Hi there,
After a bit of talking on IRC with some of you, I began to think about the Tesla. (how did it work? how to keep credibility and coolness etc…)
Out of the mini brainstorm come some ideas:
the tesla use capacitor to accumulate charges.
the guidance process is taken by LASER(s) witch ionize the air between the coil and the target.
dissipating a lot of energy, the device must be cooled
from that, I try to extract a general shape, and at the moment It look like that:
The attachment c_09.jpg is no longer available
It miss a lots of details, but it seem to me that it's a good start.
I will be happy to hear your comments/criticise/ideas
I still say that the idea to use lasers is stupid. The article that said it can be done also mentioned that the laser used happened 50 Gigawatts or fifty BILLION watts. The Germans use an anti aircraft laser system, it's output is 50 Kilowatts. The laser needed to aim lighting was 1 million times more powerful than the anti-aircraft laser. Why not just use the laser?
Not to mention you wouldn't get the cool lightning look. It would be a straight line.
Hi there,
After a bit of talking on IRC with some of you, I began to think about the Tesla. (how did it work? how to keep credibility and coolness etc…)
Out of the mini brainstorm come some ideas:
the tesla use capacitor to accumulate charges.
the guidance process is taken by LASER(s) witch ionize the air between the coil and the target.
dissipating a lot of energy, the device must be cooled
from that, I try to extract a general shape, and at the moment It look like that:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]277[/ATTACH]
It miss a lots of details, but it seem to me that it's a good start.
I will be happy to hear your comments/criticise/ideas
That looks awesome, I think the base is a little big/thick though.
I still say that the idea to use lasers is stupid. The article that said it can be done also mentioned that the laser used happened 50 Gigawatts or fifty BILLION watts. The Germans use an anti aircraft laser system, it's output is 50 Kilowatts. The laser needed to aim lighting was 1 million times more powerful than the anti-aircraft laser. Why not just use the laser?
Not to mention you wouldn't get the cool lightning look. It would be a straight line.
In fact, you seam to forget we are speaking of science fiction here, not trying to prototype it.
We can imagine that we don't try to get the current get through the lasers path but simply to lower the air resistance in one direction to make the arc form easily where we want it to go.
We can also imagine «ionizing lasers» using interferometry to excite air molecules more effectively [or any other methods we get between now and telenode's invention.]
Propose a plausible mechanism for the cool lightning look, then.
Best I can come up with that doesn't involve a lot of pseudo-science.
Base how the tesla attacks on a real world tesla. Meaning they're seeking the the path of least resistance to ground. The suits and other things made by the humans provide such an extreme level of resistance that the only other things that give the teslas any chance to ground is via things that are not protected by this material. I.E. The aliens.
Simple, based in science, and allows us to have the cool lightning effect.
We can also imagine «ionizing lasers» using interferometry to excite air molecules more effectively [or any other methods we get between now and telenode's invention.]
Which is what that laser does. It charged the air. It required 50 billion watts to do it.
Basically how the laser worked is that they used the photons from the laser to bump into the air molecules to try and rid them of electrons. They had to use a LOT of photons (which is why the wattage was at 50 billion) in order to ride enough molecules of their electrons to provide a low enough level of resistance for the lightning to travel down the laser's path.
Interestingly enough, this removal of electrons actually caused some electricity. But nothing compared to the lightning or the 50 gigawatts used to create the laser.
This is science fiction, you know?
It is far less speculative to imagine we can achieve efficient ionising beam than that we can teleport clones into the field.
It is far less «stupid» to imagine a guiding system rather than hoping their will be no scratch in an armour after one or two fight or that their will be nothing to short the circuit (and remember that the marauder can shock humans, so they are not isolated).
Try not to manipulate data, we don't need millions of watt to ionizes 10cm³ of air, in actual system, most of the injected power is wasted. Remember that electrical arc form their own path without requiring a lot of power and that their nothing foolish to think we can make a path easier than another without «pseudo science» (a term which refer more to «telekinesis» than «efficiency extrapolation»).
Theyain, I would be happy if you could take the discussion into PM's. You do this great model no justice if this thread isn't available for a variety of feedback. ;)
Speaking about feedback: As I already mentioned on IRC, I think the overall concept is nice but you will need to make it fit neatly into a cuboid bounding box. The stand is too big compared to the rest. Also feel free to make the model taller (I don't think this is a necessity - if anyone thinks we should indeed stick to the tall Tremulous bounding box, speak up now).
