Space Chase

[Kerry Skydancer]

And I was thinking 'Oh, if he only knew she was there....' What a sad missed opportunity.

Of course, she probably -will- seriously embarrass herself, err, biologically and be even more out for blood than she was before.

[Kerry Skydancer]

Budget, people. It's got to be either public domain or by someone desperate for exposure. There are a lot of good bands nobody's heard of that might work on a movie like this at a price Purloined Letter can afford, but PLS is based in the boonies and there aren't many good unheard of bands out there.

Cruxshadows. Good stuff, not well known in the US.

http://www.cruxshadows.com/frame.html

And sample stuff on youtube:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=SVNjx4k8mWk

[Madmoonie]

So the ship turned away right? Having a little following what is going on.

Also, nice Matrix type for the interface. And why is a cargo ship so heavily armed? Well, actually on second thought, it was in service during a war so I can guess why all the armaments.

[Atarlost]

Cruxshadows. Good stuff, not well known in the US.

Nice, but not suitable for a space battle. Most rock really isn't. You want something modern and artsy. Postmodern classical and related genres.

To me rock, particularly metal, proto-metal, and related genres, is, ironically, better suited to fantasy settings.

Wow, that was an ugly sentence. Two parentheticals seperated by a two letter conjugation of the verb to be. Ugly.

[Madmoonie]

Cruxshadows. Good stuff, not well known in the US.

Nice, but not suitable for a space battle. Most rock really isn't. You want something modern and artsy. Postmodern classical and related genres.

To me rock, particularly metal, proto-metal, and related genres, is, ironically, better suited to fantasy settings.

Wow, that was an ugly sentence. Two parentheticals seperated by a two letter conjugation of the verb to be. Ugly.

Uh....okay. I can only assume you know what you mean, because my grammar is terrible.

[RHJunior]

It's not all that heavily armored-- well, not compared to a typical battleship... what's got Walker's tail in a twist is the fact they unplugged EVERYTHING-- even the minimal stuff a deep space cruiser needs for self-defense, or just to deal with incoming micrometeorites or space debris....

Which is reflected in the fact that the bureaucracy was so ingrained that it had <I>the defensive systems of their new flagship</i> shut off to meet with some environmental-safety regulation....

[Madmoonie]

Personally, I say that the....Federalists?.....should blow the Rebel Cry regardless of the possible damage to the new flagship. It would help drive home the point to the former rebels that they have lost and there is no going back. If they get even close to getting away this will be so bad for them....is it still live newsfeed?

[Kerry Skydancer]

Oh, they should. But their people are 'trained' to follow the rules and not show initiative for fear of breaking some bureaucratic regulation. So they won't.

Hoist on their own petard, as they say.

[Kerry Skydancer]

Cruxshadows. Good stuff, not well known in the US.

Nice, but not suitable for a space battle. Most rock really isn't. You want something modern and artsy. Postmodern classical and related genres.

To me rock, particularly metal, proto-metal, and related genres, is, ironically, better suited to fantasy settings.

Wow, that was an ugly sentence. Two parentheticals seperated by a two letter conjugation of the verb to be. Ugly.

If you say so. I think Winterborn would make a great theme song for Our Hero.

[Madmoonie]

Hoist on their own petard, as they say.

First off, one of the best phrases ever. Secondly, yes....very true.

I was kind of sudjesting that their commanders should order them to do, but as you say this is very unlikely, since their commanders would have to get permission from their commanders, and them from theirs, and so on and so on till it reaches the head goose. Just like you said. Kinda what did in the Nazi war machine, Hitler had to approve everyhthing himself. And he never listened to his field commanders. Also what the head goose is doing. She is soooo going to end up a centerpiece at Christmas.

[Sharuuk]

She's a SWAN not a goose.......but she's still just as full of sh*t as one......although maybe not quite so much now...ya think?

Şaaruuk

[RHJunior]

I don't think you grasp what sort of damage one of those ships could do.

