Getting to space without violating the Proscriptions

Quarthinos wrote:

AirTech wrote:If you are making ammonia, making hydrazine, and then unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine(UDMH) would be a small step. Add fuming red (or white) nitric acid and you get a blast suitable for launching a Titan missile (hello Mercury / Gemini / Soyuz). This is why the Titan is made from stainless steel, but does not require refrigeration (these are storable - if very nasty - propellants).

The main problem I see with this is that RFNA isn't really storable. You have to add some HF, otherwise the acid attacks the steel and corrodes it's way out of the container. WFNA has the same problem. I'm pretty sure you can't make F any easier that you can make Cl without electricity.

Granted, you could make the RFNA next to the launch pad, but that really doesn't scale very well.

(Read Ignition! for more details..)

I have a copy of Ignition by John Clark (its available on a couple of places on the internet)....
The question is how long you store it for. If you want it in the rocket for years, its an issue, but storing it in glass lined tanks and filling the rocket just before launch then their corrosive problems become academic. The other question is how many launches you are making one a year or one a day - the V-2's had no problem as they were filled just before launch from tanker trailers.

Other alternatives also include liquid oxygen and methane rockets but these require ignitors - which are basically small solid fuel rockets but these also need cryogenic tankers but if you are making them you already have the technology.

BTW the Russians used timber heat shields on the early capsules - charred hard wood works well as a thermal insulator.

The issue is that it is possible but is it worth doing? once the OBS is offline the technology in storage in Nimue's cave becomes a template for the future.

I suggested a while back that if Charis can't find an "override" for the OBS on Safehold, one potential option to take it down would be a large number of crude solid-fuel missiles capable of (suborbitally) reaching OBS altitude with a bursting charge and a lot of shrapnel/debris.

We know the OBS has active defenses, but presumably they can only shoot at so many things at once...

How hard this would be depends on what kind of orbit the OBS platforms are in.

cralkhi wrote:I suggested a while back that if Charis can't find an "override" for the OBS on Safehold, one potential option to take it down would be a large number of crude solid-fuel missiles capable of (suborbitally) reaching OBS altitude with a bursting charge and a lot of shrapnel/debris.

We know the OBS has active defenses, but presumably they can only shoot at so many things at once...

How hard this would be depends on what kind of orbit the OBS platforms are in.

You've got a good point. But there are six cells to the OBS, IIRC. If things are spread out at all, you'd need to be able to identify and target the defensive clusters all of which have better reaction time than anything you can manage. It might not be impossible, but it looks formidable to me.

Don

cralkhi wrote:I suggested a while back that if Charis can't find an "override" for the OBS on Safehold, one potential option to take it down would be a large number of crude solid-fuel missiles capable of (suborbitally) reaching OBS altitude with a bursting charge and a lot of shrapnel/debris.

We know the OBS has active defenses, but presumably they can only shoot at so many things at once...

How hard this would be depends on what kind of orbit the OBS platforms are in.

An ECHO style balloon should cause significant confusion for the OBS - a couple of hundred should blanket its sensors enough to get a hit through. Since we can't use aluminised mylar we will just have to use silver plated mylar... At the low pressures in an ECHO the close defence system would just punch holes in the plastic with no visible impact. Alternatively the OBS could just be wrapped with metalized enough plastic and blinded.

cralkhi wrote:I suggested a while back that if Charis can't find an "override" for the OBS on Safehold, one potential option to take it down would be a large number of crude solid-fuel missiles capable of (suborbitally) reaching OBS altitude with a bursting charge and a lot of shrapnel/debris.

We know the OBS has active defenses, but presumably they can only shoot at so many things at once...

How hard this would be depends on what kind of orbit the OBS platforms are in.

They're also likely made out of materials that would laugh off that kind of shrapnel. You know, like the Temple.

And have thrusters for station keeping so you can't even knock them out of orbit. If Merlin's skimmer is anything to go by, they're likely not even reaction thrusters as we know them so you can't even run them out of fuel with repeated strikes.

