Do we actually need SD(P)s?

Loren Pechtel wrote:You don't need to rendezvous with everything--you have tractor beams. Match velocity with the debris field, build a vector that moves across it slowly and grab anything that you pass. Done within days it shouldn't be hard and normally there wouldn't be that much to clean up.

I don't think it registered just how wide this debris field would be. I calculated that after 9 months, the debris field has a radius of 157 million km. We're talking about at least 4 orders of magnitude more than the range of the tractor beam.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:You don't need to rendezvous with everything--you have tractor beams. Match velocity with the debris field, build a vector that moves across it slowly and grab anything that you pass. Done within days it shouldn't be hard and normally there wouldn't be that much to clean up.

I don't think it registered just how wide this debris field would be. I calculated that after 9 months, the debris field has a radius of 157 million km. We're talking about at least 4 orders of magnitude more than the range of the tractor beam.

That is just over an AU in radius. So the debris field will be slightly larger than the Solar Ecliptic inside Earth's orbit.... And growing.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:We already see missiles loiter in space before lighting off--stacked salvos from internal tubes. I'm simply proposing a design where that's normally the only option rather than simply the preferred option.

The question is how long they can loiter. We do know that they can for a short time, as building up double broadsides is possible, but we've never seen anything much bigger. The only bigger salvos are done by buiilding patterns of pods that themselves are towed and often powered from the mothership.

If missiles can loiter then it shouldn't be hard to increase the loiter time.

Which means:

Loren Pechtel wrote:Exactly. System defense pods lurk about in space, they're still needed. However, it seems to me that pretty much all the reasons for pods on ships have been overtaken by technology, a SD spitting missiles out of it's hammerheads from a collection of launch tubes in it's heart seem to me to be able to do everything a SD(P) can without losing the amount of space to the pods themselves.

If you're defending a system with plenty of pods already available, I agree with you. There's little need to have a ship bigger than a BC picket a system. And the reason you'd want a BC and not something even smaller is its Keyhole capability, which multiplies the control links and allows it to completely control the salvos with wedge towards the enemy.

But if you're either attacking a system or trying to defend one before the pods were delivered by freighters or FSVs, you need to have carried sufficient missiles with you. Firing from the hammerhead or broadsides can limit your rate or fire and that might be fatal, depending on just who your enemy is.

I'm not sure it has to limit your rate of fire. It has to with current missiles but what I'm envisioning I think would avoid the problem. The missiles would be fired very close together in space but spread over time. They would have to turn substantially before launch to avoid fratricide. Missile tubes are currently limited because the missiles have to light off without fratricide, if they can turn before lighting off that problem goes away and you can pack the tubes much more closely together. I'm picturing tubes in the heart of the ship that can fire as many missiles as the ship can control.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:You don't need to rendezvous with everything--you have tractor beams. Match velocity with the debris field, build a vector that moves across it slowly and grab anything that you pass. Done within days it shouldn't be hard and normally there wouldn't be that much to clean up.

I don't think it registered just how wide this debris field would be. I calculated that after 9 months, the debris field has a radius of 157 million km. We're talking about at least 4 orders of magnitude more than the range of the tractor beam.

But Manticore is going to pick it over when it's only days old.

Loren Pechtel wrote:
But Manticore is going to pick it over when it's only days old.

With what?

I'm serious. The wrecks outnumber intact ships by like 50x1, counting LACs. Counting just larger ships and abandoning the ten to fifteen thousand LAC crews to die then maybe only maybe 5x1. The wrecks are moving on several different vectors at tens of thousands of km/sec.

So what is your search priority? Do you want to try to find survivors in before they run out of air?

Or do you want to abandon all the crews to die so you can try to rescue all the RHN and RMN technology? Umm, how is that going to look when the media publishes it tomorrow?

Oh, and are you going to scatter your only surviving fleet to the four winds to do this? Or do you need to maintain them as an intact military force?

So how many ships do you have to do this, considering that you have to actually board ships to find survivors which normally requires small craft, which most RMN LACs don't have?

kzt wrote:With what?

I'm serious. The wrecks outnumber intact ships by like 50x1, counting LACs. Counting just larger ships and abandoning the ten to fifteen thousand LAC crews to die then maybe only maybe 5x1. The wrecks are moving on several different vectors at tens of thousands of km/sec.

So what is your search priority? Do you want to try to find survivors in before they run out of air?

Or do you want to abandon all the crews to die so you can try to rescue all the RHN and RMN technology? Umm, how is that going to look when the media publishes it tomorrow?

Oh, and are you going to scatter your only surviving fleet to the four winds to do this? Or do you need to maintain them as an intact military force?

