			    TRAVELLER Digest 104

Topics covered in this issue include:

  1) Re: Anti-matter accidents	by "John H. Kim" <jokim@mit.edu>
  2) Re: Antimatter Accidents	by Derek Smith <Derek_Smith.LOTUS@crd.lotus.com>
  3) AM discussion	by KenHagler@aol.com
  4) Re: TRAVELLER digest 93	by Caffein Achiever! <fok@chaph.usc.edu>
  5) Re: Anti-matter accidents	by merrick@RT66.com (Merrick Burkhardt)
  6) Antimatter accidents	by eabaltz@MIT.EDU
  7) laser	by Joni M Virolainen <jonimv@evitech.fi>
  8) no subject (file transmission)	by Joni M Virolainen <jonimv@evitech.fi>
  9) FTP	by lakes!raven@galois.nscf.org (Knight Hawk)
 10) Re: TRAVELLER digest 103	by roger.myhre@niva.no (Roger Myhre)
 11) Re: Antimatter calculations	by Roger Moore <moore@hep.phy.cam.ac.uk>
 12) Antimatter Errors	by michel_v@cpx.Prograph.Com (Michel R. Vaillancourt; ACP)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 16 Nov 1994 15:48:37 -0500 (EST)
From: "John H. Kim" <jokim@mit.edu>
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Re: Anti-matter accidents
Message-ID: <56918.jokim@mit.edu>

In message Wed, 16 Nov 1994 14:33:50 -0500,
  merrick@rt66.com (Merrick Burkhardt)  writes:

>>          Hi there.  I was in an odd mood today, and was thinking about
>>  how  much anti-matter all of those Alliance designs that keep going by
>>  have.  I  decided to figure out how much DV would be done to a
>> bystander at 1L-sec  away if ONE ton of AM detonated.

> The problem with the math above is that you channel *all* the energy
> onto the target in the 1cm^2 that the rules use to measure
> damage/penetration.
>
> You need to take the total energy released, and divide it by the area of
> a sphere at the range you are interested in (the area in cm^2, since the

To relate this to the real world, our sun loses something like several
thousand tons of mass every second (I remember it being much more, but I'm
sure any astronomers here can peg the exact figure), converting it to
energy via fusion.

I don't have any of the rules you guys are using so I can't exactly follow
what you're doing, but dividing by R^2 converts from energy to energy flux,
or energy per area (ignore time).  So to get back to MJ you need to
multiply by the projected area of the sphere (in the same units as R), not
divide.
 _______________________________________________________________________
|\_______________________________________________________________________\
| |                                                                       |
| | John H. Kim      "None of what you are seeing is actually happening." |
| | jokim@mit.edu                                                         |
| | jokim@uni.uiuc.edu     - disclaimer for TV movie 'Without Warning'    |
 \|_______________________________________________________________________|

------------------------------

Date: 16 Nov 94 17:08:18 ES
From: Derek Smith <Derek_Smith.LOTUS@crd.lotus.com>
To: traveller <traveller@MPGN.COM>
Subject: Re: Antimatter Accidents
Message-ID: <9411162210.AA01771@internet1.lotus.com>

Howdy,

The problem is that if a ship powered by antimatter takes
a fuel hit that affects, say, 1 ton, the detonation will definitely
release ALL other AM fuel on the ship.

So the mass used in the E=mc^2 equation needs to be

2*M(a)

(Two times the total mass of Antimatter on board.)

Remember that when one ton of AM is annihilated, a ton
of MATTER is annihilated with it.  So for each ton of AM,
TWO tons of mass are converted to energy.

What does that do to your figuring?

-------------------------------------------------
Derek Smith - Lotus Development Corporation - Release Engineering

"Oops!  My brain just hit a bad sector!"

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 16 Nov 1994 17:59:55 -0500
From: KenHagler@aol.com
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: AM discussion
Message-ID: <941116174725_875578@aol.com>

Michel Vaillancourt wrote:

>         The result is that a one light second away, a bystander ship would
> that just over 1,767,700 points of damage.  Per ton of AM exploding.
>         At one light minute, one has somewhat better odds, with only 29,460
> points of damage being inflicted.  At one AU (which is 8 light minutes, if
> I remember correctly), it is no worse than a solid thwack from a spinal
> mount with a mere 3,680 points.

That sounds considerably higher than the numbers I've seen before. In 5631, a
5-ton AM warhead was used to demolish the Imperial sector capital at Cyril,
but it didn't actually blow up the planet or (as far as I know) trash every
ship in the inner system. In fact, Steve told me that it would take around
200 tons of AM to actually destroy a planet. That seems pretty far removed
from the figures mentioned in Michel's article. Anyone else out there know
anything about this?

>         Anti-matter production facilites would have to be kept in empty
> subsectors for both safety and strategic reasons.

