when we hit the technological singularity (look it up)? power requirements will spike, guaranteed