For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread

[magnemoe]

15 hours ago, DDE said:

Whoo, do I have a treatise to write now.
Basically, there's a huge difference between what is considered a missile.

This is a Harpoon, an increasing rarity on US ships in favour of a Rolling Airframe Missile launcher. It's subsonic and torpedo-sized, with a delay-fused semi-armour-piercing warhead.

This is a Basalt of the older Slava cruisers, Mach 3 with a proximity-fused directional warhead rated for 400 mm armour penetration.

On the other side, we have modern ships. The Zumwalt has a pseudo-armoured belt because of the Mk 57's blast protection, the Kirovs have a 100 mm citadel, and I've heard of 8 inches of aluminum on US carriers.
But this is largely beside the point. Even in WWII penetrating armour was of questionable value.
Consider the Bismarck. She was scuttled with her main belt intact - and everything above the belt blown away or on fire.

So, barring the optimistic claim that

WWII ships don't come off as that resilient. The equivalent of a mid-sized bomb coupled with burning jet fuel is going to cause quite a bit of damage above-deck, especially on a late-WWII "all-or-nothing" warship. At best, the WWII ship of a comparable tonnage will benefit from fewer elaborate systems that can catch fire - they had nowhere near the electrical generators and radar arrays, and could just hide the small engine rooms and magazines all the way below the waterline. Even a WWII ship was armoured mostly to avert a one-hit-kill, not to shrug off every projectile.

Rolling Airframe Missile is an point defense anti air missile not an anti ship one. Think you would launch an harpoon from the VLA bays on modern ships. RAM tend to be launched from box turrets
Else I agree with you, but did Bismark armor hold up? The British got very close at the end

[DDE]

On 6/3/2020 at 2:24 PM, magnemoe said:

Rolling Airframe Missile is an point defense anti air missile not an anti ship one. Think you would launch an harpoon from the VLA bays on modern ships. RAM tend to be launched from box turrets

Nope. When converting to the Mk 41 VLS, the USN apparently didn't splurge on a VL Harpoon (and bought very few VL ASROCs). The Harpoons have stayed in separate Mk 141 launch canisters; the plans for the FFG(X) call for similar launchers. And with the shrinking margins on the Burkes, they've been increasingly thrown out. I did get my timeline wrong, though - some Burkes would pick up SeaRAMs to compensate for a quirk that prevented the AEGIS from operating in anti-air and ABM mode simultaneously, and apparently the Harpoon launchers would still be around (see enclosed image).

https://influenceofhistory.blogspot.com/2018/06/missile-loadouts-arleigh-burke-1991-2018.html

Spoiler

Ultimately, there's a reason why the USN is looking to turn the Standard SM-6 anti-air missile into a (nominally hypersonic) anti-ship one, while requesting 16 (!) non-VLS anti-ship launchers on the FFG(X).

http://influenceofhistory.blogspot.com/2018/01/surface-to-air-missiles-as-antiship-weapons.html

On 6/3/2020 at 2:24 PM, magnemoe said:

but did Bismark armor hold up? The British got very close at the end

All sources claim it did. And she was always critiqued for having an obsolete armour scheme with little horizontal protection (against long-range fire with a high ballistic arc) in favour of a powerful side belt (against close-range, direct fire), which was a gamble by her designers expecting the rubbish weather of the North Atlantic to force close-range battles. Guess they were right, albeit by a tiny margin as radar fire control was only a few years away.

On 6/3/2020 at 8:16 AM, kerbiloid said:

Old ship = sword + shield
Modern ship = two swords or a halberd or a sabre + pistols + no shield

knights → dragoons

But can a dragoon do this?

Spoiler

 

 

Also, a nitpick, dragoons didn't fight on horseback, they were mounted infantry.

Edited June 4, 2020 by DDE

[kerbiloid]

6 hours ago, DDE said:

But can a dragoon do this?

Can a modern ship repel a solid iron meteorite at 20 km/s ?

(If compare the sabre and the bullet velocity and energies).

Unlikely. Only another sabre.

***

Also, they were not so silly to carry the swords on the back. Especially in elevator.
1) Because this makes them weaponless.
2) Because there were no elevators.

 

6 hours ago, DDE said:

Also, a nitpick, dragoons didn't fight on horseback, they were mounted infantry.