Well, this can be done with the little ones. The larger Mark 2 and 3 versions
need to be orbiting something, though, so they can't be in the middle of
nowhere. The Alliance did evacuate the population from the system where it's
built its Mark 2 facility (there were only a few thousand people there).

> One nut with a
> death-wish could genocide a star system by causing a power-failure on the
> AM holding pods.

It's not that simple. Anyone who gets close enough to AM pods to sabotage
them is subjected to a very intense screening process, including psionic
examinations at regular intervals. They're not easy to sabotage, either. Only
the commanding officer can voluntarily detonate an AM pod, and all AM storage
facilities are well guarded.

> Or an enemy Navy using a heavily armored and screened
> drone ship doing a Kamakazi attack at 30g's

Well, as of 5650 nobody's warships can do 30g's (except maybe the Droyne). A
raid on the big AM facility is a concern, of course, but all the Alliance can
do is provide lots of defenses and hope for the best. Unfortunately, a
sufficiently determined attacker can destroy any fixed target, regardless of
how good its defenses might be.

> I say this, because otherwise the alliance just spent a
> huge amount of cash on fleets that can be destroyed by *1* lucky shot.

I took this one out of order. Let's dispell once and for all the notion that
there's something unusual or foolish about building ships that can be
destroyed by one lucky shot. Take two battleships, one AM powered and one NH3
powered. Both take a lucky hit from a Meson-T mount. Results are:

On AM powered ship:
1 auto critical, 19 damage rolls
Results:
Maneuver Drive Disabled
Jump Drive Disabled
Ship Vaporized
Fuel Tanks Shattered
Crew-4
Weapon-10
Computer-5
Screens-7
Power Plant-2

In short, it's real dead, and would be regardless of what kind of fuel it had.

On NH3 powered ship:
1 auto critical, 19 damage rolls
Results:
Boat Deck Destroyed
Jump Drive Disabled
Spinal Mount Out
One Screen Disabled
Fuel Tanks Shattered
Crew-4
Computer-2
Power Plant-8

This one is didn't blow up, but it might as well have. The crew is all dead,
and it has a factor-2 power plant left. And maybe it _did_ blow up. Remember
that all Alliance battleships have bays for up to five planetbusters. If this
one happened to be carrying a planetbuster, the boat deck hit would take it
out--and 5 tonnes of AM going up in a sympathetic detonation can ruin your
whole day.

The moral of the story is that it's misleading to criticize AM ships as
vulnerable to lucky one-shot kills. Sure, they are, but so are all other
ships. In fact, AM ships are _less_ vulnerable because they're generally
harder to get the lucky hit on in the first place!

Ken

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 16 Nov 94 16:11:22 PST
From: Caffein Achiever! <fok@chaph.usc.edu>
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Re: TRAVELLER digest 93
Message-ID: <CMM.0.90.2.785031082.fok@phakt.usc.edu>

Fellow Sentients-

Can anyone care to explain the physical configuration of a "Docking
Ring" and why it's volume requirement is equal to that of the space
craft to be *not* serviced?

I had envision this as being something like the Apollo-Soyuz docking
module, Space Shuttle-Space Station docking module, etc...What pray
tell is wrong with this picture?

May the photons be at your back...

Ed

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 16 Nov 1994 17:47:09 -0700 (MST)
From: merrick@RT66.com (Merrick Burkhardt)
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Re: Anti-matter accidents
Message-ID: <9411170047.AA05325@RT66.com>

>
> In message Wed, 16 Nov 1994 14:33:50 -0500,
>   merrick@rt66.com (Merrick Burkhardt)  writes:
>
> >>          Hi there.  I was in an odd mood today, and was thinking about
> >>  how  much anti-matter all of those Alliance designs that keep going by
> >>  have.  I  decided to figure out how much DV would be done to a
> >> bystander at 1L-sec  away if ONE ton of AM detonated.
>
> > The problem with the math above is that you channel *all* the energy
> > onto the target in the 1cm^2 that the rules use to measure
> > damage/penetration.
> >
> > You need to take the total energy released, and divide it by the area of
> > a sphere at the range you are interested in (the area in cm^2, since the
>
> To relate this to the real world, our sun loses something like several
> thousand tons of mass every second (I remember it being much more, but I'm
> sure any astronomers here can peg the exact figure), converting it to
> energy via fusion.
>
> I don't have any of the rules you guys are using so I can't exactly follow
> what you're doing, but dividing by R^2 converts from energy to energy flux,
> or energy per area (ignore time).  So to get back to MJ you need to
> multiply by the projected area of the sphere (in the same units as R), not
> divide.


