Ship Design Philosophy

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Spaceships: Armaments, Sandcasters, and Why the Hell Not?

1. At a quarter of a megastarbux per, they are the cheapest option.

2. They would be perceived by authorities as a more or less defensive system; unless someone figures out how to launch something more offensive from them.

3. The weakness with using sand to protect against lasers, is that the opponent might not be using them.

4. I choose lasers in substantial numbers, because of their dual purpose, they can act as anti missile defence.

5. Also, who's more likely to run out of ammunition, before I run out of power?

6. You basically would have to launch the sand in the same general direction of the laser attack, so i would think it would be a good idea to keep it turretted.

7. If you had it as a fixture, forward would be in anticipation of closing with the enemy, and behind would be an attempt to keep your distance.

8. And then you can use it as a giant shotgun to repel boarders, or restless natives, as long as they're outside the hull.

9. How many times do you have to repel boarders?

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Armaments, Sandcasters, and Why the Hell Not?

10. If your spacecraft has enough agility to swing around the fixed sandcaster, you might as well use that to evade all attacks.

11. A more souped pebble canister can afflict one deadly dice worth of dirtside destruction, which on reflection would qualify it as a tank buster.

12. The sandcutter sounds like a rather desperate move, since you have to get up close and personal, in which case, peppering your opponent with holes at point blank range sounds like a better option.

13. Chaff is probably the most useful of the ammunition options, as you can have a fixed forward launcher, and the spaceship flies through the resulting disrupting sensor cloud.

14. Sand and pebble for crowd control, but you need a turret, and if that's the case, I'm pretty sure you could modify a cheap rocket to be launched through the missile launcher, packed with canister shot.

15. Also, if the option is between sandcasters and dirtside weaponry, I'd probably opt for dirtside.

16. A thirty percent shrink of a canister is thirty five kilogrammes, which conceivably could be attached to a rocket motor as a warhead, if you assume fifty five percent split at a default forty five and five sixths kilogrammes.

17. In terms of effectiveness, there's no penalty for the firmpointed variant, though the same could be said for the missile launcher.

18. It makes sense to pump out one chaff canister when faced with missile salvos, possibly per round, since there's no indication multiple canisters stack.

19. In that sense, it might be plausible to create a window when the chaff would be degraded or ineffective.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Armaments, Sandcasters, and Why the Hell Not?

20. So, it might be a good idea for each warship to have a couple of sandcasters for electronic countermeasures.

21. Close escorts might have sandcasters to coat their charges with chaff; these would be preferably turretted.

22. Being generally perceived as defensive systems, you could have peacekeeping missions equipped with them.

23. What I'm reminded of are all those United Nation armoured cars, you could have smallcraft specifically armed with them.

24. And of course, if the natives get restless, you can sand blast them, and claim proportional force.

25. If you can utilize the sandcaster as a substitute missile launcher, while you can't use it for the most powerful variants, an interceptor missile does present a credible threat.

26. It would also be interesting how far a canister could range in Terran standard gravity, since you could substitute explosives and have an ad hoc mortar, with or with out rocket assist.

27. All these options should be viable for a commercial ship, considering that very few authorities seem to bat an eye regarding actual missiles.

28. Counter insurgency could substitute the sand with explosives or gas, which basically makes the canisters free falling bombs.

29. Or even cluster munitions.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Armaments, Sandcasters, and Why the Hell Not?

30. We know that the conversions between dirtside weapon systems and spaceship ones is somewhat unrealistics, which is ironic, considering we're playing an unrealistic game.

31. Trying to convert dirtside to spaceship, you're going to lose out on effectiveness, since volume would be inflated.

32. Because the most common spaceship weapon systems, missile launcher, sandcaster and laser, aren't really given volume, besides saying that three, or four, can fit within a one tonne turret, plus gunner, and plus reloads, you'd have to guess.

33. I tend to default to one eighth of a tonne for any basic weapon systems, since I'm going to presume that any human workstation needs half a tonne, and you have a canonical quadruple variant, regardless of extra cost or power requirement.

34. And coincidentally, by formula for determining container launcher size, which I evolved way after my calculations on turret based weaponry, one tonne of missiles divided by twelve times one hundred fifty percent comes out exactly to one eighth of a tonne.

35. And of course, sand canisters are smaller than default missiles.

36. So I think that for free falling bombs, I'd get better buck banged by extracting missile warheads and building a streamlined canister around them.

