Expended missiles

Apologies if I've missed the answer somewhere, but this came up when I was wondering about what happened to the Apollo Control Missile at the end of its run. By extension, this applies to the Dazzlers and Dragon's Teeth EW platforms, since they do not carry a warhead either.

Sure, they could collide with a wedge or sidewall and cease to exist. But what about those that don't? Do they self destruct or coast off into the deep dark?

A 100+ ton missile moving at only 1/3 Cee has a Kinetic energy of:

1/2 x 5ee5 Kg x (1eex8m/s)^2 = 2.5eex21 Joules or the equivalent of a 1/2 million, Megaton bomb. Only one missile impacting an inhabited planet is a potential dinosaur killer (aka, A Mass Extinction Event).

I would imagine that every missile must have at least some type of demolition mechanis such as a small, low yield nuke or a shut down of the plasma containment in the fusion bottle on more modern missiles or to short out the capacitor rings to release the remaining stored energy.

Another question is what happens to expended missile pods?

In HAE, we see the Wayfarer using pinnaces to retrieve missile pods so that they can be reloaded, recharged and reused. Obviously; most later battles are too dynamic to enable retrieval, but is that a contingency for the victor after a battle. (Note, missile pods which must mass somewhere around 1,000 tons can be a hazard if they hit something)

From the Pearls: Post-battle debris concerns

Besides, your math seems a little off. For a mass of 100 tons moving at 100000 km/s I get only a Newtonian kinetic energy of 5e20 J (approx. 120 GT, with relativistic equations only about 10% more). Looks like you used 1000 tons and multiplied by half twice.

munroburton wrote:Apologies if I've missed the answer somewhere, but this came up when I was wondering about what happened to the Apollo Control Missile at the end of its run. By extension, this applies to the Dazzlers and Dragon's Teeth EW platforms, since they do not carry a warhead either.

Sure, they could collide with a wedge or sidewall and cease to exist. But what about those that don't? Do they self destruct or coast off into the deep dark?

IIRC, there is a pearl that discusses the problem of after-battle-junk like leftover missiles and wreckage. Missiles have an automatic self-destruct if they run longer or further than the expected target.

As for missile pods, one modification made after operational experience with Wayfarer & Co was to put a transponder on the pods so they could be found and reused. By the same token, I'm sure that there is a self-destruct charge for pods that can't be recovered because of a retreat.

It is also standard procedure for the force holding the field of battle to do SAR and clean-up of hazards to navigation.

Rechecking my math.

KE = 1/2mV^2

KE = 1/2 x 1eex5Kg x (1eex8)^2

KE = 1/2 x 1eex21 = 5eex20 Joules

Yes. I did FUBAR.

KE of a 100 ton missile is equivalent to only 5eex20 Joule / 4.2eex15 Joule / Megaton

Or only 100,000 Megatons.

I was off by a factor of 5.

My FUBAR.

Obviously; the consequences of a missile impact with an inhabited planet, moon, space station or whatever would be inconsequential. Just let them roam free until they exit the system.

namelessfly wrote:A 100+ ton missile moving at only 1/3 Cee has a Kinetic energy of:

1/2 x 5ee5 Kg x (1eex8m/s)^2 = 2.5eex21 Joules or the equivalent of a 1/2 million, Megaton bomb. Only one missile impacting an inhabited planet is a potential dinosaur killer (aka, A Mass Extinction Event).

I would imagine that every missile must have at least some type of demolition mechanis such as a small, low yield nuke or a shut down of the plasma containment in the fusion bottle on more modern missiles or to short out the capacitor rings to release the remaining stored energy.

Another question is what happens to expended missile pods?

In HAE, we see the Wayfarer using pinnaces to retrieve missile pods so that they can be reloaded, recharged and reused. Obviously; most later battles are too dynamic to enable retrieval, but is that a contingency for the victor after a battle. (Note, missile pods which must mass somewhere around 1,000 tons can be a hazard if they hit something)

namelessfly wrote:Obviously; the consequences of a missile impact with an inhabited planet, moon, space station or whatever would be inconsequential. Just let them roam free until they exit the system.

The question is what else can you do about them? Even for a 0.3c SDM (which I think is on the slow side) its almost certain that by the time anything can actually catch it the missile will have "roamed free" on its virtually straight line course out of the system ceasing to be your problem (and virtually certainly never becoming anyone else's, even if you actually aim at another system getting anything actually inside the hyper limit needs a lot of luck across interstellar distances).

Grashtel wrote:

namelessfly wrote:Obviously; the consequences of a missile impact with an inhabited planet, moon, space station or whatever would be inconsequential. Just let them roam free until they exit the system.

The question is what else can you do about them? Even for a 0.3c SDM (which I think is on the slow side) its almost certain that by the time anything can actually catch it the missile will have "roamed free" on its virtually straight line course out of the system ceasing to be your problem (and virtually certainly never becoming anyone else's, even if you actually aim at another system getting anything actually inside the hyper limit needs a lot of luck across interstellar distances).

Like Weird Harold said, you can put a self-destruct charge on them. It's unlikely to totally vaporize them, but breaking up and scattering the missile will reduce the damage should it eventually intersect an inhabited planet or station. (Plus it precludes someone from succeeding at the needle in a haystack attempt at running down, tractoring, and reverse engineering your missile [G].

(While it's virtually impossible to run down every missed missile, it's only very, very, hard to chase down one or two, especially once they coast beyond the hyper limit and you can leapfrog ahead of them)

Duckk wrote:http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/131/1

Thanks. I knew I'd read it, but couldn't find it again.

I think I did confuse an article I read on torpedoes that mentioned self-destruct conditions being set before launch.

Duckk wrote:http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/131/1

I believe this Pearls predates KIT, SMR and I explaining what the KE of a missile is and how horrific an impact.would be. Weber was thinking in terms of moderate yield nukes rather than dinOsaur killers. Letting such a horrific threat roam loose would be insanely irresponsible. Even if all missiles exit the system, they might enter a neighbor system within a few decades.