Wasn't the ERM enough? Why bother with the Mk 16?

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:Hi, Lyonheart!

let's see if I can get this together and make sense. Stupid trackpad makes typing annoying. Oh, and you can just call me Rob, its shorter.

lyonheart wrote: Hi Armed Neo-Bob,

I suspect you might be right regarding why the BC's and cruisers were scrapped, sold or retired by Janacek, though the Prince Consorts age was the major reason, regardless of whether RFC or Bu9 confirm your hypothesis.

[Edit: I said it might be because they can't fire ERM missiles of any stripe--Mk13ER or Mk14)--Rob]

I prefer the original textev to the contradictions of the Bu9 HoS text with the original textev; the Fearless CL had 70 ton DD/CL missiles, the Fearless CA had 78 ton CA/BC missiles, essentially 11 vs 10 meters long, while SD capitol missiles were up in the 135-150 ton range.

To go from 78 tons to the Mk-16's 94 is only about a 20% mass increase, though the dimensions may be very different, so was the ERM less than a 20% mass increase?

**In SoSag, the topic of size came up. The SK class couldn't fit in the Mk 14, and the Sag-B's tubes were too small for the Mk-16 (ignoring the need for the fusion plant start-up). While a launcher can fire a missile smaller that the one it is designed for, RFC has always been vague about just how much room there is for a larger missile. I noticed the 20% increase and guessed at a size for the Mk-14 that was 86-90 tons (10-15% larger than the Mk13). Essentially, just splitting the difference.

But it is worth noting, that both the nodes AND the energy supply (capacitors) were products of Ghost Rider, and not available earlier; and some of the greater range is the higher accel, not just a longer run-time. Which, also might increase the ranges on the older missile designs, as well. /Rob

lyonheart wrote:Granted the miniaturization might not have changed the missile's dimensions, then again something could have extended them in some awkward way.

Or could it have been greater in both mass and critical materials, construction time than the Mk-16 etc; while the Mk-16 used far less, so it was indeed a no brainer to switch?

To get to just 12 M Km, would mean a 28% increase over the 180 second standard burn time [>231 seconds], though I feel a 240 second 'burn' for ~13 M km range was a more likely target.

I wouldn't be surprised if Beowulf didn't have some ERM's etc, since only a very close inspection [not going to happen] of all BSDF bases might reveal them.

L

SNIPPING
burn time:
Roszak tells Barregos his Mk17es outranged the Cataphracts (apparently he test-fired some he recovered from the hulked ships). Assuming the Mk17 and the Mk14 have the same range (NOT a testable assumption), I am guessing the Manti ERM to range out to a light minute. Nice, round number. . .

I think your burn time is predicated on the 85K g accel for the Mk13? That being in the 1900-1905, pre-war timeframe, yes? In HOS, Adcock is thinking about missiles, and capitol ship missiles as far back as 1883 had higher accel rates, as well as a 25 lightsecond runtime. I rough-guess that to around 7.5M km, more or less. Quite a bit more than old Nike's cruiser-class missiles (6.9M km, wasn't it?)

missile mass:
The missiles on Wayfarer were 120 ton Mk27C's. Text in HAE. I haven't seen any other text with missile tonnages being explicit for the SD/DN grade missile. Oh except for the odd one in the Fleet Exercise in OBS; then the 75 ton SD laserhead made its one and only appearance.

Oh, and about the age of the Prince Consort cruisers--the Redoubtables were a good 70 years older for the first flight, and the Courageous class lasted almost a century (some still in GSN commission). It isn't the age, it is whether there is room for new equipment in refits-- which the 1850-style Prince Consorts did NOT have. And it was mentioned somewhere that the Redoubtables were having trouble getting parts for repairing systems made last made when the Homer debuted in the 1860s. In addition to being difficult to bring up to spec, both were also personnel hogs in these days of automation; axing them was Janacek's "fleet modernization" program.

For that matter, the Apollos, which are older, are still in use.

Nice to hear from you!

Rob

lyonheart wrote:Hi Rob,

Thanks for the reply, and yes Rob is much easier.

More missile detail would always be nice, but the missile acceleration has jumped back and forth through the series, up to 96,000 G's in AoV then down to 92,000 in WoH and stayed there with no textev explanation for just one example.

The contradictions in the HoS data versus the early textev are painful to reflect upon, when they could have been so easily incorporated rather than ignored.

L

SWM wrote:Yes, capacitor missiles are charged by energy produced by the fusion plants. However, fusion missiles have to be charged up with raw plasma, which is even more dangerous. The text states that fusion missile launchers have extra armor around them to protect the interior of the ship from missiles exploding in the tubes. So fusion missiles are actually a bigger ship safety problem than capacitor missiles.

SWM wrote:Sharkhunter:
You are correct that missiles have inertial compensators, of a sort. But they are not the same as ship compensators. It is some kind of inertial compensation built directly into the drives themselves. David says that this would not work on ships. He doesn't explain why; perhaps it only works on very small volumes.