Oolite Bulletins

Kinda scary, no? I mean, if you were to have a multiplayer version of Oolite, and just as you were about to shoot down hesperus's trumble-ship once and for all, he showed up outside your window and fried your computer What if you were flying on a commercial flight and it got zapped...

Problem is - I used to work in the field of anti-missile tech and I can think of a few reasons why this might not work.

DH - Novice here, but I'm thinking Hardened Systems on the missle would be the equivalent to a hardhead. Am I wrong?

Cmd. Cheyd wrote:

DH - Novice here, but I'm thinking Hardened Systems on the missle would be the equivalent to a hardhead. Am I wrong?

I could tell you but then I'd have to shoot you... (or somebody would meet me in a dark alley and shoot me - which would be worse!)

Suffice to say old missiles have old technology not sure you'd kill them enough with a 600m/s closing speed to stop them hitting you...

And new missiles are probably EMI shielded, right?

Well no, not really, (not by actually design) but they are long, cylindrical, fully enclosed metal tubes, my old physics is pretty hazy nowadays but I'm not sure what a microwave would actually do when presented with such an object

it wouldn't fit.

"How long should I nuke this missile for?"

Thargoid wrote:

Now all we need is a big E and a grating noise to appear?

To make strong microwaves, you need a lot of electricity, usually from a bulky generator. Instead the team packed small explosives into a five-foot-long, six-inch-wide tube. The detonation produces a burst of electrons, which power a microwave tube—similiar to the type in a microwave oven—that radiates microwaves. An antenna zaps those at a target, where they can cause a circuit-frying current surge in electronics. The explosion destroys the device, and although the U.S. Army funded the work for “educational purposes,” it doesn’t take much imagination to think of uses for a one-shot, missile-shaped electronics buster,says James Benford, a high-power-microwave expert at Microwave Sciences in California.

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2 ... lectronics

Seems to me that if a small team could get close enough to an enemy missile, plane or other electronic equipment, they could simply use their explosives to destroy the item instead of producing microwaves.
Portable anti-tank weapons, rocket propelled grenades and demolition charges already fulfill the intended role of the device.
I can imagine a military unit attempting to use one of these devices to cook a bag of popcorn though.

Their research does seem to prove the notion that "Any problem on earth can be solved with the careful application of high explosives. ..."
http://www.entertonement.com/clips/phwn ... sValkyrie-[/img]

No, but they can cook people at long range...

http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/Microwa ... persal.htm

and I've seen this work - marines running around screaming as they try to get out of the way of the beam...

DaddyHoggy wrote:

No, but they can cook people at long range...

http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/Microwa ... persal.htm

and I've seen this work - marines running around screaming as they try to get out of the way of the beam...

E-Gad!

I'll join the critics cited in the article as having an opinion that the device is unsafe.
Thanks for helping me learn something new today, DH.

Of course, microwaves have the advantage over explosives of being non lethal...

Tell that to the hotdog my daughter put in the microwave for 10 minutes, instead of 1 like I told her....

Ooh.. who had to clean up that microwave?
Almost as exciting as the time I forgot the spoon in the mug of hot cocoa I was nuking...