Information I'd love to know

cthia wrote:Does textev state what type of ship "Haven One" is? Is she armored or just made to haul shitty ass if it hits the fan?

Unknown.

cthia wrote:What is Elizabeth's ship name, armament and type?

On the other hand, HMS Duke of Cromarty is an Agamemnon-class BC(P) with half the pod core replaced by VIP accommodations.

This is a question to any Physicists/Engineers/Mathematicians...

Has anyone done the math on the effectiveness/usefulness of the bomb-pumped laser-head missiles that are used in this series.

Starting from the target ship there is: (1) Ship's Armor (thousands of years in the future they have to have stronger materials than now, Some kind of energy distribution layer, maybe a reflective coating to diffract the lasers), (2) Gravity side-walls (how much of the energy do they block?), (3) Space between missile and ship (I know it's not much, but the beams have to loose some energy along the way), (4) Time (the missiles destroy themselves in the attack and the target ship is moving, so how long do the lasers make contact?), (5) Movement (the missile and ship are moving in relation to each other; the easiest defense for the ship would be to move in order to diffuse the effects of the laser across a larger surface area), (6) Each missile has multiple laser-heads, so how much energy does each get?

Given all of those factors, how powerful would those lasers have to be to do so much damage in short moment the beam made contact with the ship (a very small fraction of a second)?

Back when B5 was on, there was a website that actually did those calculations and concluded that it would be nearly impossible to generate that kind of energy; or if it could be generated, it would be infinitely more effective if used in various defensive ways.

There has been some analysis on this forum in the past. But the first place to go to answer some of these questions is the An Introduction To Modern Starship Armor Design, in In Fire Forged. It gives a rather thorough description of the principles of Honorverse armor, which necessarily includes some details about the weapons against which it protects.

HairbrainedSchemes wrote:This is a question to any Physicists/Engineers/Mathematicians...

Has anyone done the math on the effectiveness/usefulness of the bomb-pumped laser-head missiles that are used in this series.

Starting from the target ship there is: (1) Ship's Armor (thousands of years in the future they have to have stronger materials than now, Some kind of energy distribution layer, maybe a reflective coating to diffract the lasers), (2) Gravity side-walls (how much of the energy do they block?), (3) Space between missile and ship (I know it's not much, but the beams have to loose some energy along the way), (4) Time (the missiles destroy themselves in the attack and the target ship is moving, so how long do the lasers make contact?), (5) Movement (the missile and ship are moving in relation to each other; the easiest defense for the ship would be to move in order to diffuse the effects of the laser across a larger surface area), (6) Each missile has multiple laser-heads, so how much energy does each get?

Given all of those factors, how powerful would those lasers have to be to do so much damage in short moment the beam made contact with the ship (a very small fraction of a second)?

Back when B5 was on, there was a website that actually did those calculations and concluded that it would be nearly impossible to generate that kind of energy; or if it could be generated, it would be infinitely more effective if used in various defensive ways.

Basic answer is that David has the effective range of the xray lasers much longer then they would be in reality. Effective range is hundreds to a thousands or so KM IIRC, but with the magic of gravitics they have a standoff range of tens of thousands of KMs. Plus he has gravitics focusing the nuke on the xray heads, so the beam intensity is significantly higher than you would calculate.

On the other hand, the effective range of grasers would appear to be much lower then they would be in the real world - if in the real world you could make a coherent Gaussian gamma ray weapon of the scale he has, which would appear to be "difficult".

But it's a space opera, not a physics text.

SWM wrote:Starting from the target ship there is: (1) Ship's Armor (thousands of years in the future they have to have stronger materials than now, Some kind of energy distribution layer, maybe a reflective coating to diffract the lasers), (2) Gravity side-walls (how much of the energy do they block?), (3) Space between missile and ship (I know it's not much, but the beams have to loose some energy along the way), (4) Time (the missiles destroy themselves in the attack and the target ship is moving, so how long do the lasers make contact?), (5) Movement (the missile and ship are moving in relation to each other; the easiest defense for the ship would be to move in order to diffuse the effects of the laser across a larger surface area), (6) Each missile has multiple laser-heads, so how much energy does each get?

