Star Knight missile salvo experiment

[scifieric]

Originally Posted by Charles Oines

I'm playing around with a missile trail fx idea based on the stills I did for the Honor Harrington Ships of the Line calendars. The Honorverse uses reactionless drives for just about everything, so doing the usual hypervoxel smoke trail wasn't appropriate.

Very cool! When do we get to see the missile strikes?

[Aescapulius]

Originally Posted by Charles Oines

You know, I thought about that, and then decided that it wouldn't be interesting to look at, so I compressed the scale way the hell down. If I kept to the stated scales in the book, I could animate every battle in the books by panning across an empty starfield

On that note, I'd imagine space around the ships would be alive with anti-munitions and colossal flashes of exploding warheads, not mention the occasional thunderous impact upon the ship's sidewalls and hull.

Damn. Now I want to get in on the act. If you'd like, I'll see if I can find some ingenious way to make the Impeller effect for you.

[DAve]

Originally Posted by Aescapulius

Okay, got the band here.

Missiles are capable 46,000 G acceleration (prior to the advent of multiple stage missiles), over 180 seconds, before the impeller drive burns out. That works out as roughly six million kilometers of powered flight time, or just over (rounded down) 33000 Kps at full velocity, unless my math is terribly bad. But the average accel rate (from complete relative standstill, and the equivalent of a straight run from the tubes without course change) is 183.3 kilometres per second squared.

In other words, ****ing fast.

IIRC The impeller wedge needs to get a distance from the ship before it 'ignites' or it would damage the ship <possible spoiler removed> so it is 'fired' out in some way (I don't recall how).

This would probably (IMHO) look like canon fire from an old gallion - i.e. a spout of fire, but no visible canon ball. Since HH is very much 'age of sail' in it's influences this would also seem appropriate.

DAve

[Orblivion]

IIRC the launching system is similar to a rail gun. They accelerate the missile using the same idea as the impeller wedge with gravitic forces and then the missile's own impeller kicks in.

[flatula]

Hi Charles Oines!
I bought your Calender from Astra Games, I also have both copies of the Jayne's Intelligence Review, And the HMS Fearless and The Sirius Q ship miniatures. Anyway I enjoy your artwork immensely, Anyway, the missiles are launched by mass drivers, so yes there would probably some sort of debris like and aluminum sabot shroud that would disintegrate after launch. Most mass drivers use conductive non-magnetic material for example - Rail, Coil, Plasma, Impulse Guns anyway From everything I've read the Impeller wedge would also cause fratricidal damage to the rest of the launch unless they were staggered or dispersed., The impeller wedge for a pinnance is 1km, so though I cant find a documented size missiles I would assume somewhere from 250 - 500 meters depending on missile size. I agree however that with the scales referenced by David Weber, the artwork you created would have to be looked at under a microscope. Page 9 of Jayne's RMN Intelligence review puts the Wedge for a 712 meter Reliant class BC at 162km wide on top and bottom and the sidewalls 10km out each side. Another question that I've often wondered, from even the first book, was if counter-missiles use their wedge as a weapon and 2 full strength wedges coming in to contact would blow each others drive nodes, why would the rely on bomb-pumped lasers as weopons, why not run a ship-killer missiles wedge into the targets wedge and blow it or bring down the wedge for old-fashioned nukes or other lasers. Just a discrepancy in the Honorverse's physics I've noticed.

[Forcemaster2000]

Very cool looking! I like the ship design, and the missle salvo's looked great!

[Aescapulius]

Originally Posted by DAve

IIRC The impeller wedge needs to get a distance from the ship before it 'ignites' or it would damage the ship <possible spoiler removed> so it is 'fired' out in some way (I don't recall how).

This would probably (IMHO) look like canon fire from an old gallion - i.e. a spout of fire, but no visible canon ball. Since HH is very much 'age of sail' in it's influences this would also seem appropriate.

DAve

Oops, I knew I was forgetting something! Cheers, DAve. Yes, they are launched from gravitic mass drivers, and that's what I was referring to in my second post, you'd be able to see them launched (No missile would survive being launched at any appreciable fraction of c without its own wedge up, so it'd take at least a second for them to launch out to activation range). They'd probably reorient whilst charging the impeller drive, before 'disappearing'.

