Attacking Darius:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:So let's say those cataphract numbers are true. It can run at either:
905.5 KPS^2 for 180 seconds, then 2,800 KPS^2 for 75, or
1811 KPS^2 for 60 seconds, then 3,200 KPS^2 for 75

In the half-power launch they'd use the first stage for 110.5 seconds then cut over to the 75 second second stage, for 20.9 million km range in 185.5 seconds.

In the full-power launch they'd use the first stage for 60 seconds, coast for 15, then cut in the 75 second second stage, for 20.9 million km range in 150 seconds.

...

But I don't think those acceleration numbers are possible at all. Nothing we've seen so far can even come close. Moreover, if the MAlign@Galton had managed to produce such accelerations, it would mean they kept those missiles just for this reason for the end of the battle, instead of using it. I can see the MAlign preparing for this with malice aforethought (the whole sucker punch is so), but I don't see them having such missiles and not using them before in the battle.

The first stage accelerations ARE canon in the early book of HoTQ. Haven had such missiles fired from Grayson's moon. But the downside is to achieve those accelerations, these missiles are absolutely Gargantuan. Honor also makes a comment around??? Flag in Exile? That SLN etc could make MONSTOROUS missiles which could do same thing as what the RMN was doing with their MDM. On the order of 1 missile per "pod" equivalent. The problem with the Cataphract in pod form, such as those Filaretta had, is they get 10 per ~pod. ... And we have CM drive able to miraculously Run around with a CAPITAL GRADE WARHEAD dimension... If anyone could do this... Why the HELL would ANYONE have EVER used a normal SDM in the 1st Havenite war?

The problem I have with the cataphract is what I already typed before up thread. It is the ***standard*** CM stage ability to carry an entire Warhead MANY MANY times larger than the CM at a MUCH higher acceleration than an SDM to begin with as it breaks canon. Canon which has been true through ALL the series. Mass in a compensator field is set at ~0.25t/m^3... until we get to Cataphracts. Where 10t impeller/compensators extend only ~15% beyond miraculously change to 50+(capital grade are even larger) ton impellers compensators using FAR more power to motivate it... Why the Hell would anyone use a normal drive? On top of this, 2 impellers placed VERY close to each other without destroying the other in missile tech which we were told explicitly is not possible in previous books without the impellers interacting destroying the 2nd impeller... All that gets thrown out the window with the introduction of the Cataphracts.

No, it's dumber than that.

The warhead is smaller because it's carried by the CM. So the cruiser missiles have DD warheads.

Hey, I've got an idea! Why don't we use the CM as the booster, then we can use the actual warhead and the whole targeting and ECM/penaids/ECCM that the actual missile has?

Relax wrote:
The problem I have with the cataphract is what I already typed before up thread. It is the ***standard*** CM stage ability to carry an entire Warhead MANY MANY times larger than the CM at a MUCH higher acceleration than an SDM to begin with as it breaks canon. Canon which has been true through ALL the series. Mass in a compensator field is set at ~0.25t/m^3... until we get to Cataphracts. Where 10t impeller/compensators extend only ~15% beyond miraculously change to 50+(capital grade are even larger) ton impellers compensators using FAR more power to motivate it... Why the Hell would anyone use a normal drive? On top of this, 2 impellers placed VERY close to each other without destroying the other in missile tech which we were told explicitly is not possible in previous books without the impellers interacting destroying the 2nd impeller... All that gets thrown out the window with the introduction of the Cataphracts.

Well, David has a LAC towing around the entire 2 million ton pod core of a SD(P), at 700G and invisibly.

Can you remind me why people even use SD(P)s?

kzt wrote:

Relax wrote:
The problem I have with the cataphract is what I already typed before up thread. It is the ***standard*** CM stage ability to carry an entire Warhead MANY MANY times larger than the CM at a MUCH higher acceleration than an SDM to begin with as it breaks canon. Canon which has been true through ALL the series. Mass in a compensator field is set at ~0.25t/m^3... until we get to Cataphracts. Where 10t impeller/compensators extend only ~15% beyond miraculously change to 50+(capital grade are even larger) ton impellers compensators using FAR more power to motivate it... Why the Hell would anyone use a normal drive? On top of this, 2 impellers placed VERY close to each other without destroying the other in missile tech which we were told explicitly is not possible in previous books without the impellers interacting destroying the 2nd impeller... All that gets thrown out the window with the introduction of the Cataphracts.

