Deflector Shields: Difference between revisions
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Note: one possibility is to put a beryllium shield in front. Beryllium has a high melting point and a VERY high specific heat capacity. It takes well over 2/3 its mass in TNT just to go from near absolute zero to the melting point. That should be enough for the small constant impacts. For the bigger ones, a layering of dust particles a hundred kilometers or so in front can be used to eliminate large objects.
Note that if a shield deflects not just [[Frickin' Laser Beams|rays]] but massive objects, Newton's third law kicks in, as it requires the force stopping the projectile to be equally applied ''to the shield''—and if it has negligible mass, this means ''directly to the shield generator'', bypassing armor and everything. So if the shield is not ''very'' thick and/or does not distribute load over a ''very'' large area, its not a missile-stopper: any massive object moving at a modest (on an orbital scale) speed will pass through the shield if their interaction is limited to the safe level or crush the shield emitters and ''then'' pass through if it isn't. So bonus points if the shield either mostly disintegrates incoming projectiles [http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/spacegunconvent.php#Kinetic_Kill_Weapons~Effects so that armor deals only with dust] (i.e. acts as a rechargeable sort of [https://web.archive.org/web/20081211000227/http://hitf.jsc.nasa.gov/hitfpub/shielddev/basicconcepts.html Whipple Shield]) or it's ''not'' a main defense against missiles and that pesky iron-nickel gravel, or both. Usually in these cases [[Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better]]. Unless, of course, the shield is [[Handwaved]] to stop kinetic energy as well.
Other issues involve a shield's interaction with the same effects passing ''from inside''<ref>it would need to either be asymmetric or able to open "windows" for firing weapons and any non-inertialess propulsion, with all problems this entails</ref> and lower-grade effects.<ref>if it blocks lasers, there would need to somehow be a method to only block radiation above a certain energy level or it would block visible light</ref>
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