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cthia wrote:"And we shall christen this new SD design ..."

The Unfathomables


Do HV missiles incorporate a compensator? They do not have flesh that could turn into paste at enormous accelerations, so no compensator, right? (Although I have always questioned the durability of the hardware at such accelerations, I'll agree to hand wave that away), but what is limiting HV missiles, seemingly, to ~ .8C?

Honorverse missiles can reach 0.9c. Heck, from rest a RMN MDMs, like the Mk23, can reach 0.81c.

Even as far back as HotQ it talks about 0.9c missiles ballistic strikes (against non-maneuvering orbital targets). And those were single-drive missiles; which means their 'from rest' burnout velocity is only about 0.27c. So to make a 0.9c launch (using the Honorverse's inconsistently application of relativity) requires the launch ship to spend hours first working itself up to a velocity of 0.63c towards the target.


It's the warships that are limited (as others noted, by their particle screens) to 0.8c in n-space (and 0.6c in hyper).
That said, except in hyper, we just don't see Honorverse warships get anywhere near their max velocity -- even if the ship could pull 700g it'd still take it nearly 10 hours to work up to 0.8c - and would have covered 233 lightminutes (28 AU), by which point it's long since flown past anything of likely interest.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The problem is that the logical conclusion of this does not appear to be the case. The missile densities we've seen that the Alliance and RHN were capable of throwing would guarantee kinetic hits on the wedge. If the target ship didn't roll wedge, it would be picked off by those standoff weapons, I agree. But then if it did roll wedge, it can't fire at the missiles that are hiding beneath or above the floor or roof, respectively, so those would hit. And if they could kill, they would.

Which is why we have standoff warheads--because they often can't ram due to the wedge.

This also suggests a fortress-killer missile. Base it on a recon drone, buckler shield, ultrarelativistic, no warhead. It takes a long time to build it's speed so you can only use it against things which don't move very well. Against such things, though, I think the only thing that can stop it is a ship wedge. Recon drones can get awfully close without being detected, once it's gotten that close I don't think interception is possible. Even if you do manage to hit it with a countermissile the dust keeps on coming.

Same problem: if this could be done, it would be done. If you can put four rings on an MDM, you can put five on a larger one that's meant to kill a fort. At 0.18c/min, it will reach a terminal velocity of 0.9c from a standing start a mere 41 million km away, which is well within targetting range of any RHN ship or better.

The problem is that a fort with bubblewall has a full-sky arc of fire and no blind spots. An impactor missile must impact, which means it MUST keep to a predictable trajectory, so it can be picked off.

First, I wasn't after a mere .9c. Second, note that I'm basing it on a stealthy platform--the defenders won't see it until the very end of it's run--and at that point even if they "kill" it the mass still hits even if it's been reduced to a cloud of dust. Yes, it hits the bubble wall, but they're not invulnerable like wedges.

Loren Pechtel wrote:First, I wasn't after a mere .9c. Second, note that I'm basing it on a stealthy platform--the defenders won't see it until the very end of it's run--and at that point even if they "kill" it the mass still hits even if it's been reduced to a cloud of dust. Yes, it hits the bubble wall, but they're not invulnerable like wedges.

But a stealth missile is only stealthy because it does not have a full power wedge; so it actually is quite slow, such as Mistletoe or Hasta. Note that Hasta was seen and ended up by not doing much damage.

Or are you planning a spider drive missile? But note that at a high enough speed the missile develops a visible bow wave of energetic particles, as at Galton.

tlb wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:First, I wasn't after a mere .9c. Second, note that I'm basing it on a stealthy platform--the defenders won't see it until the very end of it's run--and at that point even if they "kill" it the mass still hits even if it's been reduced to a cloud of dust. Yes, it hits the bubble wall, but they're not invulnerable like wedges.

But a stealth missile is only stealthy because it does not have a full power wedge; so it actually is quite slow, such as Mistletoe or Hasta. Note that Hasta was seen and ended up by not doing much damage.

Or are you planning a spider drive missile? But note that at a high enough speed the missile develops a visible bow wave of energetic particles, as at Galton.

I'm basically saying to take a recon drone and slap a bubble wall on it and boost it to ultrarelativistic velocity. I do agree it will create a bow wave--but that shockwave is not FTL. Something will have to sense it and get off a warning--but the only ones around who can actually send that warning FTL are the GA. Anyone else it's going to be coming not much faster than the missile.

It's a totally ineffective weapon against ships but it should be very nasty against fortresses.

Loren Pechtel wrote:I'm basically saying to take a recon drone and slap a bubble wall on it and boost it to ultrarelativistic velocity. I do agree it will create a bow wave--but that shockwave is not FTL. Something will have to sense it and get off a warning--but the only ones around who can actually send that warning FTL are the GA. Anyone else it's going to be coming not much faster than the missile.

It's a totally ineffective weapon against ships but it should be very nasty against fortresses.

What is the advantage of a bubble wall (which only allows steering by thrusters) versus an actual impeller wedge driven ship?

