[Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

This thread will include a number of spaceship designs, all using no superscience. I'd like to build a full TL9 'space navy' with these designs, first focusing upon the SM+5 SUN-3 Menippe and its SM+12 carrier.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Named after one of the daughters of Orion, this 30-ton boat was one of the first parasite spaceships, an auxilary craft designed to be launched from a mothership. These utility ships were strictly military in nature due to their nuclear-based propulsion systems, but their extremely high acceleration and delta-V capacity was generally greatly desired.

The Menippe-class was designed to be modular - the primary control module is relatively heavily armored and includes large amounts of fuel, but lacks in mission-oriented equipment. In order to be truly useful, the Menippe is designed to link with a number of 'mission modules', such as cargo pods, missile racks, or electronic warfare equipment. These pods allow a single SUN-3 Menippe to be highly effective at a wide variety of missions, albeit only a few at a time.

Name: SUN-3 Menippe [1]
TL: 9
dST/HP: 20
Hnd/SR: 0/4
HT: 13
Move: 2G/28.8 mps [2]
LWt.: 30 Tons
Load: 0.2 Tons
SM: 5
Occ: 2SV
dDR: 15/10/10
Cost: $1,943,000 [3]


Front
[1] Armor, Advanced Metallic Laminate (5 dDR) [Hardened]
[2] Armor, Advanced Metallic Laminate (5 dDR) [Hardened]
[3] Armor, Advanced Metallic Laminate (5 dDR) [Hardened]
[4!] Magsail (0.001G Acceleration)
[5] Fuel Cell (1PP, 12 Hours Operation)
[6!] Major Weapons Battery (Fixed-Mount 10MJ Laser)
[Core] Control Room (1 Control Station; Complexity 4 Computer Network; Comm/Sensor Level 3)

Middle
[1] Armor, Advanced Metallic Laminate (5 dDR) [Hardened]
[2] Armor, Advanced Metallic Laminate (5 dDR) [Hardened]
[3] Fuel Tank (2 Tons Capacity)
[4] Fuel Tank (2 Tons Capacity)
[5] Fuel Tank (2 Tons Capacity)
[6] External Clamp

Rear
[1] Armor, Advanced Metallic Laminate (5 dDR) [Hardened]
[2] Armor, Advanced Metallic Laminate (5 dDR) [Hardened]
[3] Fuel Tank (2 Tons Capacity)
[4] Fuel Tank (2 Tons Capacity)
[5] Fuel Tank (2 Tons Capacity)
[6] External Pulsed Plasma (2G Acceleration, 4 Delta-V/Tank) [4]
[Core] Engine Room (1 Workspace)

Design Features
* Stealth Hull (Stealth Bonus: 6)

Crew
1 Pilot
1 Flight Officer
The Flight Officer pulls double-duty: he manages the sensors as well as the engines and the module clamp, and is the ship's engineer. Either the Flight Officer or the Pilot can fire the ship's sole laser cannon, and both should be trained in its use.


Notes:

1: SUN stands for Spacecraft, Utility, Nuclear, designating that the Menippe is a utility spacecraft using nuclear propulsion.
2: When using the Magsail as the propulsion system, change Move to 0.001G/350 mps
3: Besides the (relatively cheap) $2 million pricetag, the Menippe's nuclear bomb fuel load costs $3 million
4: A civilian version of the Menippe could exist which uses Fusion Pulse Drive propulsion. Change Move to 0.02G/48 mps and replace the Magsail, Weapons Battery, and Fuel Cell with a single Habitat unit, filled with a single hibernation tube, and two fuel tanks. Reduce price to $1,528,000 and reduce price to fill up on fuel to $800,000. This design could also be used in areas afraid of External Pulsed Plasma drives.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

The first module is the MA-1 Missile Pod, a relatively expensive combat pod designed to let the Menippe be used as a torpedo boat. These missile pods make the Menippe extremely dangerous, especially when the Menippe's 225 missiles are equipped with 25 kiloton nuclear warheads. A nuclear-armed Menippe costs only $11,250,000 more and can single-handedly level an entire task force of much larger ships. Compared with almost any other weapon platform, a Shiva armed with nuclear missiles gives more bang for you buck than anything else out there.