Yes, exactly. After the sail fleet _{марсофлот} has gone, all of them are shipped infantry.

P.S.

Spoiler

P.P.S.
Dragoons had a curved sabre, not a straight sword.
(I can't find a proper English term for the d'Artagnan's shiv. Why do they use absolutely different terms?)

(And should the "d'Artagnan's " really include two apostrophes? A French apostrophe after d, and an English apostrophe before s.)

This makes them as cavalry as the cavalry of early XX.

Also they would not be happy if somebody calls them not a cavalry.

Edited June 5, 2020 by kerbiloid

[K^2]

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

(I can't find a proper English term for the d'Artagnan's shiv. Why do they use absolutely different terms?)

In the original French, it's épée, which is also the English name for that sword. Pronounced a little differently, of course. Russian translation used Russian name for that type of sword, "шпага" - "shpaga", which is actually formed from its Spanish name, "espada". English translation of the novel, for whatever reason, just calls it a sword, which is probably why it was difficult to find the correct word. For what it's worth, I don't think a typical sword of a real Musketeer, or somebody who wants to become one, would be an actual épée, but Dumas called it épée, and it was portrayed and used as such in the fight scenes, so for the fictional character, I guess that's what it was. At any rate, épée is definitely the word you're looking for.

[wumpus]

10 hours ago, K^2 said:

In the original French, it's épée, which is also the English name for that sword. Pronounced a little differently, of course. Russian translation used Russian name for that type of sword, "шпага" - "shpaga", which is actually formed from its Spanish name, "espada". English translation of the novel, for whatever reason, just calls it a sword, which is probably why it was difficult to find the correct word. For what it's worth, I don't think a typical sword of a real Musketeer, or somebody who wants to become one, would be an actual épée, but Dumas called it épée, and it was portrayed and used as such in the fight scenes, so for the fictional character, I guess that's what it was. At any rate, épée is definitely the word you're looking for.

In a somewhat recent Matt Easton video, he mentions that while the fencing foil is based on the small sword (not the rapier, but a somewhat shorter weapon derived from the rapier), the  épée is based on the épée (sometimes called épée du combat).  He also mentions that the reason that épée fencing has that "if it touches, it counts" point system is that the swords were traditionally used for duels to first blood, thus making it reasonable that "going for the tie" was a sane strategy.  Presumably the sword could still be used to deal with ruffians outside of a formal duel, as I suspect they are used that way a lot in the novels.

Unfortunately, I'm having issues with audio and can't confirm that is the right video.

[K^2]

Yeah, a brief search hasn't pulled up anything terribly illuminating, but the more historical looking paintings depicting musketeers seem to show something that looks a lot more like French short sword. I don't imagine majority of them would have a dedicated dueling swords, so épée does seem like a stretch. But épée de combat is the sword that the upper class would use in a dust-up or a duel around that time. I wonder if Dumas made a mistake calling it an épée because it's a weapon he was more familiar with, intentionally called it that as a concession to his expected audience, or if people really did call short sword military used an épée, perhaps as a joke or reference to the fact that they're using it more often in duels than in combat. Or maybe I got it all completely wrong, and musketeers would actually walk around with épée de combat. I'm really curious now and would like to hear a take from somebody who's way more versed in bladed weapon history than I am.

[SOXBLOX]

I don't think it was a foil; pretty sure that was an English thing. Épée works, I guess. Of course, if the Russian is shpaga, it comes from Italian espatha or Spanish espada ropera. That would refer to the rapier, which is what the épée evolved from. That makes sense, seeing as how it was close to being the ultimate civilian sidearm, and would be in wide use. It's use was considered something of an art form as well, so I'm thinking this is the sword. But I'm not an expert, so please enlighten me if I'm wrong!

Might have been a schiavona, too. Pretty sure Porthos carried one.

And yes, English is weird.  That isn't surprising, considering that it's basically the entire Indo-European language family recombined into one big mess.

Edited June 5, 2020 by SOXBLOX

[K^2]

10 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

Of course, if the Russian is shpaga, it comes from Italian espatha or Spanish espada ropera. That would refer to the rapier, which is what the épée evolved from.