I expect (although I am not sure that it is ever stated) that a bubble wall can be seen by the same equipment that can see a low power wedge; since it is the same sort of physics that generates both.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:"And we shall christen this new SD design ..."

The Unfathomables


Do HV missiles incorporate a compensator? They do not have flesh that could turn into paste at enormous accelerations, so no compensator, right? (Although I have always questioned the durability of the hardware at such accelerations, I'll agree to hand wave that away), but what is limiting HV missiles, seemingly, to ~ .8C?

Honorverse missiles can reach 0.9c. Heck, from rest a RMN MDMs, like the Mk23, can reach 0.81c.

Even as far back as HotQ it talks about 0.9c missiles ballistic strikes (against non-maneuvering orbital targets). And those were single-drive missiles; which means their 'from rest' burnout velocity is only about 0.27c. So to make a 0.9c launch (using the Honorverse's inconsistently application of relativity) requires the launch ship to spend hours first working itself up to a velocity of 0.63c towards the target.


It's the warships that are limited (as others noted, by their particle screens) to 0.8c in n-space (and 0.6c in hyper).
That said, except in hyper, we just don't see Honorverse warships get anywhere near their max velocity -- even if the ship could pull 700g it'd still take it nearly 10 hours to work up to 0.8c - and would have covered 233 lightminutes (28 AU), by which point it's long since flown past anything of likely interest.

Interesting post!

Wedges give me the feeling of being excessively powerful, and therefore they should be able to accelerate missiles, theoretically, beyond .9C even from a standing start and within current engagement ranges if particle screening technology were to increase appropriately for missiles. So, I do not agree that particle screens do not represent a problem and limitation for missiles as well. Therefore, my notion upstream about SL missiles reaching .9C would be dependent on a breakthrough in particle screen technology. And it shouldn't need to rely on my favorite pet peeve of the MA developing super superweapons.

cthia wrote:Therefore, my notion upstream about SL missiles reaching .9C would be dependent on a breakthrough in particle screen technology.

I did give you an answer to the particle shield problem some time ago. Simply add a buckler to the missile, which has the strength of a side-wall and does not limit maneuverability. It has the side benefit of making the missile harder to kill by energy weapons.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:Therefore, my notion upstream about SL missiles reaching .9C would be dependent on a breakthrough in particle screen technology.

I did give you an answer to the particle shield problem some time ago. Simply add a buckler to the missile, which has the strength of a side-wall and does not limit maneuverability. It has the side benefit of making the missile harder to kill by energy weapons.

Yes, you did give a solution to the problem. And I thank you. But do note that I never doubted for a moment that the solution was well within SLN capabilities.

Loren Pechtel wrote:I'm basically saying to take a recon drone and slap a bubble wall on it and boost it to ultrarelativistic velocity. I do agree it will create a bow wave--but that shockwave is not FTL. Something will have to sense it and get off a warning--but the only ones around who can actually send that warning FTL are the GA. Anyone else it's going to be coming not much faster than the missile.

It's a totally ineffective weapon against ships but it should be very nasty against fortresses.

And why would anyone develop such a weapon to use against a lesser power than the GA? There are plenty of weapons that work just fine against those lesser powers, notably everything the GA has pioneered. Those new weapons should be developed to work against an enemy that has or will soon have GA-level technology, including FTL comms.

In any case, the Hastas produced a bowshock at 0.4c. We don't know if that's caused by the wedge or whether anything at that speed through the interplanetary medium will have a bowshock; we also don't know if there's a detection range for those. But the Hastas are exactly what you described: a missile with a recon drone body and its low-power stealthy wedge. So anyone who is a target of those ultra-relativistic kill vehicles would see them coming from very far away, definitely before energy range. Forts can't dodge too much, but they can still dodge a little and they have SD-grade grasers that can reach out to 2.5 light-seconds.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:Therefore, my notion upstream about SL missiles reaching .9C would be dependent on a breakthrough in particle screen technology.

I did give you an answer to the particle shield problem some time ago. Simply add a buckler to the missile, which has the strength of a side-wall and does not limit maneuverability. It has the side benefit of making the missile harder to kill by energy weapons.

Assuming this works, and assuming you can downsize it into a missile body, I still see a couple problems.

1) It does nothing to make the missile more survivable if intercepted by a CM (though, yes, a higher terminal velocity might reduce the odds of that interception a little)

2) It seemingly forces the missile to commit to a ramming attack.
If the buckler is all that's keeping it from being torn apart by the >0.9c particles then it can't drop it to engage with a laserhead or burn mode nuke. Nor can it slow down to a speed where conventional particle shielding can protect the laserhead as it goes through it's critical deployment phase -- to do that the missile would first have to perform a turnover flip; and giving the small diameter of a buckler (less than twice the diameter of the hull) attempting that would expose it to those destructive >0.9c particle -- destroying it before it can pitch more than a few degrees into its turnover.

So from an engineering standpoint this might someday be possible to build. But that doesn't seem to make it a practical weapon...