?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:P.S. I have seen capacitors explode. It is not pretty.

I don't think we were allowed to graduate from Electrical Engineering if you had never blown one or participated in its demise (at least the small ones in the microfarad range).

Agreed, I spent an afternoon in college with a couple EE friends and a pile of questionable pulled DC Caps which found their way into a AC outlet - then rapidly into a backstop ~10 feet across the room. Every EE I know has a similar story.

Theemile wrote:Agreed, I spent an afternoon in college with a couple EE friends and a pile of questionable pulled DC Caps which found their way into a AC outlet - then rapidly into a backstop ~10 feet across the room. Every EE I know has a similar story.

Ours was that we plugged it between the AC variac and the rectifier, instead of after.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Theemile wrote:Agreed, I spent an afternoon in college with a couple EE friends and a pile of questionable pulled DC Caps which found their way into a AC outlet - then rapidly into a backstop ~10 feet across the room. Every EE I know has a similar story.

Ours was that we plugged it between the AC variac and the rectifier, instead of after.

I also agree. It is imperative that an engineer witness certain things like blown capacitors, short circuits, arcing, etc., etc. But a manufactured blow and an unintentional blow are worlds apart from my experience.

Heck, blowing a car battery by improperly charging it ain't fun. And that is speaking from the old days.

EV cars with their many high density batteries and the various tricks used to charge them faster -- like placing a wet towel on the charging cable to throw the sensor off -- has to be orders of magnitude more dangerous than the good old days.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/tesla-finall ... d%20on%20X.

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:Yep, I set it up to be really simplistic. It was simply meant to get my point across. No doubt there are a gaggle of gauges to monitor. Good call. But I also wonder if coordination with all of the other impeller rooms has to be made as well before the power transfer can begin. There seems to be at least six impeller rooms. Which surprised me as well. At any rate, I wonder if the impeller rooms have to receive power in order. Or rather, has to deliver power in order or simultaneously to the impellers.

On a freighter I believe there are just 2 impeller rooms - a forward one and an aft one, and all the components to run the alpha and beta nodes are grouped into that one big easy to access room. (Though I'm not sure we have text-ev for that; and it's not impossible that they'd have at least 4, forward alpha, forward beta, aft beta, aft alpha)

But a warship has those impeller rooms heavily subdivided to limit damage cascades; so if something blows out the components driving the 3rd forward alpha node that internal damage should be contained by the subdivision and cofferdaming.

I'm not sure how finely subdivided it is, whether it's as granular as one room per node (in which case you'd have 48 or 64 rooms; depending on whether you have beta or beta-squared nodes) or if a few adjacent impellers have their support components in a shared room. But certainly it's split into way more than 6 rooms

48 or 64 rooms??? And the fact that there are at least six shocked me. Anyway, so many impeller rooms all relying on well trained people can certainly slow down the process if the many rooms has to coordinate power delivery.

Question. About those multistage missiles. Why aren't they currently designed to separate when a stage is spent like our very own booster rockets? Since they are no longer kinetic weapons. The result could be more acceleration, and there certainly would be a much smaller target at the end.

I'd be surprised if that question hasn't been discussed before.

penny wrote:Question. About those multistage missiles. Why aren't they currently designed to separate when a stage is spent like our very own booster rockets? Since they are no longer kinetic weapons. The result could be more acceleration, and there certainly would be a much smaller target at the end.

I'd be surprised if that question hasn't been discussed before.

As far as we know the Cataphracts seen to be true multi-stage missiles, based on being described as "effectively no more than a standard missile with a laserhead-armed “counter-missile” glued to its nose" [UH]. And they're pretty consistently described as having stages or being a two stage missile. So my assumption, from that, is that the standard missile body first stage is physically dropped before the second/final CM stage activates -- but I can't recall stage separation being explicitly described in the text. (Still it seems odd to call them stages if they don't stage)

The RMN (and presumably Peep and Andie) multidrive missiles appear to be different. They are pretty consistently called multidrive. And certainly we have drawing and renders of RMN MDMs and their three drive rings are tightly clustered at the rear of the missile (and for Mk23s are all powered by the same microfusion power plant further forward in the missile body). The burnt out drive rings to not appear to physically separate (and doing so would seem to provide little to no advantage because you'd seem to only be dropping a tiny fraction of the missile as all three together don't appear to cover even 1/10th of the missile's length)

However given how missile wedges work (in particular their built in compensation capability) it's unclear if physical staging would actually provide performance advantage. Certainly with a wedge simply mass never has any impact on acceleration; and it only rarely seems to have impact on compensated acceleration (at least for ship style compensators which we have more details on). We're told that for ships both compensator size and mass affect acceleration; but we've never seen a ship that's running light (dropped most of its pods, a freighter running empty, etc.) get any acceleration boost. So for warships, as a practical matter, only size seems to matter. For freighters there is presumably some mass, achievable if shipping sufficiently dense cargo, after which compensated acceleration will start to drop -- but we don't know that that mass is compared to their 'displacement tonnage' (which is just a measure of volume). And since we know even less for missiles we don't know if making them smaller makes them quicker (though that might be part of what lets CMs accelerate quicker than normal missiles -- OTOH the Viper with a small laserhead added on has the same accel as a Mk31 CM indicating that maybe size/mass isn't as impactful on missile accelerations...