Yeah, this is part where things get messy in Russian. The Russian word "shpaga" is derived from the name "espada ropera", but actually refers to an épée. The actual Russian word for a rapier is "rapira" and is derived from the name "espada ropera", just like the English analog. Yes, they took two separate words from the same Spanish name and applied them to two different, somewhat similar swords. To make things worse, the same two words are used for modern fencing foil and épée. Why yes, it does confuse people, how did you guess?  

English Language: "I'm weird".

Russian Language: "Hold my vodka."

Edited June 6, 2020 by K^2

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

On 5/22/2020 at 1:15 PM, Spacescifi said:

Does a humanoid need to be to stronger than normal humans to routinely climb walls with super adhesive hands and feet (suction pads on them that secrete a super adhesive sticky substance)?

I know physics shows humans normally need more suface adherence area to stick,  but if the adhesive is strong enough that is no longer necessary.

I have seen rock climbers climb either free, or with rope, so perhaps superior to human strength is not necessary to climb?

Just super adhesive hands and feet?

 

 

On 5/22/2020 at 3:06 PM, K^2 said:

Back when I did climbing, I knew a girl who couldn't do a single pull-up, but she was still a better technical climber than me. On the other hand, if you want to go up fast, that's a different matter. Speed-climbers tend to be very muscular, because it does take a lot of strength to go vertically at speeds they do.

Since most climbers lift primarily with legs*, stairs are actually a decent point of reference. Almost anyone remotely healthy can climb a set of stairs. If you want to be able to walk a hundred floors, you need to be in good overall shape and might need a bit of endurance training. If you want to run up to the 100th floor, you need to be in top shape and do a lot of training for it.

* Some technical routes intentionally put more emphasis on arm strength, and speed climbers use their entire body. But it's not critical for climbing in general.

In the 90s I used to teach rock climbing and one of the things we all noticed was that women tended to be better beginning rock climbers than men.  Mainly because women know that their strength is in the legs where many men think they have strength in their arms. 

K^2 is absolutely correct that core strength is actually the key, but for most beginners, learning how to climb mostly with the legs is critical - not only from a strength standpoint but endurance, which I would argue is the most important thing in climbing. Efficiency matters! An example of the extreme mismatch in humans between leg and arm strength / endurance is often found whenever you need to stand on your toes to do work above your head - I. E. Electrical work or carpentry. 

 

If you want to make a semi robotic human assist device for scaling surfaces I'd look at gecko feet - rather than something cool like small suction cups that you see in the movies - so you would end up with clown-dimension hands and feet for it to work. 

[ARS]

On stealth aircraft that's difficult to detect with radar (such as stealth bombers), assuming that it's detected visually by conventional aircraft, and they open fire using onboard machine guns instead of attempting missile lock at such close range engagement, will the damage from machine gun fire that riddled stealth aircraft's outer skin with bullets make it more visible to radar (compromising it's stealth)?

Also, I've seen this clip: in a scene involving a dogfight between 2 fighter aircrafts, A is behind B and launched a semi active radar homing missile (clearly because the pilot of A said Fox 1), but then the pilot of B used flares to deflect said missile (clearly because pilot B said Flares!). Can SARH missile be deflected that way? Or is it possible to mix chaff in flare dischargers to confuse the radar homing of said missile? Because AFAIK, modern SARH missile can differentiate between actual aircraft and chaffs since chaffs usually slows down dramatically once it's released (for info, aircraft A is Su-30, while aircraft B is Su-27)

[DDE]

4 hours ago, ARS said:

On stealth aircraft that's difficult to detect with radar (such as stealth bombers), assuming that it's detected visually by conventional aircraft, and they open fire using onboard machine guns instead of attempting missile lock at such close range engagement, will the damage from machine gun fire that riddled stealth aircraft's outer skin with bullets make it more visible to radar (compromising it's stealth)?

Given that the "machine guns" of modern aircraft tend to cause enormous holes? Yeah.

4 hours ago, ARS said:

Or is it possible to mix chaff in flare dischargers to confuse the radar homing of said missile?

It's not just possible. To my knowledge, it's how it's always done.

4 hours ago, ARS said:

Because AFAIK, modern SARH missile can differentiate between actual aircraft and chaffs since chaffs usually slows down dramatically once it's released

From what I understand, chaff is more about obscuration than a true decoy. However, there'd be a complex interplay between chaff and Su-27's own, albeit rudimentary, radar jammers.