Name: MA-1 Shiva Missile Pod
TL: 9
dST/HP: 20
Hnd/SR: 0/4
HT: 12
Move: None
LWt.: 30 Tons
Load: 0.1
SM: 5
Occ: None
dDR: 5/5/5
Cost: $3,120,000


Front
[1] Armor, Advanced Metallic Laminate (5 dDR) [Hardened]
[2] Medium Weapons Battery (3 16cm Missile Launchers)
[3] Medium Weapons Battery (3 16cm Missile Launchers)
[4] Medium Weapons Battery (3 16cm Missile Launchers)
[5] Medium Weapons Battery (3 16cm Missile Launchers)
[6] Medium Weapons Battery (3 16cm Missile Launchers)
[Core] Control Room (Complexity 4 Computer Network; Comm/Sensor Level 3)

Middle
[1] Armor, Advanced Metallic Laminate (5 dDR) [Hardened]
[2] Medium Weapons Battery (3 16cm Missile Launchers)
[3] Medium Weapons Battery (3 16cm Missile Launchers)
[4] Medium Weapons Battery (3 16cm Missile Launchers)
[5] Medium Weapons Battery (3 16cm Missile Launchers)
[6] Medium Weapons Battery (3 16cm Missile Launchers)


Rear
[1] Armor, Advanced Metallic Laminate (5 dDR) [Hardened]
[2] Medium Weapons Battery (3 16cm Missile Launchers)
[3] Medium Weapons Battery (3 16cm Missile Launchers)
[4] Medium Weapons Battery (3 16cm Missile Launchers)
[5] Medium Weapons Battery (3 16cm Missile Launchers)
[6] Medium Weapons Battery (3 16cm Missile Launchers)
[Core] Tactical Sensor Array (Comm/Sensor Level 5)

Design Features
* Stealth Hull (Stealth Bonus: 6)

Crew
None

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

The Neil Armstrong class of spacecraft carrier is the premier power projection platform in the United States Space Force arsenal. Featuring enough delta-V to travel from Earth to the asteroid belt in as little as seventy-five days, the Armstrongs are able to deliver their payload of small craft anywhere in the solar system. With a full warload of Shiva-module Menippes, the Armstrongs can transport over thirty-three thousand nuclear missiles - enough to render several planets completely uninhabitable, and for under the cost of another Neil Armstrong-class carrier. Of course, the normal loadout of a Neil Armstrong consists of only a fraction of that number of nukes and missile modules.

Name: Neil Armstrong-class Spacecraft Carrier
TL: 9
dST/HP: 300
Hnd/SR: -2/5
HT: 13
Move: 0.005G/144 mps
LWt.: 100,000 Tons
Load: 15,400 Tons
SM: 12
Occ: 1000 ASV
dDR: 70/70/70
Cost: $6,112,000,000


Front
[1] Armor, Advanced Metallic Laminate (70 dDR) [Hardened]
[2] Fuel Tank (5,000 Tons Capacity)
[3] Tactical Sensor Array (Comm/Sensor Level 12)
[4] Hangar Bay (3,000 Tons Capacity, 500 Tons per Minute Launch Rate)
[5] Hangar Bay (3,000 Tons Capacity, 500 Tons per Minute Launch Rate)
[6] Fuel Tank (5,000 Tons Capacity)
[Core] Control Room (20 Control Stations; Complexity 8 Computer Network; Comm/Sensor Level 10)

Middle
[1] Armor, Advanced Metallic Laminate (70 dDR) [Hardened]
[2] Fuel Tank (5,000 Tons Capacity)
[3!] Tertiary Weapons Battery (30 1GJ Laser Turrets)
[4] Habitat (600 Rooms)
[5] Open Space (20 Gardens)
[6] Fuel Tank (5,000 Tons Capacity)

Rear
[1] Armor, Advanced Metallic Laminate (70 dDR) [Hardened]
[2] Fuel Tank (5,000 Tons Capacity)
[3] Cargo Hold (5,000 Tons Capacity)
[4] Hangar Bay (3,000 Tons Capacity, 500 Tons per Minute Launch Rate)
[5] Advanced Fusion Pulse Drive (0.005G Acceleration, 20 Delta-V/Tank)
[6] Fuel Tank (5,000 Tons Capacity)
[Core] Fusion Reactor (1PP, 100 Years Operation) [Derated]

Design Features
* Spin Gravity (0.5 Gs)

Habitats
10 Luxury Cabins
40 Cabins
225 Bunkrooms
20 Bed Sickbay
5 Briefing Rooms
5 Offices
10 Establishments
5 Cells
260 Steerage

Crew
40 Command Crew
40 Life Support Techs ("Gardeners")
90 Hangar Crew
600 Flight Crew
30 Power Room Techs
30 Nuclear Pulse Engineers
60 Electronics Techs
30 Weapons Techs
30 Turret Gunners
5 Medical

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

I'm personally dubious that stealthing would be of more than borderline stategic or tactical usefulness on anything using a nuclear pulse engine, or that anyone (at any TL) could shoehorn a 25 k-t yield nuke into a 6 1/2 inch missile, but other than that nice designs.