Originally Posted by flatula

Another question that I've often wondered, from even the first book, was if counter-missiles use their wedge as a weapon and 2 full strength wedges coming in to contact would blow each others drive nodes, why would the rely on bomb-pumped lasers as weopons, why not run a ship-killer missiles wedge into the targets wedge and blow it or bring down the wedge for old-fashioned nukes or other lasers. Just a discrepancy in the Honorverse's physics I've noticed.

Note that the wedges of a missile and the wedges of a ship are different in terms of size. Burning out an opponent's wedge probably only works if the wedge in question is of similar or much larger size to your opponent's. And then, you're wedge is also affected. The closer the similarity in size of the wedges, the more likely it is for both wedges to fail completely. So if two ships of the same size wedge were to collide, both wedges would fail, both drives completely shagged, whereas a LAC against an SD's wedge would probably cause no perceptible damage to the SD, whereas the LAC's nodes would all be burnt out, and the LAC itself would be thoroughly screwed, being that close to an SD without a drive, not to mention the nasty side effects of a naked ship 'colliding' against an impeller wedge of that size would have. Remember that nothing can penetrate the Impeller Bands of a ship. Lasers deflect, missiles explode.

The best canon reference I have for that is On Basilisk Station, and the Haven Courier Boat versus the Fearless' impeller wedge. The Haven Courier boats are considered to be the smallest possible ships to mount a Hyper capable drive and crew quarters, which makes them much bigger than a Pinnace or LAC, but it was still much smaller than Honor's Light Cruiser, as was also stated, somewhere. :P

Uh, sorry for hijacking your thread, Charles, :P That was stupid of me. Sorry!

[flatula]

Originally Posted by Aescapulius

The best canon reference I have for that is On Basilisk Station, and the Haven Courier Boat versus the Fearless' impeller wedge. The Haven Courier boats are considered to be the smallest possible ships to mount a Hyper capable drive and crew quarters, which makes them much bigger than a Pinnace or LAC, but it was still much smaller than Honor's Light Cruiser, as was also stated, somewhere. :P

Uh, sorry for hijacking your thread, Charles, :P That was stupid of me. Sorry!

Myself, as well Charles! Not trying to Hijack just addressing two of your own post... and trying to clarify the Honorverse physics for my own project.

Aescapulius, Thats the actual reference I was thinking of, but the Have courier boats wedge was not yet fully up. The other thing I realized last night was there would be no lateral recoil from the launch, It would be "dumped into the Inertia Compensator's"

[Charles Oines]

Originally Posted by Aescapulius

On that note, I'd imagine space around the ships would be alive with anti-munitions and colossal flashes of exploding warheads, not mention the occasional thunderous impact upon the ship's sidewalls and hull.

Damn. Now I want to get in on the act. If you'd like, I'll see if I can find some ingenious way to make the Impeller effect for you.

As most of the detonation warheads attack from about 30,000km out (a little over twice the width of Earth), you might see some sparkling if you know where to look

On the whole, the scale of Honorverse combat is a good deal less cinematic than the books would lead you to believe. Personally, I think the stories would have worked just as well with the ships pulling 4 or 5 gees, and the combats being shrunk accordingly...

[flatula]

Originally Posted by Charles Oines

On the whole, the scale of Honorverse combat is a good deal less cinematic than the books would lead you to believe. Personally, I think the stories would have worked just as well with the ships pulling 4 or 5 gees, and the combats being shrunk accordingly...

Thats why I love the Art Work in your Calendars, You can feel the story.
I've mapped and did some rough work trying to model some of the first book battle between the Sirius and Fearless, the book scale makes everything microscopic, taking place over light minutes. I really like what you've done. With his scale for the Star Knight Battle cruisers at 712 meters from my copy of Jayne's, the sidewalls are out 10km, so the impeller , and David Weber indicates firing a "hole" which the missiles and beams fire through, so I thought that the impeller wedge for the missile wouldn't come up till out side the sidewall. I think when he describes the LAC shrikes, he references a 1.5 meter firing slit for the graser in the bow wall. Anyway, I like the feel and view of the launch video and it pretty consistent with your Calendar work.