BC(C) (Spoiler Within)

Here in agonizing detail. Much of which has not been stated, or missed, or forgotten about, or...

I highly doubt a multi mission mini CLAC is supposed to be armored like a BCL is. If you are fighting somewhere and you need that much armor, why are you sending a peanut joke where half of its "mass" is 4 unarmored attached modules? So, lets drop that notion out the unused rusty airlock. This is not a BCL... I will state such a large ship should be armored ALA Heavy cruiser like the SAG-C/Star Knight. Sure. Has what? 2m of physical armor?

Ok: start with a normal LAC/Docking arrangement:
LAC behind outside door clamped to a docking ring that gives a pressurized seal allowing shirt sleeve maintenance + ammo reloading capability.

Docking ring that exposes the front of the LAC and makes a pressure seal is going to be behind all the goodies and behind the Impeller ring and covering the missile tubes. So, 25% or more behind front of LAC. 25% of 72m = roughly +15m
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Now, HOW does the ammo reloading work:
2 ways possible, either
1) Rotate LAC aligning with the ammo supply armored point
2) Mechanical arm grabs the missile and aligns with launch tubes

I would go with #2. LAC designs change. This would be a more universal way to do things. Can also use said arm as a crane when maintenance requires removing PDLC's, sensor array's etc. Besides, that is how it is described in books(not the ammo movement but rather the maintenance half)
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How far back from the nose are the missile tubes? From AoV drawing, it would appear at least 10m BACK from the nose. Looks more like 15m back for the SHRIKE. We do not have drawings of Ferrets or Katanas. Katanas fire much shorter missiles so doesn't matter when compared to the Ferrets who fire longer missiles. Is it logical to presume that both the Katana's and the Ferrets both fire their missiles out OVER the impeller ring? Since the SHRIKE does and the Ferret is the ~~~ same, one would have to presume that the Ferret ALSO does as well. So, HOW LONG is a LAC missile? I would peg it around 15+m
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How much work area is needed to work on PDLC's which ARE on the very nose of the SHRIKE for instance. I would say 5m. If someone wants to argue 10m for the much larger Katana usage of SD grade PDLC's... Ok. Though depending on design said PDLC's could drop out/up to floor around the nose and as the pressurized ring is 15m back, that would be plenty of space to work "under the LAC with the PDLC "on the floor", if one assumes a flat square LAC dock which in crude terms is what it would appear AoV shows in a roughly 25x25mxLength hole... Personally, I would put work area at roughly zero length in front of LAC. Give it 2m for a mechanical arm to get through for reammo purposes and moving large PDLC parts around. BUT: I digress, will give it 5m.
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SO, work area + LAC nose to Missile Tube opening is roughly 20m. More than enough length in which to reammo a SHRIKE with 20m long missiles.

72m + 5m front = 77m + rear ~1m = 78m
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Door/armor etc 2m front of the LAC + door(2m?)
SO, 82m depending on how you wish to ammo it.

So, Hull width to fit a LAC is 82m. Hull curvature of Minotaur... Hrmmmm
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Entire LAC bay dimensions, assuming Gravitic array does not FOLD, 27m x 22m (Array is 25m(MaxxQ) wide making LAC 25mx20m in reality. Give 1m room on all sides makes 27mx22m. If Gravitic arrays fold, makes 22mx22m. Now add might want larger LAC's in the future, call it 28m x 28m. Now add armor walls between. 2m? = 30m x 30m.
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so, 85m(future larger LAC) x 30m x 30m = 1 LAC Bay.
A purpose built CLAC can have bays as small as ~80m x 22(or 27)m x 22m.

Which incidentally aligns very well with the nose to nose arrangement on the Minitaur CLAC drawings with its width of 189m max and its upper hull much shorter due to curvature.

BCL is 120+++ m wide. A 3M ton ship will be ~130++++m wide...

More than enough.

NOW does 8 LAC's fit in "Hammerhead on 3M ship"?
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15%L of 3M tons ship = apporx 150+m long. Now a good portion of this is HIGHLY tapered. From BCL HoS drawing, roughly 1/3 is highly tapered aft end and 2/3 highly tapered on the "forward" end. Who knows why. To make it "look" faster? Aggie is same way, but understandable due to the Pod Bay Door. Aggie also has poorer compensator acceleration compared to mass than BCL... Seems every drawing in all classes of ships has a more tapered "front" and a less tapered "rear"(aft). Compensator efficiency would dictate same ends? Yes? No? I would think it would. Guess not. Anyways the LAC's as I understand it upthread are placed in the AFT hammerhead region.So 100m lengthwise at full "circular maximum diameter of a 3M ton ship of roughly 130m.

A LAC bay requires 82m...

A 130m circle is still +++82m wide linearly without using the tapering effect of the LAC itself, pure square dimensions, at 50m above centerline. So, of a 130m circle, there is 100m of broadside that is over 82m wide.