Edit: for comparison, the W-80 nuclear warhead - variable from 5 to 150 KT - (TL8) is 11.8 inches in diameter and can be loaded into the AGM-129 cruise missile (TL 8) which is 2 ft 5 inches in diameter and masses 1.3 tonnes at launch. Physics constrains just how small you can make a nuke.

One other thing - where Stealth would actually be useful is on the missiles, just like the AGM-129.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

I agree - Stealth would be useless on a ship blasting away with a nuclear pulse engine. That's why the External Pulse Plasma's IR signature modifier is +9 - stealth doesn't help much there. However, the stealth is useful in, say, an asteroid field where the Menippe can latch onto a drifting 'roid and shut down everything but auxillary power. With the nuclear pulse engine off and with the ship hidden on the rock instead of just drifting in open space, there'd be a straight -5 modifier to detect the Menippe at point-blank range, a -11 modifier after you take into account the stealth.

Considering the Menippe is a general-purpose ship, I have no trouble imagining it being used in such an ambush. It's made to be able to undertake nearly any type of mission.

As to the size of the nukes, I'm going by the rules listed in Spaceships on Page 47 - the minimum size missile required for a 25 kiloton nuke is 16 centimeters, and that was listed as TL7 technology. That might be a bit off (alright, probably a good bit off), and I don't know too much about nuclear weapon design except the basics, but I don't find it too difficult to believe in a 16cm nuclear warhead - and I see no reason why a weapon with that diameter couldn't be fired from a 16cm tube.

Anyways, I'm just working with the design specifications we've been given. I have my own houserules for a few things, but these designs are going to be mostly by-the-book.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Hi Langy,

I try to be as knowledgeable as a layman can get on matters of arms control, mainly because a couple of my blogging pals are real-life experts and we end up discussing this kind of stuff. (If you want some technical info, try here.)

Hmmm, maybe. The Davy Crockett artillery shell was the smallest nuke ever built, the basic core of which (the W54 warhead with a maximum 0.5 KT yeild) is "10.75 inches diameter (270 mm), about 15.7 inches long (400 mm), and weighs around or slightly over 50 pounds (23 kg)." The Davey Crockett was firmly TL7 and weighed 76 lb (34.5 kg). It was 31 in. (78.7 cm) long with a diameter of 11 in. (28 cm) at its widest point. There was also a missile using the same sub-kiloton warhead, the AIM-26 Falcon, which had a diameter of 11.4 inches, but it's powered range was only 6 miles - useless in space combat.

A typical 25KT nuclear battlefield missile at TL 7 has a range of around 90 miles and a diameter of just over a foot and a half. A late 80's/early 90's state of the art 25 KT nuclear device core is, as I wrote earlier, about 12 inches wide and the constraints of physics mean that it can't be made any smaller. The missile itself is usually considerably wider.

I suppose, in retrospect, a 16 inch missile for a 25 KT yield is just about doable - but there's no margin for toughness of the missile itself. If it hits a micro-meteorite...poof and it has no defense against external radiation degrading the package ( which means it squibs at detonation) or (worst case) even setting it off in a low-yield accident if there's a rad surge. I'd suggest building in stealth and a layer of armor/rad proofing and add some diameter if you're going for high realism, then just use less missiles per ship. Alternatively, use 16 inch missiles with a 2.5 to 5 KT yield, which is still a lot of boom - in space, a fireball of total destruction 200 or 300 yards in diameter and a lethal radiation pulse out to about 1/2 a mile.

On the Stealth for the small craft, point accepted for powered-down lurkers. Just how likely a deployment is that?

Regards, C

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Without superscience it still has to radiate heat or the crew roasts alive.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

I think it will be hard to see the changes coming at TL9 with the advent of metamaterials. The ships using them may be unrecognizable to us in their geometry as "stealth space ships" too.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

So long as you realize that the average distance between asteroids(depending on the size cut off you are using to call something an asteroid as opposed to a pebble) is about a million kilometers. According to THS Deep Beyond pg 8, the average distance between chunks of rock several hundred feet across is 100,000 miles in our main belt. Considering that this will mean that generally, that chunk of rock is the ONLY place to hide behind, it will make ambush virtually impossible against a suspicious opponent. Might work on prospectors, not on pirates or military craft. And probably wouldn't work on prospectors for long, once word got out.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