Well, David has a LAC towing around the entire 2 million ton pod core of a SD(P), at 700G and invisibly.

Can you remind me why people even use SD(P)s?

IIRC, it was _only_ 300K+ ton container of missiles. The rest of your comment still holds. BTW, I tried to calculate the acceleration curves for those LACs and to even come close to matching velocity and position at the end; their accelerations had to be close to the accelerations of Tremaine's cruisers

Relax wrote:The first stage accelerations ARE canon in the early book of HoTQ. Haven had such missiles fired from Grayson's moon. But the downside is to achieve those accelerations, these missiles are absolutely Gargantuan. Honor also makes a comment around??? Flag in Exile? That SLN etc could make MONSTOROUS missiles which could do same thing as what the RMN was doing with their MDM.

I believe that scene would have been from In Enemy Hands; as the briefing there from her to White Haven is (IIRC) the first time we hear of MDMs.

As for the Blackbird missiles from HoTQ - they did have very high acceleration for their endurance. But my notes are they pulled 833 KPS^2 (85,000 gees) for 135 seconds before burnout. That's no quicker than the full power setting on contemporary SDMs - their massive oversized nature just somehow let them hold that acceleration for 75 seconds longer that any other missile we'd seen of that era.

The Cataphracts from UH were only marginally quicker on the first stage, 840 KPS^2, but they were somehow able to hold that for the full 180 seconds; rather than the 135 the HotQ birds could manage. (And then, as noted, to make the numbers work the Cataphracts at Galton had to be even quicker; and then use their 1/3 endurance full power mode)

Since we are complaining that the author is requisitioning too much handwavium and running up the national debt, can someone explain to me how Ghost Rider can affix the Bloodhounds to its nose w/o blinding its sensors?

And where the "small" parasites get their power, and are able to communicate back to a GR drone via FTL?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:So let's say those cataphract numbers are true. It can run at either:
905.5 KPS^2 for 180 seconds, then 2,800 KPS^2 for 75, or
1811 KPS^2 for 60 seconds, then 3,200 KPS^2 for 75

In the half-power launch they'd use the first stage for 110.5 seconds then cut over to the 75 second second stage, for 20.9 million km range in 185.5 seconds.

In the full-power launch they'd use the first stage for 60 seconds, coast for 15, then cut in the 75 second second stage, for 20.9 million km range in 150 seconds.

And that's why I don't think the scene makes mathematical sense. It doesn't matter if the GF was cleared for action, because they would've got there in 150 seconds. There's no way the GF stood down to Condition 4 while in the Galton system, so even if they weren't at Condition 1, they'd be at 2 at worst.

But I don't think those acceleration numbers are possible at all. Nothing we've seen so far can even come close. Moreover, if the MAlign@Galton had managed to produce such accelerations, it would mean they kept those missiles just for this reason for the end of the battle, instead of using it. I can see the MAlign preparing for this with malice aforethought (the whole sucker punch is so), but I don't see them having such missiles and not using them before in the battle.

Add to the fact that earlier in the book we have Gail looking at the tech specs of the Cataphract and wondering how far missile technology had come that they had a 30 million km of range. Her pondering matches what we knew about the Cataphracts, now this necessary performance for the end.

Though if those missiles do exist, then now the GA has the plans for them. Like they have the plans for:

Jonathan_S wrote:To End In Fire wrote:Galton’s R&D had engineered the original graserhead down into something it could cram into an outsized conventional missile just small enough to fit into a Hasta III pod. It wasn’t as powerful as the graser torpedoes which had savaged Manticore’s industrial infrastructure in the Yawata Strike, but it was far more destructive than any X-ray laser, because its duration was measured in seconds, not milliseconds.

They probably wouldn't have captured intact missiles (though there may be duds that could be retrieved) and the MAlign would definitely have tried to erase all the data, but they didn't destroy all stations, people are careless with data, and people have knowledge in their heads.

So the GA now has seconds-long firing grasers.

