Depleted Uranium Armor

Depleted Uranium Armor is an armor type that is standard on all ships traveling through space.

Function
While depleted unranium armor, or DUA, has been around since the early twentieth century, advances in molecular realligment and molecular physics, have enabled ship designers to drastically improve the protection DUA offers to the crew of a ship.

On its own, DUA is around 70% more dense than lead. When blended with uranium oxide, it's high melting point and sheer density offer superior protection against collisons with space debris, kinetic weapons such as rail guns, and light laser and plasma fire. When DUA is molecularlly enhanced to become ferromagnetic, an electrical charge can be run through the plating to drastically alter the characteristics of the metal, doubling its density and resistance to attack, in a process called densification. Many capital ships and some larger fighters utilize DUA as their primary defense against opposing forces.

Disadvantages
While DUA offers superior protection against attack against kinetic weapons and light energy weapons fire, its not without drawbacks. DUA is exremely heavy, and thus requires more energy to be moved and mounted onto the frame of a ship. Ships using DUA have to spend longer times to accelerate to the proper speed to initate a QST jump. Battle groups using different ships of different tonnage, must take eachother's masses into account before initating a sychronous tune into subspace.

DUA is also hazordous to human health. Inhalation of DUA dust can cause cancers and nuerological problems. After a ship using DUA lands, the ship and its pilot must be decontaminated and examined by a medical doctor. Any damaged plates must be replaced and recycled by a specialized team. Replacement of DUA plates is a time consuming process that invloves removing the heavy metal plates, removing damaged components needed for densification of the plates, and then replacing all the necessary parts. This high maintence is a significant factor in increasing turnaround time between missions.