Assume the Rebel Cry weighs, oh, close to the amount the space shuttle does(same approximate size.) The shuttle weighs in at 4.5 million pounds, counting the tank and boosters, so we'll say, what, a million pounds..... or 500 tons.

He's pulling at least a couple gees acceleration, so he's probably already screaming along at several times the speed of sound. (The Shuttle hits Mach 25 on reentry, for comparison.)

Even if the Cry were reduced to inch-wide pieces of shrapnel, every single piece would still be traveling along the same vector at the same speed--- and with no cushioning atmosphere it would deliver just as much damage to whatever it hit. worse, actually, as it would turn that 500 ton bullet into a 500 ton shotgun shell, hitting God knows how many ships in that crowded spaceport with the force of a bomb.

Math:blown out of the sky traveling at, oh, mach 5.
(around 1500 meters/second). the energy imparted to whatever he hit
would be:

KE=(0.5)*(453692kg)(1500 m/s)^2

or 510,403,500,000 joules.

or about 122 tons of TNT.

And the damage would not be limited in any considerable way by distance... any given chunk of his ship would continue hurtling through space at that speed till it hit something or fell out of orbit.

They can't shoot him down for the same reason the cops can't shoot out a suspect's tires.... it turns a controlled pursuit into an uncontrolled crash, and in these circumstances one liable to damage or even destroy dozens of ships.

[Mikhail Dragoslav]

I don't think you grasp what sort of damage one of those ships could do.

Assume the Rebel Cry weighs, oh, close to the amount the space shuttle does(same approximate size.) The shuttle weighs in at 4.5 million pounds, counting the tank and boosters, so we'll say, what, a million pounds..... or 500 tons.

He's pulling at least a couple gees acceleration, so he's probably already screaming along at several times the speed of sound. (The Shuttle hits Mach 25 on reentry, for comparison.)

Even if the Cry were reduced to inch-wide pieces of shrapnel, every single piece would still be traveling along the same vector at the same speed--- and with no cushioning atmosphere it would deliver just as much damage to whatever it hit. worse, actually, as it would turn that 500 ton bullet into a 500 ton shotgun shell, hitting God knows how many ships in that crowded spaceport with the force of a bomb.

Math:blown out of the sky traveling at, oh, mach 5.
(around 1500 meters/second). the energy imparted to whatever he hit
would be:

KE=(0.5)*(453692kg)(1500 m/s)^2

or 510,403,500,000 joules.

or about 122 tons of TNT.

And the damage would not be limited in any considerable way by distance... any given chunk of his ship would continue hurtling through space at that speed till it hit something or fell out of orbit.

They can't shoot him down for the same reason the cops can't shoot out a suspect's tires.... it turns a controlled pursuit into an uncontrolled crash, and in these circumstances one liable to damage or even destroy dozens of ships.

Are you a math teacher or something RH? That all seems pretty complicated to me but then my bailiwick was always history, not math.

[Madmoonie]

Its a MOVIE, man! Suspened reality for a moment.

[Wanderwolf]

Oh, they should. But their people are 'trained' to follow the rules and not show initiative for fear of breaking some bureaucratic regulation. So they won't.

Hoist on their own petard, as they say.

Agreed, with one minor correction: The phrase is "hoist BY their own petard", referring to the use of explosives in medieval warfare. Specifically, what happens when your demolitions officer turns to run and doesn't get very far. The resulting lift off his feet means he's been hoist by his own explosive... the petard.

Ironically, given what just happened on the bridge of that capital ship, the word "petard" is from a medieval French word for "fart". Hey, when they farted in your general direction, they meant it.

Yours truly,

The historical,

Wanderer

[Nikas_Zekeval]

It's not all that heavily armored-- well, not compared to a typical battleship... what's got Walker's tail in a twist is the fact they unplugged EVERYTHING-- even the minimal stuff a deep space cruiser needs for self-defense, or just to deal with incoming micrometeorites or space debris....