[magnemoe]

6 hours ago, DDE said:

Given that the "machine guns" of modern aircraft tend to cause enormous holes? Yeah.

It's not just possible. To my knowledge, it's how it's always done.

From what I understand, chaff is more about obscuration than a true decoy. However, there'd be a complex interplay between chaff and Su-27's own, albeit rudimentary, radar jammers.

Yes modern fighters tend to have 20-25 mm rapid firing, often gatling guns. If you get hit by them loss of stealth is the least of your problem. 
Now to counter that F22 pilots has managed to get undetected into gun range of F16 because of stealth. 
 

[Spacescifi]

On 6/6/2020 at 5:40 AM, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

 

In the 90s I used to teach rock climbing and one of the things we all noticed was that women tended to be better beginning rock climbers than men.  Mainly because women know that their strength is in the legs where many men think they have strength in their arms. 

K^2 is absolutely correct that core strength is actually the key, but for most beginners, learning how to climb mostly with the legs is critical - not only from a strength standpoint but endurance, which I would argue is the most important thing in climbing. Efficiency matters! An example of the extreme mismatch in humans between leg and arm strength / endurance is often found whenever you need to stand on your toes to do work above your head - I. E. Electrical work or carpentry. 

 

If you want to make a semi robotic human assist device for scaling surfaces I'd look at gecko feet - rather than something cool like small suction cups that you see in the movies - so you would end up with clown-dimension hands and feet for it to work. 

 

You are absolutely right about gecko feet, yet I reckon that even then it would be so hard as to be impractical for humanoids given how heavy we are.

 

In the conclusion, having heard all, I will keep the suction cups minus any adhesive fluids secreted. They will perform like normal suction cups. If a humanoud tried to climb with them they would just slide down the wall as the fell.

What I like is they offer a look to distinguish them from normal humans behind mere color changes. Of all my creations these look the closest to human.

 

The suckers are still usefull.

I cannot tell you how many times I wish I had more grip on a heavy box I was reaching for.

Or for playing catch. Never ever drop a ball again!

Also in space the suckers give them advantages normal humans need special socks and lots of velcro for.

These humanoids could walkaround in zero g no problem inside their ship.

I already have less human aliens, so the humanoud ones fill a needed niche.

 

Thanks for yours and other's help to see clearly..

[kerbiloid]

So, in Die Hard they just misheard him.

Spoiler

Actually he said something like "Épée! Take your position, monsieur!"

[ARS]

If we build a laser weapon, which one is harder: shooting it from the ground to hit something in space or shooting it from space to hit something on the ground?

Also, since mass is less of a concern in space in terms of structural stability (you can build any shape you want, unlike on earth), assuming there's a way to transport large amount of mass to space, does heavy armor (that actually designed to get hit and endure the attack) is still relevant in space combat (because you can armor stuff as much as you want without compromising structural stability due to the lack of gravity, especially on things that moves at the snail's pace in the first place such as motherships), or has it been taken over by speed and maneuverability? (especially due to how easy it is to move something around in space due to the lack of gravity)

[Spacescifi]

5 minutes ago, ARS said:

If we build a laser weapon, which one is harder: shooting it from the ground to hit something in space or shooting it from space to hit something on the ground?

Also, since mass is less of a concern in space in terms of structural stability (you can build any shape you want, unlike on earth), assuming there's a way to transport large amount of mass to space, does heavy armor (that actually designed to get hit and endure the attack) is still relevant in space combat (because you can armor stuff as much as you want without compromising structural stability due to the lack of gravity, especially on things that moves at the snail's pace in the first place such as motherships), or has it been taken over by speed and maneuverability? (especially due to how easy it is to move something around in space due to the lack of gravity)

 

You would need a scifi level laser turret for it to be it worth it.

 

It is easy for antisat missiles, ICBM's etc to hit anything they want in orbit in minutes.

When you are going at suborbital hitting an orbital object... armor is a mute point if the mass is dense enough.

[kerbiloid]

In both directions the laser beam should pass through the equivalent 8 km thick layer of air. So, both are bad.

But an airborne laser can effectively hit objects in LEO, as most part of that air is below.

