Numbers and Distances
(Some of this is subject to argument, but most of these numbers either came from astronomy texts or was used in published stories, so they are all pretty much set -ZM)
Distances in Sol System or "Earthat"
- Earth's radius is ~3960 miles or 6,37 kilometers, diameter is 2x or 7920 miles
- ~240,000 miles (385,000 Km) - Moon's average orbital distance (varies a lot!)
- Earth-Moon L2 is +37,000 miles or 277,000 miles, still barely inside transporter range. Usually.
- 250,000 miles (~400,000 Km) - Sa'arm ESP range
- 300,000 miles or ~480,000 Km - Transporter Range
- ~830,000 Km - HEZ for Earth-Moon double planet
- ~3,400,000 Km - Jupiter's HEZ
- 1 AU (one "Astronomic Unit") is defined as Earth's orbital radius, which is ~ 150 M Km, ~500 light-seconds, or 8.3 l-m
- Orbital distances: Earth is 1AU, Mars 2AU, Jupiter 5AU, Saturn 10AU, Uranus 20AU, Neptune 30AU, with numerous minor planets out to 100AU
Speeds
- Light moves 186K miles/sec, or 300K Kilometers/sec.
- 1 light-minute is ~18 M Km
- Speed in hyperspace: If a Castle does 7100 times the speed of light, that's ~ 19.4 ly/day, 0.81 ly/hour, or 1 ly every 74 minutes. It's just shy of 15 AU per second (exactly 14.7)
Masses
- System masses: The Sun has 99.86 of system mass, 4 gas giants 99% of the remaining 0.14% (J & S are more than 90%), leaving ~0.0015% of system mass for all the rocks.
Range of Common Weapon Systems
The below table is sorted by useful range. Range given is minimum-maximum, in Km. Damage is relative to that damage done by a single pulse from a standard Point-Defense Laser (or PDL).
| Weapon | Range (Km) | Damage | Platforms |
|---|---|---|---|
| 55cm Guided Missile | 5000-?? (I) | 80K (**) | Europa (4/60), Patrician (4/20) |
| 40cm GM | 300-?? (I) | 30K (*) (**) | Volturnus |
| StarSparrow GM | ??-3000 (I) | 10 (**) | All CNS (49 basic load) |
| Spinal RailGun | 300-?? (I) | 100K (*) | Hero BCs |
| Hvy PAB | 0-750 (I) | 50 | Raptors, Europas |
| 'Jr' Hero RG | 0-600+ (I) | 10K (*) | Assorted MD7 ships |
| Med PAB | 0-500 (I) | 15 | Europa, Asian, Africa, Shiro, Castle |
| 25 | Vacuna | ||
| Baby Hero RG | 0-400 (I) | 2K (*) | (50kg slug, 100kps) |
| Lt PAB | 0-200 (I) | 5 | Europa, Asian |
| Light RG | 0-150+ (I) | 2 | Patricians |
| Plasma Torp. | 1-98 | 100 | Castle, Shiro |
| 1000 | Lima | ||
| Part. Disruptor | 0-16 | 200 | Africa, I-Shiro |
| Point Defense RG | 0-5 | 2 | Lima, Lactanus |
| Point Defense Laser | 0-3 | 1 | All Confed, Liber, Lares |
(I) means that the effective range to damage the desired moving target is limited by fire control but the actual weapon range is infinity. The weapon will continue until it hits something. People are going to be troubled by accidental "overs" for centuries after this war. Officially, this is handled by a range-safety nanite group in each projectile. Unofficially, this may not be effective in all cases. Besides, laser pulses are destructive for a very long distance, too.
(*) means total kinetic energy available. In practice, all versions of the Hero railguns were too powerful; the slug would generally punch through the shield, the hull, the equipment inside, and the hull again on its way out, still retaining most of its energy.
The 40cm guided missile occasionally found on Sa'arm warships suffered from the same problem. It was too massive for its speed, and would often simply make a fairly round hole in the hull on its way in and then a more ragged hole on its way out again. Unless it ran into something massive or critical in between those two holes, getting hit by a 40cm GM usually wouldn't kill a ship.
Contrast this with the standard 55cm GM used by the Confederacy Navy throughout the war. It had a warhead comprised of many slivers of tungsten (or similar high-density, high-hardness material) separated by layers of soft lead or bismuth (or, occasionally, sodium). These warheads tended to explode whenever they hit anything solid like a starship hull, so instead of one round hole in and out there was one ragged hole going in, several smaller holes going out, and a huge mess from all the slivers which had a lot of kinetic energy but couldn't find their way out again.
Until we developed our huge high-velocity "Hero" railguns, the guided missiles launched from our smallest and most fragile warships were our only "one shot, one kill" weapon system. For the first several years of the war, everyone _except_ the Patricians had to slug it out with whoever they ran into, using low-damage, low-range weapons.
(**) Data marked with (**) are not yet accepted as 'canon' by being stated in a published story.
Dimensions: A “Hero” slug made of 6150 Ch-V-Fe steel is 7.8 g/cc or 128.2 cc/Kg so 1000 Kg has volume 128,200 cc formed into a 30cm D (15cm R) cylinder and 1.8 meters long.
(Someday this will be a navigation template. It will provide a bar across the bottom of each article with useful navigation links. Until then, this is just a placeholder to get rid of all the red "broken link" indicators. -ZM User (talk) 10:00, 3 May 2024 (PDT))
