Hybrid missile/Graser Torp

I don’t know why we have SD(P)s, as a LAC can transport the entire pod core of an SD(P) at 700g in complete stealth...

kzt wrote:I don’t know why we have SD(P)s, as a LAC can transport the entire pod core of an SD(P) at 700g in complete stealth...

Actually if you CAREFULLY parse how he wrote it, that entire CUMLV pod core was balistic most of the time. The cruisers changed accelerations, but the CUMLV did not, nor did the LAC's and I will bet in RFC's mind; 100% of the time they were balistic. Then at the end.... erm, yea... But last I checked, 8 LAC's cannot haul 300 pods around... No donkies in sight other than on the SLN ships. Then again, IF you read carefully the vectors were matching, so technically maybe you could hide the entire pod core inside the wedges of the LAC's, or BEHIND the wedges of the LAC's is probably how RFC's vision had the scenario with LAC's in FULL stealth on... with ZERO acceleration until right at the end when the LAC's left their sheep

Go back and read carefully and use paper pencil or better yet, Excel, or Libra/open office(free)

LACs cannot start fusion reactors, so there were hundreds of running fusion reactors there. It’s like a camouflaged vehicle covered with running strobe lights. Overall it really doesn’t matter how great your paint is applied, or what color and pattern you choose, it’s just not going to work.

Relax wrote:Oi, missed the 32Mkm quote... Where??? and Wasn't there a ballistic component? I got the 24Mkm one which turns out to be 85,000G 1st 180s... and 100,000G 2nd 60s = 24.2Mkm 110kG@60s = 24.4Mkm 120kG = 24.6Mkm. --> Since I forget exact quote.

It was a couple sentances past the acceleration numbers, all in the section "HMS Clas Fleming/ Prime Terminus/ Prime-Ajay Hyber Bridge"

Uncompromising Honor wrote:“Sir, there’s something strange about their launch profile,” Commander Wozniak said suddenly. Lessem turned from Thúri to look at him, and the ops officer frowned unhappily. “Sir, they’re showing a lot more accel than they should. The missiles we analyzed from Eleventh Fleet maxed at seven-zero-one KPS squared; these birds are coming in at over eight hundred and forty.”
Lessem inhaled sharply, remembering his earlier thoughts about Solarian innovation and productivity.
“Assuming the drive endurance on both stages is the same as on Filareta’s, that gives them a powered envelope of almost thirty-two million klicks,” Wozniak continued. “That drops their ballistic phase to barely four million klicks and roughly twenty-four seconds, which makes their total flight time only two-seven-niner seconds.”

The numbers all mostly seem to check out. 180 seconds at 85,714 gees (840 KPS^2) gives a 1st stage burnout of 151,200 KPS, and 24 seconds of that give a ballistic coast range of 3.62 million km (so a touch less than the "barely four million" -- though since they were looking at a real world range they must have been factoring in some pre-launch base velocity since from rest you'd need about 940 KPS^2 to get a 24 second balistic phase to coast over 4 million km)
Then by deducting the first stage and coast you can confirm the second stage flight time is still 75 seconds, and given the powered range, first stage data, and second stage drive endurance you get the second stage acceleration.

Relax wrote:ANd yes 100% about idiotic reason 46,000 instead of 48,000 even though the only thing that changed was swapping super capacitors for Fusion power. Now I suppose one can argue smaller diameter impellers = worse performance, but <<COUGH>> Countermissiles...

What I still do not get is I was pretty danged sure you are only allowed 15% past the impeller ring... so how the Hell can you get an entire CM/Laser head on there...??? I can see a SINGLE lasing rod like the Viper, with rod sticking through the impeller ring, but now we get ENTIRE laser heads? WTH...

Now if you(uh, BuShips...) are going to claim that is for maximum efficiency.... then going with a less efficient design, the Cataphract should be INFERIOR for acceleration/mass/volume as this corresponds DIRECTLY to compensator volume/efficiency or so we have been told... Wave hands and say the MALIGN has broken this barrier? Possible I suppose.

Or are we going to say single impeller missiles have no barrier for volume/compensator efficiency... in which case, WTH does not EVERYONE already have a DDM? If all you have to do is detach laser head, graft it to a 2nd missile and fire it out a tube... this is absurdly easy...

Sorry, ever since introduction of Cataphract, all of the Honorverse rules for physics have essentially been violated. Pure handwavium now. Just kinda pissed me off. The power of Plot. Grrr

I thought it was ships, with their pairs of impeller rings, fore and aft, that had placement limits. Even old SDMs, based on the drawings, seem to have their single impeller ring much closer to the rear than 15% in. And pinnaces and shuttles also use single beta rings for propulsion and don't seem to need to follow the normal impeller placement and hull shape rules.

