Remontoire wrote:What about a grazer impeller hybrid of the two types though? Seems to me the spider drive grazer torps used in oysterbay wearn't designed to be practical ship to ship main combat weapons, they were surprise attack stealth weapons.
Spider drive wasn't a technology Simões knew about, so right now the GA has no idea how it works. They've probably scoured the sensor data from both Oyster Bay attacks as well as the Beowulf data, so they may have seen something. We'll find out in the next mainline book, I suppose.
Until then, we have assume that the GA has no spider drive tech.
Grasers, however, are a well-known technology. The Alignment seems to have made theirs last seconds, as opposed to nano- or microseconds, which made for a more powerful weapon, especially in the context of the surprise attack. If they put their minds to it, the GA can probably duplicate that technology, though whether it makes sense for ship-to-ship missiles remains to be seen.
We know RMN tech can make a missile hit a target between the wedges while flying at over 0.8c, but the missile can precalculate the exact firing position and adjust on the fly to evasive manoeuvres. A sustained fire is a different thing, since the missile would need to keep on target. Plus, if the missile is flying at 0.8c, in the 3.2 seconds the MAlign torpedo graser lasted, the missile would have covered 768,000 km. I would think that scaling up from microseconds to milliseconds makes sense, but 3.2 seconds is wasted effort. Literally overkill.
PS: is your handle related to the Alastair Reynolds character in the Revelation Space books?