The "Science" behind Elite Dangerous!

[Exile]

First off, I'm not a physicist, and I make no claim to any of this being REAL science; though it will be based on some factual stuff.

Other warnings: This will be long winded, if you don't like reading, the main points will be in plain text, and the long winded bits will be in quotation boxes.

Now, let's get started!

I'm a huge nerd, and an amateur science fiction writer. In that capacity, I often try to ensure my science fiction is as close to reality as I can make it without ruining the fun of science fiction.

When I first started playing Elite Dangerous, a few things really nagged at me: Why were lasers visible? Why was there sound in space? Etc. etc.

Now, I understand a game partially hinging on space combat would be excessively boring if all you heard was your own breathing and the clicking of your trigger on the joystick; and all you saw was a little bright spot on a ship far in the distance.

So instead of arguing AGAINST the reasons why things are the way they are in Elite Dangerous, I decided to create a series of arguments to describe why they are the way they are!

I call this fluff; pseudo-science used to technobabble your way through things that would otherwise send a skeptic up the wall, as it did to me at the beginning.

So lets start with lasers!

Being an electronic-optronics technician for the armed forces, I actually work with lasers on a regular basis, so using a bit of real science and other facts from the Elite universe, I've come up with an explanation to the limitations we see in the game.

The short: Here are the things lasers in ED do that real lasers wouldn't.

1. They have very short range limitations.
2. They are visible in a vacuum.
3. They emit noise.
4. They're ridiculously powerful.

The long:

The term "laser" is an acronym that stands for a sentence: "light amplification by stimulated emission radiation." Lasers basically work by shining light through a medium that is excited electrically. When a photon collides with an excited atom, it splits into two identical photons, stripping away a level of energy from the atom as it does so. Thanks to a reflective surface and a partially transparent mirror inside the optical cavity, the photons keep bouncing back and forth, multiplying until they reach a high enough energy level to leave the output coupler; the semi-transparent mirror. Because the photons are all identical, they are all the same wavelength and all travelling in the same direction. Laser light is described as coherent and highly collimated; basically meaning that the light waves are in phase and travelling almost parallel to each other.

Due to these properties; lasers are invisible to the naked eye, unless:
A) They're being fired into the retina (which you should never do)
B) They're being refracted, reflected or diffused on a particle or surface.
i.e.: We see lasers when they're hitting dust particles, droplets of moisture(fog) or something else hanging in the air.

Being in space, the lasers in Elite Dangerous should be completely invisible until they hit the targets shields/hull, but they aren't!

Worst of all, light travels in a straight line to an infinite distance until it collides with something. With highly collimated, coherent lasers fired in space, their beams would eventually diverge, but not before travelling an EXTREMELY long distance!

My pseudo-science fluff explanation, main points are the explanation of the Frame Shift Drive and Doppler effect

Here's what I came up with that helps describe all these seemingly impossible observations.

In Elite Dangerous, compressing and expanding space seems to be done with relative ease at very low energy costs due to the Frame Shift Drive; which is actually just a different name for a real scientifically sound concept known as the Alcubierre Drive; invented by, you guessed it, Miguel Alcubierre. Look him up on Wikipedia!

Now, I'll explain the Alcubierre drive briefly so that we're all on the same page. The drive basically compresses the space in front of you, and expands it behind you; then reverses the process; effectively inch-worming the space time continuum. A region of normal space in the center can then be carried through space beyond relativistic speeds without breaking Einsteins equation. You're never ACTUALLY going faster than light, you're just riding a wave of Space Time that is being compressed and expand.

Back to lasers! They're expensive! ... energy-wise of course. So, why would you rack your brain creating an energy guzzling conventional laser that is powerful enough to melt hulls when you can use any old laser and simply expand and compress space in order to take advantage of our friend the Doppler effect?

Dopler Effect:

The Doppler effect is why cars sound higher pitched when they are travelling toward you, and suddenly lower as they travel away. It happens because the sound waves bouncing off the car are being shortened as they travel toward you because the car, being the source of the sound, is ALSO travelling toward you.