But yes, if making a DDM is as simple as making the missile really long then you'd expect system defenses to use them already.

I've speculate in the past as to whether the second stage might have to be of smaller diameter than the first stage. So that its inactive drive nodes were inside the donut hole you'd get if you projected to position of the first stage drive nodes forward. After all we know inactive impeller nodes get damaged by nearby active impeller fields -- yet the Roland's missile magazines nearly fill the space inside its impeller rings. Still - people should have been able to build smaller diameter second stages a hundred years back unless there's some other unknown trick to the Cataphract design.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Relax wrote:Oi, missed the 32Mkm quote... Where??? and Wasn't there a ballistic component? I got the 24Mkm one which turns out to be 85,000G 1st 180s... and 100,000G 2nd 60s = 24.2Mkm 110kG@60s = 24.4Mkm 120kG = 24.6Mkm. --> Since I forget exact quote.

It was a couple sentances past the acceleration numbers, all in the section "HMS Clas Fleming/ Prime Terminus/ Prime-Ajay Hyber Bridge"

Uncompromising Honor wrote:“Sir, there’s something strange about their launch profile,” Commander Wozniak said suddenly. Lessem turned from Thúri to look at him, and the ops officer frowned unhappily. “Sir, they’re showing a lot more accel than they should. The missiles we analyzed from Eleventh Fleet maxed at seven-zero-one KPS squared; these birds are coming in at over eight hundred and forty.”
Lessem inhaled sharply, remembering his earlier thoughts about Solarian innovation and productivity.
“Assuming the drive endurance on both stages is the same as on Filareta’s, that gives them a powered envelope of almost thirty-two million klicks,” Wozniak continued. “That drops their ballistic phase to barely four million klicks and roughly twenty-four seconds, which makes their total flight time only two-seven-niner seconds.”

The numbers all mostly seem to check out. 180 seconds at 85,714 gees (840 KPS^2) gives a 1st stage burnout of 151,200 KPS, and 24 seconds of that give a ballistic coast range of 3.62 million km (so a touch less than the "barely four million" -- though since they were looking at a real world range they must have been factoring in some pre-launch base velocity since from rest you'd need about 940 KPS^2 to get a 24 second balistic phase to coast over 4 million km)
Then by deducting the first stage and coast you can confirm the second stage flight time is still 75 seconds, and given the powered range, first stage data, and second stage drive endurance you get the second stage acceleration.

If 85,000G@180s and 120,000G@75s = exactly 4 Million km balistic phase

Side note diversion ***** warning ***** 120,000G@75s is superior to anything RMN had, and much superior to anything the peeps or RHN have currently and this was not seen until the Graysons showed up + R&D time which created more efficient compensators in War of Honor, a mere ~3 years ago HV time... means the MALIGN should be able to crack the compensator efficiency hurdle for ships in reverse.

Now back:
So, should have 28Mkm base DDM powered and gets there MUCH faster with much better CM dodging potential than the RMN missiles. Using off the shelf tech... So, why was Haven and RMN so stupid if all that had to be done was throw two missiles end for end?

Relax wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:The numbers all mostly seem to check out. 180 seconds at 85,714 gees (840 KPS^2) gives a 1st stage burnout of 151,200 KPS, and 24 seconds of that give a ballistic coast range of 3.62 million km (so a touch less than the "barely four million" -- though since they were looking at a real world range they must have been factoring in some pre-launch base velocity since from rest you'd need about 940 KPS^2 to get a 24 second balistic phase to coast over 4 million km)
Then by deducting the first stage and coast you can confirm the second stage flight time is still 75 seconds, and given the powered range, first stage data, and second stage drive endurance you get the second stage acceleration.

If 85,000G@180s and 120,000G@75s = exactly 4 Million km balistic phase

Side note diversion ***** warning ***** 120,000G@75s is superior to anything RMN had, and much superior to anything the peeps or RHN have currently and this was not seen until the Graysons showed up + R&D time which created more efficient compensators in War of Honor, a mere ~3 years ago HV time... means the MALIGN should be able to crack the compensator efficiency hurdle for ships in reverse.

Now back:
So, should have 28Mkm base DDM powered and gets there MUCH faster with much better CM dodging potential than the RMN missiles. Using off the shelf tech... So, why was Haven and RMN so stupid if all that had to be done was throw two missiles end for end?

