Topic: What is a blaster?

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

A serious question. What is a blaster? How does it work? What does it fire? How does it injure targets?

Best wishes,
Nicholas

[allenrmaher]

Looking at the SW movies... it fires a pretty coloured light bolts at impossibly slow speed that does small explosive damage when it hits a target rather than a typical energy burn. Blaster is a poor fit for hard sci-fi, good for space opera.

[Mungo]

Hi,

To quote SM2: it is a particle weapon that contains a miniature particle accelerator.

So it must shoot ions. How does it generate these? One idea would be an equivalent to modern electric space propulsion systems, where ions are generated by a very strong electric field applied to Caesium or Indium. Unfortunately you do not generate a blast but a stream, which is also not very strong.

So I think it is most likely plasma, which is generated in a heating chamber. Question is then how it is accelerated. Perhaps the positive ions are extracted and accelerated by a strong electric field. Of course then the other question is where the electrons go in order to keep the blaster on neutral potential. Perhaps there is a second, parallel, accelerator so that you really generate a plasma bolt (instead of an ion bolt).

The damage would then come from both the kinetic energy as well as the heat. The result would therefore be a higher energy density than the laser but shorter range due to dispersion.

BR
Juergen

[TheMAG]

In SM:P (Blaster Law) blasters are described as...

"A blaster weapon is much like a laser, except that it fires a particle beam suspended in a laser. These particle beams can have many different properties. They are, however, typically short range..."

They cause damage similar to radation damage due to the accelerated particles (and possibly some laser damage as well). I think they offer a nice alternative to the long-ranged lasers. Another option is a plasma weapon as described by Mungo above, perhaps less powerful than the plasma weapons from spacemaster (where the plasma clings to the target).

Try to look up "particle beam weapon" and "particle beam" in Wikipedia. They have some interesting descriptions and a bit of the physics behind the whole thing.

[TheMAG]

Okay so here are two descriptons lifted from Wikipedia...

"Particle beam weapon"
A neutral particle beam weapon ionizes hydrogen gas by either stripping an electron off of each hydrogen atom, or by allowing each hydrogen atom to capture an extra electron. When hydrogen gains electrons it forms anions; when hydrogen atoms lose electrons they form cations. A particle beam weapon that accelerates anions uses a traveling wave type particle accelerator. In this kind of ion accelerator, the negative ions are released inside a cylindrical ion acceleration chamber. This chamber has an electrode with an alternating electric charge of up to 1,000,000,000 volts inside it.

These stages happen:

- While the charge on the electrode is positive, the ions are attracted to the negative charge on the electrode, and thus bunched around it.
- The alternating voltage switches the charge to negative on the accelerating electrode.
- The negative charge electrostatically repels the negative ions and accelerates them to near the velocity of light.
- The resulting high energy beam of anions passes through a chamber filled with low pressure gas.
- There, collisions with the gas strip the extra electrons from the anions, and thus make the particle beam neutral.
- The particle beam proceeds straight to its target, and damages it by running into it, and by disrupting the structure of the target with its kinetic energy.

"Directed-energy weapon"
Particle beam weapons can use charged or neutral particles, and can be either endoatmospheric or exoatmospheric. Particle beams as beam weapons are theoretically possible, but practical weapons have not been demonstrated. Certain types of particle beams have the advantage of being self-focusing in the atmosphere.

Blooming is not limited to lasers, but is also a problem in particle beam weapons. Energy that would otherwise be focused on the target spreads out; the beam becomes less effective.

Thermal blooming occurs in both charged and neutral particle beams, and occurs when particles bump into one another under the effects of thermal vibration, or bump into air molecules.
Electrical blooming occurs only in charged particle beams, as ions of like charge repel one another.
---

So, a blaster could be a neutral particle beam accelerator with high energy cost, lots of kinetic energy (impact and heat/radiation damage), but short atmospheric ranges.

And sorry for my ramblings... I'll stop now

[jem]

Check out Blaster Law - some company put it together 

Jem

[chk]

IMO There's no justification in hard science for "blasters", so I'm particularly amused by the wikipedia science quotes . Blasters are a Space Opera weapon, and they're best if you don't try to come up with a rationalizing explanation like the one in SM:P.

They're typically one-handed weapons, but larger than a pistol. They behave a bit like slug throwers in that they fire "shots" (often even with some form of recoil, at least in B-movie actor hands . They're specifically *not* lasers, which behave differently (you can sweep a laser beam across a target, for example). As mentioned above, their "projectiles" travel impossibly slowly.

Think Stargate SG-1 staff weapons (only hand-held) and you wouldn't be too far off, I think. There are lots of classic SF examples (Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers), but the special effects weren't as good then, which is why I chose the SG-1 example...

[TheMAG]

I don't really see a problem with blasters being a particle beam weapon firing "bullets" of high speed particles (which would give you recoil). We have particle beam accelerators today, it is "just" a matter of getting them down to weapon size and including a good (very good) powersupply. But heck, they have 500 years in the Tintamar setting to do that from now on. Anyway, I prefer that explanation over the space opera/star wars type weapons. I Havn't seen the Stargate series...

[Defendi]

I spent a LOT of time talking with a particle physicist before writing blaster law.  I determined that radiation from blasters is a non issue in a particle beam.  I added the option of allowing "Dirty" blasters because we decided in the converation that you could design a blaster with a poorly-made particle beam specifically designed to cause some minor radiation damage.  In truth, though, anything the would be damaged on a genetic level by the radiation is already burned to a crisp by laser.

The primary advantage of a particle beam is heat management.  That's why in the base rules of Blaster Law, there are only three real differences between a blaster and a laser.  1)  The blaster causes greater atmospheric lensing do to the carried superheated particle, hence a lesser range.  2)  Blasters can sustain fire better.  3)  Do to the heated particles, the blaster and laser have slightly different interaction with armor.

In most game situations this comes down to range, armor coatings, and burst verus continuous fire.

I waffled a long time over making blasters particle or plasma weapons.  But in the end I felt I needed three types of weapos and I was supposed to stay compatible with Silent Death.

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

In discussion with the alpha playtesters, we've come up with a design using quantum entanglement that makes blasters short-range particle beam weapons, which shoot particle bolts (which emit photons providing the visible bolt), and are relatively easy to deliberately overload and explode. This does not yet mean they will be included in HARP SF - I have to be psyched up to write yet another critical table.

Best wishes,
Nicholas