In response to some of your specific questions:
(1) is answered in In Fire Forged.
(2) also answered in In Fire Forge.
(3) the beams don't lose energy, they just spread out a bit. But since they are x-ray lasers, they don't spread out all that much from the warhead to the target.
(4) and (5) the beam itself only lasts a tiny fraction of a second. The ship doesn't move very much in that time.
(6) the laserheads don't share the energy between them. Each laserhead can only utilize the energy that impacts that specific laserhead. Since the laserheads don't block each other from the energy of the nuclear bomb, it doesn't matter to the laserhead how many other laserheads are nearby. Each laserhead will get as much energy as it gets from the nuclear explosion. Suppose you design a missile with a single laserhead, which generates 1 GJ of energy. If you now use the same warhead with six laserheads, each laserhead will generate 1 GJ of energy (assuming you design it such that no laserhead obstructs another). Any energy from the bomb which is not intercepted by a laserhead is essentially wasted (as far as generating x-ray lasers).

In the end, though, you are correct that the necessary energy is huge. IFF states that it could be in the terajoule or petajoule range.

Amaroq wrote:

Amaroq wrote:Anyone else wonder what the Dresden accent sounds like? I don't know if I've ever heard of an accent described as "saw-edged" before. Maybe it's like a Cockney accent?

German can sound very harsh, especially if you've never heard it before. That makes possible sense as the Dresden accent. When I mentioned Cockney I didn't quite mean that I thought the Dresden accent sounded exactly like it. I meant more that it seemed like what the Cockney was, a strong regional dialect that generally sounds unpleasant to most people.

In my minds ear I hear the wife of a friend who was from Boston, when she was irritated her accent could etch glass

SWM wrote:

SWM wrote:Starting from the target ship there is: (1) Ship's Armor (thousands of years in the future they have to have stronger materials than now, Some kind of energy distribution layer, maybe a reflective coating to diffract the lasers), (2) Gravity side-walls (how much of the energy do they block?), (3) Space between missile and ship (I know it's not much, but the beams have to loose some energy along the way), (4) Time (the missiles destroy themselves in the attack and the target ship is moving, so how long do the lasers make contact?), (5) Movement (the missile and ship are moving in relation to each other; the easiest defense for the ship would be to move in order to diffuse the effects of the laser across a larger surface area), (6) Each missile has multiple laser-heads, so how much energy does each get?

In response to some of your specific questions:
(1) is answered in In Fire Forged.
(2) also answered in In Fire Forge.
(3) the beams don't lose energy, they just spread out a bit. But since they are x-ray lasers, they don't spread out all that much from the warhead to the target.
(4) and (5) the beam itself only lasts a tiny fraction of a second. The ship doesn't move very much in that time.
(6) the laserheads don't share the energy between them. Each laserhead can only utilize the energy that impacts that specific laserhead. Since the laserheads don't block each other from the energy of the nuclear bomb, it doesn't matter to the laserhead how many other laserheads are nearby. Each laserhead will get as much energy as it gets from the nuclear explosion. Suppose you design a missile with a single laserhead, which generates 1 GJ of energy. If you now use the same warhead with six laserheads, each laserhead will generate 1 GJ of energy (assuming you design it such that no laserhead obstructs another). Any energy from the bomb which is not intercepted by a laserhead is essentially wasted (as far as generating x-ray lasers).

In the end, though, you are correct that the necessary energy is huge. IFF states that it could be in the terajoule or petajoule range.

In addition to what has already been said, you can check out my rather crude video of an attack sequence for Mk-16 here: Mk16 attack sequence: http://youtu.be/byq68MjOlJU

As I said, it's a bit crude, as it was one of the first CGI videos I ever made several years ago.

<shamelessselfpromotion> Be sure to check out the other links in my signature</shamelessselfpromotion>

A link to Maxx-Q's YouTube page https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWbsN9YeM3sIbJBc459DmWQ to save him from more gratuitous self promotion

Poker

To go completely in the opposite direction of the discussion above...when is Eloise going to call Honor by her first name? We've seen Honor call her "Eloise" and Elizabeth calling her that as well (with Pritchart reciprocating) but I've only ever seen Eloise call Honor by her titles or rank. Usually, the text specifically points out the first time someone uses a person's given name because it's significant in some fashion.