So I was looking through a few sites like DARPA, Lockheed martin, Boeing, and so on, looking for any modern day real world atempts at creating a plasma weapon like what we see in Stargate but I only found three (projects MARAUDER, Shiva Star, and MEDUSA) and all have lost funding and been discontinued. Today most of the research into directed energy wepons is more or less focused on laser weapons, while the only plasma based projects are shields(DARPAS working on them) and cloaking devises(The Russians are inventing a new form of stealth through plasma fields don't ask me how, I don't know). So I was wondering what everyone thought of this, I mean which would be a more devistating weapon? Is it wise to put all are eggs in one basket? And which do you think we should focus more on?
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Plasma Based Weaponry vs. Lasers in the real world
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well the only weapon in stargate that can actually be built in Real Life is the zat. essentially, you use a laser to create a conduit through the air (by ionizing it) and then fire an electrical discharge.
i bet Lasers will be most popular, combined with more advanced missiles and other types of radiation weapons, like the PHaSr
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Originally posted by thekillman View Postwell the only weapon in stargate that can actually be built in Real Life is the zat. essentially, you use a laser to create a conduit through the air (by ionizing it) and then fire an electrical discharge.
i bet Lasers will be most popular, combined with more advanced missiles and other types of radiation weapons, like the PHaSr
ggf31416 obviously the writer of that page hasn't looked at any of the projects that I listed, the main reason they were canceled wasn't because they were failures (although the Shiva Star technically failed at its purpose of being a space based orbital bombardment weapon, but you can't start a working on a new form of weapon and expect it to be able to destroy cities from space can you?) they were canceled because of budget issues. Project MARAUDER got past the problem of blooming by firing a dense toroid shaped plasma projectile held together with a magnetic field and fired at a velocity between 3,000 and 10,000 Km per hour. This would have been impossible only twelve years ago but advances in containing a fusion reaction for energy purposes have opened up the opportunity to create all sorts of sci-fi weapons.
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I found this article interesting
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...1CBcQD98HFHGG3
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,522857,00.html
Kind of scary though. I'm sure money can be better spent then trying to fund research for a plasma weapon.Last edited by Alan Wake; 16 June 2009, 07:24 PM.
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Originally posted by General_Finley View PostSo I was looking through a few sites like DARPA, Lockheed martin, Boeing, and so on, looking for any modern day real world atempts at creating a plasma weapon like what we see in Stargate but I only found three (projects MARAUDER, Shiva Star, and MEDUSA) and all have lost funding and been discontinued. Today most of the research into directed energy wepons is more or less focused on laser weapons, while the only plasma based projects are shields(DARPAS working on them) and cloaking devises(The Russians are inventing a new form of stealth through plasma fields don't ask me how, I don't know). So I was wondering what everyone thought of this, I mean which would be a more devistating weapon? Is it wise to put all are eggs in one basket? And which do you think we should focus more on?
If plasma weapons ever do become a reality it's much more likely to be in the form of some kind of grenade or flamethrower type weapon.
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Can someone please just explain to me why you even WANT plasma as a weapon? (Living out your sci-fi dreams doesn't count.) A good weapon needs to deliver a LOT of energy to the target. Plasma has TERRIBLE energy density. And even if you manage to build a good high energy plasma beam, it takes a relatively weak magnetic field to disperse it.
Why not build X-Ray lasers? You cannot reflect or block an X-Ray beam. It will simply cause everything within a target to heat up dramatically, regardless of shielding. Granted, we are no closer to building one of these than we are to building a plasma cannon, but at least I can see why you'd want one.
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Originally posted by K^2 View PostCan someone please just explain to me why you even WANT plasma as a weapon? (Living out your sci-fi dreams doesn't count.) A good weapon needs to deliver a LOT of energy to the target. Plasma has TERRIBLE energy density. And even if you manage to build a good high energy plasma beam, it takes a relatively weak magnetic field to disperse it.
Why not build X-Ray lasers? You cannot reflect or block an X-Ray beam. It will simply cause everything within a target to heat up dramatically, regardless of shielding. Granted, we are no closer to building one of these than we are to building a plasma cannon, but at least I can see why you'd want one.
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Neutrons are unstable, costly to produce, and are fairly neutral to most forms of interaction. (Hence the name.) Why not simply have a complete anti-matter stream? Have anti-neutrons, anti-protons, and positrons there combined into some sort of a ferofluid. No more hassle to produce than a bunch of anti-neutrons, but this stuff will at least be easy to store, accelerate, and aim.
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Originally posted by K^2 View PostNeutrons are unstable, costly to produce, and are fairly neutral to most forms of interaction. (Hence the name.) Why not simply have a complete anti-matter stream? Have anti-neutrons, anti-protons, and positrons there combined into some sort of a ferofluid. No more hassle to produce than a bunch of anti-neutrons, but this stuff will at least be easy to store, accelerate, and aim.
Originally posted by K^2 View Postand it's a lot easier to destroy a nuke than to divert the anti-matter stream heading your way.
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