Talk:United Aerospace Command/@comment-11135771-20141201151645/@comment-10905876-20141201201718

Understood sir.

-Zahn

The UAC Arrowhead positions itself near the cloud, and activates it's tractor beam for the first time outside the test range. The system is a primitive one: it is essentially an amplified artificial gravity system that projects a broad cone of gravitic energy (technobabble!) in the general area of the target. While this imprecise method is impractical for manipulating ships and fighters, it is perfect for shifting the orbit of a section of the ice cloud with its broad reach. A portion of the cloud is deflected to a course into the sun before the equipment burns out, a promising demonstration of tractor beam research as well.

OOC: So the way I figure the tractor beam would work is to crank up the power on an artificial gravity system, which is already accepted as within UAC tech capabilities as we have earth like gravity on Ceres. You set it up to project in the area of the target, and you use some type of technology to confine the beam to just the target. Perhaps multiple weaker focused beams are used for precision guidance of a target, say for landing a fighter or docking a ship to a space station. I figure it is useful for non military applications as well, so it's a wonderful technology to develop. A few posts down is where I got authorization to begin research, so research has been going on since then. Not very far yet, but this is a good progress report. Current limits I've imposed are: broad beam/lack of precision, fragile equipment, and it's going to be unable to move large ships. Two of the three will get worked out eventually, with the third being left in place to avoid the NPD knocking on Zahn's office.