Understanding Missile Ranges

Hello All!

I have been a lurker here on this forum for years and I used to have an account but I lost the info so I have created a new one.

So, I have been reading (actually listening to via audible) the most recent book (HH14) and actually, despite many people's reviews, have actually been enjoying it. That being said, several scenes talk about missiles and their ranges (yes, all the other books do as well but I have never given this much thought) and I realized that I don't really have a good grasp on the actual distances of what Apollo can do for the long range accuracy of a ship firing them. Yes, I can read the numbers BUT it doesn't actually translate to something I understand in real-life terms. Could anybody help me out with this? Say, the actual distance that the missiles flew in At All Costs that made Lester decided to strike his wedges?

PS. This group is awesome!

Micah wrote:Hello All!

I have been a lurker here on this forum for years and I used to have an account but I lost the info so I have created a new one.

So, I have been reading (actually listening to via audible) the most recent book (HH14) and actually, despite many people's reviews, have actually been enjoying it. That being said, several scenes talk about missiles and their ranges (yes, all the other books do as well but I have never given this much thought) and I realized that I don't really have a good grasp on the actual distances of what Apollo can do for the long range accuracy of a ship firing them. Yes, I can read the numbers BUT it doesn't actually translate to something I understand in real-life terms. Could anybody help me out with this? Say, the actual distance that the missiles flew in At All Costs that made Lester decided to strike his wedges?

PS. This group is awesome!

The long distance throw at Lester in AAC is about 150 million KM, or approximately 1AU - The distance between the Earth and the Sun, or about 9.8 light minutes.

From Rest, it appears the shipborn Apollo works to approx 85-100 Million KM or a little less than the distance between Venus and the Sun (108 million KM).

A few more things:

The moon is about 385,000 KM from Earth, or about 1.2 light seconds - also about the maximum range for a Graser (~1 light second). Effective range against sidewalls is about 1/2 this, and a Grav -Lance has a range about 1/10 the distance between the Earth and the moon.

From a standstill:
Old CMs have a range of 3 Lunar distances - the newest about 12.

Single drive Missiles have a range of about 7 million KM from rest or about 1/7 the closest distance Earth and Venus.

Full powered range of a DDM is about 70% of the range Between Earth and Venus at closest approach.

Full powered range of a 3 drive MDM is about 70 Million KM, that 1 and 2/3rd the distance to Venus, or just shy of 1/2 the distance between Earth and the Sun.

Theemile wrote:The long distance throw at Lester in AAC is about 150 million KM, or approximately 1AU - The distance between the Earth and the Sun, or about 9.8 light minutes.

From Rest, it appears the shipborn Apollo works to approx 85-100 Million KM or a little less than the distance between Venus and the Sun (108 million KM)

I'd have to double-check the latest book, but I think shipborn Apollo is more like 75-80 million km.

The longest shot I remember seeing while it was still under onboard FTL control was in the Battle of Manticore which was "almost seventy-three million kilometers". A war-game simulation in Storm from the Shadows had a shot of 81 million km -- but since that was simulating if BC's had Apollo they may have also played with the effective simulated range

Still we're talking about having something under faster than light control almost half-way from the Earth to the Sun. That's a hell of an engagement range.


The Hermes relayed "trick-shot" against Theisman was about twice that far, so like having FTL controlled missiles launched from Earth at a target closely orbiting the sun.

The actual range doesn't really matter. The important aspect is that he believed she could hammer his fleet to bits before he could either close on her to shoot back, or to escape back over the hyper limit.

What he had seen up until that point is that the defenders had a small number of units firing a really deadly missile--the whole reason for the attack was to win the war before such missiles became widely available.

Then Honor shows up and fires a massive salvo of what are clearly the new missiles--it's obvious most of the new stuff is in her fleet. Given the performance of that salvo it's obvious he can't hope to survive a fight against her--but he's far beyond what was thought to be her effective range. The group of missiles heading his way, however, says she can fire combat-effective missiles even at that range.

Haven knows that Honor has no interest in racking up a body count, if she can win without killing people she would prefer to do so. Hence the demonstration of the effectiveness of her missiles--to convince him that he will not be able to either escape or reach Manticore and force it's surrender before she can destroy him.