AirTech wrote:
An ECHO style balloon should cause significant confusion for the OBS - a couple of hundred should blanket its sensors enough to get a hit through. Since we can't use aluminised mylar we will just have to use silver plated mylar... At the low pressures in an ECHO the close defence system would just punch holes in the plastic with no visible impact. Alternatively the OBS could just be wrapped with metalized enough plastic and blinded.

Assuming that the OBS defenses would not just started to shoot down anything unauthorised, that appeared over the stratosphere. And there are a lot of reason to believe, that they would do just that. The side, that controlled the OBS during the War against the Fallen have a lot of reasons to control the air-and-space communication and didn't let anything to get out of atmosphere to attack OBS or "Hamilcar". Because the space traffic was relatively limited, it wasn't too hard to program OBS to hit anything unauthorised to flight.

Also, how exactly you are proposed to send the decoys toward the OBS? For all that we could learn, the OBS is on the high Safeholdian orbit, or, possibly, even in Largange points of the Safehod moon system. There is no way that the unguided rocket could get even close to the high-orbital target.

Also: how many unguided rockets you need to put enough metalized plastic on orbit to impare the OBS sensors? Hundreds of thousands? Millions, perhaps? The maximum you could realisticly launch, is a few pounds on the LSO - to put enough to impare the OBS detection capabilites you need an AWFULLY AWFUL big armada of rockets.

Dilandu wrote:The maximum you could realisticly launch, is a few pounds on the LSO

Why? Solid rockets can be made rather large.

But I don't think impairing the sensors is necessary - just put up more projectiles than the OBS defenses can physically shoot down in the window they have.

And for my plan payloads will be much greater as we are not launching into orbit - only into a suborbital trajectory to the altitude of OBS orbit.

So for low orbits the propellant/mass-ratio needed is immensely less, and still much less for higher LEO-orbits (where I think the OBS probably is... balancing stationkeeping needs with a short orbit time for rapid response).

If it uses reactionless thrusters for stationkeeping it may well be in a very low orbit which is very easy to hit suborbitally.

n7axw wrote:You've got a good point. But there are six cells to the OBS, IIRC. If things are spread out at all, you'd need to be able to identify and target the defensive clusters all of which have better reaction time than anything you can manage. It might not be impossible, but it looks formidable to me.

Don

I understood that to mean six "magazine compartments" in one weapon, but perhaps not.

Even in that case, though, you just need six times as many missiles.

The original identification of targets can be done by OWL/Merlin. You don't need good aiming (and wouldn't have it - these would have only the crudest guidance, probably just spin-stabilized) - the point is to basically fill the whole area with projectiles.

evilauthor wrote:They're also likely made out of materials that would laugh off that kind of shrapnel. You know, like the Temple.

Maybe... but I'm not sure. I don't think the two are analogous. There's probably some components "near the surface" and vulnerable. It's not just a matter of Federation materials being invulnerable "by default" - the Temple is specifically armored to a degree Merlin finds rather silly.

If it's six separate targets then you're faced with trying to make six military operations all succeed and succeed at the same time.

If one cell can be attacked with 90% confidence, odds for the entire operation succeeding go down to barely even, and it's only that good if the cells can't warn each other of attacks and protect each other.

cralkhi wrote:

Dilandu wrote:The maximum you could realisticly launch, is a few pounds on the LSO

Why? Solid rockets can be made rather large.

You can make large solid rockets with plenty of power IF you can make use of aluminium power to multiply the base power of the fuel by 2-3 times. Given that this isn't going to happen without violating the proscriptions I doubt there is an available solid fuel with the power to lift somthing to orbit. Hence the discussion up-thread about Liquid oxygen for a Liquid fueled rocket. For the record black powder which is the only option we know they have access to is a total non starter as are most of the smokeless poweder options being discussed on these forums as they burn too fast with too little thrust per pound of fuel.