Sprint Missiles Versus Scifi Spaceship Part II

[Spacescifi]

 

My Scifi invention: My 'alien' vessels lack scifi inertial dampeners, and their max acceleration rate can be increased if they reduce the max payload onboard. Max acceleration with full payload is usually 3 or 4g. They can accelerate for YEARS without refueling due to scifi fuel.

Despite that, my vessels are commonly seen seemingly accelerating at 5g, 15g, or 30g respectively, with a pinched spatial distortion effect ahead of them in space. When the pinch flattens out the vessel flies in whatever direction it was going before warp, drifting on inertia.

Why? Slow warp/spatial translation. Accelerating space past the vessel without accelerating the vessel. Cheap trans-drives are 5g, average are 15g, expensive are 30g. Everything within the immediate  invisible 'warp' bubble surrounding the vessel is translated as well. Once the trans/warp bubble is cut off, the vessel will start drifing along it's original course. While at warp the vessel will travel in the warp direction but can still rotate...which won't have any effect on the warp direction. Any fore/retro acceleration it does won't be added to it's pre-warp state, except centripetal rotation, since using actual acceleration at warp is kind of  like running on a treadmill. It won't get you anywhere nor does it increase your speed.

Battle: My alien vessels prefer using turreted twin antimatter particle beam fore cannons that can shoot at 1000 kilometers per second velocities. So at 10,000 kilometers it would only take ten seconds to hit a target....assuming the target does not dodge. My vessel must have it's fore facing what it wants to shoot with it's twin cannon. The vessel lacks scifi shields.

Main Question: One of my scifi vessels versus a swarm of 100 REAL staged Sprint missiles. Sprint missiles accelerate at 100g and literally look like a sharp cone spike.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(missile)

Location: Deep space. Scifi Captain made a big mistake thinking the missiles were disabled and went too close to try to investigate before they activated.

Speed: Is equalized. So Sprint won't have to play catch up.

Scenario 1: Distance is 100 kilometers kilometers. My vessel has a 5g trans-drive. Max normal acceleration is 3g in all scenarios except bonus scenarios.

Scenario 2: Distance is 200 kilometers kilometers.

Scenario 3: Distance is 300 kilometers.

Bonus scenarios: Like any of the above except my vessel has either a 15g or 30g trans-drive instead.

My guess: My ship has a good chance of escape. Most likely tactic is to warp out while rotating to bring it's twin AM cannon to bear on the missiles.

Does the scifi vessel most likely survive or die in the scenarios?

How weak or tough is this scifi vessel compared to other settings?

I think it is medium...most scifi settings do not seem to realize how valuable sublight warp would be at dodging enemy fire...especially when it is 'prmitive' Earth missiles.
 

Edited May 31, 2021 by Spacescifi

[DDE]

Sprint would perform vastly above specifications because the damn thing went incandescent from friction with the air. 

[Spacescifi]

2 minutes ago, DDE said:

Sprint would perform vastly above specifications because the damn thing went incandescent from friction with the air. 

 

Oh....you are saying without air resistance we are talking higher g acceleration?

 

How much?

 

150g?

 

Oh my....my scifi ship is going to get pounded huh?

[SOXBLOX]

Even with both stages it only burned for, like, four seconds. Your ship should be able to avoid it after it uses up its ∆v but before it impacts.

Sprint was an awesome missile.

Edited May 31, 2021 by SOXBLOX

[FleshJeb]

If we're talking actual Sprint missiles with no modifications:

• They were remote-controlled because they're too hot to use onboard targeting. Shoot the control radars.
• The first stage of the missile was steered with cold-gas thrusters--Not terribly maneuverable. The second stage was steered with fins...in space.
• The W-66 warhead was only a few kilotons. Given the above, they might miss by sufficient range even if you don't dodge.

Since you're at a tech level that you can spare antimatter for guns:

"A reaction drive's efficiency as a weapon is in direct proportion to its efficiency as a drive."
— The Kzinti Lesson, Larry Niven

You won't even need to warm the guns up, just point your tail at them, light the fires, and slew a little. I'm just guessing, but I bet the plume is radar-opaque as well.

[Spacescifi]

34 minutes ago, SOXBLOX said:

Even with both stages it only burned for, like, four seconds. Your ship should be able to avoid it after it uses up its ∆v but before it impacts.

Sprint was an awesome missile.

 

I see...put sprint as the third stage then.

 

Slightly more of a chance of impact no? Just not good eh?

24 minutes ago, FleshJeb said:

If we're talking actual Sprint missiles with no modifications:

• They were remote-controlled because they're too hot to use onboard targeting. Shoot the control radars.
• The first stage of the missile was steered with cold-gas thrusters--Not terribly maneuverable. The second stage was steered with fins...in space.
• The W-66 warhead was only a few kilotons. Given the above, they might miss by sufficient range even if you don't dodge.

