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Extended Range Fusion Missile

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Extended Range Fusion Missile
Post by Lord Skimper   » Sun Sep 27, 2015 10:42 am

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Could a single stage Extended range fusion missile be made? Just use a larger bottle either to make it fit into smaller tubes or make more fit into current Mk16 tubes? The Roland could extra number of missiles as could the rest of the smaller Mk16 equipped ships. Given the size of each stage of a Fusion Missile, couldn't a fusion bottle for it be made two or three times bigger? Could a fusion missile just carry two or three bottles, without stages?
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Re: Extended Range Fusion Missile
Post by Jonathan_S   » Sun Sep 27, 2015 10:52 am

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Lord Skimper wrote:Could a single stage Extended range fusion missile be made? Just use a larger bottle either to make it fit into smaller tubes or make more fit into current Mk16 tubes? The Roland could extra number of missiles as could the rest of the smaller Mk16 equipped ships. Given the size of each stage of a Fusion Missile, couldn't a fusion bottle for it be made two or three times bigger? Could a fusion missile just carry two or three bottles, without stages?

Yes, it could but it's not really worth it.

Even in a 3-drive MDM there is a single fusion bottle, that runs the entire time - but you have 3 drives because the missile drive nodes also have a limited operating life so they burn out even though the missile still has power.

The range of a single-drive ERM is dictated by the number of seconds it's single drive can last before burning out - and the best we've seen to date is (IIRC) about 16 million km [half the continuous powered range of a Mk16 DDM]. It doesn't mater if the missile has power for another hour, it can't accelerate any further because it's drive nodes are burned out; so it's wedge is gone.


Now there's no reason you couldn't still change the power source for the ERM to a microfusion plant. However the tradeoff point where the microfusion plant + fuel, for a give operating lifetime, takes up less space than capacitors appears to be around 5-6 minutes. (Longer than the even a ERM drive's operating life).
So a fusion powered ERM would be larger than a capactor powered ERM, yet have no advantage in range. But making it fusion powered would slow down your launch times, so you could fire less salvos per minutes. Now you could have more power budget for ECM but overall the RMN has decided that microfusion isn't worth it unless it results in a smaller missile -- which is why they haven't built microfusion ERMs.
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Re: Extended Range Fusion Missile
Post by SWM   » Sun Sep 27, 2015 11:10 am

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The size of the fusion bottle is not what determines the range of a missile. It is the design of the impeller rings. The impeller rings burn out; that's what determines the range of a microfusion missile.
Last edited by SWM on Sun Sep 27, 2015 11:14 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Extended Range Fusion Missile
Post by Duckk   » Sun Sep 27, 2015 11:11 am

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http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/177/1
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Re: Extended Range Fusion Missile
Post by Lord Skimper   » Mon Sep 28, 2015 1:33 am

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I see. So the counter missile overloads its drive ring and while powerful is short lived. The cataphract makes the counter missile stage less powerful so it lasts twice as long? So could you make the missiles slower and run much longer? Is this how the ER missile works? could this work with the fusion missiles?
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Re: Extended Range Fusion Missile
Post by The E   » Mon Sep 28, 2015 2:06 am

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Lord Skimper wrote:I see. So the counter missile overloads its drive ring and while powerful is short lived. The cataphract makes the counter missile stage less powerful so it lasts twice as long? So could you make the missiles slower and run much longer? Is this how the ER missile works? could this work with the fusion missiles?


If you actually read the books, you will note that drives are already stepped down as SOP when the tactical situation demands it.
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Re: Extended Range Fusion Missile
Post by SharkHunter   » Thu Oct 01, 2015 11:36 pm

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The E wrote:
Lord Skimper wrote:I see. So the counter missile overloads its drive ring and while powerful is short lived. The cataphract makes the counter missile stage less powerful so it lasts twice as long? So could you make the missiles slower and run much longer? Is this how the ER missile works? could this work with the fusion missiles?


If you actually read the books, you will note that drives are already stepped down as SOP when the tactical situation demands it.
For fun I've been reading through again, hitting a bit about the range of the MDM's... at full throttle wide open start to finish (Buttercup) was only about 15MM kilometers. Stepped DOWN to 50% accel, the nodes last four times longer, and the missile is good for 60MM km. But the bigger deal is that with multiple stages, you can set different accel rates PER salvo.... and ballistic coast phase hiding makes its appearance. Sorta makes calculating things like massive and twisty "time on target" variations much more difficult to defend against. But only the 23E FTE control missile made those twists in-flight update-able close enough to be effective.
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