Quote:
Originally Posted by Ilya
I never read any Harrington novels -- "Armageddon Inheritance" and "Apocalypse Troll" convinced me I never want to read anything by Weber again. One blooper I found amusing was relativistic missiles with fusion warheads. That's like taking a 5-inch cannonball and sticking a firecracker on it.
....
|
Well, in his HH novels, he does point out (several times) that, if you can't maneouvre, all your enemy has to do is launch his missiles from a long way away (so that he can dodge anything you fire back) and give them plenty of time to reach very very high velocities relative to you. Then, the warhead is totally irrelevant (he calls this "kinetic strikes").
But, if memory serves, there was an even more OTT "unreal physics" tactic in E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman series: essentially, they neutralised the inertia of a whole planet, dragged it halfway across the galaxy, then switched off the machine that neutralised its inertia, so it resumed its original velocity (which was, of course, very large and in the opposite direction from the target planet).