Dorsal/Ventral pod launching?

MAD-4A wrote:

Relax wrote:And have you somehow missed the fact that an Invictus can throw 200+ vipers every 8s against this, asSNIP

So...what? your going to fire 200 missiles as a warning shot to surrender, at a pirate destroyer who you happened upon? Don't let you in-charge of the budget!!!

Gosh golly gee. You are so right! Why didn't RFC think of that! All 200 CM tubes MUST fire at the same time!

MAD-4A wrote:

SWM wrote:Wedges have open sides not because people wanted to be able to fire weapons from the broadsides. They have open sides because that's the way impellers work. An impeller wedge is two planes inclined together, and that's just the way the physics works...You cannot have the sides closed off with another wedge, or roll the wedge into a cone or anything like that. You can use sidewalls to imperfectly protect the broadsides, but you cannot have a true wedge wall on the sides.

No, It works threw a difference of potential. It can't have closed off ends, that breaks the flow. A cone has the same cross-section as a wedge and can create the same difference of potential. They have square open sides to provide an opening for sensors and weapons-fire (& likely because no-one thought of it). There is no restriction on the sides being closed off unless you want to move sideways. The main drawback is that such a ship would be dead-blind to any direction but fore & aft unless it had Keyhole to look 'round-the-corner.

You can have a sidewall on any side you want. Yes, it will stop the ship from moving, but you can put a sidewall anywhere. You can even make a bubble sidewall which completely encases the ship inside a spherical sidewall.

But an impeller can only produce two wedges, which by convention define the top and bottom. An impeller cannot even try to produce wedge walls on the other sides. It physically cannot do it, because of the physics of the wedges. Shipbuilders would have loved to have wedges on the broadsides, but they couldn't. Since they couldn't protect the broadsides with a wedge, that became the obvious place to put most of the weapons. It's the opposite of what you think--weapons on the broadside are the result of not having a wedge on the broadside, rather than the cause of not having a broadside wedge.

If wedges could be placed on the broadsides, don't you think civilian ships would already do that?

SWM wrote:But an impeller can only produce two wedges, which by convention define the top and bottom. An impeller cannot even try to produce wedge walls on the other sides....It physically cannot do it, because of the physics of the wedges.

Where do you get that from? a Wedge is not some sheet of gypsum laid out there, its a field of gravity. If they can produce a field of gravity "here" with "this shape" then they can form a field "there" with "that shape", you just have to engineer it that way. The current designs for the impellers can't produce them. That doesn't mean a NEW design can't produce it. As I pointed out, the way the "wedge" works is to produce a difference-of-potential threw differing field strengths, a Cone has the same cross-section as a wedge so it can produce the same difference of potential as a wedge - that's physics.

SWM wrote:Shipbuilders would have loved to have wedges on the broadsides, but they couldn't...Since they couldn't protect the broadsides with a wedge, that became the obvious place to put most of the weapons. It's the opposite of what you think--weapons on the broadside are the result of not having a wedge on the broadside, rather than the cause of not having a broadside wedge.

No, It's the opposite of what you think. you can't shoot through a wedge but you also can't "see" through it either so you can't put a wedge around a conventional ship or its blind on all sides and has to operate with "tunnel vision". Something ship builders, owners & Captains are unwilling to do. so they settle for top & bottom protection/wedges to allow the ship itself to both see and shoot to the sides. If you have a cone shaped Impeller field, you can only fire strait fore & aft (no off-bore fire) which means you have to give your opponent a "Down-the-throat/up-the-kilt" shot every-time you want to shoot back, which defeats the purpose of the cone shaped impeller field, plus you can't "see" where they are until you give them the shot (which they can see you turn and anticipate when to shoot) so without Keyhole to provide you with external tracking & FCS the Cone shaped field is useless. so-no they would not have "loved to have it" before.

SWM wrote:If wedges could be placed on the broadsides, don't you think civilian ships would already do that?

I recall it stating specifically that civilian ships only have 1 wedge in the book, to save cost. part of the reason civilian ships have such poor accel compared to military grade impellers. The same reason civilian ships don't carry weapons, Armor & strengthened internal structures, not because they "can't" but because they don't want the cost, all this would add to ship cost and detract from cargo capacity, thus cutting into profitability.

MAD-4A wrote:

SWM wrote:But an impeller can only produce two wedges, which by convention define the top and bottom. An impeller cannot even try to produce wedge walls on the other sides....It physically cannot do it, because of the physics of the wedges.

Where do you get that from? a Wedge is not some sheet of gypsum laid out there, its a field of gravity. If they can produce a field of gravity "here" with "this shape" then they can form a field "there" with "that shape", you just have to engineer it that way. The current designs for the impellers can't produce them. That doesn't mean a NEW design can't produce it. As I pointed out, the way the "wedge" works is to produce a difference-of-potential threw differing field strengths, a Cone has the same cross-section as a wedge so it can produce the same difference of potential as a wedge - that's physics.