37. Dive bombing originally was meant to help increase accuracy, though I suspect making them guided resolves that.

38. In an atmosphere, you can also make them glide in, which I would suppose without a rocket motor, would make them harder to detect, especially if you stealthed the canister.

39. For a more watery environment, you could develop them as depth charges, though by now we know that torpedoes are more efficient; but torpedoes need a target, while depth charges just requires the submariner to be unlucky.

 

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Spaceships: Accommodations, Life Support and Multi Environment Space

1. On reflection, I wondered what exactly that environmental equipment did.

2. As a swimming pool, it would be justified as I believe swimming pools have pumps and filters, to circulate the water, filter out contaminants, and add in sanitation chemicals.

3. So I wondered how life support is supposed to work?

 

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Spaceships: Armaments, Zen, and the Art of Missile Maintenance

410. While I might be wrong, the inspiration behind the bomb pumped torpedo would have to be the Honorverse.

411. Not to say that that wasn't a Reaganian notion to have the same mechanism onboard orbiting satellites, to take out Soviet missiles.

412. It's been a while since I've read Weber, but as I recall, the idea was to position the torpedo either fore or aft, so that the multiple laser beams can punch through the weaker shields.

413. This seems weaksauce against intent, though the antimatter version appears to have realized this.

414. However, if we default between twelve and fifteen levels of technology, that's not in consideration.

415. The plasma torpedo appears to be the most effective, since it has armour piercing, and delivers one deadly dice.

416. The only thing to complain about is the cost.

417. I'd say the principal targets would be something less than battleship, but heavily armoured.

418. I'm thinking armoured cruisers, heavy cruisers, and monitors.

419. While the warhead is really hefty, it's a waste to use them on poorly armoured opponents; there's no mechanism for it, but the plasma torches could just melt through the hull, the bulkheads and be out the other side before it explodes in over penetration.

 

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Spaceships: Hulls. Heat Shields, and How SpaceX Designed A Heat Shield For The Largest Spacecraft Ever Built

For the first time we saw the fully assembled Starship/SuperHeavy stack assembled on the pad. This is all designed to put Starship, the largest spacecraft ever built, into orbit, but we also got a really good look at a near complete thermal protection system, and that's critical to bringing the Starship back from orbit safely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Lsbi-bVfk0


1. Radiating black bottom, reflective white top.

2. Complex hull geometry.

3. Hexagonal tiles, mounting brackets.

4. Steel and aluminum hulls.

5. Avoid gaps to permit gas access.

6. Blunt point to buffer shock wave away from surface.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Armaments, Zen, and the Art of Missile Maintenance

420. Let's assume that the default missile chassis is an ungravitated streamlined hull, whether by tradition, launcher configuration, or the possibility of entering an atmosphere.

421. So that's one hundred twenty percent of twenty five kilostarbux per tonne, divided by twelve for missiles twenty five hundred starbux, three for torpedoes ten kilostarbux, divided by twenty for canisters fifteen hundred starbux.

422. Technological level fourteen reactionary rocket acceleration fifteen sixty percent fuel efficiency, thirty percent volume, ten round endurance fifteen percent fuel tank, seventy five hundred starbux for an advanced missile, thirty kilostarbux for an advanced torpedo.

423. Warhead and guidance is the remaining fifty five percent, forty five and five sixths kilogrammes for an advanced missile, and one hundred eighty three and one third kilogrammes for an advanced torpedo.

424. It's an open question whether a torpedo has armoured bulkheads and/or hull armour; I'm not sure how to represent that fifty percent resilience in comparison to missiles.

425. Advanced missile warhead and guidance costs nineteen and one sixth kilostarbux; advanced torpedo warhead and guidance fifty one and two thirds kilostarbux.

426. Damage potential five and seven dice respectively.

427. I can't really shrink the warheads.

428. Considering the investment in rocketry and the warhead, fuel tankage would be optimal at four rounds or six percent.

429. You'd probably want a cheaper warhead and guidance for possibly instantaneous, and one round and two rounds options, since those extra two rounds of endurance are a cheap form of buffer to allow corrections.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Armaments, Zen, and the Art of Missile Maintenance

430. Technological level eleven reactionary rocket acceleration fifteen, thirty percent volume, four round endurance fifteen percent fuel tank, five kilostarbux for a missile, twenty kilostarbux for a torpedo.

431. Technological level ten reactionary rocket acceleration twelve, twenty four percent volume, four round endurance twelve percent fuel tank, four kilostarbux for a missile, sixteen kilostarbux for a torpedo.

432. Since there's an immediacy for both acceleration fifteen and twelve for long range, and two and three rounds respectively, the real difference would be a question of the target being able to evade an acceleration twelve easier than acceleration fifteen.

