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missiles

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Re: missiles
Post by kzt   » Tue Mar 25, 2014 6:09 pm

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Dafmeister wrote:Or the expectation was that nukes would be used because of the damage a kinetic strike could do.

It doesn't matter, the KE of the missile will transfer to the planet either way.
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Re: missiles
Post by MAD-4A   » Wed Mar 26, 2014 4:29 pm

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kzt wrote:
Dafmeister wrote:Or the expectation was that nukes would be used because of the damage a kinetic strike could do.

It doesn't matter, the KE of the missile will transfer to the planet either way.

MDMs fired at long range reach nearly 1/2c anyway - but you still have to hit the target direct - without hitting any of the grav-bands (SW/Wdg) these would likely deflect and absorb a pure kt strike on a ship.
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Re: missiles
Post by Whitecold   » Wed Mar 26, 2014 6:13 pm

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MAD-4A wrote:MDMs fired at long range reach nearly 1/2c anyway - but you still have to hit the target direct - without hitting any of the grav-bands (SW/Wdg) these would likely deflect and absorb a pure kt strike on a ship.


This is getting awfully murky. The original quotation wanted to show that in world building, David Weber originally underestimated the sheer kinetic energy any missile carries, and by the time it was pointed out, it was too late to really change it. If a nuke going off near a sidewall can burn it out, so should a missile hitting it with a million times more energy.
But it had been declared this doesn't happen, so it doesn't.
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Re: missiles
Post by SWM   » Wed Mar 26, 2014 10:29 pm

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Other people have already noted the main answer to Skimper's question, namely, that it takes time to get up to those speeds. The current four-drive system defense missiles are the best that can be done currently, and even they can only get up to around 0.9 c.

But I would like to correct another incorrect statement in the original post:
Lord Skimper wrote:They are gravity wedge powered and gravity can go faster than light speed.

Gravity cannot go faster than light speed. The effects of gravity are limited to the speed of light, just like the effects of the electrical and magnetic fields.

The gravitic signals that Weber introduces in the Honorverse do travel faster than the speed of light, but they are not gravity. Gravitics is science fiction. Gravitic signals travel along the interface of the next higher band of hyperspace, at the speed of light in that band. But that is not gravity.
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Re: missiles
Post by Joat42   » Thu Mar 27, 2014 7:27 am

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Just a little comparison:
  • 50 Megaton explosion contains ~2x10^17 joules of energy
  • 50 ton mass traveling at .9c contains ~9.4x10^21 joules of energy.
  • 50 ton mass traveling at .4c contains ~4.4x10^21 joules of energy.

Mass traveling at relativistic speeds contains HUGE amount of potential energy.

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Re: missiles
Post by Rakhmamort   » Thu Mar 27, 2014 8:45 am

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Maybe any solid object passing through an active sidewall (not to mention, wedge) would be ripped apart into it's constituent atoms. Nukes exploding near sidewalls, however, delivers radiation and whatnot through the sidewalls damaging the mechanisms that generate the sidewalls themselves.

Since modern missiles are designed to hit ships with laser heads, relativistic missiles hitting ships whose sidewalls are down 'never' happens anymore.
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