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Re: Relativity | |
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by kzt » Sun Oct 11, 2020 8:28 pm | |
kzt
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It makes no sense to be firing missiles if you have not localized the spider. They have terrible sensors and space is very very big.
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Re: Relativity | |
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by ThinksMarkedly » Sun Oct 11, 2020 8:48 pm | |
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You must have at least a rough idea of where it is. How rough will depend on what your missiles can do when they arrive nearby. |
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Re: Relativity | |
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by Robert_A_Woodward » Mon Oct 12, 2020 2:06 am | |
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Your equation is INCORRECT, see http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hb ... trans.html . Thus the factor, at .8c, is the inverse of .6 rather than the inverse of .36. ----------------------------
Beowulf was bad. (first sentence of Chapter VI of _Space Viking_ by H. Beam Piper) |
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Re: Relativity | |
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by cthia » Mon Oct 12, 2020 9:15 am | |
cthia
Posts: 14951
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Note:
I first opened this can of worms about ramming in the Battle of Spindle thread. There is an appalling number of MK23-E control missiles wasted per massive launch. Somewhere over in the thread, the .8c rad-shield limitation imposed on a missile's accel is the impetus behind my conception of a MAN missile using a different design which allows it to use 100% of its missile's accel. I called it a burst mode. Since the MA will be potentially launching from very short, unprecedented distances then they should be able to guide the missile to it's target without the need to expose it's sensors. Indeed, without the need for the missile to even rely on sensors. Because the LD is so close, it can guide the missile to it's target, thus, also circumventing light speed limitations. Even if traditional missiles are launched from RF ships at maximum range it can pass control to the much closer LD. That is the logic behind my post anyway, whether it has merit or not. The notion about using the many orphaned control missiles to ram an LD is confined to any situation which becomes one of Providence where the possibility simply happens to present itself. Like the rare chance Scotty was presented opportunity to sneak in a nuke. Or out of necessity, like if the last remaining launch is headed downstream when the location of the LD becomes known. Also related to that notion is the reality that an LD has to be concerned with occluding stars. Well, the 23E's are sharing snapshots of the battle field, and they're already using insanely capable computers. If they can analyze all of their views of the heavens, the proper algorithm may be able to detect missing stars, in their FOV. (Field of View) Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense |
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Re: Relativity | |
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by Loren Pechtel » Mon Oct 12, 2020 4:00 pm | |
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Even without a wedge the impact will destroy the ship. And note that to save the ship the point defense must actually shove the missile aside somehow, merely "destroying" it isn't enough unless they can zig out of the way of the plasma cloud it left behind. That plasma cloud will be just about as deadly as the intact missile. |
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Re: Relativity | |
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by Loren Pechtel » Mon Oct 12, 2020 4:19 pm | |
Loren Pechtel
Posts: 1324
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If part of the missile goes on through it's kinetic energy isn't liberated. I'm talking about that kinetic energy of whatever is stopped (and I think that will be the whole missile, especially if it can do something like turn sideways before impact.)
Yup. The kinetic energy at MDM burnout is similar to the rest mass of the missile. The biggest booms we have seen were in the low gigatons. A missile ram exceeds a teraton.
There is--the dazzlers are spent as they enter the defense zone, but they soak up defensive shots anyway.
But said 1000km spread when they are engaging from 50,000km away still puts them in a very narrow piece of the sky. All are coming in at just about the same angle.
But fleets stay close together so their defenses cover each other.
It's not an off chance--it's quite likely. If the defender still has shots left the missile wouldn't have been allowed to reach detonation range. The fact that it is there at all either means the defenses are dry or that multiple shots have missed.