I get this from the books. An impeller wedge is not merely a "field of gravity". Simply putting two plate-shaped gravitational fields inclined toward each other cannot produce the acceleration effect that an impeller wedge produces. An impeller wedge is much more than that--it is a tame grav wave in normal space.

Here is the text, with certain sections bolded:

The Universe of Honor Harrington wrote:Then, in 1246 pd, the first phased array gravity drive, or impeller, was designed on Beowulf, the colonized world of the Sigma Draconis System. This was a reactionless sublight drive which artificially replicated the grav waves which had been observed in hyper-space for centuries. The impeller drive used a series of nodal generators to create a pair of stressed bands in normal space, one "above" and one "below" the mounting ship. Inclined toward one another, these produced a sort of wedge-shaped quasi-hyper-space in those regions, having no direct effect upon the generating vessel but creating what might be called "a tame grav wave" which was capable of attaining near-light speeds very quickly. Because of the angle at which the bands were generated relative to one another, the vessel rode a small pocket of normal-space (open ahead and closing in astern) trapped between the grav waves, much as a surfboard rides the crest or curl of a wave, which was driven along between the stress bands.
. . .
In the military sphere, it was soon discovered that although the bow (or "throat") and stern aspects of an impeller wedge must remain open [swm--later books clarify that this is only true if you want the ship to accelerate], additional "sidewall" grav waves could be generated to close its open sides and serve as shields against hostile fire.

I believe the text is quite clear, here and elsewhere, that impellers only produce a pair of bands, not more, not less, and they have to be a particular shape and inclination. Sidewalls can be on any side, but there are only two impeller bands, which by convention define top and bottom.

SWM wrote:If wedges could be placed on the broadsides, don't you think civilian ships would already do that?

I recall it stating specifically that civilian ships only have 1 wedge in the book, to save cost. part of the reason civilian ships have such poor accel compared to military grade impellers. The same reason civilian ships don't carry weapons, Armor & strengthened internal structures, not because they "can't" but because they don't want the cost, all this would add to ship cost and detract from cargo capacity, thus cutting into profitability.

No, the text says that civilian ships have only one layer in their wedges. Military ships have a double-layered wedge. Every kind of ships have two impeller bands, one above and one below the ship. No ship has only 1 impeller band, or more than 2 impeller bands. No ship has or can have wedges on the sides. The reason a civilian ship has lower acceleration has nothing to do with single- or double-layered wedges; it has to do with military grade inertial compensators. The purpose of the double-layered wedge on military ships is to prevent enemy sensors from seeing through the wedge.

Also, doesn't the angle between the two bands of the wedge vary somewhat with acceleration? With a truncated cone, changing the angle would also change the surface area of the cone and probably complicate things.

Back to WastedFly's original intent which would be to add many more pods to an SD(P) for early use in a battle... which would make tactical sense if an SD(P) were EVER designed to operate solo, but they aren't. They operate in squadron strength, and a squadron of SD(P)s armed with MDMs will eat any other fleet / battle group for lunch without breaking a sweat.

For the sake of tactical consideration though, let's say you only had a single squadron of SD(P)'s defending Spindle, or Yeltsin for that matter. Keep in mind that MDM(s) have about 10x the range and that Havenite and IAN pen-aids are superior to every other navy in space, except Grayson and Manticoran weapons, which are that much commensurately better than the RN/IAN. Do you need the extra pods? Doubtful. One Invictus can control enough missiles by itself to have taken out Thurston's ships in Yeltsin in ONE SALVO, or Crandall's ships in Spindle in whatever size target groups that the flag officers wanted to slice off at a time.

It makes much more sense in terms of gross engineering has been well discussed elsewhere and is the combination of unpowered pods on the Rolands, Sag-C's etc. until launch time initiation and a method of extending "Keyhole lite" control and missile supply when those smaller ships are operating in convoy protection mode, such as freighters with some modular tactical capabilities, etc. that can thicken initial launches while getting the heck out of dodge.

unlurking for a moment....

I'm too lazy to find it at the moment but i am 95% sure that RFC has already stated somewhere in this site quite some time ago that Manticore's next generation of SD(P) WILL have "multiple launch points" for pods NOT located on the hammer heads.

okay...back to lurking

jaydub69 wrote:unlurking for a moment....

I'm too lazy to find it at the moment but i am 95% sure that RFC has already stated somewhere in this site quite some time ago that Manticore's next generation of SD(P) WILL have "multiple launch points" for pods NOT located on the hammer heads.

okay...back to lurking

Yes, this is true. This thread is not the first or second time it has surfaced. I have been lobbying for dorsal/ventral pod exits for years. Not sure if I can claim to be the first. Somehow I doubt it. Probably someone over at baen's bar a year after AAC came out circa sometime around 2006.

First time I saw this topic I saw "Dorsai/Ventral pod launching?

Dorsai launching ventral pods?

Got Gordon Dickson on the mind eh?