Relativistic Kill Vehicles: Mass Driver Calculator
This is an excessively simplified mass driver calculator. The primary simplification comes from the naive calculation deriving the net magnetic force - it is an unrealistic upper bound, working on the assumption that the magnetic field strength will drop from full power to zero across the length of the projectile, that this drop will remain constant as the projectile travels, that the projectile has high permeability and will not saturate. Other issues that this calculator ignores include inducing torque in the projectile, the risks of off-center drift, and so on.
The Relativistic Rocket functions were invaluable here. For a more detailed overview on a superior upper bound, see this post by Kuroneko, along with the rest of that thread. I may try to incorporate some of it so that this can have some utility as a more general mass driver calculator.
| Display Commas | |
| Scientific Notation Threshold / Precision | |
| Magnetic Field Strength (Teslas) | |
| Gun Efficiency (percent) | |
| Projectile Heat Share (percent) | |
| Projectile Facing Area (square meters) | |
| Projectile Length (meters) | |
| Projectile Density (grams per cubic centimeter) | |
| Projectile Invariant Mass (kilograms) | |
| Idealized Force Acting on Projectile (Newtons) | 1,591,549.432737564 |
| Projectile Acceleration (meters per second per second) | 212.2065910316752 |
| Total Length of Gun (kilometers) | |
| Total Length of Gun (light years) | |
| Projectile Acceleration Time (gun's frame, seconds) | |
| Final Projectile Velocity (meters per second) | |
| Lorentz Contraction | |
| Final Projectile Velocity (Fraction of c) | |
| Projectile Acceleration Time (projectile's frame, seconds) | 3,633,600.9018627354 |
| Projectile Relativistic Mass (kilograms) | 49,382.64770162368 |
| Momentum (Newton·seconds) | 14,632,807,821,994.428 |
| Final Projectile Kinetic Energy (gigajoules) | 3,764,224,652,104.396 |
| Final Projectile Kinetic Energy (tonnes TNT equivalent) | 899,671,283,963.7657 |
| Average Energy Expendature (gun's frame, megawatts) | 818,838,008.75845 |
| Peak Energy Expendature (gun's frame, megawatts) | 943,188,314.869971 |
| Average Projectile Heat Absorption (megawatts) | 1,035.9488435217795 |
| Peak Projectile Heat Absorption (megawatts) | 3,105.1424179674596 |
| Interstellar Medium Particle Density (atoms / cubic centimeter) | |
| Distance to Target (light years) | |
| Intervening Matter (grams) | 0.2674236597095055 |
| Intervining Mass Ratio (percent) | 0.00000356564879612674 |
| Particle Impact Rate (atoms/second) | 507,270,671,162,473.5 |
| Particle Impact Rate (invariant grams/second) | 1.1030135186624116e-9 |
| Particle Impact Energy (Watts) | 553,598.7571404616 |
| Particle Effective Blackbody (Kelvin) | 1,767.646235351453 |
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