From: mikkelhaaheim@gmail.com   
      
   Le mercredi 5 octobre 2016 19:51:29 UTC+2, Rick Pikul/Chakat Firepaw a   
   écrit :   
      
   > > Furthermore, although you are quite correct about armour peircing shells   
   > > not being a requirement, I had a slightly different intent in mind for   
   > > the use of the explosive shell, which I should have made more explicite.   
   > > Detonating the shell just before contact sends a splatter of shrapnel,   
   > > which is quite effective at scouring detectors, rendering them unusable.   
   > > This also takes care of those gap issues we were discussing.   
   >    
   > To have something like that you need larger shells.  That means either    
   > more mass, a narrower area of attack or larger gaps between your shells    
   > than you would have had between the shot.   
      
   You really don't. You don't need anything more than a principle mass of hard   
   grains mixed with an explosive binder. You also need a small detonator... a   
   computer nanochip will do, with just a little bit of hypergolic reactants. You   
   can do a lot with nano-   
   tech, especially after a couple decades or so of further research.   
      
   >    
   > > Second, you   
   > >> have to drop the mass/area by multiple orders of magnitude, (using my   
   > >> earlier, wrong, calculation:  To get to 'only' a kilotonne of stuff you   
   > >> need to get down to 10 _micrograms_ per square metre).   
   > >    
   > > Or decrease the target area. Yes.   
   >    
   > Which is something you can't afford to do.  Consider, in a 1AU orbit a    
   > normal burn that shifts things by a single arc second means a difference    
   > of ~750km in three months.   
   >    
   > Now consider something that is doing that once a month and you have a    
   > time in flight of 3-4 months.   
      
   Perhaps. However, again, random actions have a tendancy to negate one another,   
   meaning there will be an average path with a stanard of deviation. If that   
   standard of deviation is considered too large, then yes, military planners   
   will opt for another    
   approach: such as drones, mines, stealth seeker missiles, stealth guided   
   missiles, laser attacks, etc.   
      
      
   > Getting it isn't so hard, it's getting it up to 10,000m/s or so.   
      
   Yes it is. But asteroid miners will more than likely have to overcome this   
   challenge anyway in order to get their ore to the various customers and their   
   processing plants. Energy production will be scaled up at least as much as   
   material production.   
   Unfortunately, so will demand.   
      
   >    
   > > Also depends upon the energy available. If we are   
   > > dealing with colonies that can afford building their own space navies,   
   > > the availablity of both will likely be extremely high.   
   >    
   > You don't quite grok the energy needed.   
      
   Actually, I understand this quite well.   
   Sorry, it appears my earlier estimate for world yearly energy consumption was   
   a bit off. The world was already in the 20 EJ range since before 1820. By WWI,   
   it was at 50 EJ/yr. Currently, it is approximately 550 EJ/yr, and growing more   
   steeply than it    
   ever has been before, with the exception of the early 1970s.We have barely   
   started tapping solar energy.   
      
      
   Sorry. I will have to get back to this later. Might be a few days or so.   
      
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