Well the calculation would give MJ cm-2.  The Rules however deal with
the energy (discharge energy, DE) that is focused on some area of the
target (the total delivered energy being the area of the beam (crosss
sectional) times the energy/area (or time times energy density).

You would *not* want to multiply by the sphere's area, the delivered
energy (non-focused) would drop off as 1/r^2, not increase as r^2.

To get the delivered energy you'd have to know the thickness of the
propagating shell of energy (the explosion duration would give a rough
value for this, if multiplied by c).


-Merrick

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 16 Nov 94 21:45:48 -0500
From: eabaltz@MIT.EDU
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Cc: xboat@MPGN.COM
Subject: Antimatter accidents
Message-ID: <9411170245.AA02760@vongole.MIT.EDU>


I think you've been misplacing exponents.  1 ton of antimatter is 1000 kg,
with a mass energy of 1000x9e16 joules.  (E=mc^2)  This is 9e19 J or
9e13 MJ.  At 4e15 joules to a megaton, this is about 20,000 Megatons.  This
explosion has 10x the danger space as one 100x as small, 200 Megatons.
I believe the largest nuclear explosion ever was a russian test at about
100 Megatons.  Thus, a ton of antimatter won't destroy the sector, but it
shouldn't have a problem vaporizing the ship.

At one hex range = 3e7 meters this delivers about 1MJ per square METER.  this
would toast a human, but superdense is safe.  This stuff is probably more
trouble than its worth.  Just research better fusion power.  Less fuss, free
fuel, no pesky detonantion....



Ted Baltz			"Pigs make lousy ninjas"
fizix student
eabaltz@athena.mit.edu		- Hamton


------------------------------

Date: Thu, 17 Nov 1994 09:16:25 +0200 (EET)
From: Joni M Virolainen <jonimv@evitech.fi>
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: laser
Message-ID: <199411170713.CAA09435@Mithril.MPGN.COM>

OK, here it is.         TL-9 5cm Underbarrel Laser
                        --------------------------
Focal Array Diameter: 5cm
Total Weapon Lenght: 45cm
Pulse Discharge Energy: 0.02 Mj
Weapon Specifications: 1.7 kg, Cr1713
Power Pack Specifications: Vol 13,7 l, mass 31.5 kg, Cr415.8

         Dam Dice
ROF  S-M-L-E  W-X-Y-Z  Pen Rtg  Bulk  Mag  Short Range
---  -------  -------  -------  ----  ---  -----------
SA2  7-4-2-1  1-0-0-0    Nil     2     50     100

Atmospheric Adjustments:

SR  Vacuum  Trace   VThin   Thin    Standard  Dense  Exotic
--- ------  -----   -----   ----    --------  -----  ------
100 S-S-S-S S-S-S-S S-S-S-M S-S-M-M S-M-L-E  M-L-E-W W-0-0-0

Notes:

This underbarrel laser (a.k.a. Laser Launcher) is primarily used by Ninja
Cartel troops in Shadigi subsector (Diaspora). It is usually placed under
the barrel of SMG. As the power pack is heavy, usually only one trooper in
the squad carries the laser. It is very effective against unarmored troops
and when combined with ROF 5 SMG for auto fire, it is quite frightening
weapon.

Any comments and questions are welcome.

Joni Virolainen
jonimv@evitech.fi



------------------------------

Date: Thu, 17 Nov 1994 09:17:48 +0200 (EET)
From: Joni M Virolainen <jonimv@evitech.fi>
To: Traveller_Digest@evitech.evitech.fi, traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: no subject (file transmission)
Message-ID: <199411170715.CAA09439@Mithril.MPGN.COM>

Penetration
-----------
It seems to me that you have understood the rules right except that
a weapon with pen nil can penetrate an environment suit with AV 0.
And it is true that you need more than an ordinary weapon to penetrate
Battle Dress, but hey that's the point of having a battle dress anyway.
Besides my players sometimes complain that the armors in TNE are not so
effective as they would like because they only have BC armors (or is it PC
armor ?).

RC troops use variety of weapons but I think one of the most common weapon
is ACR.

I have to say that in one occasion I found that pen value was too low. It was
when one of my PCs was covering behind a tree (30 cm thick) and was fired
by 7mm assault rifle and the bullets couldn't penetrate the tree. Well, I
guess those bullets weren't full metal jacket bullets.

I hope this helped you at least a bit.

Power Pack laser
----------------
Thanks to Antti Lahtinen, maybe now I can finally complete my design.

Concussion
----------
Okay, this was not in Traveller 102. I have one problem with concussion
damage.
And that is what is the Pen of concussion damage? I suppose it is either nil
or 0 (that is the armor does not affect it at all). Help!

Droyne
------
Thanks Hugh Foster for shedding light to my Droyne problem.
BTW TL 12 IS a high TL in my RC campaign.

