From: estewar1@husc10.harvard.edu (Eric Stewart)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games
Subject: Re: Wing Commander Anachronisms!
Date: 15 Aug 92 02:37:22 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1992Aug14.223724.14750
Organization: Harvard University Science Center

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.

>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.

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

{Some calculations deleted}

>is not a lot of mass. (the density of water is 1000 Kg/m^3), but then
>again, you need to blow up one ship per every 1*10^4  m^3 of space. (think
>of a box 10x10x100 ... smaller than a good sized down-town building).  
>That is a lot of ships...

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!!!
>
>Also note, that to maintain thrust, one needs .9 GigaWatts of power.
>
>(I know no one asked for this, and I am not going to gauruntee any of
>my figures, but I couldn't resist.)
>
>W
>
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!)
>
                                                Eric
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games