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cthia wrote:I will trust your math, but you must consider that the designers of the missile run those same numbers along with the optimum spread pattern and vector the missiles will need to assume. We're talking about the throw weight of a Solarian Alpha launch.

Yes, at a single ship. With 10,000 missiles per ship, the SLN had better score a kill!

And I'm not exaggerating. I said that with a 1 minute of warning, the target ship can place itself anywhere inside a sphere of 9,000 km in radius, which means a cross-section of 244.7 million km². Assuming it keeps the wedge on and face-on to the missiles, the wedge is about 25,000 km². The cross-section area is 10,000 more than the wedge area, so that's how many missiles you need to saturate the area to guarantee one hit.

This number can be smaller if the attacker can predict where the ship will be. I don't think that's possible, see below.

This is also assuming that hit anywhere on the wedge will kill the ship. That's not only assuming that a kinetic energy weapon can penetrate a warship's dual wedge, but the simple destruction of the wedge will mission-kill the ship inside. If it must hit the actual ship after passing through the wedge, then you need FAR more than 10,000 missiles: an Invictus is 1394 m long and at its tallest, 202 m. That means its cross section is 0.29 km², or 9 orders of magnitude less than the cross-section of where it can be.

And you can definitely count on the first unveiling of this acceleration to be devastating, catching a defender off-guard. The range at the moment the missile goes "supernova" will catch all evasive maneuvers off guard. And remember, even though the launch won't be as good as Lays Potato Chips, you will only need to eat just one.

What does the acceleration have to do with anything? The missile is ballistic at the end, meaning it's moving at constant speed and direction.

And another thing, totally unlike when a missile goes ballistic and you don't know where it is. In this case when a missile goes supernova, you may not realize that it has gone supernova. And possibly neither will your sensors and defensive systems realize what is coming if it can no longer detect a launch that is now traveling at such speeds.

"WTF? Did it just go ballistic?"

Uh uh.

More like "WTF are you talking about?"

A missile that goes ballistic is a hunk of metal and molycircs that is going on a very, very predictable pattern.

In some other Sci-Fi, I've seen missiles that consume themselves by converting into plasma and held by some sort of magnetic field so they don't dissipate immediately. At that point, the plasma is indeed moving ballistically and can't change direction. And since it's just a ball of ionised gas, it can't be shot down either. The only defence against those is to not be where it'll be.

But that's even more detectable than a rail gun round, because plasma is radiating energy away.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:And you can definitely count on the first unveiling of this acceleration to be devastating, catching a defender off-guard. The range at the moment the missile goes "supernova" will catch all evasive maneuvers off guard. And remember, even though the launch won't be as good as Lays Potato Chips, you will only need to eat just one.

And another thing, totally unlike when a missile goes ballistic and you don't know where it is. In this case when a missile goes supernova, you may not realize that it has gone supernova. And possibly neither will your sensors and defensive systems realize what is coming if it can no longer detect a launch that is now traveling at such speeds.

Why are you equating this to going "supernova"? The target ship will be able to track the missile all the time it is accelerating and so will know its track when it goes ballistic.

I can't think of any event that would be more eventful, or fatal, than an object the size of a missile hitting C rather than a sun going supernova. So, my crazy brain figured, why not attribute supernova-like abilities to a missile hitting up against the speed of light, or pretty damn close anyway. If you don't mind downplaying the event, that is.

And I'm none too sure about sensors detecting such speeds without the need of a software upgrade at the very least.

cthia wrote:And you can definitely count on the first unveiling of this acceleration to be devastating, catching a defender off-guard. The range at the moment the missile goes "supernova" will catch all evasive maneuvers off guard. And remember, even though the launch won't be as good as Lays Potato Chips, you will only need to eat just one.

And another thing, totally unlike when a missile goes ballistic and you don't know where it is. In this case when a missile goes supernova, you may not realize that it has gone supernova. And possibly neither will your sensors and defensive systems realize what is coming if it can no longer detect a launch that is now traveling at such speeds.

tlb wrote:Why are you equating this to going "supernova"? The target ship will be able to track the missile all the time it is accelerating and so will know its track when it goes ballistic.

cthia wrote:I can't think of any event that would be more eventful, or fatal, than an object the size of a missile hitting C rather than a sun going supernova. So, my crazy brain figured, why not attribute supernova-like abilities to a missile hitting up against the speed of light, or pretty damn close anyway. If you don't mind downplaying the event, that is.

And I'm none too sure about sensors detecting such speeds without the need of a software upgrade at the very least.

It is NOT hitting up against the speed of light, it is still 10% off; although it is beginning to manifest relativistic effects. There is no reason that instruments which can track .8c, cannot also also track .9c.

Actually going supernova would destroy everything within several astronomical units, now that would be spectacular.

cthia wrote:I can't think of any event that would be more eventful, or fatal, than an object the size of a missile hitting C rather than a sun going supernova.

How about a regular nova?

Anyway, like tlb said, the missile is not hitting c. That's impossible.

Even cracking the sound barrier doesn't produce the sonic boom. It's not the act of crossing that speed that does; it's the shape of the sound waves created by the craft going faster than the propagation of the waves created at the front of the craft. If superluminal flight were possible, we might see a similar effect, in which the photons all arrive packed together... but unlike sound waves that compress real matter, photons can pack more since they don't have to obey the Fermi Exclusion Principle.