433. Seems a nice compromise where you only need to have a single round endurance against a long range target.

434. One round endurance would be two and a half percent times twelve divvied by ten equals three percent fuel tank.

435. Fragmentation and standard are about as cheap as you can get.

436. Seventy seven percent warhead and guidance, at default tonnage.

437. It's no secret the most of the rocket engines are anachronistic, but default acceleration ten at technological level ten is twenty percent volume, plus twenty five percent fuel tank, so back to an overall warhead percentage of fifty five percent.

438. Fragmentation would be thirty percent rockets, thirty seven and a half tonne fuel tank, thirty two and a half percent warhead and guidance.

439. Rocketry five kilostarbux, chassis twenty five hundred starbux, nine and one sixth kilostarbux fragmentation warhead and guidance.

 

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Spaceships: Armaments, Zen, and the Art of Missile Maintenance

440. 27.0833 kilogramme fragmentation warhead and guidance, three percent fuel tank, and twenty four percent rocketry.

441. 37.100456 kilogrammes divided by seventy three percent.

442. Interceptor missile clocks in at forty one and two thirds kilogrammes.

443. Interceptor missile acceleration twelve twenty four percent, three percent fuel tank, seventy three percent warhead and guidance, 30.416 kilogrammes; 5'208.33 starbux minus twelve hundred fifty starbux chassis, two kilostarbux rocketry, warhead and guidance 1,958.33 starbux.

443. Dogfight missile acceleration fourteen twenty eight percent, three and a half percent fuel tank, sixty eight and a half percent warhead and guidance, 14.27 kilogrammes; 1'562.50 starbux minus 625.00 starbux chassis, 1'166.67 starbux rocketry, warhead and guidance deficit 229.17 starbux.

444. Apparently, the dogfight missile is a loss leader.

445. In theory, acceleration twelve is well within the close range immediate window.

446. Looking up transit times in Core, three gees is six minutes five seconds for a thousand klicks, nineteen minutes fifteen seconds for ten thousand klicks, one hour one minute for hundred thousand klicks.

447. Missile flight times says gee six is short (1'250 klicks) immediate, medium (10'000 klicks) one round, long (25'000 klicks) four rounds, very long (50'000 klicks) six rounds, distant (50'000 plus klicks) twenty one rounds.

448. I might have screwed up with the calculation of the fuel tanks.

449. Immediate requires one round endurance, one round actually requires a tank with two rounds endurance, since I assume the assumption is to that you have the entire round to reach the target.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Armaments, Zen, and the Art of Missile Maintenance

450. I kinda wonder if, assuming missiles and variants torpedoes were actually designed to a template, that extra round was accounted for , as well.

451. Looking at it from a real time viewpoint, if it's mentioned that something has a ten round endurance, you assume that means that it means at the end of ten rounds, the endurance is finished.

452. True, if the round it's activated is the first round.

453. However, immediacy means that you hit in the same round you launch, and one round means that the hit is delayed one round, which means any endurance calculation would be one plus ecks round(s).

454. Overhead, sort of like the jump drive.

455. So a four round endurance is basically presumably half the size of the default onboard fuel tank, rather than forty percent.

456. In theory, if you calculate that a curtailed range would be reached before you ran out of fuel, you could design the missile with fractional round endurance.

457. However, you might want to account for evaporation.

458. You could have drop tanks for torpedoes, which when launched at range would be dragged down, but as it approaches the target, drops them and accelerates even faster towards the target.

459. Whether that would neutralize range penalties, where Core pretty much states that the minus six distant penalty is due to lack of endurance, who knows.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Armaments, Zen, and the Art of Missile Maintenance

460. Technological level eleven reactionary rocket acceleration fifteen, thirty percent volume, four round endurance eighteen and three quarters percent fuel tank, five kilostarbux for a missile, twenty kilostarbux for a torpedo.

461. Technological level ten reactionary rocket acceleration twelve, twenty four percent volume, four round endurance fifteen percent fuel tank, four kilostarbux for a missile, sixteen kilostarbux for a torpedo.

462. Interesting, acceleration twelve lists distant as nine, so that would work for a ten round tank.

463. Very long takes three rounds, so that would be a forty percent tank, and upto long, one round endurance.

464. Seen from the perspective of technological level fourteen, acceleration twelve would be the option for cheap shot missiles.

465. Long range has a penalty of minus two, compared to minus four for very long and minus six for distant, but the hit is immediate, and acceleration fifteen doesn't improve those odds.

