Might I suggest that the gravity drivers would either be a flat plate at the breach or a series of toroidial coils along the bore? The later is most plausible because we actually have theoretical designs for gravity generators that actually are shaped like a donut. The principle is to have ultra dense matter flowing through a series of rings concentric with the minor access of the torrid.
More importantly, there seems to be no reason why the cylindrical missile tube can not recipricate along it's axis to move the breach to a point even with the forward end of the magazine. My Barrett .50 BMG caliber rifle operates on this principle to facilitate loading as well as dampen recoil.
MaxxQ wrote:namelessfly wrote:Great rendering.
I confess that I don't like the way the missile tubes split to accept loading rather than being loaded from the end. I envision the gravity drivers being analogous to magnetic coil guns so compromising the structural integrity in this manner would be a no no. I prefer the concept included in Weber's illustration of HMS MINATOUR in EoH where the missiles for the chase tubes load from the breach end. Check the numbers but I think there is enough hull beam to allow this for broadside tubes.
You're referring to the animation of the Mk-13 mag and tube, correct?
No, there's no room broadside to breechload. The Star Knight is the smallest ship with an armored core hull, and the tube and mags take up all the space between that and the main hull. As it is, the tubes are not even twice the length of the missile. That also happens to be for the SK itself, and on larger ships, there *would* be enough room for breechloading.
The Roland, because of the inordinate length of the hammerheads, has plenty of room for breechloading its Mk-16's, and that is how it's set up. The Falcon and Chanson, though, are too small and also use a similar loading mechanism to the SK, even though they use slightly smaller missiles than the Mk-13's the SK carries.
As for the grav drivers... while they may *act* similar to a magnetic rail gun, they don't work on a similar principle. Each "flat" section of the tube is a self-contained grav driver "plate" (for lack of a better term), and doesn't rely on a connection to the one next to it, except inasmuch as they need to communicate with each other for timing, the degree of power to use on the missile, and to transfer power to the "plate". As with everything else, that is not a finished mesh, but mainly just a conceptual, blocked-in model of one possible method that fits the criteria needed.
We're also trying to keep in mind the fact that some ships are older than others, and may have different ways of doing things. Then, when we get around to doing newer ships, we can make changes that would show generational differences, as you can see with the differences between the Roland and the other three ships.
Again, the issue crops up where people don't really see what goes into making these things work in a way that's plausible. Let's use the SK as an example:
The main hull of the ship is 66 meters wide.
The armor is 4 meters thick at the centerline, just a little below the lower weapons deck. At the centerline of the tubes on the upper deck, the armor is just under 3.5 meters thick, and the width of the outer hull at this point is 56 meters.
So, now we're down to a beam at the centerline of 58 meters.
The outer surface of the armored core hull is 24 meters across, so now we have 34 total meters at the centerline to play with, divided between the two broadsides, which means at most, there's 17 meters between the outer surface of the core hull and the inner surface of the main hull.
A Mk-13 is about 12 meters long. The magazine drum is 13 meters long, allowing for a little space between the missile and inner wall of the mag drum, and the thickness of the drum for armoring.
Do the math. Unless you're firing the missile through a 4 meter long launch tube - well, 6 meters, as it extends halfway through the armor - there's absolutely no way to breechload a warshot anywhere near the centerline. CM's, yes. Large missiles, no. Even a Roland couldn't breechload a broadside tube.
Another thing people forget (or at least, don't factor in when they're trying to figure things out) is that these ships are cylindrical, which causes its own problems with trying to fit a workable magazine and launcher into a broadside.
This reminds me of that scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfus) is telling the other people about a trail up Devil's Tower leading around to where they're trying to go, and one of the guys says that he never knew that, that all his drawings were from the same side.
Roy responds, "Next time, try sculpture."
