?

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:After the energy requirements of the ECM has been met (lighting the missile up like a Christmas tree), is the remaining energy requirement really that high? After the wedge is dropped and the missile body housing the reactor has separated, the missile only needs to detonate, which is all of several microseconds.

A smartly packed bank of high density instant discharge capacitors can be tasked to provide that instant power delivery. The reactor can be ejected after the ECM requirements have been met. So, the entire volume of the missile that is housing the reactor can be separated. The reactor consumes a massive one third of the missile body. Add to that the 18 % of the additional volume that may be shed which an SDM grew to become an MDM and voila! The total volume shed should represent a significant decrease in the end-of-run missile body!

Also, why simply separate the stage containing the reactor. It should immediately self destruct. It might mess with enemy sensors. IOW, if the reactor blows after separating, it might have an ECM like effect.

I wondered who would take Lord Skimper's place.
So you are adding capacitors, explosives and mechanisms to eject the reactor in order to do what? The wedge is not dropped (if it is dropped at all) until just before the warhead explosion (which also serves to destroy the reactor in a normal missile).

But lets assume that the wedge is dropped minutes before the warhead explosion. During that time the missile is just coasting, so what does it matter how much it weighs when there is no acceleration in any direction?

If the reactor were to separate and immediately explode, then the missile might be hit by shrapnel.

PS: After a car starts, the battery is almost unnecessary; the alternator or generator supplies the electricity for ignition. Consider the old time cars that started with a crank, they did not need a battery at all; since they had magnetos that supplied the spark.

penny wrote:Why won't it work? Are you certain that powering the missile for microseconds is too "cost" prohibitive for the application?

penny wrote:One of my engineering professors once said that oftentimes the solution is better served by how one approaches the problem. The MA seems to have imbibed that notion while they were still in test tubes. Alphas … duh. Oftentimes, when brainstorming, one simply needs to get out of ones own way. And never tell Sonja Hemphill that something won't work, but how it can be made to work.

Having said that, what is truly “the end.” I'll give you a hint. The answer might lie in the same question that I applied to the wedge. When does the reactor outlive its usefulness and becomes a liability? Let's look a bit closer at the problem.

As far as multi-drive missiles go, and an on the spot analysis of the problem, the reactor is certainly needed on its journey up to and including powering the ECM and wedge.*

Remember, the wedge will be dropped soon. After the energy requirements of the ECM has been met (lighting the missile up like a Christmas tree), is the remaining energy requirement really that high? After the wedge is dropped and the missile body housing the reactor has separated, the missile only needs to detonate, which is all of several microseconds.

A smartly packed bank of high density instant discharge capacitors can be tasked to provide that instant power delivery. The reactor can be ejected after the ECM requirements have been met. So, the entire volume of the missile that is housing the reactor can be separated. The reactor consumes a massive one third of the missile body. Add to that the 18 % of the additional volume that may be shed which an SDM grew to become an MDM and voila! The total volume shed should represent a significant decrease in the end-of-run missile body!

Also, why simply separate the stage containing the reactor. It should immediately self destruct. It might mess with enemy sensors. IOW, if the reactor blows after separating, it might have an ECM like effect.

*Once the wedge is running on a missile and a ship, can the wedge run without any reactors? It doesn't really matter in this application because high density instant discharge capacitors are being considered. But I have always been interested in the question. As a kid, I remember being shocked that a car's engine will still run after disconnecting the battery.


P S. I almost forgot! I agree that the order of the activation of the drive rings is not only interesting but might play a crucial role in the success of this application.

However, do consider that the placement of everything will definitely change when reengineering the missile for this tactic.

Jonathan_S wrote:Oh, also, without an active wedge the warhead wouldn't have any particle/rad shielding; and so would be vulnerable to proximity kills. If the other warheads going off didn't fry it your idea of blowing up the missile's reactor certainly would!

tlb wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Oh, also, without an active wedge the warhead wouldn't have any particle/rad shielding; and so would be vulnerable to proximity kills. If the other warheads going off didn't fry it your idea of blowing up the missile's reactor certainly would!

I agree with proximity kill, but do not think the wedge does anything for particle shielding, whether for a missile or a ship. The particle shielding is separate and will run at low power even when the wedge is down and the ship is in orbit. Note that the particles are coming in the open frontal aspect.

runsforcelery wrote:When a missile's wedge goes down, however, so does its particle shielding.

Jonathan_S wrote:From the infodump "Pearls of Weber: "Buckshot" missile defenses

runsforcelery wrote:When a missile's wedge goes down, however, so does its particle shielding.

Storm From the Shadows wrote:The shroud-jettisoning maneuver had been programmed into the missiles before launch. Unlike any previous attack missile, the Mark 23s in an Apollo pod were fitted with protective shrouds intended to shield their sensors from the particle erosion of extended ballistic flight profiles at relativistic speeds. Most missiles didn't really need anything of the sort, since their impeller wedges incorporated particle screening. They were capable of maintaining a separate particle screen—briefly, at least—as long as they retained on-board power, even after the wedge went down, but that screening was far less efficient than a starship's particle screens. For the most part, that hadn't mattered, since any ballistic component of a "standard" attack profile was going to be brief, at best.

penny wrote:Again ... too cost prohibitive?

penny wrote:Again ... too cost prohibitive?

Jonathan_S wrote:Oh, also, without an active wedge the warhead wouldn't have any particle/rad shielding; and so would be vulnerable to proximity kills. If the other warheads going off didn't fry it your idea of blowing up the missile's reactor certainly would!

tlb wrote:I agree with proximity kill, but do not think the wedge does anything for particle shielding, whether for a missile or a ship. The particle shielding is separate and will run at low power even when the wedge is down and the ship is in orbit. Note that the particles are coming in the open frontal aspect.

Jonathan_S wrote:From the infodump "Pearls of Weber: "Buckshot" missile defenses

runsforcelery wrote:When a missile's wedge goes down, however, so does its particle shielding.

NAVAL DESIGN AND DOCTRINE wrote:The maximum safe velocity in n-space was approximately .8 c for a ship with military-grade particle and radiation shielding, whereas merchantmen normally relied on much weaker—and less massive—shield generators, trading lower maximum speeds for greater cargo capacity. But speed wasn't the only reason military shielding was so much more powerful, for it was also used to fill the area between the sidewall and hull and could lessen or even negate the effect of a hit which managed to pierce the primary defense.

Chapter 46 wrote:Yang's visual display blanked as the dreadful, white-hot boil of fury overpowered the filters. Attila was less than six hundred kilometers from Farnese when she went, and the flagship's hull fluoresced wildly as the stripped atoms of her eviscerated sister slashed across her. Only her standard, station-keeping particle screens were up, and those were intended mainly to keep dust from accumulating on her hull. They had never been intended to deal with something like this, and threat receivers and warning signals wailed.

Chapter 44 wrote:The plasma wave came on the heels of the flash, ripping out across Grayson One's course. But Honor had anticipated that. Her order to turn away had snatched the vulnerable open throat of the yacht's wedge—and her own—away from the center of detonation. The true fury of the explosion wasted itself against Candless' belly stress band. Only its fringes reached out past the wedge, and generators shrieked in torment as the particle and radiation shielding which protected the throat of any impeller wedge took the shock. Those generators were designed to protect the ships which mounted them against normal space particles and debris at velocities of up to eighty percent of light-speed. Grayson One and Candless were moving far slower than that, at barely nine thousand KPS, but their shielding had never been expected to face the holocaust which suddenly erupted across their base course, and the demon howl of the generators and the scream of audible warnings filled the universe.