I know we've talked about the viability of different metamaterials before, but he is right. No metamaterial will prevent the craft from having to radiate heat. Although whether future advances will allow one to chose which direction that heat is radiated may be up to debate, I think that the First Law of Thermodynamics will still apply even several tech levels removed from our current tech level.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Yes but whether its the slam dunk "automatic detection" that many people assume is nowhere close to assured. The technology that is being experimented with now indicates that there are possible hard science solutions for electromagnetic spectrum shielding and cloaking. I'm surprised this is so controversial. As technology improves, detection, stealth, armor, and firepower are in a constant arms race. It only makes sense that in some future setting they will continue to be in contention. There's too much at risk not to develop ways to deal with the problem.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Honestly for me it's that whole First Law thing. It's one of the big fundamentals. I'm sure there will be a lot of research into making things harder to see, but the typical star trek-esque cloaking fields that come to mind when people start mentioning stealth in space(to me, at least) generally seem(again, to me) to be handwaving the First Law, which you just can't do. I think most research into stealth is going to be with reducing the power requirements of combat craft. Computer controlled ambushers, a la the AKVs of THS. The easiest way to lower power requirements of combat craft is to make it so they don't need to lug around life support systems, IMO.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Hang on - doesn't that pod only give 45 missiles, not 75?

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

It's got 45 launchers - and each launcher has 5 missiles. I missed a multiplication in there - it has a total load of 225 missiles, not 75. A full nuke load would be $11,250,000. Still drastically under the cost of an equivalent conventional force.

As to the heat problem, two people and a minimum of electronic devices probably don't put out too much waste heat - but the amount they do put out is accounted for in the +3 IR signature, +4 when the fuel cell is active. I assume that heat sinks could also be used to help 'hide' the heat of the ship for a while, and if a Menippe is landed on an asteroid it could dump its heat into the 'roid, hiding it there.

The 100,000 mile distance between asteroids isn't too bad, either - that's still just half the distance of the Distant combat scale. Still not very good, of course - but well within the capabilities of the Menippe, with its 1G acceleration (with a module installed). This gives it the ability to get an Attack Vector on a foe in the 10 minute time scale, making the engagement range Long - well within range for these missiles against an SM+12 target. At this range, you could place Menippes on several asteroids up to two hundred thousand miles out in order to perform the ambush.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

*blink* 225 missiles on a 30 ton boat?

A 25 KT "physics package" weighs in at around 80 lbs and cannot be made lighter without superscience or contravening the laws of physics. That's 18,000 lbs (9 tons) right there.Then there's the propellent, guidance package, missile body etc. What range do these things have? How much is one supposed to weigh?

If this is RAW then I'm glad I've not bought the book. I'd just have to rewrite it anyway.

Edit: I just read Ultra-Tech on the subject of mininukes (TL9) and Antimatter warheads (Tl10). That's superscience, right there, even if you assume the technology is applied to higher yields. I personally don't believe a word of it will ever actually come to pass and wouldn't use it for a hard-science setting.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

With an 80-pound nuclear package, you can easily build a 16cm missile using the Spaceships rules. With this design, the missile only has 6.3 miles per second delta-V and 4G acceleration - with a larger missile I'd use something similar to the Menippe for propulsion, a mini mag-orion in a missile massing around ten tons, making it a very long-range, high-speed weapon.

EDIT: Oh, and remember that the missile pod itself masses a total 30 tons while the boat that carries it also masses 30 tons. The whole delivery platform masses 60 tons.

Name: 16cm Nuclear Missile
TL: 9
dST/HP: 3
Hnd/SR: 2/4
HT: 13
Move: 4G/6.3 mps
LWt.: 0.1 Tons
Load: None
SM: 0
Occ: None
dDR: 0/0/0
Cost: $150,000


Front
[1] Warhead
[2] Warhead
[3] Warhead
[4] Warhead
[5] Fuel Tank (0.005 Tons Capacity)
[6] Fuel Tank (0.005 Tons Capacity)
[Core] Control Room (Complexity 2 Computer Network; Comm/Sensor Level -2)

Middle
[1] Warhead
[2] Warhead
[3] Warhead
[4] Warhead
[5] Fuel Tank (0.005 Tons Capacity)
[6] Fuel Tank (0.005 Tons Capacity)
[Core] Fuel Tank (0.005 Tons Capacity)

Rear
[1] Fuel Tank (0.005 Tons Capacity)
[2] Fuel Tank (0.005 Tons Capacity)
[3] Fuel Tank (0.005 Tons Capacity)
[4] Fuel Tank (0.005 Tons Capacity)
[5] HEDM Chemical Rocket (2G Acceleration, 0.5 Delta-V/Tank)
[6] HEDM Chemical Rocket (2G Acceleration, 0.5 Delta-V/Tank)

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

All I'm saying is that if I were the captain of a vessel in known hostile territory, and there are only three places to hide in several billion cubic miles, I'd be keeping an eye on those three places fairly diligently.

