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Mirror-armed missiles

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Mirror-armed missiles
Post by Dilandu   » Wed Aug 24, 2016 1:54 pm

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Ok, we knew, that lasers could penetrate the walls of warships. We knew, that while they aren't as powerfull as grasers, they are still considered pretty capable to deal damage on capital ship scale.

So, let's arm our missile with mirror. Just large parabolic mirror, amde from thin foil with some orientation and targeting system. The missile would carry the folded mirror near the target, here the mirror would unfold, track the enemy...

And our SD, positioned a hundred millions kilometers away, would hit the mirror with all his lasers, tuned to provide radiation in the optimum part of spectrum.

The mirror would concentrate the defocused beam radiation, and re-focuses its on target. Of course, the mirror itself would be evaporated, but the sufficient part of energy would be re-focused on target. Sidewalls would be penetrated. And a number of those pesky Manticorans would be fireballed.
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Oh well, if shortening the front is what the Germans crave,
Let's shorten it to very end - the length of Fuhrer's grave.

(Red Army lyrics from 1945)
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Re: Mirror-armed missiles
Post by Joat42   » Wed Aug 24, 2016 1:56 pm

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Lord Skimper, is that you? :shock:

---
Jack of all trades and destructive tinkerer.

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Re: Mirror-armed missiles
Post by Dilandu   » Wed Aug 24, 2016 1:58 pm

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Joat42 wrote:Lord Skimper, is that you? :shock:


Nah, just me. Plain old Dilandu. :) With his grunge against Too Good Guys Who Always Win)
------------------------------

Oh well, if shortening the front is what the Germans crave,
Let's shorten it to very end - the length of Fuhrer's grave.

(Red Army lyrics from 1945)
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Re: Mirror-armed missiles
Post by Joat42   » Wed Aug 24, 2016 2:20 pm

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Well, if you consider the amount of energy that needs to be reflected a reflection of 99.999% isn't enough. The mirror will be flashed to plasma in microseconds. Also, if this short lived pulse manages to penetrate the sidewalls you still have to penetrate the armor which is very very unlikely.

Now, if we instead borrow a page from Live Free or Die (John Ringo) and use some more exotic material to build a mirror it may be possible but the aiming is going to a pain.

Anyway, it is just a one trick pony. The target only has to make minor random speed adjustments since the weapon is light-speed lagged. Heck, any kind of maneuvering makes the weapon unusable.

---
Jack of all trades and destructive tinkerer.

Anyone who have simple solutions for complex problems is a fool.
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Re: Mirror-armed missiles
Post by kzt   » Wed Aug 24, 2016 2:43 pm

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And the minor detail that Honorverse anti-ship energy weapons are firing hard x-rays or gamma rays. Which don't interact with the mirror in any usable way.
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Re: Mirror-armed missiles
Post by Dilandu   » Wed Aug 24, 2016 2:44 pm

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Joat42 wrote:Well, if you consider the amount of energy that needs to be reflected a reflection of 99.999% isn't enough. The mirror will be flashed to plasma in microseconds. Also, if this short lived pulse manages to penetrate the sidewalls you still have to penetrate the armor which is very very unlikely.


Of course it would evaporate! :) But it would serve the purpose.

Well, in theory we could build mirror that would not evaporate, but it would be REALLY big. Not heavy, though - with Honorverse nanomaterials the mirror with the diameter of Jupiter would probably weight just a few tons - but really big. With really big mirror we could afford the dispercion of energy so the mirror would not be destroyed, because the beam power per square meter would be low. But... such big mirror would took too long to deploy and would be hard to aim.

The basic idea is to provide near-target guidance for long-range laser shots. Previously in infodumps the idea of long-range laserr shots were dismissed because of time lag: the target could shift during the beam fligh time, if the distance is more than a few lightseconds.

But with re-targeting mirrors we could basically blast the enemy from other side of star system.

P.S. By the way, this is the perfect idea for sudden attack weapon. All that you need is secretly deploy several mirrors in the inner system, than - when they are deployed - your armada of long-range laserships would jump over the hyper limit and start to slice the enemy ships apart from light HOURS. Because the position of mirrors is known to the attacker, and the mirrors are doing the targeting, all the attacker need is just to pump the mirrors. And they do the rest.
------------------------------

Oh well, if shortening the front is what the Germans crave,
Let's shorten it to very end - the length of Fuhrer's grave.

(Red Army lyrics from 1945)
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Re: Mirror-armed missiles
Post by Dilandu   » Wed Aug 24, 2016 2:45 pm

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kzt wrote:And the minor detail that Honorverse anti-ship energy weapons are firing hard x-rays or gamma rays. Which don't interact with the mirror in any usable way.


http://honorverse.wikia.com/wiki/Laser
Lasers were the most common shipmounted energy weapon. Anti-ship lasers had lenses that ranged from several decimeters to over a meter in diameter; they had effective ranges of about 1,000,000 kilometers (500,000 km against targets with sidewalls). A majority of ships also mounted clusters of smaller point defense lasers for the anti-missile duty, that were powerful enough to destroy shuttlecraft. Grasers were a larger, more powerful version of lasers.


Nothing was said about the exact wavelenght of Honorverse's lasers.

And, if I'm not mistaken, the sidewalls are at least partially transparent in several diapasons. Like visual light.
------------------------------

Oh well, if shortening the front is what the Germans crave,
Let's shorten it to very end - the length of Fuhrer's grave.

(Red Army lyrics from 1945)
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Re: Mirror-armed missiles
Post by Duckk   » Wed Aug 24, 2016 2:53 pm

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Graser? You know, as in, gamma ray laser? It's all there in the name.
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Shields at 50%, taunting at 100%! - Tom Pope
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Re: Mirror-armed missiles
Post by Joat42   » Wed Aug 24, 2016 2:56 pm

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You don't think a big honking mirror is kind of a giveaway?

And it is still a one trick pony.

---
Jack of all trades and destructive tinkerer.

Anyone who have simple solutions for complex problems is a fool.
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Re: Mirror-armed missiles
Post by Jonathan_S   » Wed Aug 24, 2016 2:56 pm

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Dilandu wrote:
Nothing was said about the exact wavelenght of Honorverse's lasers.

And, if I'm not mistaken, the sidewalls are at least partially transparent in several diapasons. Like visual light.

Well, not in the wiki. But it's quite often incomplete or erroneous. (It's not something David Weber provides or reviews, so it's subject to fan errors, misunderstandings, or apathy)

Here's a reliant part from the armor essay in the anthology In Fire Forged which does clarify the wavelengths.
In Fire Forged: An Introduction to Modern Starship Armor Design wrote:. Early space energy weapons used photons in the ultraviolet, visible, infrared, and even the radio range. These wavelengths are impractical to focus at contemporary combat ranges so modern weapons use shorter wavelength photons in the X-ray to gamma ray range. Indeed, modern space weapon lasers are so commonly X-ray lasers that the term “laser” is generally synonymous with “xraser” in naval parlance. Their rarer gamma emitting cousins are called “grasers.” Both of these words have their obvious origin with the ancient “laser” though the fact that many such weapons do not operate on the principle of “stimulated emission” is generally forgotten.

Edit - and just to be nice I stuck that detail into the wiki page you'd linked.
Last edited by Jonathan_S on Wed Aug 24, 2016 3:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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