Original Starship Design Thread

[Andrew Joshua Talon]

Granted. It would be difficult to create rail guns that fire at those velocities. So, let's do some more calculations:

3% light speed (about 9,000,000 meters/sec) would decrease our overall kinetic energy to 4,131,000,000,000,000 joules, or 4.131 X 10^15. Which equals 4,131 terajoules, or 4.131 petajoules. For comparision, 4.184 × 10^15 joules (or 4.184 petajoules) equals 1 megaton, or 1,000,000 metric tons of TNT. Using the same five shots per second firing rate, the Abydos can deploy ten megatons a second against enemy targets-Still very effective against Al'kesh and other small threat vessels, such as Wraith cruisers. And far more practical weaponry for a ship this size. Naquada-enhanced shells would, for a given amount of naquada, make these rail guns extremely effective against enemy capital ships. However, we do not know exactly how much. What do you think?

[Auralis]

Yes, and even 2% c are stretching it, remember the current rails guns are only mach 5, 2%c is a LONG away from that.
Plus, you have the problem that you need to accelerate the projectile first, which costs at same amount of energy it will release on impact in space. In your example 5.1 X 10^17 joules, plus you get a recoil effect from the impulse of the sheel fired.
Lets see, your shell is 102kg heavy, and your ship weigths 14597000kg, that is
143107.8 times heavier.
Next we need to figure out how fast the projectile needs to be accelerated.
For that we need to reeach 20%c in about 20m length (gun length). That gives us a timeframe for the acceleration phase of about 0.000000333 seconds. That gives about 18000000000000g acceleration for the projectile.
Now our ship is much heavyer as seen above, so the recoil that propels the ship away from the projectil is then: 125779307g .....

[Andrew Joshua Talon]

Unless you include anti-gravity field generation, which (as we have seen) cancels out inertia and therefore, recoil. Anti-grav boosts to rail guns would not have to lower the KE of the projectile-But merely provide a "bubble" of anti-grav that pushes the shell along, not compromising it's KE, but rather the KE and inertia of the space behind it.

[aAnubiSs]

Using a railgun for an E17 energy release isn't that good. Railguns aren't that efficient, around 33% IIRC. A Coil gun however is 90%+ under the right conditions.

Artificial Gravity, Inertial Dampeners and Mass Lightening...

It's interesting to know if it lowers the internal mass. However I can't really see a reason why would do that, nor can I see any possible way how since I doubt one could lower individual particles mass. And if you could you'd need more particles for the same thrust. Also wouldn't it frell the ship up it they had several mass lightening devices on the ship so that some sections have a lower mass than others. Would be interesting to see how this would function when you pull 90 degree turns at 60 PSL. Would totally tear the ship apart I'd guess.

[Andrew Joshua Talon]

So, why not use coilguns instead? Or Guass rifles.

Essentially, my ship is for use against vessels in it's weight range one-on-one.

[aAnubiSs]

So, why not use coilguns instead? Or Guass rifles.

Essentially, my ship is for use against vessels in it's weight range one-on-one.

A gauss gun is a coil gun Two different names for the same thing

[Andrew Joshua Talon]

Ah. I see.

In that case, coilguns should replace railguns as anti-ship gunnery aboard Tau'ri starships. Our current rail guns demonstrate effectiveness against fighters and smaller vessels, and are sufficient for those roles. Missiles, however, will continue to be our primary anti-ship munitions. Preferably with inertial-dampening technology to make them harder to intercept.

[freyr's mother]

They should also make the casing of the missile stronger so darts can't take it out by commiting suicide. It would just plow through the darts till it reached the hive and then boom.

[Andrew Joshua Talon]

Or, use rail guns to deliver naquada-enhanced warheads of some kind. Even a tiny amount of the stuff can create a huge explosion (as seen in "Singularity"). Perhaps the rail gun velocities do not need to reach significant fractions of the speed of light, but just fast enough to deliver the payload without being shot down.