Relevant anecdote:
When I was going through Marine Combat Training, we had a camouflage class. There was some classroom time on camouflage techniques, and then they released us into a dry gully in groups of two to camouflage a fighting position. We had about a half hour before the instructors would come try to find us. Me and my partner found a dry creek bed that was ideal, and we picked a spot where a small tree was growing out of the side of the creek bed. With a minimum of fuss, we had a position where our uniforms matched the foliage, and the round shapes of our helmets merged with the base of the tree so that there wasn't any obviously artificial silhouettes. When the instructor appeared, he walked right up to our position and greeted us.

I asked him how he had seen us. He said he hadn't, but because all the rest of the terrain had so little cover to offer, this tree was an obvious place to hide.

I'm not arguing the game mechanics of hiding on an asteroid. By the rules, it obviously would work well. The problem is, anyone who knows what they're doing will KNOW what a good hiding spot it is, and approach it with a suitable sense of caution. Or just hit it regardless of whether they detect anything, if it's actually a war and they don't have to worry about ammo(using lasers, perhaps.) Thats all I'm trying to say.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

We're actually talking about a 400,000 mile radius sphere, centered upon the target. With one rock per 100,000 mile radius sphere, that's 64 asteroids within range. That's not just three hiding places - that's sixty-four hiding places, each of which is several hundred feet in diameter and thus quite a bit larger than the roughly forty-five foot long Menippe.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

I don't doubt this. The finer issue, really, is whether some material/ship design will prevent you from detecting the energy.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0529190038.htm
"This metamaterial has been engineered to ensure that all light is neither reflected nor transmitted, but is turned completely into heat and absorbed. It shows we can design a metamaterial so that at a specific frequency it can absorb all of the photons that fall onto its surface."

Seems that the power requirements of ships could be kept very small if light hitting it were converted into heat. Other articles mention how the materials can be tunable within a range of frequencies. This is at the infancy of the study of the materials, so, it seems safe to say that we don't fully understand exactly what the outcome is going to be.

Some of the real world designs place an umbrella like device between the spacecraft and the enemy, which greatly reduces the likelihood of detection. it's no cloaking device, but is could (possibly) show what futuristic hard science spacecraft will look like -- umbrella shields with metamaterials for many, many purposes (including lenses for sensors and weapons, and for stealth). Perhaps a such giant shield would serve all three purposes.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Absorbing all the light really isn't the best way to hide a ship in space - the primary problem in hiding is the generation of heat, and absorbing light would just increase that problem. What you'd want to do is remove heat from the ship, not add it.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

On the contrary, the problem is not keeping warm, but keeping cool.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Sixty-four still isn't a lot, especially when computers get involved. However, you may well have a point that the situation isn't quite as dire as I had originally guessed.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Sixty-four isn't too many to track, sure - but if you're blasting every single rock you pass, you'll be spending more time shooting rocks than moving. Not to mention the fact that a several-hundred-foot asteroid could easily take a few laser blasts without even harming the missile boat hiding on it, considering how small it is compared with the size of the 'roid. If they can't detect the ship on the roid, and they can't efficiently blast all the roids out of the sky, then you can still easily place an ambush.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

And if the metamaterials are also working on the IR signature?

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Well, at 100 mps, assuming 10 mps in reserve for maneuvering, thats 45 mps cruising velocity. It'd take slightly over 12 three minute combat turns to travel 100,000 miles, the distance between your rocks. And once you're up to your cruising speed, there's not a whole lot else to do. I don't see a merchant ship doing it(I generally assume merchant ships will only have 1-2 PD lasers for asteroids/debris they can't dodge), but I can easily see a combat ship deciding to clear out the debris in an envelope around it, especially a carrier with a screen of combat craft deployed in front of it.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Well, the article you linked converts light to heat. What does the advanced metamaterial convert heat to? If its anything detectable, it's just changing the spectrum in which the ship is the most easily detected.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Heh, I suspect it will require a hull with some sort of multispectral material(s). But clearly it will route the energy in some desirable manner, say, straight away from the enemy. With a big umbrella cloaking you in the front, and your hull converting heat into light and pushing it out the back (or directing it into your laser battery) who knows. Maybe it will be converted to gravitons for reactionless propulsion? I have no idea.

But clearly we are in a very early stage for this type of thing. Who can possibly say with certainty "cloaking in space is superscience" when the advances of metamaterials are continually moving forward?

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Quite. The things you suggest are ruled out or drastically limited by the laws of thermodynamics, particularly the Second Law.

This is not a materials problem. It is a thermodynamics problem.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

"There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will." Albert Einstein

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." Lord Kelvin.

I think you may miss what I am saying -- not that it's possible now, or that we even understand how it may work in the future, only that its very nearsighted to say that something is impossible. Science progresses very rapidly, and history shows us that time and again the impossible is possible. Perhaps there will be challenges to the second law? Perhaps it will stand. Who can say with certainty?

