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Are missile pods obsolete?

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Re: Are missile pods obsolete?
Post by Bill Woods   » Mon Feb 23, 2015 1:46 pm

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I don't think Lagrange points are going to be a big deal in the Honorverse. Even at the stable points L4 and L5, if you want multiple facilities, you're going to need to do stationkeeping. With tractor beams and tugs as common equipment that's easy, but it would be in most any other orbit too.
Vince wrote:To Kizarvexis

The L4 and L5 Lagrange points of the Earth-Moon system are not quite fully stable. When the Sun is included in the calculations, it takes very little disturbance for an object at the L4 or L5 Lagrange points to begin moving away from it. This makes sense since the Lagrange points can be thought of as 'higher' in terms of how much energy is required to reach them, with the nearby space being 'lower'.

With the Sun in the calculations, instead of an object being right at the L4 or L5 point, it is more stable to have the object in an orbit around the Earth so that from the point of view of an observer at the Lagrange point, the object would appear to be orbiting the point.
L4 and L5 are stable; if an object there is perturbed, a restoring force will keep it in the vicinity of the point. This is different from L1-3, which are saddlepoints; if perturbed, an object will just keep on going away from the point.

Vince wrote: An even better orbit would be a 2:1 resonance orbit around the Earth, with an apogee is ~200,000 miles and a perigee of ~100,000 miles. This orbit is completely stable, with an orbital period of slightly less than 2 weeks.

An orbit that sweeps out so much of the space around a planet is going to be inconvenient if you want to build a lot of other facilities there. I think most large objects are going to be in low-eccentricity orbits.
----
Imagined conversation:
Admiral [noting yet another Manty tech surprise]:
XO, what's the budget for the ONI?
Vice Admiral: I don't recall exactly, sir. Several billion quatloos.
Admiral: ... What do you suppose they did with all that money?
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Re: Are missile pods obsolete?
Post by Belial666   » Mon Feb 23, 2015 3:05 pm

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Why are we discussing L-points when Honorverse gravity tech can negate up to 100 gravities for prolonged period of times and tractor/pressor beams can hold and/or move around millions of tons?



I mean, the planet Haven imports 15 megatons of foodstuffs every day. If lowering that kind of mass down a gravity well is routine, holding orbit - or even a nonrotating position over a planet - wouldn't be any different.
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Re: Are missile pods obsolete?
Post by Kizarvexis   » Tue Feb 24, 2015 11:02 am

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Belial666 wrote:Why are we discussing L-points when Honorverse gravity tech can negate up to 100 gravities for prolonged period of times and tractor/pressor beams can hold and/or move around millions of tons?



I mean, the planet Haven imports 15 megatons of foodstuffs every day. If lowering that kind of mass down a gravity well is routine, holding orbit - or even a nonrotating position over a planet - wouldn't be any different.


Why use energy you do not have to? Even a small amount of energy adds up over time. It is also an additional safety factor. If the counter grav fails, being in a stable/near stable orbit, means you have more time to fix things before they get out of hand. When you build something that people work in, it behooves you to keep safety at the top of the list of design considerations. Especially, if it also might endanger others, like those living on the planet, if something goes wrong.
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Re: Are missile pods obsolete?
Post by Belial666   » Wed Feb 25, 2015 2:29 pm

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Kizarvexis wrote:Why use energy you do not have to?

It's convenient. Plus the energy and time each ship will waste to get to an inconvenient orbit will be equal to or even higher than the energy you'll be spending for stationkeeping.

Kizarvexis wrote:If the counter grav fails...

The nearest tug uses its tractor beams to hold you until the problem is fixed. Since it's already there on standby 24/7 just in case other types of accidents happen, it might as well be used for that too.
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Re: Are missile pods obsolete?
Post by Kizarvexis   » Wed Feb 25, 2015 2:52 pm

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Belial666 wrote:
Kizarvexis wrote:Why use energy you do not have to?

It's convenient. Plus the energy and time each ship will waste to get to an inconvenient orbit will be equal to or even higher than the energy you'll be spending for stationkeeping.

Kizarvexis wrote:If the counter grav fails...

The nearest tug uses its tractor beams to hold you until the problem is fixed. Since it's already there on standby 24/7 just in case other types of accidents happen, it might as well be used for that too.


I don't think you understand the concept of safety when it comes to engineering. You want things to fail safely, not to have to have intervention when something fails. Having the counter-grav fail and then have to be saved by something else is bad design. Having the counter-grav fail and the installation stay largely where it is, by orbiting one of the Lagrange points mentioned, is failing safely.
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Re: Are missile pods obsolete?
Post by Bill Woods   » Thu Feb 26, 2015 4:21 am

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Belial666 wrote:
Kizarvexis wrote:Why use energy you do not have to?
It's convenient. Plus the energy and time each ship will waste to get to an inconvenient orbit will be equal to or even higher than the energy you'll be spending for stationkeeping.

Kizarvexis wrote:If the counter grav fails...
The nearest tug uses its tractor beams to hold you until the problem is fixed. Since it's already there on standby 24/7 just in case other types of accidents happen, it might as well be used for that too.
Kizarvexis wrote: I don't think you understand the concept of safety when it comes to engineering. You want things to fail safely, not to have to have intervention when something fails. Having the counter-grav fail and then have to be saved by something else is bad design. Having the counter-grav fail and the installation stay largely where it is, by orbiting one of the Lagrange points mentioned, is failing safely.
In space, a lot of systems have to work pretty much all the time; safety means being able to survive on local resources for a while, until help comes. If an object is relying on its counter-grav to hover a few hundred kilometers above a planet, then yeah, that's a bad idea. But an object in orbit which requires a station-keeping nudge every few months is a different story.
----
Imagined conversation:
Admiral [noting yet another Manty tech surprise]:
XO, what's the budget for the ONI?
Vice Admiral: I don't recall exactly, sir. Several billion quatloos.
Admiral: ... What do you suppose they did with all that money?
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Re: Are missile pods obsolete?
Post by stewart   » Sun Mar 08, 2015 9:08 pm

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Bill Woods wrote:Are missile pods obsolete?

Once upon a time, ships had to turn their broadsides toward their target to fire missiles. This limited their opportunities to fire and the size of their salvos. Ships needed launchers capable of throwing missiles beyond the ship's sidewall. Missiles were used to soften up the enemy, before closing to energy-weapon range.

Then the pod was invented. Ships could simply drop them off, using the ship's own acceleration to separate them from the ship. Pods could be pointed in almost any direction, and salvos were limited only by the number of fire controllers. The power of the first strike made missiles the dominant weapon.

But now, the latest missiles can delay activation after launching and be turned to fire "off-bore". In essence, they're one-missile pods. So why bother with pods? Dump as many missiles out the stern as you want in a salvo, in whatever mix of types. (And Apollo multiplies the number of missiles each controller can handle.)



---------------

Thought this was also discussed in another thread.
Pods, especially long range capable pods (Mk16 / Mk23) can provide an older class ship with a long-range punch on the short term / opening phases of an engagement. Example Abagail's training exercise in SftS between the Lynx terminus and Spindle. She had tractored pods of 8-10 Mk23's on exterior hard-points to supplement the Mk16's internally.

No reason this cannot work for older classes of DD's / CA's / CL's while other Mk16 class ships are built.

-- Stewart
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