---
To be fair; in a couple of places a Cataphract is called multi-drive or MDMs called multi-stage. It's unclear if that's just sloppy narration / character speech/thought or if that's intended to indicate that they do work more similarly and we shouldn't rely on "stage" to mean it actually physically stages. <shrug>

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:Question. About those multistage missiles. Why aren't they currently designed to separate when a stage is spent like our very own booster rockets? Since they are no longer kinetic weapons. The result could be more acceleration, and there certainly would be a much smaller target at the end.

I'd be surprised if that question hasn't been discussed before.

As far as we know the Cataphracts seen to be true multi-stage missiles, based on being described as "effectively no more than a standard missile with a laserhead-armed “counter-missile” glued to its nose" [UH]. And they're pretty consistently described as having stages or being a two stage missile. So my assumption, from that, is that the standard missile body first stage is physically dropped before the second/final CM stage activates -- but I can't recall stage separation being explicitly described in the text. (Still it seems odd to call them stages if they don't stage)

The RMN (and presumably Peep and Andie) multidrive missiles appear to be different. They are pretty consistently called multidrive. And certainly we have drawing and renders of RMN MDMs and their three drive rings are tightly clustered at the rear of the missile (and for Mk23s are all powered by the same microfusion power plant further forward in the missile body). The burnt out drive rings to not appear to physically separate (and doing so would seem to provide little to no advantage because you'd seem to only be dropping a tiny fraction of the missile as all three together don't appear to cover even 1/10th of the missile's length)

However given how missile wedges work (in particular their built in compensation capability) it's unclear if physical staging would actually provide performance advantage. Certainly with a wedge simply mass never has any impact on acceleration; and it only rarely seems to have impact on compensated acceleration (at least for ship style compensators which we have more details on). We're told that for ships both compensator size and mass affect acceleration; but we've never seen a ship that's running light (dropped most of its pods, a freighter running empty, etc.) get any acceleration boost. So for warships, as a practical matter, only size seems to matter. For freighters there is presumably some mass, achievable if shipping sufficiently dense cargo, after which compensated acceleration will start to drop -- but we don't know that that mass is compared to their 'displacement tonnage' (which is just a measure of volume). And since we know even less for missiles we don't know if making them smaller makes them quicker (though that might be part of what lets CMs accelerate quicker than normal missiles -- OTOH the Viper with a small laserhead added on has the same accel as a Mk31 CM indicating that maybe size/mass isn't as impactful on missile accelerations...

---
To be fair; in a couple of places a Cataphract is called multi-drive or MDMs called multi-stage. It's unclear if that's just sloppy narration / character speech/thought or if that's intended to indicate that they do work more similarly and we shouldn't rely on "stage" to mean it actually physically stages. <shrug>

I didn't think it would be possible for multi-drive missiles, although I did say redesign them to separate. And those drive rings appear to be the question mark. But I don't want to leave those out either as far as it being possible to redesign them. Is there a reason the drive rings have to be clustered together? Anyway, it appears the era in which missiles were designed prevented considering it, since kinetic weapons were vogue in the beginning of their conception. I am also unsure whether or not multi-drive missiles actually contain a lot of necessary components in the soon-to-be "inert" drive stage. Like capacitors, ECM, etc.

But multistage missiles seem to be an excellent candidate for separation. I don't suppose the detached stage would contain any secrets.

Even if it doesn't result in a performance boost, it might result in a survivability boost by being a smaller target if redesigned. Although a smaller missile might have a shorter ballistic flight. At those velocities, particle density would affect a smaller object more.


Late edit: Retraction. Kinetic weapons had gone by the wayside by the time MDMs came on the scene. Right? But I guess the mindset could have already set in. As well as the necessity to have somewhere to cram in all of the necessary components.

penny wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:As far as we know the Cataphracts seen to be true multi-stage missiles, based on being described as "effectively no more than a standard missile with a laserhead-armed “counter-missile” glued to its nose" [UH]. And they're pretty consistently described as having stages or being a two stage missile. So my assumption, from that, is that the standard missile body first stage is physically dropped before the second/final CM stage activates -- but I can't recall stage separation being explicitly described in the text. (Still it seems odd to call them stages if they don't stage)