Another interesting thing is that you'd first see the craft when it arrives, and THEN you'd see the photons of its travel. Which means you'd first see the arrival, then you'd "see" it slowly going backwards. So if it were possible for a missile to crack c, you wouldn't see it in n-space sensors at all until it hit you.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Another interesting thing is that you'd first see the craft when it arrives, and THEN you'd see the photons of its travel. Which means you'd first see the arrival, then you'd "see" it slowly going backwards. So if it were possible for a missile to crack c, you wouldn't see it in n-space sensors at all until it hit you.

However the main sensors to detect wedge driven ships would still be tracking the missile, since that uses signals which are 60 times faster than the speed of light.

PS: Cherenkov radiation is produced by an electron traveling faster than the speed of light in a dielectric medium. An example is the blue light emitted in a water cooled reactor. So specific cases of superluminal flight are possible, just not by a ship (or missile) in space.

So, what happens if a missile gets to right in front of where a ship will be in 1 second (remember how fast these things (both missile and and them some warships accelerating at over 200g) and the missile's warhead does off. It is s FUSION explosion. What will happen when the ship flies through the heart of the explosion? Somehow I don't think the "particle shielding" will just shrug it off?

Brigade XO wrote:So, what happens if a missile gets to right in front of where a ship will be in 1 second (remember how fast these things (both missile and and them some warships accelerating at over 200g) and the missile's warhead does off. It is s FUSION explosion. What will happen when the ship flies through the heart of the explosion? Somehow I don't think the "particle shielding" will just shrug it off?

That's a loaded question - is it just a Boom? or a Burn? - a Burn will use grav fields to focus the plasma towards the ship (and could get stand-off distance of up to 10K KM, depending on the tech). If it's just a simple boom (ie zero focusing), the distance between the heart of the explosion and the will dissipate at a rate of r^3, as the sphere of energy expands away from the explosive point. Both may do damage at the ranges you are discussing, but the Focused Burn warhead will do far more - if it is focused properly on the target ship)

Brigade XO wrote:So, what happens if a missile gets to right in front of where a ship will be in 1 second (remember how fast these things (both missile and and them some warships accelerating at over 200g) and the missile's warhead does off. It is s FUSION explosion. What will happen when the ship flies through the heart of the explosion? Somehow I don't think the "particle shielding" will just shrug it off?

Theemile wrote:That's a loaded question - is it just a Boom? or a Burn? - a Burn will use grav fields to focus the plasma towards the ship (and could get stand-off distance of up to 10K KM, depending on the tech). If it's just a simple boom (ie zero focusing), the distance between the heart of the explosion and the will dissipate at a rate of r^3, as the sphere of energy expands away from the explosive point. Both may do damage at the ranges you are discussing, but the Focused Burn warhead will do far more - if it is focused properly on the target ship)

The situation you are describing is what happened in the assassination attempt in Ashes of Victory; where the Prime Minister of Manticore was killed in one ship, but Honor saved the Queen in the other.

However warships now have bow walls that can protect against a head-on explosive or laser attack.

tlb wrote:However the main sensors to detect wedge driven ships would still be tracking the missile, since that uses signals which are 60 times faster than the speed of light.

Indeed, and those gravitic sensors would be seeing the missile all the way until it cut off the wedge. So the question would be whether the wedge could accelerate the missile past c (for all we know, it can't) or if some other mechanism took over after the wedge fizzled out. If the missile turns ballistic because the wedge shut down, then the ship has a very, very good grasp of the direction and speed the missile is travelling at, whether it can be seen or not.

It could add some gas thrusters to change the direction slightly. We've seen rockets in the HV do things they shouldn't be able to, so it wouldn't be impossible to add 50 gravities of acceleration over a few or many seconds, to randomise the trajectory.

Theemile wrote:That's a loaded question - is it just a Boom? or a Burn? - a Burn will use grav fields to focus the plasma towards the ship (and could get stand-off distance of up to 10K KM, depending on the tech). If it's just a simple boom (ie zero focusing), the distance between the heart of the explosion and the will dissipate at a rate of r^3, as the sphere of energy expands away from the explosive point. Both may do damage at the ranges you are discussing, but the Focused Burn warhead will do far more - if it is focused properly on the target ship)

And of course, a laserhead can do even more damage and at even greater distance. So if you can get your missile to a position where a boom or burn nuke would do damage, you should use a laserhead and have it actually take the shot.

The advantage of a nuke, such as it may be, is that it doesn't have to be precise. So if your laserhead guidances aren't that good, a focused burn may actually take sidewalls down where a laserhead might have completely missed. And if your missiles can't turn well enough to focus a burn nuke, a simple boom may work.

Of course, if your missiles are that poor, you're not likely to have MDMs. The final speed of such a poor SDM isn't going to crack 0.25c. Moreover, such a navy probably doesn't have enough missiles to saturate the defence of a modern waller, even the deathtraps the SLN was riding on, or RMN/GSN-level cruisers, especially at the low speeds we're talking about.