MAC's on SG?

[Publius Aemilius Aper]

I was thinking...since the Asgard won't give us energy weapons and the writers seem to dislike the idea of having Earth ships blast away all oposition with say, Ion Cannons(which I can understand), then Earth really needs a new and more powerful main weapons system. The rail guns are a step forwars and the MarkIX prolly packs a lot more punch than 30 min's worth of bombardment from a Ha'tak, but we still need something bigger.

So...how about MAC's(Magnetic Accelerator(tion) Cannon), like the ones used on capital ships in Halo. The way I see it a huge(or at least bigger than our current rail gun rounds) projectile fired at supersonic speeds towards a Wraith Hive Ship for example, should do at least as much damage as an Ion Cannon/Plasma Cannon blast. What do you guys think?

[Qasim]

How do these things work? (I dont play)

[Commander Aegir]

The MAC gun uses pure kinetic energy to slam straight through a target even shielded ships, but the Wraith Hive Ships don't seem to have shields so a big enough MAC gun would fire straight through it.

[aAnubiSs]

AFAIK MAC-cannons are sometimes used to refer to a belly/spine mounted coil-gun that goes from the very back of the ship(engines) to the very front of the ship, allowing for several 100 meters worth of electricity for acceleration, which allows for velocities over 30-40km/s(15-20miles per second) for a 300-400 meter long vessel.

Can be used to launch either plasma or standard solid projectiles.

[GateMan2000]

Sounds like a gun I would want if I were them! Railguns aren't cutting it!

[alfirin_kirinki]

I totally came on to this thread about to say, "No, they're Dell Inspiron 8600s, just like I'm using now!"

[Qasim]

I totally came on to this thread about to say, "No, they're Dell Inspiron 8600s, just like I'm using now!"

yeah....and i have no idea what your on about

[aAnubiSs]

yeah....and i have no idea what your on about

Laptops... Macintosh

[Qasim]

Damn!!! I should have got that one as I thought this would be about Macs when I saw the thread *is a stupid idiot*

[Stampie]

AFAIK MAC-cannons are sometimes used to refer to a belly/spine mounted coil-gun that goes from the very back of the ship(engines) to the very front of the ship, allowing for several 100 meters worth of electricity for acceleration, which allows for velocities over 30-40km/s(15-20miles per second) for a 300-400 meter long vessel.

Can be used to launch either plasma or standard solid projectiles.

This sounds interesting. Care to elaborate on the matter if possible ?

[aAnubiSs]

This sounds interesting. Care to elaborate on the matter if possible ?

On which part?

http://www.oz.net/~coilgun/theory/electroguns.htm has some information

[freyr's mother]

It just sounds like a giant railgun.

[Three PhDs]

I was thinking...since the Asgard won't give us energy weapons and the writers seem to dislike the idea of having Earth ships blast away all oposition with say, Ion Cannons(which I can understand), then Earth really needs a new and more powerful main weapons system. The rail guns are a step forwars and the MarkIX prolly packs a lot more punch than 30 min's worth of bombardment from a Ha'tak, but we still need something bigger.

So...how about MAC's(Magnetic Accelerator(tion) Cannon), like the ones used on capital ships in Halo. The way I see it a huge(or at least bigger than our current rail gun rounds) projectile fired at supersonic speeds towards a Wraith Hive Ship for example, should do at least as much damage as an Ion Cannon/Plasma Cannon blast. What do you guys think?

um, I think you just described a railgun.

[Laros]

The problem with electromagnetic coil guns is that they suck up so much power and take up so much space, that you're probably better off using torpedoes. Using the formula Pt=mad (yes, this is an actual formula. It can also be rearanged to read Power makes you mad over time [P=mad/t]) we can find that in order to accelerate say... a 50 kg (only about 100 pounds) projectile by 2 000 000m/s every second (this is the number you need to make it go 40km/s after it is done accelerating) over the course of a 400 m ship, you would need 40 000 000 000 kWs. Using more formulas that I can't type because of lack of a squared button, we can find that it would take a 50th of a second for the projectile to leave the gun. Put this into our power makes you mad over time formula, and you can find that the device will require 2000 billion watts (that's 12 zeros). Now, to put that into perspective, that's a bit more than the average electrical power consumption of the world in 2001. Where's that power going? Well, (using E=1/2mv[squared] or momentum=mv we can find that) the projectile would have 40 Gigajoules of energy, or a momentum of 2 million kgm/s.
A different way of putting that is that if the wraith ship on the receiving end of that blast actualy stopped the projectile, it would be hit with 400million newtons of force. That's a huge amount of force. Energy-wise, it's equivalent to about 10 tons of TNT.


Personaly, I'd go with the TNT. It's easier.

[Laros]

Oh, and the reason I said torpedoes would be better is because it dosn't have to go as fast (provided you have someone remotely pilot it through a defense grid if there is one), and you can arm it with a nuke. The largest nuke ever tested in the real world had 10000 times more energy than 10 tons of TNT, so I'm assuming that you put a gatebuster on a torpedo, you could at least wipe out all the darts anywhere near you.

Also, a nuke is easier to aim than a gun strapped to the back of your ship, and considerably harder to see.