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

I can say with certainty that if the Second Law of Thermodynamics did fall in any way, then the effects on spaceship design would be far more profound than simply allowing stealth in space. For a start, you could replace the power plants with perpetual motion machines. A ship that could break the Second Law of Thermodynamics would not have to dick around with TL9 reaction engines.

In any case, defying any of the Laws of Thermodynamics or any of the fundamental conservation laws definitely calls for a "^" superscience descriptor.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

I don't know about 4th Edition, but at least one GURPS 3rd Edition book has rules for how small one can make warheads of various yields at different TLs.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

The Von Braun-class of factory ships is designed to accompany a small fleet or task force of other vessels in order to supply them with mobile refueling and rearming. The Von Brauns are capable of mining asteroids and using that material to construct new ships, missiles, and nuclear bomb pulse units. They are also capable of refining water or nuclear pellets out of asteroids. The Von Brauns carry a large number of parasite drones which are used to collect the asteroid chunks the factory and refinery require.

Along with serving as a supply ship, the Von Brauns include a large number of entertainment and recreation establishments in their habitat ring, allowing them to serve as mobile entertainment barges for the task forces they accompany.

The Von Braun is also popular as a civilian ship type for Belter colonies or mining start-ups, though its extremely high cost is usually quite daunting for all but the largest corporations.

Name: Wernher von Braun-class Logistics Supply Ship
TL: 9
dST/HP: 300
Hnd/SR: -2/5
HT: 14
Move: 0.005G/144 mps
LWt.: 100000 Tons
Load: 8,475 Tons
SM: 12
Occ: 400 ASV
dDR: 70/70/70
Cost: $15,290,000,000


Front
[1] Armor, Advanced Metallic Laminate (70 dDR)
[2] Hangar Bay (3,000 Tons Capacity, 500 Tons per Minute Launch Rate)
[3] Cargo Hold (5000 Tons Capacity)
[4] Habitat (600 Rooms)
[5] Fuel Tank (5,000 Tons Capacity)
[6] Fuel Tank (5,000 Tons Capacity)
[Core] Control Room (20 Control Stations; Complexity 8 Computer Network; Comm/Sensor Level 10)

Middle
[1] Armor, Advanced Metallic Laminate (70 dDR)
[2!] Fabricator ($5,000,000 per hour)
[3!] Mining System (500 Tons per Hour)
[4!] Chemical Refinery (1500 Tons per Hour)
[5] Fuel Tank (5,000 Tons Capacity)
[6] Fuel Tank (5,000 Tons Capacity)
[Core] Fusion Reactor (2PP, 50 Years Operation)

Rear
[1] Armor, Advanced Metallic Laminate (70 dDR)
[2!] Fabricator ($5,000,000 per hour)
[3] Fusion Reactor (2PP, 50 Years Operation)
[4] Fuel Tank (5,000 Tons Capacity)
[5] Fuel Tank (5,000 Tons Capacity)
[6] Advanced Fusion Pulse Drive (0.005G Acceleration, 20 Delta-V/Tank)


Design Features
Spin Gravity

Habitats
200 Cabins (Full Life Support)
50 Establishments
5 Offices
95 Steerage

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

The ME-2 Artemis-class electronic warfare module is designed to provide point-defense and electronic warfare support to other ships in a battlegroup, from other Menippe-class utility ships to, when used in tight formation with other Artemis EW pods, much larger ships such as a frigate or cruiser. Aside from their electronic warfare support, Artemis pods can supply vast quantities of point-defense fire, especially effective against enemy missile swarms.

This module design assumes a ship can 'lend' its Defensive ECM bonus to other ships it is in tight formation with - an assumption that I believe makes perfect sense. In order to provide a -2 bonus to a ship one size modifier larger, three ECM modules are required - with the Artemis, it can provide a maximum of a -2 bonus to a single SM+7 vessel, a maximum -6 bonus to a single SM+6 vessel, or a maximum of a -6 bonus to each of three SM+5 vessels.