So how many ships do you have to do this, considering that you have to actually board ships to find survivors which normally requires small craft, which most RMN LACs don't have?

There must be thousands of pinnaces in-system, hundreds alone belonging to the RMN and the government. We don't know what happened to the MPARS in the last 3 centuries, but Manticore used to have an agency dedicated to search and rescue. That means dedicated ships with endurance, plus trained crew and equipment. A system with as much traffic as Manticore must have such a service still around.

kzt wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:
But Manticore is going to pick it over when it's only days old.

With what?

I'm serious. The wrecks outnumber intact ships by like 50x1, counting LACs. Counting just larger ships and abandoning the ten to fifteen thousand LAC crews to die then maybe only maybe 5x1. The wrecks are moving on several different vectors at tens of thousands of km/sec.

So what is your search priority? Do you want to try to find survivors in before they run out of air?

Or do you want to abandon all the crews to die so you can try to rescue all the RHN and RMN technology? Umm, how is that going to look when the media publishes it tomorrow?

Oh, and are you going to scatter your only surviving fleet to the four winds to do this? Or do you need to maintain them as an intact military force?

So how many ships do you have to do this, considering that you have to actually board ships to find survivors which normally requires small craft, which most RMN LACs don't have?

The wrecks can be plotted and a beacon dropped if need be, no need to find them again. They won't pick up everything but they won't have to search for it and the MAlign would be insane to try to pick it over when that's all too likely to mean the first they realize they're in trouble is when a missile drive lights off.

It's not a set of ship hulls. What you are dealing with is a series of expending debris cloud with along a vector of tens of thousands of KM/sec, along with a sprinkling of actual wrecked ship hulls. The wrecked ships are actually not a big deal, you just tractor them and pull them back to Manticore. It's the cloud of debris that is a problem.

We don't even know how many ships were destroyed. We know it was something like 350 SD/CLACs, and you can roughly determine the number of LACs, but David provided no counts for the destroyers, cruisers and BCs with Home and 2nd fleet. Logically they would be about the same as the SDs.

But we do know that it takes a LOT of craft to conduct S&R for even a few ships. Conducting it for many thousands of LACs and 650 ships is a vast task. The need to chase something moving a several percent of the speed of light doesn't make it any easier, as you have to get doing a lot faster to catch up, then slow down to search, then cancel that vector and reverse to get back to Manticore.

I'm not even sure what the life support duration on a pinnance is. I'd assume it is several days at least, but I can't remember if it has ever been stated.

kzt wrote:It's not a set of ship hulls. What you are dealing with is a series of expending debris cloud with along a vector of tens of thousands of KM/sec, along with a sprinkling of actual wrecked ship hulls. The wrecked ships are actually not a big deal, you just tractor them and pull them back to Manticore. It's the cloud of debris that is a problem.

We don't even know how many ships were destroyed. We know it was something like 350 SD/CLACs, and you can roughly determine the number of LACs, but David provided no counts for the destroyers, cruisers and BCs with Home and 2nd fleet. Logically they would be about the same as the SDs.

But we do know that it takes a LOT of craft to conduct S&R for even a few ships. Conducting it for many thousands of LACs and 650 ships is a vast task. The need to chase something moving a several percent of the speed of light doesn't make it any easier, as you have to get doing a lot faster to catch up, then slow down to search, then cancel that vector and reverse to get back to Manticore.

I'm not even sure what the life support duration on a pinnance is. I'd assume it is several days at least, but I can't remember if it has ever been stated.

I think we can assume that SAR took the next week or so after BoMA, with essentially a 100% effort during that period, 24/7. Any reclamation ( that didn't take place as part of SAR) would take place after that, starting with nearly intact hulls, then on down. Little things like missiles and RDs are traveling so fast, by the time resources are available to look for them, the search volume may prove pointless for a thorough search.

kzt wrote:We don't even know how many ships were destroyed. We know it was something like 350 SD/CLACs, and you can roughly determine the number of LACs, but David provided no counts for the destroyers, cruisers and BCs with Home and 2nd fleet. Logically they would be about the same as the SDs.

Second Fleet consisted of 240 SDs, 16 CLACs with 3200+ LACs, and a screen of 90ish BCs and below.

Home Fleet consisted of 90 SDs, 57 BCs and below, and 4000+ LACs.

Of those, 75 SDs from Second Fleet and about 200 LACs from Home Fleet survived in a condition that could reasonably call a "ship". The rest were widely scattered bits debris of greater or lesser sizes.

Not to mention the couple million missiles launched in various directions and the pods they came from.