Theorycraft - Starfarer MOAB delivery system.

Vavrik

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What else are we suppose to do while drinking beer at the pub?
Well you could just stand on the "balcony in the back" and pee on uninvited party crashers who might have less than honorable intent. Frozen pee on a hostile Cutlass or Hornet's window window would make it awfully hard to see what's in front that you're trying to shoot at. Be a tad cold for Big Willy though, and cold tends to make him try to run hide up around your kidneys (Called "Shrinkage" in Canada)
 

Vavrik

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Yanno... Except peeing on a hostile space ship... all this stuff is totally possible, just depends on CIG's will to make it happen.
(it would be pelted with ice, not wet pee. But still it's a fun thought.)
 

Shadow Reaper

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As much as this is a cool idea, I am much more a fan of sitting from space and launching 4 size 10 Kinetic bombardment devices (KBD) from my Polaris. Where a modern MOAB has a blast yield of "11 tons TNT" were as KBD "In the case of the system mentioned in the 2003 Air Force report above, a 6.1 m × 0.3 m tungsten cylinder impacting at Mach 10 has a kinetic energy equivalent to approximately 11.5 tons of TNT (or 7.2 tons of dynamite)." the airforce determined it was not worth the price because of the cost to get the weapon into space, but if you are already in space...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-43/B_MOAB
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment

Edit: oh and close support? I think a Hammer Head will be better, in part because of it's weapon placements are so well designed, 5/6 weapons will be able to fire if it's movie parallel to the ground.
One of the things that proponents of kinetic energy weapons from orbit do not often discuss is that hypersonic reentry heats objects so much they will disintegrate unless special conditions are met. We see this happen with almost all meteors. Studies of how tungsten rods would melt have shown the "rods from god" scenario is much harder to pull off than one would guess. Recall, these same forces are what destroyed Space Shuttle Columbia, and that had heat shield covering all but a tiny portion that was damaged at launch. I don't know if CIG has sufficient physics in game to make kinetic weapons possible, but even given they did you would have the thermal issue to look after. Simply dropping full fuel tanks on someone could be a better option.

Have they said anything about fuel in the PU being combustible?
If so that means the Starfarer is pretty much a flying flame thrower on planet surfaces..........
Yeah, I think the fuel is hydrogen? Quite explosive. If you mix it well with air before you ignite it, I think you can get a supersonic combustion (detonation as opposed to conflagration). Makes a big bang. Some thermobaric weapons do this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon
 
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Shadow Reaper

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Fuel air bombs explode twice. The first explosion bursts the canister and mixes the fuel with the air. The second explosion is the fuel itself which burns supersonically or DETONATES and that makes a big boom. Theoretically one could rig this with a standard fuel canister from a StarG, etc. The trick is the first explosion cannot ignite the fuel, but must mix it with the air.
 
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Vavrik

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One of the things that proponents of kinetic energy weapons from orbit do not often discuss is that hypersonic reentry heats objects so much they will disintegrate unless special conditions are met. We see this happen with almost all meteors. Studies of how tungsten rods would melt have shown the "rods from god" scenario is much harder to pull off than one would guess. Recall, these same forces are what destroyed Space Shuttle Columbia, and that had heat shield covering all but a tiny portion that was damaged at launch. I don't know if CIG has sufficient physics in game to make kinetic weapons possible, but even given they did you would have the thermal issue to look after. Simply dropping full fuel tanks on someone could be a better option.
This is true, but they have worked out the physics for the USAF study, and that does work. That was the origin of the 20 ft by 1 ft tungston telephone pole. That was the effective size and shape. The problem with kinetic strikes is they become very expensive ways of executing what amounts to a surgical strike, with an impact zone of just a few square meters, but very deep. The major expense is lifting the kinetic bundles into orbit. Right now that's not cost effective vs flying a plane nearby and executing a stand-off strike.

But all this assumes that your target is on Earth or another thick atmospheric body starting from fairly low orbit. Actually what you would do is use Stellar gravity, you can achieve far higher velocities by starting the drop from a stellar intersection orbit, like for example starting out near Jupiter's orbit or so. But it's still dang expensive to get out there.

Still though, they would be fairly effective on a moon or planet without a thick atmosphere. The idea would be to soften the target by cracking it open and exposing the interior to the vacuum, even if it was buried.
 

Shadow Reaper

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The major expense is lifting the kinetic bundles into orbit.
That is a problem, but also note you have to have sufficient energy to deorbit the rods, which means you're lifting rockets to tie to those rods. I don't honestly think anyone would do something like this until we have a replacement for rockets. Needs something propellantless.
 

Vavrik

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That is a problem, but also note you have to have sufficient energy to deorbit the rods, which means you're lifting rockets to tie to those rods. I don't honestly think anyone would do something like this until we have a replacement for rockets. Needs something propellantless.
Yeah good point. Propellantless or very very cheap. If you used conventional rocket motors, you turn each launch into a roman candle. If you launch rail guns, you'd have to also have a way of re-positioning the orbit of the launch vehicle after each launch. Most solutions work into quite the price tag.

What about compressed gas jets? It would be kind of stealthy, at least it wouldn't look like you set off a firecracker in orbit to every 7 year old with a telescope. You only need a couple hundred M/s to hit the opposite side of the earth, I wonder how many fire extinguishers that would take, and how much it would cost to send them up too.
 

NaffNaffBobFace

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Cool vid dude, I play the 1984 game Sopwith which has bomb dropping and gravity physics so you can end up doing some wacky stuff at higher airspeeds.

I spent 20 minutes searching for footage on Youtube where a player takes an enemy aircraft out of the sky with a bomb but can't find any... it's the marque of a Sopwith Master... imagine what i had to write to try to find that footage, if I vanish that'll be why.
 
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