Joni Virolainen
jonimv@evitech.fi


------------------------------

Date: Thu, 17 Nov 94 02:51:42 EST
From: lakes!raven@galois.nscf.org (Knight Hawk)
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: FTP
Message-ID: <V1cXVc2w165w@lakes.trenton.sc.us>

I was wondering If there is a place to PUT Files for FTP for Traveller I
recently asked if there were any file that could help me with my Ship
designs and didn't get a response.  So I put all the Information I had
into a txt file and would like to know if there is an FTP site I could
put it in so someof you with more experience with FF&S ould check and see
if everything works out correctly and for general comment on it.  The
file is too long to try and post in a messagge.  I tried to PUT it in the
/PUB/TRAVELLER/VEHICLES on engrg.uwo.ca but it said PUT DENIED.
Also Where are the current back issues held I ddin't see them there when
I looked.  Also what format Zip is used for the files ending in .Z?

BTW the Ship is my B&B design for an Alien craft With Stutterwarp.

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 17 Nov 1994 08:25:27 +0200
From: roger.myhre@niva.no (Roger Myhre)
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Re: TRAVELLER digest 103
Message-ID: <ea36ad50@smtplink.niva.no>

     Cynthia wrote:

     >P.S. Back in both Classic Traveller and Megatraveller, soldiers in
     >Battle Dress were considered practically invulnerable to anything
     >short of a PGMP or FGMP.  Think "Starship Troopers".

     And now they are almost invulnerable to that too.


     StarWolf

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 17 Nov 1994 12:10:40 +0000 (GMT)
From: Roger Moore <moore@hep.phy.cam.ac.uk>
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Re: Antimatter calculations
Message-ID: <9411171210.AA03698@axpf.hep.phy.cam.ac.uk>

>        I believe the real-world AM/M energy yeild is E=MC^2.  Lets assume
>that a 1 ton AM pod ruptures, and only 50% of its contents react with
>matter.  That leaves us with a yeild of 45 000 000 000 000 000Mj.  Weapon
>intensity in FF&S is equal to the Mj divided by the square of the range (in
>thousands of Km).  I used a range of 1 light-second.  This gives us an
>effective I of 50 000 000 000Mj.

First, in space I don't believe that even 50% of the antimatter will react
since the explosion will blow most of it out into space, away from ordinary
matter but for the sake of arguement I'll take your value.

Secondly you have to add in the energy of the matter which it reacts with
since this is converted too. ie. 500kg antimatter+500kg matter => 'm'=1000kg
Thus the actually energy is :

		E=1000c^2 (=9E19 J)

Now for the moment let's forget any cobbled together physics they have put in
FF&S and do a real world calculation. Area of a sphere at 1 lightsecond:

		A=4.pi.c^2

Hence neglecting energy lost due to neutrino production (which won't interact
with matter very well) we get and intensity of :

		I=1000/(4.pi)=79.6 Jm^-2

This is not a lot, certainly not enough to penetrate any sort of armour.
>From this we can conclude that:

	(i)  FF&S doesn't know what it's talking about when it comes
             to physics

and/or	(ii) The values you are using are for beam weapons where the
             energy is channeled in a particular direction, not randomly
             over an entire sphere

To put the above calculation in perspective the sun converts around 5 tons
of matter into energy every second and yet the earth is still here.

Hope that helps - antimatter is dangerous, but not THAT dangerous!

Roger

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 17 Nov 1994 10:27:52 -0500
From: michel_v@cpx.Prograph.Com (Michel R. Vaillancourt; ACP)
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Antimatter Errors
Message-ID: <9411171428.AA03342@Prograph.Com>

>Even without your throwaway, I get 3.979E-9 MJ cm-2
>
>The rules talk about 1 MJ cm-2 needed to penetrate 1 cm of steel... the
>energy above wouldn't warm the hull much.
>
>The problem with the math above is that you channel *all* the energy
>onto the target in the 1cm^2 that the rules use to measure
>damage/penetration.
>
>You need to take the total energy released, and divide it by the area of
>a sphere at the range you are interested in (the area in cm^2, since the
>rules deal with MJ delivered to a 1 cm^2 area).  The damage value
>associated with the AM above would be on the E-16 order.
>
>-Merrick

  I'll double check my numbers.  Still, keep in mind this is per ton, and
most Alliance ships carry dozens of tons.  I'll re-calc and see what
happens based on the surface area fixit.
--
    -+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=-
 Michel Vaillancourt            Written from, not for:
 "Live, Love, Learn"            Prograph International
 MetroCity 2.0.2.0 BBS          2745 Dutch Village Rd,
    902.835.9766                     Halifax, NS
1:251/17@fidonet.org            "Watch your language!"

------------------------------

End of TRAVELLER Digest 104
***************************
