Tavarokk
Pursuer of perversion
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- Jan 10, 2015
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You can't appeal to Newton laws in a system where mass of an object is variable. Classic mechanics is built on presuppositions that don't hold in a system where eezo exists.Newton's first law of motion:
"In an inertial frame of reference, an object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by a force."
Oh? Do tell, where does all the additional momentum and kinetic energy appear from, then? The problem with your reasoning is that if ME tech doesn't obey conservation of energy principle, it'd have been trivial to build a perpetual motion engine with it, and while we can engage in interpretative dance when it comes to mechanics by bringing in relativistic physics, dark matter and who knows what else, it's rather more difficult - impossible, even, I'd say - to work around 2nd law of thermodynamics without everything stopping making sense. What little it already does, anyhow.The mass effect field is not a force, it simply lowers or increases the mass of something. A projectile loosed from the carrier is going to maintain its velocity in the vacuum of space when it leaves the ME field, but its mass will return to normal, giving it its actual destructive power.
Do we actually have quotes that mass drivers apply pseudo-speed to projectiles? ME tech can generate real thrust just as easily (biotics being obvious example), so for all we know mass drivers are just gravity-based equivalent of electrokinetic weapons.This is backed up by Canon, in fact, with how the ME mass drivers work. If it was as you say, then Canon mass drivers would be impossible, as any projectile fired from a mass driver would immediately slow down the very instant it leaves the barrel.
A ship traveling at FTL is enveloped in ME field throughout entire transit, and inside that field it travels all the way with the normal, modest speed, attainable by its thrusters. There's no change in energy there.And if we look at FTL drives, then we see that they work by lowering the mass of the ship, which is then accelerated to FTL speeds with conventional thrusters until at the halfway point the thrusters are reversed, slowing the ship back down to sub light velocities.