Which is reflected in the fact that the bureaucracy was so ingrained that it had <I>the defensive systems of their new flagship</i> shut off to meet with some environmental-safety regulation....

Hmm, two things that confused me. AFAICT they are on the Bridge, and the Chairfoul (not a misspelling! ) seems to be speaking to the ship's computer. One, where is the Captain, or at least the Officer of the Deck that should be giving those orders? And two, why is the computer taking orders of a civilian in a battle/crisis situation?

Or is that 'bridge' actually the flag bridge, a docking/navigation bridge, or a fancy observation deck for the civies and the Captain is on the real bridge buried as deep in the hull as the designers could place it?

[Nikas_Zekeval]

Even if the Cry were reduced to inch-wide pieces of shrapnel, every single piece would still be traveling along the same vector at the same speed--- and with no cushioning atmosphere it would deliver just as much damage to whatever it hit. worse, actually, as it would turn that 500 ton bullet into a 500 ton shotgun shell, hitting God knows how many ships in that crowded spaceport with the force of a bomb.

This assumes inelastic collisions however. IF you could shred a target finely enough there should be a decent chance that the collisions against armor that the warship should have to deal with space debris would be elastic, in short the debris bounces off the armor only imparting a portion of their energy before merily continuing on their way. This is why battleships were built with ever larger main guns, rather than huge banks of 5", 40mm, or .50 cal weapons for antiship work. 3000 lbs of individual BBs fired at armor won't penetrate, but a 3000lb 16" AP shell could.

Of course what warship armor laughs at might still be enough to shred civilian stations and vessels, comm and weather sats, and spacesuited workers outside any armor. Plus a fusion reactor and the thrusters are likely heavily built enough to survive anything short of a contact nuke, at least intact enough to be crude missiles to anyone downrange of their last vector.

[Csadn]

[quote="Sharuuk"]She's a SWAN not a goose....... [...]
Şaaruuk[/quote]

And the ship's she's on is named _Cygnus_....

http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/cygnus

Ego-Trip much, lady? :)

[MikeVanPelt]

Its a MOVIE, man! Suspened reality for a moment.

Yeah... But I'd *love* to see a movie that got this right. They never do. Even Babylon 5, one of the better ones, they should have had a *whole* lot more trouble with debris from all the blammage that went on in their neighborhood than they did. The did ... once or twice, but only in the heat of battle. It should have been a continuing headache for them for months after each battle.

True, Nip hasn't had a chance to accelerate up to this sort of velocity yet, but at orbital velocities, it doesn't matter what the projectile is made of. A feather at 10 km/s is still going to deliver 1/ mv^2 of energy to its target.

See the marvelous scene in "Startide Rising" where Our Heros manage to trick the Very Bad Guys into making a fast hyperbolic orbit around a star -- right into the path of a cloud of nice, soft water vapor they'd just deposited for them to run into.

At that relative velocity, it was sorta like a bug on a windshield.

[Squeaky Bunny]

Its a MOVIE, man! Suspened reality for a moment.

Yeah... But I'd *love* to see a movie that got this right. They never do. Even Babylon 5, one of the better ones, they should have had a *whole* lot more trouble with debris from all the blammage that went on in their neighborhood than they did. The did ... once or twice, but only in the heat of battle. It should have been a continuing headache for them for months after each battle.

Like that teddy bear that Sheridan spaced?

True, Nip hasn't had a chance to accelerate up to this sort of velocity yet, but at orbital velocities, it doesn't matter what the projectile is made of. A feather at 10 km/s is still going to deliver 1/ mv^2 of energy to its target.

See the marvelous scene in "Startide Rising" where Our Heros manage to trick the Very Bad Guys into making a fast hyperbolic orbit around a star -- right into the path of a cloud of nice, soft water vapor they'd just deposited for them to run into.

At that relative velocity, it was sorta like a bug on a windshield.