How I Got My Laser Eye Injury
By Phil of Funranium Labs
https://www.funraniumlabs.com/2024/07/how-i-got-my-laser-eye-injury/
This is one of the dirty little secrets of a scifi battle with laser pistols.
Every innocent bystander between you and the horizon is at a risk of laser blindness
https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/sidearmenergy.php#laserblind
Well, innocent bystanders can be protected by the blink reflex, as described in a familiar (to me) conversation on your page.
The idea is that a trigger press initiates a safe flash before the main shine. Maybe it could be two or three safe flashes of increasing brightness before the main shine.
The military could VR goggle optics, to avoid any optical paths to damage eyes. Or if you're on a budget, the pirate eyepatch method works. Once.
@isaackuo @nyrath yeah I like the sci-fi sub-tradition where, because beams, projectiles & explosives are too risky in space boarding battles that the standard for personal combat, for either attackers or defenders, defaults to clubs, armored gloves, maybe nets, as part of hand-to-hand melee.
because if the wrong thing gets pierced or malfunctioned then *all* those folks will Have A Very Bad Day in Space
if one side wants the prize.booty at least. if its not a kamikaze
I've always found this a bit curious, myself, as it's hard to come up with circumstances that lead to a contested boarding battle without your spacecraft already being all shot up for, if no other purposes, immobilization to enable boarding in the first place.
(Undefended static habitats aside, I suppose.)
It doesn't have to use acceleration to escape you to make boarding impractical; it just has to be able to generate enough differential acceleration to tear your boarding pod/tube/grapple/etc. off the hull, or to make itself too dangerous to close with for fear of collision.
Well, obviously it depends on the specific details of how boarding is actually accomplished and what spacecraft are like in the setting.
But in a realistic setting there will generally be sturdy anchor points/rails around the hull for safety harnesses to attach onto.
The fastest way into a ship wouldn't even need those - you just use an oval line charge to blow a hole in an unoccupied portion of the ship and then seal it back up with a patch.
@cerebrate @synlogic @nyrath
Immobilization is not necessary. If the boarding vessel or EVA suits have higher acceleration than the target spacecraft, the target spacecraft can't use acceleration to avoid boarding.
Now, it might spin as fast as it could and hope for the best, but otherwise insufficient thrust is insufficient thrust.