What he doesn't realize is that while she can get hits at that range it would be a very slow process given how few birds she can actually control at once at that range. Had he gone for Manticore he would have taken losses but he would have won.

I guess the Royal Manticoran Navy does bluff after all.

Loren Pechtel wrote:What he doesn't realize is that while she can get hits at that range it would be a very slow process given how few birds she can actually control at once at that range. Had he gone for Manticore he would have taken losses but he would have won.

I don't think the vector for that would have worked. And if he had planned something like that he'd have already obliterated the few million people who spent several hours sucking their thumbs while waiting to die because reasons.

And in any case she can move the part of the fleet to where he'll exit the hyperlimit and leave enough to chase him to keep him from doing that. It takes about 72 Apollo pods to kill a fully operational Haven SD(p) inside a fully operational fleet missile defense system. And 2nd has very few fully operational ships and their fleet missile defenses are in bad shape. And a single BatRon has a lot of missile pods.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Theemile wrote:The long distance throw at Lester in AAC is about 150 million KM, or approximately 1AU - The distance between the Earth and the Sun, or about 9.8 light minutes.

From Rest, it appears the shipborn Apollo works to approx 85-100 Million KM or a little less than the distance between Venus and the Sun (108 million KM)

I'd have to double-check the latest book, but I think shipborn Apollo is more like 75-80 million km.

The longest shot I remember seeing while it was still under onboard FTL control was in the Battle of Manticore which was "almost seventy-three million kilometers". A war-game simulation in Storm from the Shadows had a shot of 81 million km -- but since that was simulating if BC's had Apollo they may have also played with the effective simulated range

Still we're talking about having something under faster than light control almost half-way from the Earth to the Sun. That's a hell of an engagement range.


The Hermes relayed "trick-shot" against Theisman was about twice that far, so like having FTL controlled missiles launched from Earth at a target closely orbiting the sun.

I don't think the Apollo max range has been nailed down definitively, but we're still talking about somewhere between .5 and .6 AU.

As another comparison, Mars has an orbital radius of 1.524 AU, or about 1/2 again the orbital radius of Earth. Which also means the closest aproach of Earth and Mars is just a smidge more than 1/2 an AU, or around 80 million KM. Which means one of Mar's small close Moons could most likely be targeted by shipborne Apollo, but is slightly outside of powered MDM range, requiring a slight ballistic coast phase. But this still means that a ship in Earth orbit could hit a ship in Mars orbit with MDMs about 15 minutes after it fired.

NortonIDaughter wrote:I guess the Royal Manticoran Navy does bluff after all.

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To quote Honor -- "a bluff is when you raise on a busted flush"

Honor's launch against Lester was a range demonstration; Lester could not have gotten either to Manticore or escaped the resonance zone before Honor could have repositioned and hammered if need be.

-- Stewart

kzt wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:What he doesn't realize is that while she can get hits at that range it would be a very slow process given how few birds she can actually control at once at that range. Had he gone for Manticore he would have taken losses but he would have won.

I don't think the vector for that would have worked. And if he had planned something like that he'd have already obliterated the few million people who spent several hours sucking their thumbs while waiting to die because reasons.

And in any case she can move the part of the fleet to where he'll exit the hyperlimit and leave enough to chase him to keep him from doing that. It takes about 72 Apollo pods to kill a fully operational Haven SD(p) inside a fully operational fleet missile defense system. And 2nd has very few fully operational ships and their fleet missile defenses are in bad shape. And a single BatRon has a lot of missile pods.

The whole point of the attack was to capture Manticore and end the war. Of course his vector went there!

And Honor can't just hyper over to his exit vector--that leaves him in possession of the Manticore system.

And she put those 60 missiles through his defenses, she could do it as many times as she wants except actually putting them on target. She could have picked his fleet apart slowly.

No, he was heading 2nd fleet out beyond the hyperlimit to rearm and pull out the damaged ships. Then they would come back. However not blowing up the Sphinx orbital stuff in passing makes it a lot harder to deal with Manticore if the Queen doesn’t just surrender.