I seem to recall a suggestion of mine that got asteroids thrown at me for insisting the MA will develop a missile with an insane acceleration. I continue to feel... that when a missile reaches attack range, all the time left on its drive is wasted. When the range warrants it, why can a missile not be developed that would expend its drive time immediately at short ranges, producing an insane acceleration. Shoot that surplus wad of drive time immediately. That isn't what happened here, no, but perhaps the MA do have missiles with a higher accel. I always expected that. Over in the question thread, I believe, is where I championed this notion.

Necessity is the mother of invention. And the MA needs a missile that can produce an insane acceleration almost instantly, since with their unprecedented stealth they may be launching from ranges inside the enemy's underwear.

Shoot that wad immediately! Pardon the pun and the double entendre.

tlb wrote:It is true that Herlander was the only member of his team that we can be certain was not blown up with the Gamma Center.

kzt wrote:IIRC, Gamma Center was basically deserted when it blowed up.

Very true, but the team project was very important and nearing the end; so there could easily be motivated members trying to wrap it up. So I think my statement stands.

penny wrote:I seem to recall a suggestion of mine that got asteroids thrown at me for insisting the MA will develop a missile with an insane acceleration.

Because you were suggesting a million gravities or more of acceleration, which is still over 3x more than those insane numbers we'd need at the end of TEiF. It's possible Darius has that and hasn't shared with Galton, but it's still too much. Especially if we consider the numbers from TEiF must be in error somewhere.

What's more, it wouldn't help so much. I don't recall the numbers, but a surprise attack from far enough away that the launching platform would be out of energy range, but for which the missiles could cross in so little time that not even sidewalls would be fully up required far more than a million gravities. You'd still need a tremendous number of those missiles in order to saturate the CM defence.

That's different than what you're suggesting here:

I continue to feel... that when a missile reaches attack range, all the time left on its drive is wasted. When the range warrants it, why can a missile not be developed that would expend its drive time immediately at short ranges, producing an insane acceleration. Shoot that surplus wad of drive time immediately. That isn't what happened here, no, but perhaps the MA do have missiles with a higher accel. I always expected that. Over in the question thread, I believe, is where I championed this notion.

Necessity is the mother of invention. And the MA needs a missile that can produce an insane acceleration almost instantly, since with their unprecedented stealth they may be launching from ranges inside the enemy's underwear.

Shoot that wad immediately! Pardon the pun and the double entendre.

Sure, necessity is the mother of invention and ramping up your acceleration would be extremely useful. But the MAlign is not unique in needing this, and so far all we know about the way impellers work is that you can't have two different accelerations in the same missile body.

To do differently, the MAlign would have needed to invent something even better than the quantum baffle that allows the MDMs to exist. Not impossible, given that MDMs were thought to be impossible too before they weren't. Indeed, someone trying to come at it without all of the information could conceivably find something that those who'd been using it for a while didn't. That's after all what the improved compensators are, with Grayson obliqueness.

This requires a technological revolution we're not allowed to make. Only RFC can do that.

The other solution is a Cataphract-like solution: two different missiles with enough separation between them that the two impeller rings don't interfere with each other. This is not what you were suggesting, though, not exactly. What's more, from the very little we know about the Ninurta missile, it appears to be a true MDM, so at least Gail wasn't aware of such innovations.

So, in all, it's not that they couldn't happen. It's that we have absolutely no way to predict that they can, because there are no clues leading to it. Our flights of imagination don't count. It's far easier to imagine a Ghost Rider that can detect spiders...

penny wrote:I continue to feel... that when a missile reaches attack range, all the time left on its drive is wasted. When the range warrants it, why can a missile not be developed that would expend its drive time immediately at short ranges, producing an insane acceleration. Shoot that surplus wad of drive time immediately.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:This requires a technological revolution we're not allowed to make. Only RFC can do that.

Let's think about a single drive missile, so we do not get caught up in the quantum baffle that allows the MDMs to exist or the Cataphract-like solution. Remember that we all initially thought that the different stages of the MDM could run at different settings, until RFC said no way.

What Penny wants is a drive that can vary its acceleration setting during flight. Remember that most can be set to less than maximum acceleration at time of firing and we do not know what is special about that. If it were possible to change, then it could only go back to the maximum setting; not something higher. There is a compensator function built into the missile drive and so the absolute maximum acceleration must be dictated by that.

As you say, this is RFC's universe and we have to abide by his rules.