In astronomy, scientists use the Doppler effect to find planets around stars, because the light waves bouncing off of a planet rotating TOWARD an observer are compressed, they move up along the electromagnetic spectrum, and literally shift toward the Ultra Violet, or the blue side of the spectrum. They call this Blue Shift. The opposite happens when a planet is moving away, this is called the Red Shift, because the wavelengths are expanding and dropping toward the Infra Red side of the spectrum.

So basically, my hypothesis is that laser weapons in Elite Dangerous are using Frame Shift technology to create a region of Expanded space just before the output coupler of a laser(the source of the collimated beam); they then stretch this expanded bubble to a given distance; which, when in contact with a ships hull, or shields, catastrophically compresses the laser light, driving its energy levels from the visible range high up beyond the Gamma range; effectively dropping a giant star on the hull of the target ship.

Conclusions:

So, let's go over the things we didn't think lasers should do.

First, they have a range limitation; we can fluff this out by way of the frame shift bubble that has to reach out to touch the target in order to deliver the now highly compressed light waves to the target. The weapon system can only create a frame shift region to a certain range before it becomes prohibitively expensive in terms of energy use.

Secondly, they are visible in a vacuum. This one requires a bit more artistic license. What I came up with is that, though the coherent light is fired into the expanded Frame Shift bubble at high energies, (here comes the fluff) "On impact with a shield, hull or the end of the frame shift bubble, the laser light reflecting on the surface of the medium re-enters the frame shift conduit produced by the weapon, but at a much lower energy level, that of the red wavelength; and is focused along the surface of the warp field, creating the telltale shimmer of pulse and beam lasers."

In third place we have the noise. Now, human beings are creatures who have evolved on earth. We hunted for food over thousands of years using our eyes and our ears. My explanation for ALL sound in Elite Dangerous that isn't happening inside the cockpit, is a highly sophisticated virtual reality software that uses light sensors and other transducers to "hear" for us where we can't; and produce sounds that allow us to react to the stimuli that is beyond our bodies ability to comprehend.

The last thing was the power of the lasers. Without knowing the actual warping factors involved with the Frame Shift drive, I can't surmise as to how much amplification is happening with the light waves in my scenario; but we can imagine a laser used to cut steel here in our time, modified to fire into a warp bubble to get amplified to some umpteenth degree, and come out on the other end with wavelengths far beyond the Ultra Violet range.

So there you have it! The reasons for powerful, visible, noisy range limited lasers in Elite Dangerous!

Hope you enjoyed my ramblings.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Er, you can't fire weapons in SC, so that kills your first argument.

Anyway,


You don't hear the lasers, you hear the capacitors discharging.

You don't see the lasers, the HUD in your cockpit is simulating that for you.

The simplest explanations are usually the best, and people are more likely to read them, too.

 

[Exile]

Luckily I'm a selfish , so I mostly do these things for no one other than myself; therefore not having a requirement for anyone to read it. I put it up for the simple fact that I assumed a space sim forum would probably harbor people who enjoy theorizing.

You're right, sometimes the simplest explanations ARE the best; but there's a flaw in the cockpit simulating the lasers: The lasers are still visible after a cockpit blowout.

Not firing during SC has to do with the fact that there are intense stresses on the hull when the ship is in Frame Shift, which requires hardpoints retracted (this is written in the manual if you were wondering where I got it from); other than those like the Interdiction device which are designed to function in Supercruise. The frame shift fields I theorize are used by the weapon systems would be much smaller and less powerful than those used to create the warp field around the ship; so I'm not sure why you think that debunks my theory.

Capacitors discharging is a great idea for the sound of the lasers though. Mind you that time constant would be insane to take that long; but I guess if they're some kind of crazy superconductors or some other highly futuristic material it's totally plausible.

But I'm not here to argue; this is all just fun speculation.

 

[Cmdr Pli55ken]

You don't hear the lasers, you hear the capacitors discharging.

But you do hear it hit the enemy hull...that certainly wouldn't be the case.

The last thing was the power of the lasers.

I've seen what industrial CO2 lasers can do at close range. The power is dfinitely there.

Not firing during SC makes sense. It would be a waste of energy/ammo. Objects are WAY too far away (light seconds!). Your beam would travel seconds to get anywhere and by thet time the target (also travelling at SC speeds) is no longer there. Projectiles would take years to get there.


