Medusa-C (The end of the SDP?)

Loren Pechtel wrote:I just had a thought here: I think I see a way to greatly increase the fire rate.

The limits on how closely you can place the tubes comes down to fratricide. Since we are now doing off-bore launches, lets do it a bit differently:

Build a ship with say 5x the tubes of the best designs we have now. What's this, I hear someone saying "fratricide"? No--because we are going to do a staggered launch. Look at it as groups of 5 tubes where there was one. Each tube fires 6 seconds after the last one in the group fired. Horrible for normal shooting but since we are talking off-bore it doesn't matter--all the missiles are heading normal to the target anyway. After as many missiles as you want are in space they turn towards the target and light off--they will arrive as a single salvo.

That is already how they launch. DW has stated that a missiles wedge is ~10km across. A ship is all of 1.5km long at most... Do the rate math. ~100 CM/MDM tubes/broadside. Sidewall 10km distant. Do get to spread +/- 20 degrees or so for calculating initial velocity from tubes required.

Enjoy the high school geometry problem.

darrell wrote:Onboard missile storage dosen't have hundreds of tractors, fusion plants, or thousands of box launchers. Even with the space saving flat packs, you will be able to fit more missiles in onboard missile storage, which means that you will have more missiles and a longer sustained firing rate than any pod storage.

Which would you rather have?

The capability to pound your opponent for an hour,

OR

The ability to overwhelm your opponent with one or two salvos over about five minutes (+missile flight times)?

Not to mention a pod-layers biggest advantage: they can fire ANY missile that will fit in a pod that mates with their rail system. Tube launchers can only fire a very limited range of missiles; usually only a single Mk series of missiles.

Weird Harold wrote:

darrell wrote:Onboard missile storage dosen't have hundreds of tractors, fusion plants, or thousands of box launchers. Even with the space saving flat packs, you will be able to fit more missiles in onboard missile storage, which means that you will have more missiles and a longer sustained firing rate than any pod storage.

It should be noted you could do the same thing as a pod by just dumping the reactor missiles out the rear end of a ship. No box launchers required. No tractors required. No secondary micro fusion required. No structure to hold all these systems required. Activate the wedges as desired.

Relax wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:"="darrell"]Onboard missile storage dosen't have hundreds of tractors, fusion plants, or thousands of box launchers. Even with the space saving flat packs, you will be able to fit more missiles in onboard missile storage, which means that you will have more missiles and a longer sustained firing rate than any pod storage."

It should be noted you could do the same thing as a pod by just dumping the reactor missiles out the rear end of a ship. No box launchers required. No tractors required. No secondary micro fusion required. No structure to hold all these systems required. Activate the wedges as desired.

This assumes it is possible to start the micro reactors without starting the drive. Since there is more than one missile per pod, this sounds sensible.

BTW, is there discussion anywhere of about fatricide when firing a missile pod? Even with only two/pod, firing both at the same time just might cause a small problem. Also, how can we get adequate clearance from the pod itself before firing the drive?

DDHvi wrote:

Relax wrote:It should be noted you could do the same thing as a pod by just dumping the reactor missiles out the rear end of a ship. No box launchers required. No tractors required. No secondary micro fusion required. No structure to hold all these systems required. Activate the wedges as desired.

This assumes it is possible to start the micro reactors without starting the drive. Since there is more than one missile per pod, this sounds sensible.

BTW, is there discussion anywhere of about fatricide when firing a missile pod? Even with only two/pod, firing both at the same time just might cause a small problem. Also, how can we get adequate clearance from the pod itself before firing the drive?

See Roland scenario waiting to fire off a triple stacked Mk-16. The power to start the wedge can be initiated via the fusion reactor at any time. Also the palm in face moment when one realizes one can coast missiles ballistic for many minutes(hours?days?) before initiating the second wedge.

As for pod fratricide see BOMA 1 where the RHN had to station its ships widely so they could fire all those missiles without getting in each others way or blanking control links. SO, eventually it can happen, but no, there is no "in-depth" talk by DW about the "problem."

Relax wrote:See Roland scenario waiting to fire off a triple stacked Mk-16. The power to start the wedge can be initiated via the fusion reactor at any time. Also the palm in face moment when one realizes one can coast missiles ballistic for many minutes(hours?days?) before initiating the second wedge.

As for pod fratricide see BOMA 1 where the RHN had to station its ships widely so they could fire all those missiles without getting in each others way or blanking control links. SO, eventually it can happen, but no, there is no "in-depth" talk by DW about the "problem."

The first salvo delivered by a pod layer should actually be about 5 full salvos coordinated to arrive in about 15-30 seconds. So a few thousand missiles.

D=1/2*A*T^2 ===== V=AT

100 G's acceleration at 12 seconds = 72 KM distance between pod groups. Add a velocity difference of 12KM/second and the distance from the first and second groups of pods 54 seconds downrange is 720KM

Shoot each missile and angle each pod at a slightly different angle and no danger of fracticide.

DDHvi wrote:BTW, is there discussion anywhere of about fatricide when firing a missile pod? Even with only two/pod, firing both at the same time just might cause a small problem. Also, how can we get adequate clearance from the pod itself before firing the drive?

darrell wrote:M

Shoot each missile and angle each pod at a slightly different angle and no danger of fracticide.

DDHvi wrote:BTW, is there discussion anywhere of about fatricide when firing a missile pod? Even with only two/pod, firing both at the same time just might cause a small problem. Also, how can we get adequate clearance from the pod itself before firing the drive?

Think this was in an early book, tSVW or somesuch, that pointed out the missiles are fired very very slightly offset from each other.

Which leads me to have a slight difficulty in imagining how with a small external shape change, suddenly the flat-packs can be packed in such a manner that front to back and front to front INCREASES their ability to be stuffed into podlayers. But that's a whole other cake to be discussed over.

Did RFC actually say you can get the same throughput from a non pod design the way the OP suggests?

I recall mention of survivability and total ammo capacity being rethought and the Medusa-B being a transitional type for use against range limited opponents, but nothing about a non pod design being to match a pod one.

ericth wrote:Did RFC actually say you can get the same throughput from a non pod design the way the OP suggests?

I recall mention of survivability and total ammo capacity being rethought and the Medusa-B being a transitional type for use against range limited opponents, but nothing about a non pod design being to match a pod one.

Not really but a little logic tells us a lot. A tube design will have better ammo storage, but a Pod design will have more plannar arrays for control, due to fewer weapons in the broadsides.

Assuming a Mk 23 spins up in the same time as a Mk 16, the minimum launch time is 18 seconds per salvo. Assuming an SD patterned after the Nike with a 40 missile broadside, a mk 23 tube SD can fire 320 missiles in 72 seconds.

A pod SD rolls 6 pods every 12 seconds, so with 10 missile mk 23 pods, will roll 360 missiles in 72 seconds.

Where the Pod SD truly has the advantage, is all of these pods can be flushed at once. We've never seen a tube ship roll more than 3 salvos at a time, where the pod design can roll missiles for 4 or 5 minutes (if it's allowed to) and toss massive salvos - over and over again. And with the way modern defenses are (an Invictus can launch 11*206 counter missiles against each salvo), yon need mass of numbers to overwhelm defenses.