466. This isn't really an anomaly in real life, since you usually have a range of missiles, that are roled or optimized for specific circumstances.

467. Immediacy means the other side can evade, but can't run.

468. Doctrine would be adapted to close to long range, before firing off missiles.

469. Though I'm still curious if acceleration nine is penalized, similar to acceleration six.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Armaments, Zen, and the Art of Missile Maintenance

470. Technological level ten reactionary rocket acceleration ten, twenty percent volume, eleven round endurance twenty seven and a half percent fuel tank, 3'333.33 starbux for a missile, 13'333.33 starbux for a torpedo.

471. Forty seven and a half percent motivation, fifty two and a half percent warhead and guidance, forty three and three quarter kilogrammes for a standard missile, one hundred seventy five kilogrammes for a standard torpedo.

472. Budget warhead with increased size fifty two and a half kilogrammes, six kilostarbux for standard missile.

473. In theory, substituting the fuel tank with the enlarged warhead would leave us sixty three percent minus fifty two and a half percent, ten and a half percent, minussed from twenty seven and a half percent, leaves us with seventeen percent fuel tank.

474. Seventeen percent divided by two and a half equals six and four fifths rounds.

475. Shift acceleration to twelve, rocketry twenty four percent, fuel tank thirteen percent.

476. Thirteen percent divided by three. equals four and a third rounds, just enough for very long range.

477. Rocketry acceleration twelve and one round endurance is twenty seven percent.

478. Fifty two and a half tonne warhead and guidance, divided by seventy three percent, equals 71.91780821917808 kilogrammes.

479. Seventy two kilogramme chassis eighteen hundred starbux, acceleration twelve rocketry thirty four hundred fifty six starbux, total 11'256.00 starbux per standard missile, acceleration twelve, long range.

 

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Spaceships: Armaments, Zen, and the Art of Missile Maintenance

480. For ortillery missiles, saying that they are too slow to be used effectively as anti ship weapons, unless it's a surprise, means that if they are moving at acceleration ten, then they can hit as normally without penalty.

481. Apparently, acceleration six penalizes targetting at minus six.

482. This doesn't scale neatly, as minus four would be acceleration seven, and minus two would be acceleration eight.

483. In theory, you could make acceleration nine minus one; otherwise, acceleration nine wouldn't have a penalty, if penalizing is linear.

484. In the other direction, acceleration three would be minus twelve, and acceleration one would minus sixteen.

485. In theory, you could have acceleration zero manoeuvring, as a sort of powered guided gliding bomb.

486.You could have a canister installed as a warhead on a slow powered missile, as opposed to have a missile sabotted to fit within a caster.

487. This would allow, for whatever it was worth, to launch sand canisters and it's variants from missile rails, making the missile launcher more of an universal ordnance weapon systems.

488. The primary attraction of of a caster is that it's three times cheaper, but a launcher is two thirds larger.

489. I was thinking in terms of an acceleration three rocket attached to a canister, which at the expected ranges and effect, even sandcutter, should be able to target without penalty.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Armaments, Zen, and the Art of Missile Maintenance

490. I'm not quite sure about the relationship between the speeds generated by spaceship motivations, and dirtside speed.

491. The old formula of gee minus local gravity field, Terran in this case, would have acceleration three leave us with two gees.

492. That should be enough to slip the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.

493. Going by Core transit times, acceleration three can reach a thousand klick in six minutes five seconds (a tad more than around), and acceleration two in four hundred and forty seven seconds, which would mean what, five hundred klicks in a round?

494. Five hundred klicks is about enough for an intermediate range missile.

495. On the tactical scale, that should be enough speed to get a warhead from one side of the battlefield to the other.

496. Sort of an upscaled version of the tac launcher.

497. Not accounting for the packaging, a dogfight missile is slightly more powerful than a tactical missile, and costs about the same.

498. For the intermediate range missile, it doesn't necessarily have to go ballistic.

499. You might have a series of sonic booms flying it at low level, but it should be harder to hit it.

 

[Condottiere]

(Aero)spacecraft: NASA Plans To Replace Hubble With a Giant Balloon Telescope

Hello and welcome! My name is Anton and in this video, we will talk about a new type of a telescope - a balloon based SuperBIT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSCZwvR3OYg


1. First thought, you can point that camera in the other direction, you know, for facial recognition.

2. More usefully, communications satellite.

3. Possibly, one year.

4. Inexpensive.

5. Altitude forty kilometres.

6. Solar panelling.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: How SpaceX Uses Simplicity To Engineer The Cheapest Rockets In History

SpaceX are building the cheapest rockets in history, its changing the shape of the launch market, and transforming our access to space. But doing so is extremely difficult and takes and engineering approach not previously seen in the space industry.