The RMN (and presumably Peep and Andie) multidrive missiles appear to be different. They are pretty consistently called multidrive. And certainly we have drawing and renders of RMN MDMs and their three drive rings are tightly clustered at the rear of the missile (and for Mk23s are all powered by the same microfusion power plant further forward in the missile body). The burnt out drive rings to not appear to physically separate (and doing so would seem to provide little to no advantage because you'd seem to only be dropping a tiny fraction of the missile as all three together don't appear to cover even 1/10th of the missile's length)

However given how missile wedges work (in particular their built in compensation capability) it's unclear if physical staging would actually provide performance advantage. Certainly with a wedge simply mass never has any impact on acceleration; and it only rarely seems to have impact on compensated acceleration (at least for ship style compensators which we have more details on). We're told that for ships both compensator size and mass affect acceleration; but we've never seen a ship that's running light (dropped most of its pods, a freighter running empty, etc.) get any acceleration boost. So for warships, as a practical matter, only size seems to matter. For freighters there is presumably some mass, achievable if shipping sufficiently dense cargo, after which compensated acceleration will start to drop -- but we don't know that that mass is compared to their 'displacement tonnage' (which is just a measure of volume). And since we know even less for missiles we don't know if making them smaller makes them quicker (though that might be part of what lets CMs accelerate quicker than normal missiles -- OTOH the Viper with a small laserhead added on has the same accel as a Mk31 CM indicating that maybe size/mass isn't as impactful on missile accelerations...

---
To be fair; in a couple of places a Cataphract is called multi-drive or MDMs called multi-stage. It's unclear if that's just sloppy narration / character speech/thought or if that's intended to indicate that they do work more similarly and we shouldn't rely on "stage" to mean it actually physically stages. <shrug>

I didn't think it would be possible for multi-drive missiles, although I did say redesign them to separate. And those drive rings appear to be the question mark. But I don't want to leave those out either as far as it being possible to redesign them. Is there a reason the drive rings have to be clustered together? Anyway, it appears the era in which missiles were designed prevented considering it, since kinetic weapons were vogue in the beginning of their conception. I am also unsure whether or not multi-drive missiles actually contain a lot of necessary components in the soon-to-be "inert" drive stage. Like capacitors, ECM, etc.

But multistage missiles seem to be an excellent candidate for separation. I don't suppose the detached stage would contain any secrets.

Even if it doesn't result in a performance boost, it might result in a survivability boost by being a smaller target if redesigned. Although a smaller missile might have a shorter ballistic flight. At those velocities, particle density would affect a smaller object more.


Late edit: Retraction. Kinetic weapons had gone by the wayside by the time MDMs came on the scene. Right? But I guess the mindset could have already set in. As well as the necessity to have somewhere to cram in all of the necessary components.

I assume the rings are clustered at the end because the involved the smallest increase in the size of the missile. In a single-drive missile the single impeller ring is on the aft, the capacitors that provide the power fill much of the middle, and the warhead, lasing rods, and sensors fill much of the nose.

So when enlarged into an MDM the midsection got longer to fit 3x the volume of capacitors, the nose was still full of warhead and sensors, and so the extra rings got tucked back at the rear by the existing one. Then with the Mk23s the capacitors all got ripped out, the midsection shortened some, and a microfusion plant sliped in there -- but the nose and tail remained essentially unchanged).

Even if the missile impeller ring would work from another position (and it probably would) fitting it elsewhere would require moving something critical that's already there -- and at least on a Mk23 that wouldn't let you drop more of the missile because everything but the rings themselves is needed until the moment before warhead ignition. (On the capacitor powered MDMs if you wanted to enlarge them somewhat to split things up you might, might be able to pair each ring with ~1/3rd of the capacitors and drop the spent ones. But it might be less energy efficient to have 3 smaller sets than each separately drain from full to empty than it is to have one big capacitor bank that is drained over time -- so adding the physical staging might drive up the initial size of the missile more than you'd expect.


As for making a smaller target, shaving a few meters off the length might help. Not against CMs though, since they only need to hit the wedge, and that's not going to shrink just because you dropped a bit of length. And the most likely aspect to hit the missile with PDLCs is from directly ahead, where their length adds almost nothing to their target silhouette. PDLC fire can't come from above or below the missile, its wedge blocks those angles. It can come from the side, but that's a pretty narrow vertical angle of vulnerability and the missile can pick its rotational orientation to try to avoid exposing its flanks while flying past enemy screening units. So that really leaves frontal fire as the one really open area of attack -- plus the target ship gets the best shots as the missile has to steady down on it's final attack run; which generally require it to be pointing its vulnerable nose at the target. So I think in most situations even a missile that's somehow even half the length is only going to be a fraction of a percent more likely to avoid defenses.