Name: ME-2 Artemis
TL: 9
dST/HP: 20
Hnd/SR: 0/4
HT: 13
Move: 0.005G/144 mps
LWt.: 30 Tons
Load: 8,475 Tons
SM: 5
Occ: 400 ASV
dDR: 5/5/5
Cost: $5,540,000


Front
[1] Armor, Advanced Metallic Laminate (5 dDR)
[2] Defensive ECM
[3] Defensive ECM
[4] Defensive ECM
[5] Large Multipurpose Sensor Array, Front (Comm/Sensor Level 6)
[6] Medium Weapons Battery (3 2cm VRF Gun Turrets, 1000 shots each)
[Core] Control Room (1 Control Station; Complexity 4 Computer Network; Comm/Sensor Level 3)

Middle
[1] Armor, Advanced Metallic Laminate (5 dDR)
[2] Defensive ECM
[3] Defensive ECM
[4] Defensive ECM
[5] Medium Weapons Battery (3 2cm VRF Gun Turrets, 1000 shots each)
[6] Medium Weapons Battery (3 2cm VRF Gun Turrets, 1000 shots each)
[Core] Large Multipurpose Sensor Array, Middle (Comm/Sensor Level 6)

Rear
[1] Armor, Advanced Metallic Laminate (5 dDR)
[2] Defensive ECM
[3] Defensive ECM
[4] Defensive ECM
[5] Medium Weapons Battery (3 2cm VRF Gun Turrets, 1000 shots each)
[6] Large Multipurpose Sensor Array, Rear (Comm/Sensor Level 6)


Design Features
Stealth Hull (Stealth Bonus: 6)

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

You can have all the fancy metamaterials you want. It doesn't alter that each person in the spacecraft will be generating on the order of 0.3 joule/kelvin of entropy every second. A typical 1 kW appliance will be dumping around 3 joule/kelvin of entropy into the spacecraft environment (assuming the is exhausting its waste heat into a room temperature environment). Add up the demands for lighting, life support, computing, communication, and sensors. Now you have the total entropy load that must be disposed of every second. In space, the only way you can dispose of this is to radiate it. Otherwise, energy and entropy build up until the crew cooks (or the microchips suffer heat failure). If you have fancy metamaterials that prevent radiation, you are simply preventing the spacecraft from getting rid of its waste until it cooks.

We have materials today that minimize radiation. A smooth aluminized surface will do a very good job at keeping an object from radiating (or silvered, or gold coated. Gold is actually best for minimizing radiation from room temperature objects). You don't need metamaterials for reducing radiated heat. But saying that coating a craft in metamateriasl eliminates its need to dispose of heat is like saying that coating a person in impermeable plastic will eliminate his need to dispose of metabolic wastes.

You cannot convert heat (energy with associated entropy) entirely into laser light (energy without any associated entropy). You need to get rid of the entropy (<rant>Everyone always forgets about the entropy! They assume that once you deal with the energy accounting, everything is fine. One of the greatest advances in physics, the second law of thermodynamics, is entirely overlooked</rant>).

Anyway, you can, to some extent, direct your waste radiation. It always requires a larger and bulkier radiator assembly than if you radiate in all directions. It is not to difficult to restrict your radiation into half of the sky, it is very very difficult to restrict your radiation into a narrow cone. The issue now is how do you direct your radiation so the enemy doesn't see it. Now here's the problem - the enemy will undoubtedly be looking from all sides. If you have sufficient forces to have shot down all his picket drones and observational platforms all over the solar system, you've pretty much already won the battle for this solar system, and all that is left is mopping up. There is also the issue that a picket drone with only low power electronics can be much harder to see than any spacecraft that you actually want to do something -so you will not know where your radiated power should not go.

In any event, gravitons for reactionless propulsion is clearly not TL9 non-superscience like this thread is about.

Because even metamaterials are limited by the constraints of physics. They can do some amazing things, yes. But they are still physical systems and subject to physical laws. They cannot make entropy go away.

Luke

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Was Einstein referring to a Physical Law(tm) when he said that nuclear energy was impossible? Was Lord Kelvin?

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

I think that this design in particular calls for my house ruled Super-Sized Sensor/Comms Array. You'd power up your module a lot, and you only have to sacrifice 2 weapon slots.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Right. If you can prevent, even for a brief time, in some limited manner, the enemy from detecting your emissions, the result is much better than "stealth is impossible." That's all I'm saying.

I haven't said that. And who is saying the ship must have people aboard it, anyway?

Even if its not entirely, the point still stands that ships will likely make use of materials and energy in ways we don't today.

[QUOTE=lwcamp]The issue now is how do you direct your radiation so the enemy doesn't see it. Now here's the problem - the enemy will undoubtedly be looking from all sides. . . . so you will not know where your radiated power should not go[QUOTE=lwcamp]

The tactical employment argument is the weakest. I can think of many scenarios in which a ship would benefit tactically from being able to radiate in one direction. Stealth systems today are highly limited in their employment too, but we still spend billions to research and produce them.

I'm not arguing that the laws will be handwaved, only that the materials (and in particular, ship geometry) could produce effects that could meaningfully reduce a ship's signature without reducing such claims to "superscience."

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Very few settings with FTL deal with the inevitable time travel spin off technologies. Is stealth with the rest of thermodynamics untouched very different?

