u/Thanos_354

A while back, a came across a comment mentioning an upgraded version of the Lithium Salt Water Rocket. It consisted of lithium deuteride pellets with a fissile shell that provided all the neutrons for fusion to occur.

Could those neutrons be provided by a solid core NTR, probably in a specialised part of the reactor to to avoid meltdown, in order to massively increase the performance of the engine?

Laser weaponry is steadily advancing as we speak, and it's pretty obvious that we'll see them in action within our lifetimes (unless you're 95).

But lasers aren't actual precision weapons. Not because they spread damage over a large area, but because a simple reflective surface can redirect the beam to any random direction. A simple IR laser meant to blind drones could also blind every soldier and sensor in the area, as long a mirror fragment happened to be in the way. Therefore, it'd be better if lasers stayed away from urban environments, and particle beams are obviously a compelling alternative.

However, they suffer from atmospheric collisions, losing much of their energy even above the karman line. Just how much is the loss? Is it enough to dismiss even heavy beams, or just radiation ones? I remember Matter Beam mentioning that millimeter beams aren't affected by atmospheric interference, or something along these lines. Is this true? Do we have a simple equation to calculate what a specific beam will experience?

AI cannot fully replace human labour. It also cannot achieve central planning. But as it has already demonstrated, it excels at replacing managerial positions. Now these usually are discussed in the form of CEOs and private managers, but politicians also are in the same boat.

An AI doesn't have personal aspirations to fulfil through corruption. You could have Swedish-style welfare using automation. You can also have laws that won't be abused in the future because they're not up to interpretation by subjective individuals.

Do you think that AI states are a gateway to a more free society or that they'll just be like flying cars?

When looking at the evolution of European/middle eastern armour, we see characteristics of metal plates almost from the start. The bronze age had plate/scale mail chest pieces, while the shoulders were protected by plate pauldrons.

But after the fall of Rome, the only remnants of plate-making came in the form of helmets. Pauldrons just disappeared until like the 1400s. Even the East Romans and the Sassanids used many little plates connected together, instead of solid plates.

Why is that? I know that technology and industry regressed considerably but the Mycenaeans had mastered plate shoulder protection nearly 2000 years before that.

Long story short, fictional universe needs a Vermintide scenario to happen, with certain cities surviving completely on their own.

I want the army size to be small so that the cities are protected by a small amount of people and there isn't an imperial army or something like that which just swoops in to save the day.

Hence, I'm looking for times and places with small armies to see the factors that led to them

Long story short, fictional universe needs a Vermintide scenario to happen, with certain cities surviving completely on their own.

I want the army size to be small so that the cities are protected by a small amount of people and there isn't an imperial army or something like that which just swoops in to save the day.

The first thing that came to mind is the high medieval period of Europe, with country armies being like 2000 dudes, but that's a bit overdone and I'm not fond of the aesthetic.

And since the automod started sounding the alarm, this is a question about history. What I'll do with the answers doesn't matter

Jitter, in the context of energy beams, refers to the inevitable wobbling (from engine burns or people walking around) of an object while it sends out a beam. Say a warship is firing a laser towards a target at a distance of one light second. If it was vibrating enough for the beam to miss by a maximum of 0.00001°, the beam spot will be more than 50 meters away from the target.

In the context of weapons, this isn't too much of a problem. As long as the laser hit something, we're good. But power beaming is placed under more restrictions than that. A laser ablative engine relying on stationary installations should eventually lose most of its propellant because the beam keeps missing. A macron gun, remotely accelerating a missile, will be unable to hit its target masses to produce thrust.

So my question is, does anyone know or have a guess on what that range would be? Do we even know how much wobbling a ship is expected to do? Also, would something like a stellaser be almost immune to this due to having no moving parts?

I've been pondering the most viable methods of space transportation for different organisations/parties and I'm kinda stuck on the military side.

Because a warship needs high acceleration and autonomy, the fusion or beam propulsion of say a civilian ship is unacceptable. The only engine capable of both extremely high efficiency and hight thrust is the orion drive and maybe something like pure fusion bombs.

But it requires the use of fissile materials like uranium, which happens to be some of the rarest elements in the universe. The fact that many deposits are kind of inaccessible or the concentration just isn't high also doesn't help.

So, going with just uranium, is there enough of the stuff to last a couple thousand years of usage by military vessels until antimatter production gets going?