Ray: "What's stopping us from using particle beams?"
Obligatory: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent2.php
Nothing is stopping us, the Daqin are already using them. I imagine particle beams sit in a weird middle-ground territory and as such they aren't widely used which in turn means there aren't many super-mature particle beam weapon systems in the setting. The Daqin hands down have the best ones simply for the fact they are the only people regularly using them. The Magnetic Assembly also started playing around with these kinds of beam weapons but mostly as a laser-focusing scheme which is a bit separate from this conversation.
Compared to Railguns:
Particle beams are basically shooting much smaller bullets, so with the same amount of energy they should be able to generate a beam many times faster. While the beam will suffer bloom, which will make the beam ineffective after some amount of distance, the faster time to hit the target would translate into a greater effective range against maneuvering targets. It may also be more accurate, and be able to hit multiple targets faster with a continuous beam.
Compared to Lasers:
Lasers are going to be the king of long range weapons that aren't missiles being sent to glide for an extended period of time. It moves even faster than a particle beam, suffers less bloom, and is a technology that we've already invested a lot of money in so we know all sorts of tricks like adaptive optics to make it work better in atmosphere or other locations.
Then there is the Weirdness:
This would make you think that the Particle Beam is some kinda middle ground between a laser and a railgun but these beams have all sorts of weirdness and special circumstances that apply to them.
I don't think any of the above questions about beams are deal-killers for their use as a weapon, I just don't see large institutions that like safe bets being attracted to developing them.
Obligatory: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent2.php
Nothing is stopping us, the Daqin are already using them. I imagine particle beams sit in a weird middle-ground territory and as such they aren't widely used which in turn means there aren't many super-mature particle beam weapon systems in the setting. The Daqin hands down have the best ones simply for the fact they are the only people regularly using them. The Magnetic Assembly also started playing around with these kinds of beam weapons but mostly as a laser-focusing scheme which is a bit separate from this conversation.
Compared to Railguns:
Particle beams are basically shooting much smaller bullets, so with the same amount of energy they should be able to generate a beam many times faster. While the beam will suffer bloom, which will make the beam ineffective after some amount of distance, the faster time to hit the target would translate into a greater effective range against maneuvering targets. It may also be more accurate, and be able to hit multiple targets faster with a continuous beam.
Compared to Lasers:
Lasers are going to be the king of long range weapons that aren't missiles being sent to glide for an extended period of time. It moves even faster than a particle beam, suffers less bloom, and is a technology that we've already invested a lot of money in so we know all sorts of tricks like adaptive optics to make it work better in atmosphere or other locations.
Then there is the Weirdness:
This would make you think that the Particle Beam is some kinda middle ground between a laser and a railgun but these beams have all sorts of weirdness and special circumstances that apply to them.
- How much damage would they really do? Anatoli Bugorski took a particle beam to the face with the energy of 76 billion electron volts and basically walked it off. These high powered beams could fly right through a ship without hurting anything.
- But really how much damage would they do? On the other hand, if these high energy beams hit some heavy armor, the breaking radiation from the impact could irradiate and kill/incapacitate the crew.
- How much energy do you need to run the weapon? It seems like it takes a lot of energy to get these going, and particle beams TODAY are big, things that take a lot of power to get going. The energy requirements seem to be higher than a laser or a rail gun.
- How heavy are these things? Todays particle accelerates are big and heavy, often the size of a small town. If you're carrying one on your ship, I imagine your ship would need to be built around the weapon.
- Can you even hit the target? This is actually an instance where energy shields would work. Your beam needs to be charged to be accelerated, and even if you use charge neutralization techniques to strip that charge off your opponent can deploy beam-charging strategies against you to re-charge the beam and then deflect the beam with its own magnetic field or particle beam.
I don't think any of the above questions about beams are deal-killers for their use as a weapon, I just don't see large institutions that like safe bets being attracted to developing them.