You've been warned.
Carl wrote:Okay, several things raised in this thread over it's life i'd like to address.
1. Grav drivers in missile tubes and structural issues raised where an area i wanted to address.
First and foremost even with structural material a thousand times stronger than modern steels and a 10KM grav tunnel a Sagi-C would snap in half firing just one missile tube. The recoil is just that extreme. So the issues a split design missile tube might represent aren't really an issue by comparison.
Fortunately Missile tubes aren't the only thing that has this issue. Pulsar weapons fire Pulsar dart's, but we saw Solid shot used all the way back in Basilisk Station. And the effects are way beyond what 5.56 can do, and probably beyond even 7.62 with frangible ammo. Even with a 2KPS firing velocity the KE and especially momentum requirements to do that kind of damage basically dictate a similar weight dart to a 5.56 round at the minimum, maybe more, (though it would still probably be less than a 7.62 at a guess, and probably no heavier than a 5.56 once you include brass and powder charge, plus mag weight savings. At that kind of mass the accelleration force required starts to get very extreme to hit 2KPS. For an M16 length barrel you'd be comfortably beating out the average recoil force of an M16, and even that of the higher caliber, longer barreled M240. Go down to an M14 style Barrel and it gets even worse.
Given that Pulsar's have if anything been shown to have much lighter recoil than modern weapons, (in fact i can't recall pulsar's ever being depicted with measurable recoil), i'd say it's a fair bet that the "equal and opposite reaction" that newtons third law dictates is occur as non-physical force. I.e. feedback in the grav driver energy systems.
This also suggests firing a broadside won't punt the ship sideways at a couple of hundred m/s.
1) Pulsers, not pulsars. A pulsar is a rapidly spinning collapsed star.
2)The first rule about recoil in the Honorverse is that you don't talk about recoil in the Honorverse. Although I admit I'm intrigued by your "feedback" thought. Sounds sort of like you're talking about using the it similar to how automatics and semi-autos use the recoil to actuate the slide, hammer, etc.
Carl wrote:2. Regarding the Keyholes. Given that they'd probably be targeted at energy range, Have no armor to protect them from even simple shrapnel at energy range, and modern combat doctrine has hardened towards missile combat which gives more reaction time to surprise attacks, i have to ask why the thing needs to be kept recessed. It probably does have some minor advantage's, particularly in not blocking LoS at extreme angles for certain sensor systems. But i'd think at least in the Aggie's case that mounting them in a dedicated external cradle would be better than making a mess of the internal's that way on a design allready light on armor and the like. Cutthroat allready provides a valid example here to inspire someone to think that way...
I would imagine (we haven't really discussed it in BuNine) that KH still has a bit of armor - not much, but some - just for protection against the kind of shrapnel you refer to. As for protection at energy range, well my thoughts are that if you allow an enemy ship into energy range, you've screwed up somewhere.
I realize that it's possible to get into energy range (we've seen it enough in the books), but I also think that by the time ships are at energy range, the KH would have been toast long ago anyway.
As for why it's recessed, it has to do with impeller drive and wedge physics, I suppose. One of the reasons there's a taper at either end of an impeller drive ship is because of the way the wedge comes up. Note that there's almost nothing that extends above the surface of the taper, and if there is, it's very flat. I believe that when a wedge starts to come up, it angles along the hull somewhat, following the angle of the taper.
Edit: Also what The E said. I forgot about the compensator field, even though there have been discussions on *that* before.
Recessing the KH platform would keep it out of the way of that wedge startup field. There have been some discussions about this previously here and at Baen's Bar, and TBH, there's never been a satisfactory answer for everything. Especially with regards to the Aggie, because it breaks a lot of the supposed "rules" of things extending too far beyond the hull surface and the need for no obstructions on the non-hammerhead side of the impeller nodes.
But then, so does a pinnace.
