[TML] A little tinkering with Lasers

[Jerry W Barrington]

On 8/23/07 1:54 AM, "Garry Ward" wrote:

> Ah, but it does make life easier for the patrol cruiser captain; if the ship
> ahead has the wrong size FAs on its laser, then firing first and asking
> question later is a lot easier to justify.

Not really.  The *gravitic lens* needs to be the required size.  That
doesn't mean the hardware that generates the lens does.  And you can't
easily measure the lens unless the thing is prepped to fire.

In fact, who's to say the hardware for different gravitic lens would be much
different in size?  More likely just the power requirement changes.  Which
implies variable focus lasers...  Hmm.



On 8/23/07 1:54 AM, hal at buffnet.net wrote:

> At 08:04 PM 8/22/2007 -0400, you wrote:
>> I don't like the meson guns at all.  They work on a completely flawed
>> premise: that the mesons will decay in a bunch at a preset distance.
>> 
>> Actual particle decay occurs in half-lives, and would be totally useless as
>> a weapon.  The decay would be spread out over the line of fire, and the bulk
>> of it would happen just out of the barrel of the gun!
> 
> Frankly - I wonder just how different Traveller would have been had there
> been no Meson Weapons or Meson Communications technologies

If I ever get MTU going, we'll see.  Of course that'll be only one of
several changes...



On 8/23/07 1:54 AM, James Ramsay wrote:

> So you have problems with a hand wavium particle that doesn't decay
> realistically? I think the designers knew well enough how particles
> decay, and didn't make a mistake with the meson gun. Just as Traveller
> ships consume far more "fuel" than is realistic, don't worry about mass
> for propulsion, psychic powers, and a long list of other hand waves.
> 
> P.S. And I think the concept behind the meson gun is that the particles
> are shot at the speed needed for most of the decay to happen near or in
> the target. And of course mesons could have other properties which make
> this possible (eg a chain reaction decay, which is possible given the
> existence of meson shields, or a drop in speed before they decay).

I like to keep handwavium to a minimum.

Speed is irrelevant to exponential decay.  The highest density of decay will
always be near the gun, not near the target.  And a chain, one particle
decaying to another which then decays, doesn't change the exponential nature
much either.  It's still smeared over a broad time/area.  Changing that
would change all of quantum physics.

It just seems like a bad and un-needed hand wave to me.  I'll stick to
missiles, non-grav lasers, and kinetic energy projectiles.