Mirror-armed missiles

Aside:
Can a ship come through the junction rolled?

This is a question without meaning. Rolled relative to what? Space is 3 dimensional. No one would emplace defenses on a plane which would allow rolling ship to be an effective defense.

Duckk wrote:

Aside:
Can a ship come through the junction rolled?

This is a question without meaning. Rolled relative to what? Space is 3 dimensional. No one would emplace defenses on a plane which would allow rolling ship to be an effective defense.

Ah! Thanks.

cthia wrote:Aside:
Can a ship come through the junction rolled?

Since it is kind of pointless to roll ship when using Sails, why would it matter? I don't know of any restriction on a ship's orientation going through a wormhole, so ships could emerge from a wormhole in any attitude desired. Then when the sail is dropped and the wedge brought up they would be rolled against some aspect, but whether there would be anyone to be rolled against would be just random chance.

Weird Harold wrote:

cthia wrote:Aside:
Can a ship come through the junction rolled?

Since it is kind of pointless to roll ship when using Sails, why would it matter? I don't know of any restriction on a ship's orientation going through a wormhole, so ships could emerge from a wormhole in any attitude desired. Then when the sail is dropped and the wedge brought up they would be rolled against some aspect, but whether there would be anyone to be rolled against would be just random chance.

And their chances of surviving the minute or two of hostile fire until they moved far enough to swap from sails to wedge is... minimal...
So if there's anybody you'd need to roll against the ship's not going to still be alive by the time it can roll.

How many ways does this idea fall flat on it's face - let me count the ways...

First you are assuming that a cheap mirror will survive deployment at a significant fraction of c relative to the local environment (which is a very thin, not a total, vacuum) sufficiently intact to be useful. This is an unproven assumption (especially give the size of mirror required - see below).

Next you are assuming that the mirror material can survive long enough a reflect enough energy to do damage to the ship while putting a reflective surface on said ship cannot deflect enough of this reflected energy to save said ship - unproven assumption.

Third, you assume that a large mirror can be packed, carried at high acceleration and then automatically deployed in short order. Highly unlikely in Today's technology, but hey, this is the Honorverse - still, unproved assumption (Note: lasers become ineffective at distance because their beams are not perfectly parallel - they disperse - so to make them effective again your mirror has to capture all or most of the beam, which is now spread quite wide).

Fourth, a parabolic mirror will focus a bean of light perfectly parallel to it's major axis to a point (called, surprisingly, the "focus"). The laser bean is not perfectly parallel, or it would not disperse and lose effectiveness with distance. So to hit a point, a different shape would be required. And even if it were perfectly parallel (or the imperfect focusing of a parameter were sufficient), the mirror would not be parabolic, it would be a segment of a full parabolic mirror. Easier to show with a diagram than explain, but you would basically imagine a full parabolic mirror around the target ship, with the ship at its focus, parallel to the attack beam, then cut out that segment that intersects the beam. So you have to get the shape and direction pretty much perfectly right. Not an unproven assumption per se, just pointing out how little you appear to have considered the actual problem.

Fifth, to get the attack beam to hit the mirror and then the target, the mirror has to know where the beam is coming from when the beam source is seconds away. This is difficult to do, indeed the most reasonable way to acheive this is to have the source ship fly in a known pattern when the mirror-missile is launched. This may well make the attach ship more vulnerable to counter-attack and thus be a dubious trade-off.

Sixth, the mirror assembly has to be cheap as well as accurate and durable before use. Unproven (and dubious) assumption.

Seventh this attack method will be effective enough that must be an economical trade off to use some number of expensive missile busses each with a "cheap" mirror assembly in place of some number of identical expensive missile busses with an "expensive" nuclear warhead and lasing rods assembly.

Eight, mirror tipped missiles will require the same number of control links as an equivalent number of laser tipped missiles. This is a hard fact, and it reduces the combat value of mirror tipped missiles if more are required for the same impact as laser tipped missiles.

Note this only addresses the original proposal for a mirror tipped missile. "Lots of cheap mirrors everywhere" is a different proposal with its own problems and is not relevant to this post.

Dilandu wrote: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.

ColinD wrote:Next you are assuming that the mirror material can survive long enough a reflect enough energy to do damage to the ship ...

We do have second hand evidence that it is not possible, at least at anything like a reasonable price. If there was a material that reflected laser light well enough, they would probably build the outer shell of the missiles out of that material, thereby making them unaffected by PDLCs.

crewdude48 wrote:

ColinD wrote:Next you are assuming that the mirror material can survive long enough a reflect enough energy to do damage to the ship ...

We do have second hand evidence that it is not possible, at least at anything like a reasonable price. If there was a material that reflected laser light well enough, they would probably build the outer shell of the missiles out of that material, thereby making them unaffected by PDLCs.

Or, as I mentioned in an earlier post, you could cover the full-up warships with it.

Wave guide.

In a U shape

Created using a tube of massive gravity.

(Assuming you could twist a grav field into a u shaped tube)

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