Star wars weaponry

[Soyuzturtle]

Question : if one of the most common weapons in star wars were lasers , couldn't you just cover your ship in mirrors to deflect the lasers ???

 

[Horus Lupercal]

Question : if one of the most common weapons in star wars were lasers , couldn't you just cover your ship in mirrors to deflect the lasers ???

For the same reason why lasers can cut mirrored steel. There's always some absorption, even if it's only 20%, that'll build up and melt the armour.

Also turbolasers would have such a ridiculously high output that there'd be a certain amount of kinetic impact as well as the thermal heating which would also need to be protected against.

A better level of protection would be something that would dissipate the heat and energy fired against it, like multiple heat ablative ceramic layers with air or insulated gaps between.

 

[Soyuzturtle]

For the same reason why lasers can cut mirrored steel. There's always some absorption, even if it's only 20%, that'll build up and melt the armour.

Also turbolasers would have such a ridiculously high output that there'd be a certain amount of kinetic impact as well as the thermal heating which would also need to be protected against.

A better level of protection would be something that would dissipate the heat and energy fired against it, like multiple heat ablative ceramic layers with air or insulated gaps between.

What about lasers from small starfighters ?

 

[Horus Lupercal]

What about lasers from small starfighters ?

Same principle applies. If you watch A New Hope, when the Falcon takes hits from TIE fighters you can see it buck and recoil from the impacts. This is kinetic energy transfer from high powered laser fire. Turbolasers are just much bigger, and you can see this kind of thing when Star Destroyers are firing upon Rebel ships and they're bucking and swaying all over the place.

For an example of what I mean, there's a Because Science feature on the real world aspects of firing the Death Star laser and just how much recoil that weapon would generate, and basically the engines of the Death Star wouldn't be powerful enough to stop the DS from skittling about like a pinball whilst the weapon is being fired unless the mass of the Death Star was so enormous that its gravity would be hideous to live and work on

 

[Soyuzturtle]

Same principle applies. If you watch A New Hope, when the Falcon takes hits from TIE fighters you can see it buck and recoil from the impacts. This is kinetic energy transfer from high powered laser fire. Turbolasers are just much bigger, and you can see this kind of thing when Star Destroyers are firing upon Rebel ships and they're bucking and swaying all over the place.

For an example of what I mean, there's a Because Science feature on the real world aspects of firing the Death Star laser and just how much recoil that weapon would generate, and basically the engines of the Death Star wouldn't be powerful enough to stop the DS from skittling about like a pinball whilst the weapon is being fired unless the mass of the Death Star was so enormous that its gravity would be hideous to live and work on

So basically the some of the laser would still be absorbed and kinetic energy would still damage a mirror covered ship?

 

[Horus Lupercal]

So basically the some of the laser would still be absorbed and kinetic energy would still damage a mirror covered ship?

Yep. Even if it reflects 90-95% of the incoming energy, it's still gonna absorb that 5-10%. Hell, leave a mirror outside on a hot, sunny day and see how warm it is after a few hours. Then imagine that isn't a Sun, but a multi-million mW directed energy weapon.

 

[Soyuzturtle]

Yep. Even if it reflects 90-95% of the incoming energy, it's still gonna absorb that 5-10%. Hell, leave a mirror outside on a hot, sunny day and see how warm it is after a few hours. Then imagine that isn't a Sun, but a multi-million mW directed energy weapon.

Thanks!

 

[Horus Lupercal]

The other problem is like any other weapon vs armour thing is once someone creates an armour to defeat the weapon, someone will create a weapon to defeat that armour. So if mirrors did actually work, someone would create a true kinetic projectile weapon like hyper-drive powered railguns etc.
Probably be more hassle than they're worth in an orbital environment, but be really, really effective

 

[Earl]

The real question is how jedis don't burn to death when they ignite their lightsabers

 

[smol]

If a laser was delivering kinetic energy, and you reflected the beam, wouldn’t you take twice as much kinetic energy than if you just absorbed it?

if you build three orthogonal mirrors (like you see in land surveyor equipment) wouldn’t you reflect the beam to the sender?

 

[Horus Lupercal]

The real question is how jedis don't burn to death when they ignite their lightsabers

The Force leads to many abilities some may consider to be un-natural bend the laws of physics

 

[Pink]

If a laser was delivering kinetic energy, and you reflected the beam, wouldn’t you take twice as much kinetic energy than if you just absorbed it?

Where would that extra kinetic energy come from?

if you build three orthogonal mirrors (like you see in land surveyor equipment) wouldn’t you reflect the beam to the sender?

Probably. But the awesome power of the turbolaser would destroy the mirror and anything behind it before any more than a small fraction of the laser was reflected.