So, without counting the tapered end of hammerhead there is a 100m x 100m broadside cube in which to fit 8 LAC bays(4 each broadside)

Up above I said a "LARGE" Future looking ARMORED LAC bay is 30m x 30m. So, can easily fit 9 LARGE future LAC bays in 90mx90m leaving 10m to spare on both sides irrespective of the "depth" or the taper section. With passage space for moving ammo. 1 Ammo line services 2 tiers of bays... 2 ammo lines each can be 5m high/wide for moving ammo to storage.

SO, YES, 8 LAC's fit quite easily. With a very large volume left over for movement of ammo, storage of ammo, and access corridors.

If one went with armored 2m thick LAC bays, tightly fit to the current LAC's with folding Gravitic arrays, could fit 16... with room to spare. Would still have space for ammo movement from storage bunkers...

Oh: BTW: Even if you went with 10m of door face armor, can still get 8 LAC's in using 30x30. Especially easy if you had a realization that LAC's are ~~ round, not square.

PS> Minotaur off longitudinal mean at 45m above mean line is 83m. So, if bays are 30m x 30m, the upper echelon of bays have little or no armor, @50m up is 81m and at 60m up is 73m.
PPS. I drew the circle at the fat dimension, not the small dimension. Minotaur would seem to be "square~ish" to fit the upper echelon of LAC bays in with armor above Heavy Cruiser.

MaxxQ wrote:

Rincewind wrote:Assuming a hanger bay 80m x 24m x24m & a mid hull section lengthened to about 45% of overall length & hull depths & widths being approximately the same you could mount two rows of 5 bays & 1 interrupted row with two 2 bays for a total of 14 bays per side. Furthermore, with the bays mounted longitudinally you could still have sufficient hull depth to have two LACS per bay & have a core hull. Granted they would not be as efficient as having one LAC per bay in a regular CLAC; (you could only launch half the LAC Group simultaneously & they would be more vulnerable), but it would still allow you to carry a worthwhile number of LACS 56 on a much smaller hull.

Where are you planning to fit the missile loading equipment for the LACs?

You've left 9 meters between nose and tail of lined up LACs. Trust me when I say that 9 meters is NOT enough room, especially when you will also need to add access corridors and cofferdamming between them. Or do you plan to have it as one long bay, not separated by any sort of armor?

Never mind where the reloads and associated magazines are going to fit

Where's the hull armor going to go (based on your assumption that you could fit two LACs per bay)?

Just going by your 80x24x24 dimensions, that works out to 96 meters, leaving just 33 meters to accomodate the core hull (as you mentioned) and the armor. Considering the armor on a Nike is no less than 10 meters thick, that leaves 13 meters for a core hull, which, BTW is ALSO armored. Let's be conservative and say the core hull armor is only 2 meters thick (most likely thicker, but we haven't gotten that far yet), which leaves us with a core hull interior width of only 9 meters at its widest point - at the centerline. That's only for your centerline placed LAC bays - it'll be even less for the upper and lower lines of bays, since, you know, the hull is curved and gets narrower the farther up or down you go.

Of course, if you're only talking a single LAC per bay, then sure, you could do that. But then you don't get the numbers - 28 as opposed to 56.

Did you account for the fact that the width of a LAC DOES NOT include the gravitic array blades?

Counting the blades, a LAC is more like 25-26 meters wide. Plug those numbers into the above bit about how much room is available and do the math.

IOW, you will STILL need to widen a Nike-based or -sized BC to accomodate LACs in sufficient numbers to make something like that worthwhile.

Rant begins:

<sigh> This is the sort of thing that I have to deal with when someone brings up a "brilliant" way to stuff more crap into a given hull: they all look at the external dimensions, and NEVER take into account armor thickness, or where all the ancillary support equipment is going to fit. I don't resent it, but it does tend to get repetitive after the seventh or eighth time of reminding someone. Sometimes I wish some of you knew 3D modeling and could build a mesh that would accomodate everything you want, but also include all the necessary armor and such that is REQUIRED for warships.

This is Skimper's biggest problem - he sees the size of the weapons ports compared to the size of the rest of the hull, and assumes that that's the size of lasers, grasers, missile tubes, and defense clusters. He doesn't even realize (or just outright dismisses it as unimportant) that what's behind the weapons port is about three times as big, and a hell of a lot longer, and THAT doesn't even include magazines for the attack missiles or CMs. I spent a week remodeling (over and over again) a cross section of the Star Knight, trying to get the required hull armor thickness, the armored core hull, and the missile tubes and magazines to fit without having to cut notches out of something (outer hull armor, core hull, etc.).

/rant

Edited for a stupid 1 meter difference error on my part. Math is hard

I've meant to reply to this post some time ago but never got around to it& it was not until I was rereading my old posts that I remembered what I was going to say.

Yes, you are quite right for a Manticoran LAC but who says that another nation's LACs have to be the same size. For example, look at the differences between the French, Royal & US Navies nuclear attack boats. Designed for the same kind of missions yet completely different due to different requirements, specifications & technology. Also, compare the difference between the US Navy's McDonnell Douglas F4J Phantom & the Royal Navy's FG1 variant which was based on it. Both were the same length but, because the Royal Navy's FG1 s had to fit onto lifts that were only 54 feet long they were designed to be struck down with their noses folded. They also had a double extendable nosewheel gear to cope with the higher angles of attack used on launch by the RN.

