Shielding ITP

[golentan]

Hey guys, thought I'd pick your brains. I'm writing a Sci-Fi story and the major problem the characters have is a microid (micro asteroid, in universe term) smashing into the ship. One of my friends said that that shouldn't happen because they should have sufficient shielding to prevent such impacts. That discussion (plus some on the boards recently), got me thinking about different forms of shielding, so this is what I've got:

Broad Category: Deflector Shields

Deflector shields are anything that serves as a physical barrier to impact. Examples include:

Medieval style shields (really any physical armor).
Force Fields.
Active Defense Measures (sand guns, Anti-missile batteries).
Deflector Fields (a large area of curved space or magnetic fields that makes something miss).

The main general problem with deflectors is they need to apply energy to an incoming attack to stop it. Over sufficiently large distances for sufficiently slow moving projectiles this is easier (last example entry), but the faster something is or with less warning it becomes more energy intensive and hard to engineer.

Broad Category: Absorption Shields

Absorption shields are anything that absorb and convert the energy of an attack.
Examples include:

Crash barriers (really any defense hinging on water).
Black Globes in Traveller/Warship shielding in Niven/Pournelle's works.
An argument can be made that Sandcasters fall in this category as well as or instead of Deflector shields.

The main problem being: What do you do with the energy? If you're converting it, it's going somewhere, probably somewhere on your ship. Having the energy of a nuke go through your electronics isn't much better than it going through your hull if you can't radiate it quickly enough.

Broad Category: Eversion Shielding

Eversion shielding is anything with an albedo of (or arbitrarily close to) 1. In some ways it's a suped-up deflector, and I'm considering merging it into that. It's distinct though in that it doesn't apply force, it simply absorbs none.
Examples:

White Globes in Traveller.
The Squozer in Red Thunder.

The main problem being: Ummm... How do we get an albedo of 1? How do we navigate when it's active? How do we shoot back?

So I'd like to ask everyone for ideas on:
1. Other broad categories of shielding that I may have missed.
2. Other examples.
3. Problems with or solutions for shielding.
4. Anything else you think the thread needs.

Thanks.

[Player_Zero]

I don't think another reading your story will obsess over the different types of shields your ships have. Perhaps something to develop once you've finished your draft?

[Cyrano]

I was always under the impression that, barring your examples of water-based absorption shielding, heavier armour and point defense, that shielding was a distinctly unrealistic prospect. And if you don't care about realism, just have Dragons solve everything, it doesn't matter.

Although I might be wrong!

[golentan]

This isn't for my story, it's just fascination about the subject.

I don't think shielding is reasonable. Hence the original argument. I'm picking everyones brains for later, and out of curiosity. I'm doing this for the discussion, not for a story fix. I like my story. It's interesting, even if everyone who's read it has told me reality is unrealistic. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealityIsUnrealistic) (The crew doesn't die of explosive decompression, they survive as long as people in vacuum do in real life with appropriate damage and symptoms. The radiator is damaged, causing the ship to begin overheating in space even though "everybody knows space is cold." etc. etc.)

[Mando Knight]

A ship traveling in space for extended periods of time should have sufficient armor to deflect or withstand micrometeorites and such. It's a known issue, so unless something was wrong with the ship, there should be means to avoid having problems with it.

[golentan]

A ship traveling in space for extended periods of time should have sufficient armor to deflect or withstand micrometeorites and such. It's a known issue, so unless something was wrong with the ship, there should be means to avoid having problems with it.

2 words. Point Defense.

They've got systems for dealing with micrometeorites. They had a bad day and old sensors. Can we move on please?

[thubby]

the method of travel could provide its own solution. sub/hyperspace jumps, space/time warping effects, etc. could create a situation where moving is the simplest defense against those sorts of things.

you can combine all of the various kinds of armor to create a space worthy ship, it doesn't have to be just one. magnetic field to repel small debris, active defenses for whatever gets through, and a nice tough hull just in case.

if you want to be a little different you could have ships have a lot of ablative armor on their front. it would limit their range based on how much is still there, would solve the problem of moving forward quickly, and i imagine would have interesting implications on an economic level.

i think it would be cool to see a universe where this sort of thing makes giant space cruisers prohibitive.

[FoE]

How hard is this sci-fi story? Do they have FTL travel? Teleportation? What are their weapons? Are there aliens? Details, man, we need more details!

[golentan]

Sigh. Giving up fighting derail.


It's a reasonably hard Sci-Fi story. No real phlebotinum. They do have a UFT, so they have limited gravity control (und thus inertialess drive). Power is supplied by fusion, or very carefully contained matter annihilation (you create a positron from a starting energy supply then collide it with another electron, netting the original energy investment plus 32 percent of that of an electron).

Faster than light doesn't exist, but I might introduce it later in the universe's timeline if I run out of ideas in the Crazy Cometary Belt. No Teleportation!!!

Weapons are many and varied, both particle and energy. Weapons of War tend to be smart projectiles or really high energy boom booms (anti-proton ion cannons, for example. Set to converge with another beam near a target, not hit it directly), point defense being lasers, sand turrets, and limited gravitics.

Aliens no, nonhumans yes (both genetically engineered and fully artificial).