My beef is more with the multiguns:
The barrels of multiguns would melt almost instantly if fired in a real vacuum as depicted in the game. Even though space is cold, vacuum is an almost perfect insulator (that's why your thermos has a vacuum layer). Without convection only radiation losses remain for cooling. The heat buildup in such a gun would be enormous. (Note for example thet the international spacestation would overheat if the ammonia cooling systems were to fail)

 

[Exile]

My beef is more with the multiguns:
The barrels of multiguns would melt almost instantly if fired in a real vacuum as depicted in the game. Even though space is cold, vacuum is an almost perfect insulator (that's why your thermos has a vacuum layer). Without convection only radiation losses remain for cooling. The heat buildup in such a gun would be enormous. (Note for example thet the international spacestation would overheat if the ammonia cooling systems were to fail)

That's a really good point I hadn't thought of!
Rotating multi-barrel systems ARE used to dissipate heat; so I suppose one idea would be that some kind of small heatsink is being used to suck the heat out of each barrel as it's travelling toward the chamber for another shot.

Any other ideas?

 

[philux]

The devs stated at multiple occasions in the past that they intentionally sacrificed realism for fun in terms of flight physics; projectiles; visible lasers; weapon, engine and other ship sounds; etc.

 

[Exile]

The devs stated at multiple occasions in the past that they intentionally sacrificed realism for fun in terms of flight physics; projectiles; visible lasers; weapon, engine and other ship sounds; etc.

I completely agree.

I'm just filling in the gaps to satisfy my curiosity. I'm using science and science fiction to create plausible in-fiction things that translate to development choices made in the interest of fun.

I'm very happy that we can see and hear the lasers, I find it exhilarating in combat. Nonetheless, my scientific mind needs to fill the gap... probably because I'm slightly obsessive.

 

[Cmdr Pli55ken]

The devs stated at multiple occasions in the past that they intentionally sacrificed realism for fun in terms of flight physics; projectiles; visible lasers; weapon, engine and other ship sounds; etc.

Oh, I'm not saying they should change anything. It's just fun to look at the realiyt vs. the fantasy. In the end this is a game, and from the flight model to faster-than-light-travel to the weapons to the layout of solar systems, to... I'm all for sacrificing reality if it makes the game more fun.
If I want reality I'll run a NASA solar system simulator.

 

[philux]

My previous post was not meant as criticism just an FYI. I'm a flight simmer and I miss more complex flight mechanisms, weapon systems and avionics, for instance.

 

[Exile]

Oh, I'm not saying they should change anything. It's just fun to look at the realiyt vs. the fantasy. In the end this is a game, and from the flight model to faster-than-light-travel to the weapons to the layout of solar systems, to... I'm all for sacrificing reality if it makes the game more fun.
If I want reality I'll run a NASA solar system simulator.

Totally agree.

If I wanted realistic space flight I'd play Kerbal, and kill a bunch of brave brave idiots.

 

[Poseidal]

That's a really good point I hadn't thought of!
Rotating multi-barrel systems ARE used to dissipate heat; so I suppose one idea would be that some kind of small heatsink is being used to suck the heat out of each barrel as it's travelling toward the chamber for another shot.

Any other ideas?

The Multicannons power consumption mostly goes into the cooling. They wouldn't require that much energy to spin and fire, and the weapon capacitor is mainly for weapon cooling.

 

[Exile]

My previous post was not meant as criticism just an FYI. I'm a flight simmer and I miss more complex flight mechanisms, weapon systems and avionics, for instance.

No worries. I didn't take it as an offense or negative criticism.

It was, from my perspective, a simple observation.

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The Multicannons power consumption mostly goes into the cooling. They wouldn't require that much energy to spin and fire, and the weapon capacitor is mainly for weapon cooling.

Right, but from a scientific perspective; cooling happens from either convection, radiation or conduction. So the capacitors would be charged by the power plant, and I suppose discharged to power some kind of advanced thermoelectric cooler, like a sci-fi super peltier cooler?

I can understand the capacitors dumping pulses of energy into coolers for the multi-cannons, but to say the weapons capacitors are there mainly for cooling would kind of upset the logic involved in powering and firing a ship outfitted with lasers.

I suppose multi-cannons take much less power from the weapons caps.