And finally, kinetic kill weapons for anti-ship use never seem to have been a thing. At least not since the invention of impeller powered missiles (so probably 500-600 years ago). If you're in the missile's powered range the impeller wedge is vastly more destructive that the kinetic energy of the missile body, and if you're not within powered range your chance of hitting an enemy ship is essentially zero.
Then once sidewalls were invented they're equally effective against missile wedges and kinetic impact.

Thanks for the response in the previous discussions.

Toll of Honor wrote: Montressor could still move on just her after-impeller ring, even with her forward ring completely down—or could have, assuming they’d had time to get it up—but she’d been brutally lamed, and with Sidewall Two gone and Four off-line, she’d lost half her starboard sidewall, as well. Spreading her remaining capacity to cover the gap would weaken that sidewall catastrophically. Of course, the state of her sidewalls would be supremely unimportant if she couldn’t get her impeller wedge up to protect her hull’s unarmored top and bottom in time.

I enquired about this eons ago. Like with the shields in Star Trek, I always wondered if the sidewalls could benefit from diverting power from other systems to them. It seems that they might; at least the sidewalls that are up can be reconfigured to cover inoperable sidewalls.

That is not quite the same as what I was suggesting eons ago that it should be possible to divert more power to a section, or sections, of a sidewall that is expected to be hit (before any damage), thus strengthening that section of sidewall in anticipation. But it is unclear if a sidewall’s strength can be increased, say, by fifty percent (even at the expense of other systems) if the sidewall’s strength is already at nominal. But if the sidewall is weakened or weakening, can diverted energy “shore it back up”?

“Increase power to the forward shields Scotty!”

Of course where I am headed is that a much bigger warship with a much bigger power budget might be able to increase the strength of the particular section of sidewalls, that are likely to be hit, by fifty percent or more.

Think SDs and LDs. If possible, LDs might be able to draw on enormous power reserves to divert to the sidewalls in an emergency.

But it appears the gap in coverage that is made in this case comes by reconfiguring the operable sidewalls to stretch and cover the gap caused by the inoperable (downed) sidewalls. That isn't exactly the same thing as increasing power to an area of the sidewalls that has not failed yet. But the question still stands.

Note: By implication I am assuming that each sidewall has four sections.

penny wrote:Thanks for the response in the previous discussions.

Toll of Honor wrote: Montressor could still move on just her after-impeller ring, even with her forward ring completely down—or could have, assuming they’d had time to get it up—but she’d been brutally lamed, and with Sidewall Two gone and Four off-line, she’d lost half her starboard sidewall, as well. Spreading her remaining capacity to cover the gap would weaken that sidewall catastrophically. Of course, the state of her sidewalls would be supremely unimportant if she couldn’t get her impeller wedge up to protect her hull’s unarmored top and bottom in time.

I enquired about this eons ago. Like with the shields in Star Trek, I always wondered if the sidewalls could benefit from diverting power from other systems to them. It seems that they might; at least the sidewalls that are up can be reconfigured to cover inoperable sidewalls.

That is not quite the same as what I was suggesting eons ago that it should be possible to divert more power to a section, or sections, of a sidewall that is expected to be hit (before any damage), thus strengthening that section of sidewall in anticipation. But it is unclear if a sidewall’s strength can be increased, say, by fifty percent (even at the expense of other systems) if the sidewall’s strength is already at nominal. But if the sidewall is weakened or weakening, can diverted energy “shore it back up”?

“Increase power to the forward shields Scotty!”

Of course where I am headed is that a much bigger warship with a much bigger power budget might be able to increase the strength of the particular section of sidewalls, that are likely to be hit, by fifty percent or more.

Think SDs and LDs. If possible, LDs might be able to draw on enormous power reserves to divert to the sidewalls in an emergency.

But it appears the gap in coverage that is made in this case comes by reconfiguring the operable sidewalls to stretch and cover the gap caused by the inoperable (downed) sidewalls. That isn't exactly the same thing as increasing power to an area of the sidewalls that has not failed yet. But the question still stands.

Note: By implication I am assuming that each sidewall has four sections.

I don't think diverting extra power to sidewalls helps, they are running at 100%, and the only time they might need more power, is when their power routing is damaged. Most components on an Honorverse ship have a local ring capacitor sized to power the attached device for a limited time while disconnected from ship power, and to make sure it has sufficient power and not effected by power transients, so needing more power usually is not an issue, as more is at hand if needed.

Modern Honorverse ships have multiple sidewall generators in each broadside. They each have a zone, and overlap each other, and the larger the ship, the more actual redundancy there is. If a particular sidewall generator is overloaded or blown out, there is usually a redundant or overlapping sidewall from a different generator there to take the hit. As sidewalls are blown out in combat, it is possible to stretch the remaining sidewalls and re-align them to cover weakened or exposed areas - probably (but not mentioned in text) at the expense of the local strength of the sidewall. But just adding more power won't fix anything.