Since you're at a tech level that you can spare antimatter for guns:

"A reaction drive's efficiency as a weapon is in direct proportion to its efficiency as a drive."
— The Kzinti Lesson, Larry Niven

You won't even need to warm the guns up, just point your tail at them, light the fires, and slew a little. I'm just guessing, but I bet the plume is radar-opaque as well.

 

Actually not quite so for mine.

 

Their propulsion system although highly energetic mostly manifests it as one energy form and that is propulsive....not much of it is even manifest as thermal.

The propulsion uses a kind of scifi repulsor ray that works because rays emitted repel the mirrored nozzle....and everything else really. They repel all mass, the repulsion thrust is amplified off reflective surfaces, thus the mirrored nozzles.

 

The heat emitted is like ordinary light from a flashlight. It's the thrust that is more noticable though, as it feels and sounds like a rocket in atmosphere and even blows like one.

Only lighting up the inside of the nozzle rather than a visible plume

 

Goes without saying that they have SSTO spaceships and missiles use the same basic propulsion system.

 

The trans-drive only works in outer space and usually not put on missiles due to expense and size. They are reserved for ships.

 

FTL is an unrelated system that has no bearing on this so I did not include it. Suffice to say they cannot just FTL out everytime they face danger, as that would be boring in scifi.

Edited May 31, 2021 by Spacescifi

[DDE]

18 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

I see...put sprint as the third stage then.

I think you should just fetch Sprint's exoatmospheric cousin the Spartan.

[Spacescifi]

26 minutes ago, DDE said:

I think you should just fetch Sprint's exoatmospheric cousin the Spartan.

 

Was it 100g fast acceleration?

 

Somewhat unrelated but max effective range of the vessel's twin AM particle cannon before the beam starts spreading out is 10,000 kilometers.

 

Not as much range as some settings, but still lethal.

 

Also, so long REAL propellant missiles are in play, we can expect a lot of free orbiting missiles that can be recycled since they missed their target.

Too bad this does not even occur in space sim games. Not even in Elite dangerous.

 

Why buy missiles when you can pick up exausted ones for free and modify them?

 

Edited May 31, 2021 by Spacescifi

[kerbiloid]

4 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Was it 100g fast acceleration?

Only if hit by the Soviet cousin, Taran.

Edited June 1, 2021 by kerbiloid

[SOXBLOX]

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Only if hit by the Soviet cousin, Taran.

I can't even find any "Taran" in English, besides a Cold War tank thing. Do you have a link? I'm curious...

Edited June 1, 2021 by SOXBLOX
Mi Spellang wes bade.

[kerbiloid]

36 minutes ago, SOXBLOX said:

I can't even find any "Taran" in English, besides a Cold War tank thing. Do you have a link? I'm curious...

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=ru&tl=en&u=https://topwar.ru/90930-proekt-sistemy-protivoraketnoy-oborony-taran.html

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=ru&tl=en&u=https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Интегрированный_оборонно-наступательный_океаническо-сухопутно-космический_комплекс

Edited June 1, 2021 by kerbiloid

[magnemoe]

One issue with missiles in sci-fi space battles is that mostly they behave like anti air missiles so they burn until impact or burn out and fly ballistic after that who don't make much sense in space. For one thing range will be much longer, missile ranges will be longer than effective direct energy weapons like lasers and you will prefer to launch them before you come into gun range. 

So you burn for intercept then just continue without trust, it can be smart to stage here and have second stage be stealthy.  No stealth in space is true if you are under trust or have an life support system or other stuff generating heat, not for an small passive missile. 
As the enemy has seen your missile launch they will try to evade, they will also try to locate your missiles and shoot them. 
Then you get close to target second stage activates and does an new intercept. 

For the first stage acceleration is not very important, it has to be much faster than the target but you prefer ISP here, for second stage you want acceleration as your inside the enemy close in weapon systems to get an decent chance for hit and you are very visible during the burn, on the upside range is no so close dodging is very hard. 

[Shpaget]

7 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Also, so long REAL propellant missiles are in play, we can expect a lot of free orbiting missiles that can be recycled since they missed their target.

Too bad this does not even occur in space sim games. Not even in Elite dangerous.

 

Why buy missiles when you can pick up exausted ones for free and modify them?

Sprint was never supposed to hit the target. It just had to come in the general vicinity. It was a nuke, after all.

In any case, why are you so dead set on Sprint? It has been obsolete for 45 years.

[Codraroll]

3 hours ago, Shpaget said:

In any case, why are you so dead set on Sprint? It has been obsolete for 45 years.

Also, why Sprint and not HIBEX? The latter accelerated four times as quickly, although it wasn't ever deployed as a weapon.

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, Codraroll said:

Also, why Sprint and not HIBEX?

"Family!" (c) from Black Widow.

http://www.astronautix.com/s/sprintabm.html