I envisaged an LAC about the same length as a Shrike but with a much narrower hull & with the offensive & defensive missiles being added on as external systems. Also, who says that the Gravity Blades cannot be retractable? They probably would not be as effective ship for ship but they could be well within the capabilities of a moderate sized navy to develop especially since they were having to play catch up. For another modern day example look at the differences between the carrier aircraft deployed by the US Navy & those of the Royal Navy &, later the Marine Nationale. They were at least a generation behind their American counterparts in service at the same time & it was not until the Buccaneer in the 60s for the Royal Navy & the Rafale in the 2000s for the Marine Nationale that they finally caught up.

Ships in the honorverse are not going to fold up. Merchant vessels will run at 400g without a compensator for hours. Warships are much stronger. They are massively overbuilt. So they are essentially 747's where flying through skyscrapers without any damage was part of the design requirements.

kzt wrote:Ships in the honorverse are not going to fold up. Merchant vessels will run at 400g without a compensator for hours. Warships are much stronger. They are massively overbuilt. So they are essentially 747's where flying through skyscrapers without any damage was part of the design requirements.

To be fair the gravities array blade are a sensor system, and so external and unarmored. That doesn't mean it's practical to fold them (I've no idea if it is) but they at least aren't neccesarily at structurally indestructible as the ship hull and internal systems.

Jonathan_S wrote:

kzt wrote:Ships in the honorverse are not going to fold up. Merchant vessels will run at 400g without a compensator for hours. Warships are much stronger. They are massively overbuilt. So they are essentially 747's where flying through skyscrapers without any damage was part of the design requirements.

To be fair the gravities array blade are a sensor system, and so external and unarmored. That doesn't mean it's practical to fold them (I've no idea if it is) but they at least aren't neccesarily at structurally indestructible as the ship hull and internal systems.

I don't see why they couldn't be folded. Engineering wise from what the drawing shows, there is no problem. Now, if those gravitic blades go DEEP into the ship, for instance, and must be whole, then this could be a problem. Of course why those blades couldn't be offset from each other and sunk into/out of the ship on a ram, based in the opposite side of the ship/LAC, I don't know. Locking them into position for accurate sensor readings should not be a problem at all. Add one, a hard lock to the blade when fully extended, and two put a pin hole down the center and a laser inferometer for x,y,z coordinate check. Doesn't matter if it is off, as long as you know which direction the blades are off from mean center line of your ship so your computer can calc your angles etc in 0.00000000000001s.

Folding is relative. Where are you going to fold them too and how?
Where do you put the fold? is it at the base and does it fold "up" (relative to the internal orientation of the ship) and how much clearence "overhead" do you need in the bay for that.
Is it a multiple fold option like a set of solar panels that can be stored and then unfolded to multiple times the size when deployed?
Some carrier aircraft had wings which "folded" in two directions for handling/storages. First (after unlatching and disconnecting stuff as needed) you rotated the wings 90º so the leading edge was perpendicular to the deck and then you used a hinge arrangement to manuver the wingtip so it was back by the tail.

Another question is can you manuver the ships/LACs under their own power this way or will you have to use CLAC mounted tractor/pressors? Most of what you gain with folding gear like this is storing in relatively small spaces but how much of and advantage is it when given the size of something like a CLAC, even a military freighter/LAC carrier and the size you start with for the mothership? If you have to deploy the fins etc inside the LAC bays, you still need enough space for the fully configured LAC in the bay and so far they don't seem to be using multiple LACs in one bay. Yes, you have things like Wayfareer, but then the LACs are house inside what is essentialy very large cargo spaces, rather than indivudual bays.

I don't see the economy of making a lot of the external equipment needed for "flight" foldable at this point.

No folding. Period. Full stop. Nyet. Nein.

MaxxQ wrote:No folding. Period. Full stop. Nyet. Nein.

Any specific reason why not? Are the port and Starboard gravitic arrays a single unit on a LAC? IE it is actually a single gravitic array, not two gravitic arrays?

MaxxQ wrote:No folding. Period. Full stop. Nyet. Nein.

Unquestionably true for current designs. Does it hold true for all possible future designs, too?

In designing a BC(C), a concurrent design for a smaller, origami LAC would make many of the design choices much easier.

Almost from the very idea of carrier based aviation, aircraft were designed to fold wings, tail, nose, and every sort of protrusion to save deck and hanger space. It boggles the mind to think that such adaptive design principles can't be applied to a BC(C) specific LAC.

Weird Harold wrote:Almost from the very idea of carrier based aviation, aircraft were designed to fold wings, tail, nose, and every sort of protrusion to save deck and hanger space. It boggles the mind to think that such adaptive design principles can't be applied to a BC(C) specific LAC.

There is pearl on that.

Also, consider that everything on a ship is designed (for some reason that makes sense to David) to directly handle something like 6km/sec^2 acceleration. So the hinges for a 100 kilo faring are going to have a marked resemblance to the hinges on a 60 ton vault door.