Other claims to higher firepower comes from these sources:
http://www.b5tech.com/oldb5tech/science ... torBIG.jpg
Here, the Sharlin is apparently armed with what I think looks to be an "8" missiles, which are rated as 20 Mtons, or 20 Megatons.
Another source, such as the Hyperion deckplan book (part of an RPG book) says this:
I highlighted the important parts. At close range, the warhead appears to make use of a 10 ton yield, while at longer range, this is bumped up to 25 megatons. Palp suggested to me in a thread ( http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/ ... 459/page-7 ) that both variations of the yield are armor piercing, that is to say, all focus their yield in one direction."Deck Bravo 6
This deck houses the main torpedo launch tubes. The
torpedo bay doors remain sealed until the weapon is ready
to fire, at which time the hidden doors recede into the
hull and shift to either port or starboard and the weapon
is launched. The ion torpedo is one of the most deadly
weapons featured aboard the Hyperion but its tactical
effectiveness is centred on its high rate of acceleration,
not the size of its warhead. The reason for the torpedo
being designed to reach maximum velocity so quickly
was to minimise an opponent’s ability to target and shoot
the weapon down. When used in short-range combat
the torpedo detonates a conventional, armour piercing
warhead with a yield of 10 tons (the equivalent of a 20th
century Davy Crockett fission bomb) and a maximum
blast yield of only 25 megatons in long-range combat.
While the dual warheads found on the ion torpedo are
small, the weapon’s ability to accelerate at nearly 20
Gs (192.3 m/s^2). With a few minor differences in
machinery, Bravo 6 is nearly identical to Bravo 5 in all
other respects. Access hatchways connecting Bravo 6
to Alpha 15, as well as access hatchways and ladders
leading to Gamma 1 and 2."
I don't really agree with this. The first reason is that I think the sentence designates the armor piercing bit to the ten ton yield only; "When used in short-range combat the torpedo detonates a conventional, armour piercing warhead with a yield of 10 tons and a maximum blast yield of only 25 megatons in long-range combat."
If you look at the quote, it seems to be indicating that when the weapon is used in short combat range, the torpedo detonates a conventional, armor piercing warhead with a yield of ten tons. It however, has a maximum blast yield of 25 megatons in long range combat. This actually makes a great deal of sense.
Consider for this, we look at tungsten as our "armor". Obviously I think B5 uses much stronger materials than tungsten, but it serves as a basis to most easily measure how effective these weapons are when used differently. For this example, I'll be using atomic rocket's linked nuclear space nuke ( http://www.5596.org/cgi-bin/nuke.php ).
Now consider that a .01 kiloton nuke (10 tons) is detonated with a shape charge. Instead of say, 12.566 which indicates a spherical burst, we use 4.566. In addition to this, we also assume that the bomb goes off at .1 meters from the hull, since after all, this warhead is indicated of being an armor piercing warhead, suggesting to me that it's supposed to come into contact or at least close proximity. At that range, a 10 ton bomb would punch through 11,705 mm of tungsten material.
Now compare this to say, a 25,000 kiloton bomb going off at even 100 meters; the significantly more powerful nuke only penetrates up to 10,633 mm of tungsten. At a kilometer, the damage is only 106.33 mm.
But Palp also provided another quote, one that goes into detail about the Centauri's failed attempt at creating Trek-style shielding:
In other words, 100+ terawatts is what we could suspect at being the output of a typical heavy energy/particle weapon wielded by races at the time of the early 2000s. While Palp suggested that Centauri technology had vastly increased since then, I'm not really convinced. The Centauri used fusion then and they still use fusion now, as do many other races. The ship that was mentioned is still in service and it still seems to be a fairly effective ship.Magneto-Gravitic defence fields were, by far, the most
far-reaching and innovative technology the Centauri
sought to exploit upon discovering artificial gravity
technology. The theory regarding this technology was
simple – use the ship’s gravitic drive to create an invisible
barrier of electromagnetic and gravitic energy around
the Primus capable of diffusing and deflecting away
incoming energy beams and projectiles. Developing
and exploiting this technology appeared to be, if taken
to its ultimate conclusion, a defensive system that could
give the Centauri an unprecedented advantage on the
battlefield. Energy defense fields would permit them to
reduce the amount of physical armor on Centauri ships
and thus reduce their physical mass, making the Primus
lighter, faster, and more nimble while remaining well-protected.
Centauri tacticians had a great deal of faith
in this technology, despite the concerns and reservations
voiced by their scientists. Military leaders dismissed the
half-hearted concerns of a minority of physicists, with
officers in the Royal Naval believing the combination
of speed and energy defence to be their key to making
capital ships nearly invincible.
...