I was assuming the ballistic phase would come before the 2nd stage - not after. But either way I'm missing how you got 4 million km.

85,000 gees for 180 seconds gives you a velocity (from rest) of 149.940 KPS. 24 seconds of that is 3.59 million km.

Add on 120,000 gees for 75 seconds and you get a velocity of 238,140 KPS. 24 seconds of that is 5.71 million km.



Also "powered-range" should mean range without any ballistic component. That's why to get the almost 32 million km range I assumed the second stage would have to more like 250,000 gees (vastly more than even the RMN's latest CMs: 130,000g for 75s). If so with a 24 second coast between the stages they were firing at a target up to 35.46 million km away -- beyond continuous powered range.


But I agree - if it was so easy to build a cataphract why hadn't anybody done it before? (Even if only for system-defense; and later for towed pods -- situations where magazine capacity and ease of ammunition handling isn't so critical). Even if you didn't think your fire control could hack the extra range, a dual stage missile using full acceleration (and up to a 15 second coast between stages) could cover the same range as an SDM in no more than 75% the time; and at significantly high terminal velocity. You'd think that would be useful enough to pay about twice as much per round for...

There is a simple answer. And there is the in-universe answer, which basically is that everyone but Manticore has serious lead poisoning.

Jonathan_S wrote:I was assuming the ballistic phase would come before the 2nd stage - not after. But either way I'm missing how you got 4 million km.

85,000 gees for 180 seconds gives you a velocity (from rest) of 149.940 KPS. 24 seconds of that is 3.59 million km.

Add on 120,000 gees for 75 seconds and you get a velocity of 238,140 KPS. 24 seconds of that is 5.71 million km.

180+75 = 255 seconds.... Wasn't number 279... - 255 is 24s as you stated previously. Vel after stage one is 150,000km/s as you also typed up. 24 x 150,000 = 3.6Mkm as you also stated... Need 4Mkm....

It could just be RFC had the tac officer round the numbers as anyone SHOULD instead of how he typically has the tac officer on watch spell it out in absurd decimal fashion or RFC added initial velocity. Either way, close enough and DW wanted to show that DDM's could go balistic to Sollies I guess? Or he button punched wrong and then gleefully added that part just because he could.

Of course IFFFFFF you add up the drives that gives 28Mkm from rest.... THEN we go to a diff battle and the missiles only have 24Mkm from rest.... which would indicate full stop that the 2nd drive only has 60s run time. Not 75s. Which is inline with all other CM drives of the time.

Personally, I think his 32Mkm scenario was a complete FUBAR and it was supposed to be 28Mkm range not 32. I think the real numbers are 85kG@180s and 120kG@60s on Cataphract Mark III missiles I guess if Filaratta got Cat II's since those are the numbers he uses in the NEXT battle, and there are no ??? marks as the numbers align.

Or maybe he typed 4 Million KM balistic when he meant 8Mkm balistic, but screwed up the amount of time balistic of an additional ~30 seconds or a total balistic component of 54s

Or he screwed up the 24Mkm missile numbers and they are REALLY supposed to be 28Mkm from rest with 75s burn time at 120,000G on 2nd stage instead of 60s.

There is no way to square the numbers.

kzt wrote:There is a simple answer. And there is the in-universe answer, which basically is that everyone but Manticore has serious lead poisoning.

Nah, just those in project Grahm

So silly of them to believe there was any benefit to get 2 or 3 impeller rings into a missile. Just stack them... as we have been doing for the last hundred years....

Jonathan_S wrote:

Uncompromising Honor wrote:“Sir, there’s something strange about their launch profile,” Commander Wozniak said suddenly. Lessem turned from Thúri to look at him, and the ops officer frowned unhappily. “Sir, they’re showing a lot more accel than they should. The missiles we analyzed from Eleventh Fleet maxed at seven-zero-one KPS squared; these birds are coming in at over eight hundred and forty.”
Lessem inhaled sharply, remembering his earlier thoughts about Solarian innovation and productivity.
“Assuming the drive endurance on both stages is the same as on Filareta’s, that gives them a [u]powered envelope of almost thirty-two million klicks[/u],”

UH.... stupid me... guess I cannot read and why we have been cross words ....

Yea base of 32Mkm powered + 24s ballistics from first 180s stage at 85kG's... = 2nd stage CM has 75s@250kGs!!!!! At that point, why bother with only 75s @250,000G? Just go for 180s@250,000G... no balistic component required. hits 40Mkm all by itself...

Holy... Moly... there is NO WAY to get 32Mkm powered with anything rational or the entire HV better surrender now to the Malign. NONE