Dorsal/Ventral pod launching?

SWM wrote:20,000 km away? The wedge is two orders of magnitude closer than that.

Limpeting means actually clamping down onto the hull. I don't recall any text where pods from a podlayer do that. The pods can tractor and tag behind the ship, but I don't recall them ever actually attaching themselves to the hull. Do you have a cite?

AAC, at the Battle of Manticore. Eighth Fleet put out 1/3 of its pod loadout onto their ships before hopping through the Junction.

SWM wrote:20,000 km away? The wedge is two orders of magnitude closer than that.

20,000 meters.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/100/0
"The throat of the wedge for an SD is about 190 kilometers deep; the after aspect's opening is only about 40 kilometers deep. This is why the throat is the most vulnerable aspect, and why missiles are usually programmed to try to get around their targets in order to achieve a down-the-throat shot. Usually, however, the target of the missile attack will turn to present its heavier broadside point defense to the enemy fleet in order to engage missiles as they try to attain that sort of firing position. In addition, of course, an entire task force will be organized into one or more missile defense nets whose units protect one another."

kzt wrote:

SWM wrote:20,000 km away? The wedge is two orders of magnitude closer than that.

20,000 meters.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/100/0
"The throat of the wedge for an SD is about 190 kilometers deep; the after aspect's opening is only about 40 kilometers deep. This is why the throat is the most vulnerable aspect, and why missiles are usually programmed to try to get around their targets in order to achieve a down-the-throat shot. Usually, however, the target of the missile attack will turn to present its heavier broadside point defense to the enemy fleet in order to engage missiles as they try to attain that sort of firing position. In addition, of course, an entire task force will be organized into one or more missile defense nets whose units protect one another."

Right, so it's three orders of magnitude (rather than the 2 orders of magnitude I first said) less than the 20,000 kilometers Wastedfly said. Since the rear edge of the wedge is 20 kilometer up and 250 kilometers to the rear of the ship, Wastedfly is incorrect in saying that you would have to fire a pod almost 90 degrees up in order to hit the wedge. In actuality, you would have to fire the pod within 4.5 degrees of the stern in order to miss the wedge.

YUP, typing too quickly. Should know better. Situation Normal, all uh yea.

Still with built in tractors I don't see why they would have the problem of hitting the wedge.

SWM wrote:

kzt wrote:

SWM wrote:20,000 km away? The wedge is two orders of magnitude closer than that.

20,000 meters.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/100/0
"The throat of the wedge for an SD is about 190 kilometers deep; the after aspect's opening is only about 40 kilometers deep. This is why the throat is the most vulnerable aspect, and why missiles are usually programmed to try to get around their targets in order to achieve a down-the-throat shot. Usually, however, the target of the missile attack will turn to present its heavier broadside point defense to the enemy fleet in order to engage missiles as they try to attain that sort of firing position. In addition, of course, an entire task force will be organized into one or more missile defense nets whose units protect one another."

Right, so it's three orders of magnitude (rather than the 2 orders of magnitude I first said) less than the 20,000 kilometers Wastedfly said. Since the rear edge of the wedge is 20 kilometer up and 250 kilometers to the rear of the ship, Wastedfly is incorrect in saying that you would have to fire a pod almost 90 degrees up in order to hit the wedge. In actuality, you would have to fire the pod within 4.5 degrees of the stern in order to miss the wedge.

If you angle the rails correctly, then it can help with dispersing the pods so you'll have less wedge interference between missiles from different pods.

And you can have rails sending pods aft and forward to further disperse the pods quicker or dispense more pods (bigger salvos)

Necro warning!

With tractors/pressors it shouldn't really matter what angle the rails come out.

Only problem with combing with boat bay is well, there are usually "boats" in the boat bay. But since the boat bay is where all RD's are launched from either extend the boat bay for more maneuvering room(always a good thing) or combine the RD launch bay with the POD launch exit to minimize space used. Or do a combo of all of the above.

Relax wrote:Necro warning!

With tractors/pressors it shouldn't really matter what angle the rails come out.

Only problem with combing with boat bay is well, there are usually "boats" in the boat bay. But since the boat bay is where all RD's are launched from either extend the boat bay for more maneuvering room(always a good thing) or combine the RD launch bay with the POD launch exit to minimize space used. Or do a combo of all of the above.

For that matter, the same approach could be used on ships not designed as podlayers for better combined maintenance and deployment of (almost) all their non-missile parasite craft: cutters, pinnaces, assault shuttles, recon drones (possibly in huge number), decoys (also possibly in huge number), a small number of missile pods on units that aren't really podlayers but can use one pod-enhanced salvo routinely....

I want to add some smaller version of Keyhole, but I don't think the RMN can bear to remove enough bells and whistles from anything doing any part of the Keyhole job to make it small enough for this. Similarly, I doubt any waller is going to have a use for a hybrid CLAC design for internal LAC carriage and rear deployment to tolerate the volume used and the vulnerability of that wide a hatch.

So, here is my vision of how this might work.. The pods are not launched straight up or down, but instead on angles in an area much less likely to be hit than even the aft hammerhead on an up the kilt shot. The red line is the current pod-rails, and the green lines are the 'new' pod-rails. The blue path is the path taken by the pods with the use of a minor tractoring of them, setting them up on a path to clear the wedge easily.



*Beware my mad MSPaint skillz!!

Erls wrote:So, here is my vision of how this might work.. The pods are not launched straight up or down, but instead on angles in an area much less likely to be hit than even the aft hammerhead on an up the kilt shot. The red line is the current pod-rails, and the green lines are the 'new' pod-rails. The blue path is the path taken by the pods with the use of a minor tractoring of them, setting them up on a path to clear the wedge easily.

***Image snipped***

*Beware my mad MSPaint skillz!!

When viewed in an inertial reference frame, an object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by an external force, or more colloquially, an object in motion will stay in motion with the same speed and direction, unless an external force is applied to it. Issac Newton's First Law.

Change the blue lines so that they are either parallel to each other or slightly diverging, otherwise the pods will collide as they continue in the direction they are traveling. The planes of the impeller wedge, even at its narrowest (aft end) are much further apart than the ship is tall. (The wedge is about 40 kilometers wide at the aft end, and even an Invictus SD(P) is nowhere near that, with its dimensions given as 1394 × 202 × 188 meters*.) See the image in Wedge geometry and compare size of the superdreadnaught with the distance between the planes of the wedge at the aft end.

* Dimensions of the Invictus SD(P) from House of Steel.

Vince wrote:When viewed in an inertial reference frame, an object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by an external force, or more colloquially, an object in motion will stay in motion with the same speed and direction, unless an external force is applied to it. Issac Newton's First Law.

Change the blue lines so that they are either parallel to each other or slightly diverging, otherwise the pods will collide as they continue in the direction they are traveling. The planes of the impeller wedge, even at its narrowest (aft end) are much further apart than the ship is tall. (The wedge is about 40 kilometers wide at the aft end, and even an Invictus SD(P) is nowhere near that, with its dimensions given as 1394 × 202 × 188 meters*.) See the image in Wedge geometry and compare size of the superdreadnaught with the distance between the planes of the wedge at the aft end.

* Dimensions of the Invictus SD(P) from House of Steel.

If the pods have tractors, and the tractors have a presser function, pods could push one another out of the way to get divergent trajectories, once they're clear enough of the wedge. That said, they'll spread enough if the paths are just divergent enough to clear the wedge reliably.

Another point though - What's the problem with broadside pod launch, like LAC's use? The "launchers" would of course be vastly larger than missile tubes (but smaller than LAC hatches), and presumably the sidewalls could incorporate larger "gunports" for them.