ERIM

Relax wrote:For the love of... Can NO ONE READ?

I even gave the relevant quote.

Kinetic Energy means NOTHING in the honorverse.

If you have a wedge up, energy required to accelerate is NO DIFFERENT than not moving at all.

PS. If you cannot figure out how to dump a CM out of a cannister... Got issues. RFC does not have such an issue either.

I don't believe that's quite accurate. There is textev for varying "strengths" of wedges, even on the same ship, and a low power, low acceleration wedge is easier to hide/less detectable at longer ranges.
However, I would agree that the energy required to accelerate is significantly less than the math for a reaction-based system would suggest. It has to be.


Impeller drive acceleration also bypasses/ignores (most of) the effects of relativity.
That is, if you're under impeller drive, your base velocity is meaningless when it comes to how much acceleration a given amount of energy/wedge strength/setting will provide.

However, I would agree that the energy required to accelerate is significantly less than the math for a reaction-based system would suggest. It has to be.

The math i used wasn't for a reaction drive, it was for perfect 100% efficient energy transfer from fusion to motion.

Sorry Relax but given the author went to the trouble of re-writing how grav pulse coms work when IRL physics made what he originally laid out impossible i think it's a safe assumption that honorverse ships do obey conservation of energy. Ergo your wrong.

Weird Harold wrote:

munroburton wrote:IIRC, those canisters didn't have any drives of their own. They relied on the shipboard launcher to impart enough velocity to get clear of the wedge and then deployed.

Not exactly ideal for extended range interceptions.

Canisters, no. Canister in place of the warhead in a "MIRV" configuration, maybe. ["MIRV" is "Multiple Independent Re-entry Vehicle" which isn't exactly correct; it would be more "Multiple Independent Targeted Counter-missile" or "MITC"]

The problem, despite Relax's refusal to accept Honorverse limitations, is providing an acceptable command and control loop for each counter-missile and/or finding a way to extend counter-missile range without usurping attack missile tubes or pods...

Unless I'm mistaken, the whole point of using canisters was as a first-stage drive to deploy useful numbers of CMs at an extended range without wasting the mass of a shipkiller missile(SDM or MDM) on a single countermissile.

The original purpose of canisters were to replace CM tubes lost during combat, at the expense of magazine space for SK/EW missiles. There are two significant changes which might have killed the canister off:
1) CMs launchers can now fire off-bore, just like big missiles, effectively doubling how many are in action.
2) DDMs and MDMs eat considerably more magazine space than SDMs did and allocating the same number of canisters per magazine would further reduce a ship's fighting loadout.

IMO, the answer probably lies somewhere in developing a recon drone version of the Apollo control missile for CMs. They would form a second screening wall beyond the LAC screen and relay instructions to extended range CMs which are timed to intercept incoming fire as they cross the ACRD wall.

As for extending the range of CMs, it's easy enough. You just bite the bullet and build them to roughly the size of old SDMs, paying all the associated tonnage penalties in the process. It does mean mounting two flavours of CMs in a broadside - the wee Vipers should be retained in greater numbers for closer-in defense.

Replace the warhead and such of a SDM with vastly improved seeking systems and they also become of great potential use when facing an incoming salvo guided by Apollo-style control missiles.

Like sniping enemy officers with this.

Carl wrote:Sorry Relax but given the author went to the trouble of re-writing how grav pulse coms work when IRL physics made what he originally laid out impossible i think it's a safe assumption that honorverse ships do obey conservation of energy. Ergo your wrong.

Since when. Try actual text-ev for my bolded part of your post.

PS. RFC has never obeyed CE, except in one instance. High velocity objects impacting another object(planet). All of his grav HV mechanics violate CE.

Weird Harold wrote:The problem, despite Relax's refusal to accept Honorverse limitations, is providing an acceptable command and control loop for each counter-missile and/or finding a way to extend counter-missile range without usurping attack missile tubes or pods...

No, it is your refusal to contemplate usage of the preexisting FTL infrastructure that also has light speed emitters.

