In 9/11/21 19:18, Richard Aiken - raikenclw at gmail.com (via tml list)
wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 9, 2021 at 4:02 AM James Catchpole - jlcatchpole at
> googlemail.com <http://googlemail.com> (via tml list)
> <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:
>
>     <snip>
>
>     The behaviour of the particles fired by a meson gun is certainly
>     weird, since they apparently don't decay at all until at the
>     target distance. I don't much like the idea that strong or weak
>     force control is exerted on them all the way to the target, since
>     that implies that such control could be targeted on another ship
>     at extreme ranges.
>
>     One possible handwave is to say that jump space, or something
>     similar, is involved somehow. The mesons are tunneled from the gun
>     to the target point where they emerge as a beam and immediately
>     start decaying...
>
>     The other possible explanation is the old suggestion that it was
>     invented by Prof. Meson and involves complex physics we know
>     nothing about...
>
>
> ISTR someone positing that the appellation "meson gun" originated with
> a TAS reporter of the time misunderstanding the technical briefing he
> was given and the IN subsequently not trying very hard to correct this
> (for security reasons).
>
> --
> Richard Aiken

Richard,

What happened before the rise of the TAS, such as during the duration of
the Nth Interstellar War, after the Terrans developed (IIRC the first
non-Ancient) meson bang bangs?

Figures, though - the bunch of human nutcases without a collective
cultural memory of the Ancients being the first ones to independently
develop meson weapons, within 2 centuries (canonically) of independently
developing Jump.

Alex