Carl wrote:3. That image of the after hammerhead, do you think you could yank up your pod design and place one in front of one of the missile door, those doors look to be as wide as they are tall whilst your pods are noticeably thinner in one dimension than the other.
Not sure what you mean. The pod bay hatches match the shape of the pods, except they are larger by one meter or so for clearance
Carl wrote:Of course Aggie and co where probably designed with the old style round pods in mind which would have required that kind of release door and all the issues it creates in terms of rail layout and how that feeds into internal layout. Which is quite different from how i imagined it as well tbh. Then again i had the boat bays figured differently.
Again, I'm not sure what you're referring to when you say "old style round pods". Pods have always been trapezoidal in shape, although the older versions, as depicted by Russ Isler in the earlier books, were much thicker than the flat pack pods shown in the Aggie renders.
As for how you imagined the rail layout and such, I'm sure there are quite a few ways to do it, some more complicated or less complicated than the way I did it. I'm not an engineer, although I suppose you could say I know enough to be dangerous. What I *do* end up trying to do is design something that *could* work. Whether it's the best method or not, I have no idea, but if I ever get around to making the animation showing pod bay operations, you'll see that it *could* work, based on assumptions of how things work *in the Honorverse*.
Carl wrote:4. Talking of boat bay's, I've noticed their on the underside, i always had the impression from the text they where side mounted, have i missed something in the text or did the great re-sizing I've heard about require a change in that?
We had some discussion on this as well a couple years ago when I first posted my pinnace renders. Pretty much, they've always been under the ship, open to space. Otherwise, one wouldn't need a boarding tube. Maybe David never specifically stated it, but ever since I first read the books, I always had the impression that the bays were on the bottom. It was nice to see that confirmed with the art of the later books, and then reconfirmed once I was invited into BuNine.
That said, the aforementioned discussion on pinnaces ( viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4357&p=100446&hilit=Condor+Pinnace#p100446 ) also brought up the boat bays on the Tepes, which give the impression of being exactly how you envisioned all boat bays. I'll leave the details to the thread I linked - it's only four pages.
Carl wrote:5. Talking of the Sagi-C's again, there's an offhand comment in At All Costs that mentioned Mantie cruisers firing rolled on their side, and the Sagi-C's are supposed to be able to fire both broadsides together, but without keyhole i don't see how that can work, was that ever explained?
Think that's all for now.
Well, *every* modern Manty ship can launch missiles while rolled - that's the "off-bore" capability that's new, which is why on the newer ships I've rendered, there are no CM tubes on the hammerheads, and why the Roland has all its missile tubes in the hammerheads (except CM tubes). Keyhole is not required for off-bore firing.
What Keyhole *is* required for is updated targeting info *while* rolled. Non-KH-equipped ships need to roll back "level" to continue updating targeting info to their missiles, unless another ship is relaying targeting info for them.
The best advice I can give you right now when reading the Honorverse books is that while someday it *may* be possible to do some of what's depicted in the books, and that Weber tries for realism, there's going to be areas where it breaks down and doesn't fit with known physics. The advice? Live with it, ignore it, or stop reading the books.
I admit, that sounds very sarcastic, or even condescending, but really, that's all you can do. The series is too far along now for Weber to change anything he's written. At least The Great Resizing happened early on in the series and by just not mentioning ship dimensions anymore, he could retcon that easily enough. <shrug> OTOH, BuNine is *trying* to come up with plausible ways to explain or reconcile what he has written with real-world physics/engineering/design, etc. Whether we're successful or not remains to be seen, but I'd like to think we *are* succeeding, in part.
The thing to remember, though, is that whether it's realistic or not, the rules of physics and engineering (and design, for that matter - note how similar all the ships are, no matter who builds them) in the Honorverse are *consistent* (mostly - see the aforementioned Aggie and pinnace vs. impeller nodes subject). How often do you find that level of consistency in a science fiction series?
. But he's been quite consistent about it. Anyway this is just that that's what I've gotten from RFC's posts over the years)