As well, an antisat rocket with a nuke-powered Xray laser can hit a sat or a warhead from below after getting to the stratosphere.

***

ISS is ~420 t heavy.

It's ~7 heavy battle tanks, or a hollow steel sphere of 20 cm wall thickness and ~20 m in diameter.
Not that it's a lot of room to put anything deserving such payload.

Really large objects (more than hundreds of meters in diameter, a mini-asteroid size) may be armored, making enemy either to spent myriads of low-yield missiles, or launch a huge multimegaton thing which could be intercepted.

[razark]

Both lasers require a massive power source and a way to dispose of waste heat. Those tasks would be simpler for a ground station to deal with.

So, firing it more than once is going to be easier on the ground, at least.

[kerbiloid]

11 hours ago, razark said:

Both lasers require a massive power source and a way to dispose of waste heat. Those tasks would be simpler for a ground station to deal with.

So, firing it more than once is going to be easier on the ground, at least.

The power produced on ground will mostly dissipate in air, so the airborne one produces less, but also spends less.

Edited June 10, 2020 by kerbiloid

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

18 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

The power produced on ground will mostly dissipate in air, so the airborne one produces less, but also spends less.

What about a double fired laser?  First shot isn't the killing energy blast - it's purpose is to 'clear the air' or create a plasma channel - perhaps like the leader that precedes a lightning blast - and then the kill shot from the ground station uses the cleared path to take out the target?

[ARS]

20 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

What about a double fired laser?  First shot isn't the killing energy blast - it's purpose is to 'clear the air' or create a plasma channel - perhaps like the leader that precedes a lightning blast - and then the kill shot from the ground station uses the cleared path to take out the target?

Doesn't that makes double the power requirement? Laser ionizes the air, but I doubt that double fired laser since if you ionize the air on the firing line with the first shot, then there would be little to no air to ionize for the second shot. If you shoot the second shot fast enough, there's not enough air to ionize, but if wait a bit before the second shot, then what's the point if it's no different than the first shot?

[kerbiloid]

3 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

What about a double fired laser?  First shot isn't the killing energy blast - it's purpose is to 'clear the air' or create a plasma channel - perhaps like the leader that precedes a lightning blast - and then the kill shot from the ground station uses the cleared path to take out the target?

It should be many fired  laser, or thousands of them, like the possible targets are.
But in any case it should pass through the 8 km layer of air if shoot vertically, and up to tens of kilometers if the target is low at the horizon.
If the beam is ~1 m wide, this means tens of tonnes of air it should pass through (8000 * 1.225 * pi/4 * 1² ~7700 kg, and *~10 if the target is at the horizon)

A lot of energy will anyway be spent on clouds boiling, and the beam will be distorted and dissipated, so this will increase the required power, to make the beam wide ond brighter.
And the laser is or megawatt range. Its place will be warmed without any opponent hits.
So, afaik, while big on-ground antisat lasers were tested, but the known plans consisted of only orbital and airborne ones in mass.

[NFUN]

In lieu of the question, here's the answer I found after an hour of searching small variations of the same damn terms:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Network

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

8 hours ago, NFUN said:

In lieu of the question, here's the answer I found after an hour of searching small variations of the same damn terms:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Network

I remember reading an article about this in Discover or SciAm nearly 20 years ago. 

I also remember this part as defining 'droll' -

"While it would use little energy, transport along the network would take a long time." 

e. g. "the trip from Earth to Mars or other distant locations would likely take thousands of years." 

(The article hyped 'superhighway' when it should have focused on the low energy part) 

Thanks for the post! 

Edited June 13, 2020 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Couple of Lagrange point questions:

1 - L4 and L5 are considered to be relatively stable coorbits, while at L1 and L2 a coorbiting body should only be stable for a few months.  Is this purely through the 3-body problem, or is it because of the moon? (L1 and L2 are relatively close, but L4 and 5 are solar distance - which could be far enough that earth/moon could be treated as combined gravitational point) 

2 - JWST is going to orbit the L2... But presumably it will need some kind of station keeping ability - thus a finite fuel source. I've not seen anything on this, but does JWST have some kind of engine for this?  And while L2 has great advantages for an observatory - why not put it in L4 or 5 for the stability?