You may have noticed them being used for oh, the last 20 HV years. They are called FTL RD's. They have such high FTL bandwidth now that they can tactically update an entire enemy task force to its mothership in realtime.

Missiles controled = bandwidth available/bandwidth required per missile. If you do not acknowledge this very simple principle of communications, why bother talking further or even discussing any part of this thread?

Relax wrote:It would appear that from MaxxQ's latest posts that missile tubes cannot fire smaller missiles anymore.

From pearl: http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/175/1

Note that an MSM launcher can fire a smaller missile

Neither are cannon, but one is from a Bu9 hobnobber.

Yeah, AFAIK, that is the standard for current missiles. However, there *is* a design we worked on several years ago that was just a little bit smaller than another missile, and through the use of a "sleeve" was able to be launched through the larger missile's tube.

I believe the sleeve was only a couple cm thick, which is okay as far as space for magazines and such, but if you're trying to save magazine space (or increase the number of missiles contained in a magazine by using smaller missiles) by using missile that are a *lot* smaller than normally fired, then forget it. Reason being that the added sleeve would increase the diameter to that already needed, thereby negating any extra space you might have gained.

munroburton wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:
"At that time" also means older, slower, less capable and most importantly smaller counter missiles that the current Mk-31/Viper drive units.

IIRC, an estimate of no more than three Mk31s can replace the warhead of a Mk23. Smaller CMs, like DD/LAC models, could be used in Mk16 or Mk23 canisters or in a "MIRV" configuration.

The problem still remains providing control at extended ranges, no matter how you get your CMs that far from the mother ship.

IIRC, those canisters didn't have any drives of their own. They relied on the shipboard launcher to impart enough velocity to get clear of the wedge and then deployed.

Not exactly ideal for extended range interceptions.

Correct. All the design work we've done (which admittedly is very little) has unpowered cannisters. They're only big enough to hold however many CMs could fit.

Carl wrote:

However, I would agree that the energy required to accelerate is significantly less than the math for a reaction-based system would suggest. It has to be.

The math i used wasn't for a reaction drive, it was for perfect 100% efficient energy transfer from fusion to motion.

Sorry Relax but given the author went to the trouble of re-writing how grav pulse coms work when IRL physics made what he originally laid out impossible i think it's a safe assumption that honorverse ships do obey conservation of energy. Ergo your wrong.

Honorverse ships obey the law of conservation of energy only if you assume energy is being drawn from somewhere outside our normal universe (such as hyperspace). Otherwise, it is quite clear that they do NOT obey the law of conservation of energy.

And David has not changed how grav pulse comms work. What makes you think he has?

[Edit: Wow, this rambled on a lot further than I expected - travel and don't get to look at the thread for almost a day and you try to respond to everything ]

Relax wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:(Oh, as an aside I'm assuming that even microfusion missiles have some capacitors to help with wedge start; like starships do. So they don't have to have a reactor scaled to handle that power peak. Then they can recharge the capacitors from the reactor after the wedge is up and the power siphon effect kicks in)

In reverse. Micro fusion is lit off inside current ships. So, no I doubt there are any capacitors to start the micro fusion. Now a pod on the other hand... Yes.

Umm, I said "wedge start" not "reactor start". I know the reactor is started in the launch tube (that's why they have extra armor cofferdams around them).

Even in a starship they don't try to bring up the wedge from the instantaneous output of their reactors. They charge capacitors off the reactors and use those for the peak start-up energy. (Possibly because the wedge may not that all that much absolute power to start, but needs it in a very short time)

I was speculating that the microfusion powered missiles probably do something similar. A (relatively) small capacitor bank used so you don't need a reactor capable of a power output vastly in excess of your normal power levels.


Yes, the reactor starts in the tube, then the missile launches. Once it's clear the auxiliary capacitor bank I'm speculating about (plus the normal output of the reactor) is used to initiate wedge start-up. Then the reactor runs the wedge and also recharged my aux capacitors so they're ready to help bring up the next drive.