[deadman]

Or they could use pure naquada slug for the rail guns filled with and explosive of some kind to start the explosive reaction.

[Andrew Joshua Talon]

Trouble is, we don't know how destructive it would be. Aybody know how big a boom of 102 kilograms of naquada would cause?

[Auralis]

We can estimate,
We know that a naquada enhanced themonuclear device gets a powerincrease of 100.
This is still in the e=mc^2 possibile realm, which would limited a explosion to be about 240 times that of a fusion nuke.
So, we can estimate that naquada has a energy potential of (e=mc^2)/2.4

Which is very impressive.

[Milleniumlance]

my head hurts

[Ouroboros]

These threads are always a fun diversion.

Ok I've done a Carrier and a cruiser before so lets try something new.

Submarine/Stealth ship/I'll let McKay name it since he always gets screwed


Dimensions

The ship will be as big as the weapon fits and reactors require it to be in order to function to proper effect. An effort to keep size down will be made however because it's probaly going to be easier to cloak something smaller. Also smaller ships means we can build more of them and this is the sort of ship that's going to become exponentially worse for our enemies in larger numbers

Hull considerations

The hull in general will be built with whatever sensor fooling materials we have available. The shape will also be designed to present a minimal sensor aspect when the ship is on attack approach. In the event that the cloak fails or can be partially seen through these things will help as a secondary line of defence. Armour will be minimal. If the ship gets detected it will flee using the superior Asguard derived FTL drive technology Earth currently holds over its enemies.

The shape will be determined by men much smarter than I am with the above and following considerations and limitations in mind.

Armaments

The ships primary anti ship armament is going to be a series of perhaps half a dozen to a dozen large bore axial mounted railguns firing naquada enhanced nuclear bombs into it's forward arc.

The ship will also carry (if size permits) a series of silos loaded with long range FTL capable missiles packing extremely high yeild naquada or biological warheads. These are intended not for anti ship use but as weapons of mass destruction to be employed against enemy planetary assets.

Additional features

The most important feature of the entire ship will be its cloaking device. The entire ship will be essentially designed around optimizing it's form to be more efficiently cloaked. It will also be equiped with passive stealth technolgies of whatever level of effectivness the various brains at Area 51 can come up with.

A single, or small number of, FTL capable scout craft to spot targets and extend awareness at longer ranges will also be included if space allows. Ideally these ships will also have a cloak.

Methods of Engagement

The intent of these ships in a ship-to-ship context is to approach under cloak on an enemy ship and lay as devestating an alpha strike as possible on it with their axial railguns, preferably when they're laying unexpecting with shields and defences powered down. Ideally several salvos will be loosed into an enemy formation by a pack of subs hunting together before the hostiles can even react. Each railgun will be capable of independant targeting in a limited arc making it possible to hit several targets, or several key parts of a large target, with the single initial strike provided they are grouped closely enough together.

The ship will remain cloaked at all times while in combat and will manuver evasively at sufficient range to reduce the chances of a blindly firing enemy scoring hits to near zero.

The second method in which the sub can be used is as a tool of mass destruction. In this context it will use it's speed and stealth advantage to penetrate deep into enemy held territory and harrass supply lines/factories and launch it's strategic missiles against whatever planet bound, or large stationary space bound, targets are in range. The missiles should carry warheads roughly on par with those in the Mark 9 gatebuster, sufficient to cause irreversible damage to the biosphere of any planet on which the explode, rendering said world useless. The drives can be cheap and with limited fuel since neither great range nor endurance are required.

As a side effect the ship will also make an excellent spy/intelligence gatherer.

In either role the sub/stealthship/whatever mcKay names it will serve as a weapon of terror to intimidate and demoralize the enemies of Earth. It attacks suddenly and from nowhere, from great distances or from inside the imagined safety of your own backyard. It can not be seen by any conventionally known means and thus it can not be stopped.

[WraithWarrior]

my head hurts

Yeah, I know how you feel, I think mines gonna explode