The SLN also has the problem that none of it's defenses were engineered to deal with missiles with that kind of closing velocity. I don't think there's anything a missile realistically can do to avoid being shot down, but a better seeker is less likely to be spoofed. |
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Re: Relativity | |
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by ThinksMarkedly » Mon Oct 12, 2020 11:08 pm | |
ThinksMarkedly
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Gah, sorry, the radical disappeared from the text. I made two mistakes then. Should've just written "sqrt." I'm going to sit in a corner for a while so you don't take my nerd membership card away. The analysis is valid, though off by a factor of 2 to 3. |
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Re: Relativity | |
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by ThinksMarkedly » Mon Oct 12, 2020 11:42 pm | |
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That sentence makes no physical sense. The 0.8 or 0.9c limitation of the particle shields applies to top speed, not accel. It doesn't matter how fast you get to that speed, you can't pass it. Are you proposing an acceleration mode that burns the impeller in less than 60 seconds, but achieves much more acceleration? Say, 200,000 gravities? I remember this part of the thread, and my arguments is that it's not fast enough, unless said missile can achieve ludicrous speeds.
That short range is not less than 1 light-second. Even then it would be dangerously close to an enemy with good sensors or any formation of ships where you couldn't take all of them out in one shot. At 2 light-seconds away, a missile accelerating at 200,000 gravities would need 12 seconds to strike. At 300k gravities, it's still 10 seconds. To get it under 5 seconds, you need more than 1.2 million gravities, which is 10x more than the the current fastest CM missile known. And it is moving at only 0.2c at the end of this run. And without sensors? Do you expect the missile to fly in a straight line, like a beam? That makes interception far easier. And why would the MAN use FTL for this? Note that even the state-of-the-art RMN requires a missile dedicated to being the FTL platform. Even if the MAN can replicate the technology and miniaturise it sufficiently to fit in a missile body, they'd still have to do something like Apollo and send a control missile for every N shipkillers, and all this would achieve is reduce the control loop from 6 seconds to 2.06 (the baseline 2 seconds is the time lag of the sensors). They would need not only an Apollo, but also a Ghost Rider, with sufficient stealth to get much closer than 1 light-second. Summarising, you're positing that the MAlign achieves:
And all of this still assumes that the LD can generate an intercept course with its targets. I've said this time and again: aside from a fixed location where the ships must go to, that's nearly impossible for ships that are slower than their targets. And for fixed locations, there'll be active radar and ready defences.
The sky isn't filled with stars; there's a lot of empty space, or at least where the background object being occluded is sufficiently faint that missiles and ships would not be carrying instruments to detect them. |
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Re: Relativity | |
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by cthia » Tue Oct 13, 2020 6:55 am | |
cthia
Posts: 14951
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It applies indirectly to top speed because of the duration the missile would be able to maintain that accel. Textev frequently includes the enemy's musings "If the missile maintains that accel..." Plus, I'm positing top speed reached in very short time frames within much shorter engagement ranges of the enemy. Resulting in a missile arriving at .9c from half the normal engagement ranges or less. Equivalent to a sports car's faster 0-60 mph rating.
I'm proposing an acceleration that may burn "GA" impellers in less than sixty seconds, but requires much shorter distances to reach the same .9c.
The LD would be controlling the missile. I'm also allowing for traditional ships of the RFN launched on GA positions and the LD doubling as a very stealthy GR drone leading the missile to target. Same as GR does.
There might also be an occlusion of other ships. Or an occlusion of another control missile if a net of 23-Es or GR drones are launched to blanket certain areas, as I also proposed in that other thread. Expensive, yes. But warships and people are more expensive. Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense |
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Re: Relativity | |
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by Jonathan_S » Tue Oct 13, 2020 11:23 am | |
Jonathan_S
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Plus the 0.8c limit is on rad shielding in ships to protect humans. Missiles already exceed that. Even as far back a Flag in Exile, when talking about ballistic attacks on Grayson's forts / stations (should Honor hold the GSN back under their protection) we got this nugget - "if the Peeps launched at .8 c, their birds' drives would boost them to .99 c before burnout." There was no indication that the missiles couldn't do that, or that their laserheads would be non-function when they reached attack range. (They definitely wouldn't be going for kinetic kills; not with the planet Grayson floating behind most of the targets) That missile velocity is obviously far easier to reach with a MDM since you don't need anywhere near as much base velocity from the launching ship for the missile to exceed 0.8c. (Heck, in theory an MDM could do so from a standing start; but only in the last several seconds before 3rd stage burnout -- so in practice it's only likely to exceed that if the ship has build up some noticeable velocity before launch) |
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