I noted that I would be unhappy with a non-bulletproof spacestation
or warship, and "Jeffrey Kaplan <
gor...@gordol.org>" wrote:
> You're in a firefight, it will likely not be a single shot that hits
> the hull, it'll be lots of shots that hit the hull. Eventually, the
> hull gets weakened to the point of failure or puncture. This would
> happen sooner with slug throwers than PPG bolts.
And it would happen instantly if the enemy has mounted a gatling gun to
their ship and starts shooting at you. B5 does not have force-field
type tech, and bullets don't slow down moving through a vacuum. In
a vacuum, bullets would have a range measured in tens or even hundreds
of miles. And you wouldn't even need chemical explosives, because with
fusion tech you could use magnetic linear accelerators.
Based on what we see and what Garibaldi said, anyone who wants to take
out B5 (and apparently any of the EA cruisers or destroyers) can put some
of these on their spaceship:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/M61_Vulcan
and fire it from 20km out. 60 seconds of continuous fire from 10 of
these would put so many projectiles on course that there would be no
hope of intercepting them - and you'd only have 20 seconds to respond,
which wouldn't even be enough time to launch starfuries (even if there
was anything for them to do). If the hull can't handle the slugs from
a .45, anyone with a military junkyard could obliterate the station (or
any of the military vessels) and kill nearly everyone on board in
minutes.
Arguing the same point from the other direction: I have the memory of
something crashing directly into the side of the station at one point;
some small spacecraft during a battle, I think. If the side of the
station can survive an impact from a space vehicle moving at high speed
and remain airtight, I don't see how a slug from .45 is going to get
through it. (The same argument could be made for the episode in
which a Centauri heavy cruiser attacks B5: why use so few heavy
projectiles if 100 times as many tiny ones would work?)
"If you'd like to be a contestant on 'The Running Man', send a self-
addressed stamped envelope to ICS Talent Hunt, in care of your local
affiliate. Then go out and do something _really_ despicable!"
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