SpaceX have adopted a philosophy of simplicity and they apply its rigerously to their engineering approach. But how do you "Engineer" simplicity into the some of the most complicated machines ever built?

From the well known and obvious techniques, to some of the more suprising ways SpaceX build simplicity into every aspect of rocket design, manufacturing, launch and even the development process itself, this video hopes to give you an insight into the principles at work and the decisions that make it work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TllA-WMdXy4


1. Race car harnesses for acceleration couches.

2. Best part is no part, the best process is no process.

3. I'm going to leave auto destruct up to the crew.

4. Vertical integration, net complexity, inhouse, outsourcing, and invisible overhead.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Armaments, Zen, and the Art of Missile Maintenance

500. Technological level eight reactionary rocket acceleration six, twelve percent volume, eleven round endurance seventeen and a half percent fuel tank, two kilostarbux for a missile, eight kilostarbux for a torpedo.

501. Twenty nine and a half percent motivation, seventy and a half percent warhead and guidance, fifty eight and three quarter kilogrammes for an ortillery missile, two hundred thirty five kilogrammes for an ortillery torpedo.

502. Chassis twenty five hundred starbux, rocketry two kilostarbux, twenty and a half kilostarbux warhead and guidance for an ortillery missile.

503. Ortillery missile warhead and guidance, technological level seven, 58.75 kilogrammes, 20'500 starbux, one deadly dice.

504. Highly technologized ortillery missile warhead and guidance, technological level ten, thirty percent size reduction, 41.125 kilogrammes, 30'750 starbux, one deadly dice.

505. Budgetted ortillery missile warhead and guidance, technological level seven, one hundred twenty percent size increase, 70.5 kilogrammes, 16'400 starbux, one deadly dice.

505. Highly techgnologized technological level fourteen reactionary rocket acceleration fifteen, thirty percent volume; five round endurance 7.5 percent fuel tank.

506. Budgetted technological level ten reactionary rocket acceleration twelve, twenty four percent volume, one hundred twenty five percent fuel inefficiency, one round endurance 3.75 percent, 1.75 percent remaining; 100 kilogrammes, rocketry 3'840.00 starbux, chassis 3'000.00 starbux, warhead and guidance 16'400.00 starbux; 23'240.00 starbux.

507. Default budgetted ortillery missile would be hundred kilogrammes, increased size, at twenty kilostarbux.

508. This is a tad cheaper than the above customized ortillery missile, which only has an endurance of one round, but double the acceleration.

509. Does this penny pinching matter? Well, it could, if you combine it with maximizing effect, like immediacy minimizing point defence, not allowing the missile to wander off, and increasing the speed to overcome inaccuracy.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Engineering and Two Scientists Are Building a Real Star Trek 'Impulse Engine'

Space may be the final frontier, but we can't go far on rocket fuel. Now, two scientists are working on a device that may one day make the "impulse engine" from Star Trek real.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bp8fk5rosI

I wonder if we could pull that off by having a very heavy bowling ball move along a rail, with alternating gravity fields.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Armaments, Zen, and the Art of Missile Maintenance

510. Yes, basically, for Traveller missiles, it does come down to acceleration principally, followed by damage.

511. Then you try and figure out if the costs involved in obtaining that damage, including wastage, is worth it.

512. The ortillery missile is surprisingly cheap, probably because the designers thought that minus six would be sufficient deficit to balance it.

513. In terms of damage, it's the same as the anti matter torpedo, in terms of cost, about twelve times cheaper, it's faster, and can target sub two kilotonne ships without penalty, which might alpha strike them.

514. Admittingly, plasma torpedoes are only eight times more expensive, and in addition to the same damage potential, have armour piercing ten.

515. If you can outsource various components, you can have pretty low technology factories building them for you, as long as the launcher is embedded in a technological level fourteen constructed spaceship.

516. In theory, budgetted enlarged missile launchers would be one hundred fifty kilogrammes, instead of default one hundred twenty five kilogrammes.

517. However, launcher volumes are ignored in mounted fixtures.

518. The more expensive versions could have their chassis coated with either reflec, which should mess with laser point defence, but allow the enemy sensors a better lock, or stealthed, which would make it more difficult to detect and hit.

519. If necessary, the ones intended for actual orbital bombardment, heat shields.