From: wayne@eng.umd.edu (Wayne C. McCullough)
Subject: Re: Wing Commander Anachronisms!
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 92 02:24:34 GMT
Organization: College of Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park

In article <1992Aug14.223724.14750@husc3.harvard.edu> estewar1@husc10.harvard.edu (Eric Stewart) writes:
>In article <1992Aug14.140017.25531@eng.umd.edu> wayne@eng.umd.edu (Wayne C. McCullough) writes:
>>>
>>>No, no, it's not the air that's slowing the ships -- it's all that space
>>>junk! Ya know, those little spinning bits of metal that Origin threw in
>>>so you'd have some reference to look at and prove to yourself your ship
>>>is actually moving. Apparently the war's been going on so long that the
>>>entire universe has been filled to a constant density with bits of destroyed
>>>spacecraft...
>>
>>Hmmm... Let's think about that for a minute or two, shall we?
>>
>>In the majority of small vessels, the SR (Spacial Resistance) will
>>drop a ship from 300to 0 Mps in a linear fasion in, oh say 5
>>seconds (I don't remember the units that well, but I THINK it's Meters
>>Per Second, but I could be wrong.  NOTE:  This makes SRF (Spacial
>
>I took a look at the game and velocities are "KPS"!!!!!
>Kilometers per second, I think.  However, it sure does not _look_
>like you are going that fast...  Think of the approack to the
>Concordia, which is _relatively_ motionless compared to your speed.
>(Concordia cruise vel. = 50 kps according to Joan's Fighting Sp.craft.)
>Your velocity (cruise) in a ferret = 360 kps.  So, 360-50=310kps,
>Or, .9837km (Con. length)/310km/s=3.17x10^-3 s! (Three milliseconds)
>You should blow by it too fast to see!  The Concordia is 983.7 m
>according to Joan's.  Joan's also confirms that kps=km/s.
>This assumes of course, that you are both traveling in the same direction.

Hmmm... KPS???

This does not bode well for the comparison of WC to Reality...

Let see, by constantly applying ones afterburners, one can go from
0 to 1200 Kps in, oh 3 s.   A little math, and we see that translates
to 400,000 M/s^2  acceleration, or aproximately 40,000 G's.  Now, just
as a few referancepoints, standard gravity is 1 G,  Pilots wearing
G suits (which prevent blood from just pooling in one part of the body,
and keep it flowing) black out in about 5-10 s in a range of 5-10G.
If I remember right, most humans can not live for more than a minute
or two at 20G.  Placing a human under 100 G will most likly kill him/her,
probably leaving nothing but a soupy mix with some bones.  I am too lazy
to look it up, but I think under 40,000 G, you will have sufficiant forces
to make some pretty wierd chemicals, and destroy the protiens in our body.
Also, the ship will probably vmax, tearing off everything from the engines.

One other netter (Please forgive me, I don't remember your name) suggested
that the drive is non-inertial, and the afterburners were.  Based on
the G forces, I certainly don't think so.  I geuss I can accept that
a non inertial drive would have virtually no gravity effects on the
ship itself.

It would probably explain why they need to use non-inertial drives as
apposed to inertial drives.  Inertial drives would probably be more
efficiant, so would be prefered.

>>Resistive Force) about 6G -- 6 earth gravities.).
>>
>>Let's also assume that the Net Space Junk is "still" to the local 
>>universe, and also that in any segment of space on a similar size
>>order of magnitude of a small vessel, this is also the case. (Not
>>Bloody likely...but).  Also, Let us assume that the craft has a
>>mass of, oh 10 Mg (1*10^7 grams) (I know they give the figures, buyt
>             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>Good guess, if 10 "tonnes" in Joan's = 10Mg, the mass of the ferret.
>The broadsword, on the other hand, = 100 tonnes.

They arn't exactly the same, but the same order of magnitude.  Good
enough for government work.

>
>>I don't have them in front of me...)
>>
>I do ;)

I still can't find my WC docs, so I am going by memory and what I 
relearn from the net.  Sorry...

>Understatement of the decade, I think!!! =:)
>We could do the calculations to find the number of ships in each "system"
>(there systems are star/planet systems, like the solar system, right?)
>Assuming the size of a system ~= the diameter of Pluto's orbit, Sheesh,
>lets NOT do that calculation... It would be huge!!!

Now that I think of it, it would be interesting to compare the general
density caused by debris and the net density of the solar system.

For sake of simplicity, the volume of the solar system will be a cylander
with a radius of 7*10^12 m (averate orbital radius of pluto), 7*10^10 m
high (average orbital radius of Mercury).  The total mass would be about
4*10^30 kg (twice the mass of the sun... VERY high guess) so the density
would be 4*10^-7 Kg/m^3.  So, to maintain warfare, each side would have
to take ALL the mass from milions of solar systems to maintain an effort...

No.  I like the non-inertial drive much, much better.

>Since the difference b/w mps and kps is 10^3, The answers above will be
>off by at least three orders of magnitude.  (Good job on the calc's,
>Wayne, regardless!)

Well, everyone can still see that it would still be rediclous for this
order of magnitude of debris to be generated.  Sorry about this for
those who don't care...  I am a phusics major, this is how some of
us have fun  :)

W