- spurkis
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- Honorable Member
Posted by: Dustin 6047
It wouldn't be that hard to repositon the thing. In space there is no friction to slow it down, so only one burst of a thruster could do. Also, in Halo: Reach, the Pillar of Autumn is lifted into the air which most likely is heavier than an Orbital Defense Platform.
And it couldn't take an unbelievable amount of power to shoot a Mac gun. It's a magnetized working thing, meaning that you don't need to have as much power with you. Magnets make their own energy as they go. I think... I mean then again it is an artifical magnet...
Not entirely accurate. Yes, the lack friction redcues the need of power to move the thing, but at the same time the low gravity will make it go on until it breaks off. That means it would need more than one set of thrusters to stop it before it turns too much for the machinery to bare.
Also, MAC guns do require insane amounts of energy.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/4231461
"[...] the system will fire rounds at up to Mach 8, drawing on tremendous amounts of electricity to generate the current for each test shot. That, of course, is the problem with rail guns: Like lasers, they're out of step with modern-day generators and capacitors. Eight and 9-megajoule rail guns have been fired before, but providing 3 million amps of power per shot has been a limitation. At 32 megajoules, this new system appears to be the most powerful rail gun ever built, and the Office of Naval Research is installing additional capacitors at the Dahlgren facility to support it. The planned 64-megajoule weapon, if it's ever built, could require even more power--a staggering 6 million amps."
That is also why they don't just put hundreds of Onagers (the mini-MAC you use when protecting the Pillar) all over the battlefield. It was only a emergency solution and probably a prototype, that required ridiculous amounts of energy to operate and would stop functioning shortly after the predicted Pillar take-off.
[Edited on 04.17.2011 6:26 PM PDT]