 

[Pink]

Yep. Even if it reflects 90-95% of the incoming energy, it's still gonna absorb that 5-10%. Hell, leave a mirror outside on a hot, sunny day and see how warm it is after a few hours. Then imagine that isn't a Sun, but a multi-million MW directed energy weapon.

FTFY.
A million mW is 1 watt.
(Just being overly pedantic)

 

[Horus Lupercal]

Then imagine that isn't a Sun, but a multi-million mW directed energy weapon.

FTFY.
A million mW is 1 watt.
(Just being overly pedantic)

A better piece of pedantry would be a megawatt laser wouldn't be that powerful. Even today we have lasers that are rated into the pW.

 

[smol]

Where would that extra kinetic energy come from?

From reflecting the laser.

Do you get more kinetic energy from catching a ball (inelastic collision), or from having a ball bounce off of you (elastic collision)?

 

[Pink]

A better piece of pedantry would be a megewatt laser wouldn't be that powerful. Even today we have lasers that are rated into the pW.

Yeah, but those PW lasers are fired for femto-seconds. You could almost power them with a AA battery.

From reflecting the laser.

Do you get more kinetic energy from catching a ball (inelastic collision), or from having a ball bounce off of you (elastic collision)?

 

[Horus Lupercal]

Yeah, but those PW lasers are fired for femto-seconds. You could almost power them with a AA battery

I'd like to believe there are these enormous laser set ups and rather than coming from a power station, there's just a guy putting a duracell AA battery into a slot to fire it up.

 

[Soyuzturtle]

Oh god , I think I've created a paradox where star wars geeks continuously correct eachother.

 

[TtTOtW]

Oh god , I think I've created a paradox where star wars geeks continuously correct eachother.

You called the Warmaster a geek? Now prepare for your doom...

 

[Pink]

I'd like to believe there are these enormous laser set ups and rather than coming from a power station, there's just a guy putting a duracell AA battery into a slot to fire it up.

Yeah, that would be comical. Deserves to be in an Austen Powers kind of movie.
In reality, they're probably using some kind of awesome capacitor that can dump a PW of energy in a minute amount of time. Not a lot (relatively) in terms of raw joules, but it's very hard to deliver that energy fast enough without burning something.

1 Peta-watt: 1,000,000,000,000,000 watts.
But, they only need it for a pico-second!
Works out to less than a watt-hour, if my maths is correct.
1 AA battery can slowly give you 3 watt-hours, but it can't give 1,000,000,000 amps at 1,000,000 volts for ANY length of time.

 

[Horus Lupercal]

If a laser was delivering kinetic energy, and you reflected the beam, wouldn’t you take twice as much kinetic energy than if you just absorbed it?

Do you get more kinetic energy from catching a ball (inelastic collision), or from having a ball bounce off of you (elastic collision)?

If you're using the same projectile moving at the same speed and hitting the same object, the impact is the same. By your metric, a straight on strike gives less energy into a target than a ricochet. Sloped armour is sloped because of the opposite effect, sloping increases the chance of a bounce which reduces the energy imparted (it's not bringing the shell to a stop), reducing the chance of a penetration.

Catching a cricket ball in your hand and taking one to the face are different scenarios. When you catch a ball, your hand acts to reduce the impact force by moving backwards, acting as a buffer and spreading its deceleration time out. If you get one to the face when you're not expecting it, there is no buffering effect because your face doesn't move backwards and that's why it tends to mess you up.

Same reason why IED resistant vehicles have V shaped hulls and shock attenuation seating. The hull redirects the blast energy away, reducing its effect and the seats are suspended from the hull using one method or another and collapse downwards as the blastwave accelerates the vehicle upwards, reducing the sudden accelerational effect on the crew. Combined, this goes a long way to stop the IED defeating the armour and reducing the amount of back and neck injuries inside with the crew being thrown around the interior.

 

[Soyuzturtle]

Ignore this. Im asking something on the ksp forums but they dont let you upload images directly so im posting it here and giving them a link to it.

 

[Gecko Gekkota]

Ignore this. Im asking something on the ksp forums but they dont let you upload images directly so im posting it here and giving them a link to it. View attachment 46469

Perhaps look into imgur for this rather than forum resources?

 

[Soyuzturtle]

Perhaps look into imgur for this rather than forum resources?

Yeah thats what im gonna do from now on.

 

[TtTOtW]

Yeah thats what im gonna do from now on.

Because we despise you wretched sellouts. Gmpf, KSP... SR2... If they were so damn perfect why don't they let you post a simple image, hmmmm??? Now you wanna come abuse our disk space for their issues?? Find another way, TRAITOR!