Review: OK, but bad physics really detracts from the story
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 05 28, 2014
The plot was decent, and the writing style was ok, but the horrible physics really ruined the story for me.There are no missile detonation "shockwaves" in space whatsoever, but only the explosion itself and radiation and whatever gases were in the missile.  And if you fire a half-light-speed kinetic round at a ship 10 light-seconds away, the other ship would be constantly slightly jinking/dodging, so the odds of hitting the ship would be miniscule.  And kinetic rounds don't stop, so if you've got a stationary or predictable target (which there are several times but I won't describe them here so as not to give the story away), then you can fire at it from virtually any distance, including from inside an asteroid field.Furthermore, apparently ships can accelerate to 0.3c in almost no time, but can't continue accelerating for some reason? And yet they somehow require energy to maintain the speed?  That doesn't make sense.  There's no friction or gravitational force to slow them down, so what energy does it take to maintain speed, and why can't they keep accelerating to even higher velocity?  And then there are little things too, like putting a ship 0.5 light-seconds distance from another, and using a shuttle to traverse that 0.5 light-seconds - that's ~90,000 miles, which apparently the shuttle is able to traverse in 20 seconds.  Really?  And apparently laser weapons are fired against missiles light-seconds away, using hand controls and targeting reticules? When they're going 0.45c?  How could humans possibly do that?