While the magneto-gravitic defence fields did work,
the energy handling limits did not meet the production
standards set down in the build requirements. In order
to be effective, the defence field would have to be able
to absorb and retransmit particle-beam and plasma-bolt
energy blasts in the range of 100+ Terawatts or greater
at the focal point of weapon contact, and thus provide
protection equivalent to the thick armour found on other
starships. Unfortunately, the fields simply could not pool
energy at a single point quickly enough, or produce an
energy field powerful enough to withstand the awesome
power of new energy weapons.
Basically, I think the Centauri hit a technological plateau. This isn't unwarranted either; in-universe the Centauri had been in a massive decline since their glory days back in the early 2000 era. The Narn Regime and the Earth Alliance, despite clearly not being as technologically advanced as the Centauri of the 2250s, are clearly able to challenge and even defeat Centauri warships. We might even assume that their weapon capabilities are somewhat lower and the Centauri have perhaps slightly advanced.
However, I think it's rather reasonable to look at the typical upper Young Race ship as having capital lasers/particle weapons that rate at ~100 terawatts.
Now, even with this, any narrow-pointed 100 terawatt beam is going to slice through a shit-load of tungsten and my initial estimations of only 1-10 mm showed this to be the case. However, going to this site:
http://web.archive.org/web/201012070613 ... rships.htm
I obtained the width of the laser as being 10 meters from this quote:
Now, here's the thing. A laser with a diameter of only 1mm is going to be much more powerful at punching through armor than a laser of the same yield, but a diameter of 10m (duh). Plugging this and tungsten into another linked calculator from atomic rockets ( http://panoptesv.com/SciFi/LaserDeathRa ... mLaser.php ) I got this:The beam weapon has a circular cross-section with a diameter of 10 meters. We determined this value by comparing the weapon port and beam to the size of EarthForce fighters.
In case you're wondering, I used 10 kilometers of tungsten, and the depth of the hole (under material damage, towards the bottom) is 10.4 meters. Note that this is the same sort of damage you could expect from a 10 ton tactical nuke going off at point-blank range. The reason is that while the ten ton bomb is smaller, it's energy is going to be delivered over a much smaller area than a ten meter wide laser beam.Damage to Tungsten
Beam parameters
Beam power: 100 TW
Beam diameter at target: 10 m
Beam duration: 1 s
Beam energy: 100000000 MJ
Environmental parameters
Ambient temperature: 300 K
Ambient pressure: 101 kPa
Material properties
density: 19250 kg/m3
Heat of fusion: 285 kJ/kg
Heat of vaporization: 4.39 MJ/kg
Heat capacity: 132 J/(kg K)
Melting temperature: 3695 K
Boiling temperature: 5828 K
Molar Mass of vapor: 0.1838 kg/mole
Thermal Conductivity: 173 W/(m K)
Coefficient of viscosity: 7.1 mPa s at 3695 K
Surface Tension: 2.3 J/m2 at 3695 K
Ultimate Strength: 980 MPa
Shear Modulus: 161 GPa
Cavity Strength: 4.44 GPa
Speed of Sound: 5.2 km/s
Drilling conditions
Vapor pressure: 895 MPa
Surface temperature: 12850 K
Melt thickness: 9.57 μm
Material damage
Drilling speed: 10.4 m/s
Vaporization speed: 10.4 m/s
Melt-ejection speed: 3.91E-8 m/s
Depth of hole: 10.4 m
Time to drill hole: 1 s
Aspect ratio: 1.04
But switching gears back to the Blackstar, the thing people always harped on was the range. And they're right, at the range that the visuals showed, the Sharlin should have only had the equal of 8.5 mm of tungsten armor punched through and while this would be all across the Sharlin, the fact is that Centauri warships of two centuries previous had 100 terawatt beams that would have punched through 10,400 mm s. However, if we consider that the visuals are only there for eye candy and that the what the writer had in mind comes first (ie, a ship destroyed with a 200 megaton mine--or at least heavily damaged), we can consider that the bomb must have been close to what we actually observed.
If this is the case and the bomb was actually, 25 meters, then suddenly instead of only penetrating 8.5 mm, the nuke would penetrate 13,611 mm. This would be on par with a 10m wide, 100 TW laser beam.
More to the point, the quote that I showed earlier, of yields being varied depending upon combat supports this. At longer ranges, an enemy ship is going to have more time to target and destroy the oncoming bomb, so it can't possibly get as close. At close ranges, a higher bomb can be a danger just as much to you as it is to your enemy. Even if it won't completely penetrate your own armor while hitting a ship at say, 1 km away, it'll still deal some damage to your own ship. Especially for your fighters and exposed guns.
All said and done, the Sharlin doesn't have to only be a few dozen meters away. The idea however, is that the bomb doesn't even have to only be a few dozen meters away to deal significant damage to a ship, something the opposition even suggested (ie, the weapons dealing the Blackstar in, rather than the nuke), but the evidence points to that Younger Race Babylon 5 species being able to take low to moderate megaton level weapons at fairly moderate range.
Sooo, ideas?