Relax wrote:

Carl wrote:Sorry Relax but given the author went to the trouble of re-writing how grav pulse coms work when IRL physics made what he originally laid out impossible i think it's a safe assumption that honorverse ships do obey conservation of energy. Ergo your wrong.

Since when. Try actual text-ev for my bolded part of your post.

I don't know that I'd categorize it as "re-writing", but the earlier books talked about (at least artifical) grav as being FTL - it was fairly late in the series when he added the clarification that the FTL grav signals propagated as ripples along the next higher hyper-wall. Hence why the "effective real-time receipt" mentioned in HotQ was really 62x c (speed of light in the Alpha bands) (though SftS says "sixty-four times the speed of light"; but I believe that's an error based on surround information and previous info dumps from RFC) -- full quote was
"Footprints, like gravitic pulses, were detectable by the fluctuations they imposed on the alpha wall interface with normal-space, which meant they propagated at roughly sixty-four times the speed of light."

That clarification has some implications on sensors and FTL transmission in hyper that haven't been explored in the text yet. (Though it come up from time to time in discussions here) Even in the Delta bands, while escorting merchant ships, the grav sensors (and FTL comms) would apparently only operate about about 1.32c - a far cry from the 62c they do in n-space.

That slower FTL in hyper seems to undermines part of the justification that McKeon gives for the Sarnow deployment of convoy escorts (in IEH). Yes, the ship out in front extends the sensor range, but if the FTL comm is only 1.33c you don't get the report back anywhere near as quickly as McKeon seems to be saying.

Though even before the clarification I had issues with their plan, because it relied on Prince Adrian using a recon drone's FTL transmitter; because she hadn't yet been refit with her own. Works fine in a rift; but recon drones aren't built to operate in grav waves - I don't see why their extra FTL transmitter node would have the extra size and circuitry needed to tune it to avoid self-destructing when used inside a grav wave (effectively making it an alpha node)

SWM wrote:

Carl wrote:The math i used wasn't for a reaction drive, it was for perfect 100% efficient energy transfer from fusion to motion.

Sorry Relax but given the author went to the trouble of re-writing how grav pulse coms work when IRL physics made what he originally laid out impossible i think it's a safe assumption that honorverse ships do obey conservation of energy. Ergo your wrong.

Honorverse ships obey the law of conservation of energy only if you assume energy is being drawn from somewhere outside our normal universe (such as hyperspace). Otherwise, it is quite clear that they do NOT obey the law of conservation of energy.

And David has not changed how grav pulse comms work. What makes you think he has?

IIRC, wedge detection and FTL communications in the Honorverse were originally accomplished by gravity waves/pulses travelling faster than light in normal space. At the time David wrote the books, it appeared that gravity waves traveled FTL in real life. When observations in real life proved that gravity waves actually travel at lightspeed in real life, David retconned FTL detection/communication to producing and detecting 'ripples along the interface (wall) of the next higher hyperspace band' (in normal space, this would be ripples along the alpha wall).

Vince wrote:

SWM wrote:And David has not changed how grav pulse comms work. What makes you think he has?

IIRC, wedge detection and FTL communications in the Honorverse were originally accomplished by gravity waves/pulses travelling faster than light in normal space. At the time David wrote the books, it appeared that gravity waves traveled FTL in real life. When observations in real life proved that gravity waves actually travel at lightspeed in real life, David retconned FTL detection/communication to producing and detecting 'ripples along the interface (wall) of the next higher hyperspace band' (in normal space, this would be ripples along the alpha wall).

Physics always said that gravitational waves traveled at the speed of light. The indirect measurement (it is not considered proof, since we have not directly measured gravitational waves yet) confirmed that, but it was hardly unexpected.

David never said that FTL communications were from "gravity waves" or "gravitational waves". He said that they were "gravitic waves". His personal Honorverse tech book always said that it traveled at the speed of light of the next higher hyper band. He just didn't bother mentioning that in the text at first.