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Certainly not, as long as you hang the superscience caret on it, and don't confuse it with actual science.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Good point! I added it in. It fits the design extremely well.

As to the stealth discussion, the Spaceships rules work pretty well for realism as far as I can tell. For example, when a ship is just hanging out in the open against a backdrop of normal space, it is extremely easy to detect - an automatic +34 bonus for a sensor to detect your ship, enough to fully cancel out the penalty for being 500 miles away. The basic sensor on a SM10, TL9 ship gives a further +8 bonus, allowing it to fully cancel out any penalties up to 10,000 miles away, and that bonus can be doubled to +16 if you know where to look - giving the ship the ability to almost cancel out the penalty to detect a ship 10 million miles away that is running on minimal power. If that ship was using, say, an external pulsed plasma drive and a fusion reactor, the detecting ship would have a further +16 bonus to detect it - enough to scan out to 75AU with only a -1 penalty to detect the ship, which would be a large enough radius to detect this nuclear pulse, fusion-powered spaceship all the way across an entire solar system.

The only way the Menippe is able to stealth itself is by hiding among asteroids and making sure not to sillouette itself against space. This is likely one of the only ways of stealthing a space ship unless you use super science.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

No, but I get a ^ on the TL when there is FTL.

Safisher is not making, and I am not attempting to rebut, the argument that "superscience could permit stealth in space". In fact it is very much the opposite, since I am arguing that "stealth in space is superscience". Safisher suggests that metamaterials currently in development suggest that we might soon have different and unexpected interactions of matter and radiation going on, and that stealth in space is not out of the question for the actual future.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

No worries man, it's an old discussion that flares up every now and then, usually with somewhat the same participants. Almost up there with armor weights, hiking speeds(pre-HT), etc.

Sorry for polluting your thread with our outraged sense of hard science orthodoxy.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Just to throw my two cents into the pot on the stealth in space thing....

Since the ship is more or less attached to the asteroid, and the asteroid itself is radiating a certain amount of energy (and entropy, I suppose), doesn't the ship just have to somehow match its radiation signature with that of the asteroid to effectively have stealth? And I imagine that the life support system can handle a bit of extra heat for a short time while in "silent running" mode.

And isn't there a very low amount of background radiation just about anywhere you look in space? So if you could somehow not radiate anything, wouldn't the "hole in space" sort of stand out?

And then again, I am probably talking out my nether regions anyway (my last physics class I had was way back in 1987.... :-)

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

The most easily detectable part of a spaceship is usually in the IR spectrum, due to their requirement to radiate away all their waste heat or cook everything inside. Asteroids usually are about the same temperature as the space around them, which is to say, fricken' cold. A ship will be hotter than an asteroid, unless it is completely powered down(no life support, no computers running, nada.) However, the ship can dump its waste heat into the asteroid, using it as a heat sink. Eventually this will cause the asteroid to be suspiciously warmer than a normal one, but in the short term it would help conceal the craft. So it's not a matter of getting a ship to radiate as much energy as an asteroid, but as little. The life support can indeed handle not radiating away its waste heat, but the length of time that it can do that is probably not very long unless the ship is running on very low power, is very efficient, or has on-board heat sinks of some kind(like fuel tanks full of ice.)

There is pretty much some sort of radiation everywhere in space(you're probably thinking of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation), but so long as the ship wasn't actually absorbing anything, I don't think it would be detectable. However, you would have problems with very sensitive instruments pointed in the right direction, as silhouetting yourself in front of a high noise "source" like a sun/planet/moon would probably be enough to be spotted.

Anywho, I think this is the way things work. I'm sure I'll be corrected if I've misstated anything.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

And I'm not disagreeing with that at all. Space stealth is caret time all the way. I'm disagreeing with what I quoted in the original post:

Namely, that in SF any given applied superscience will or should have logical consequences based on whatever physical laws it circumvents. Very often SF, even quite good SF, blatantly breaks physical laws in a very specific manner without any other noticeable consequences. (Not that if it does so it is bad. In fact, I like that sort of thing.)

That said, it occurs to me your "perpetual motion machine" comment may have been a rhetorical device rather than a manifesto for consistent SF thermodynamics.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Not really. Anything that breaks the Second Law should allow the creation of perpetual motion machines. Without increasing entropy, you have perpetual motion. And if I'm playing sci-fi, I generally prefer logical consequences. Then again, I tend to fall on the Hard end of the spectrum, so it's probably personal preference. But I get annoyed if the logical consequences of anything(even in fantasy) isn't carried through, unless it is EXPLICITYLY a genre trope, such as super villains monologuing or creating elaborate death traps.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Yes. If your radiation is large enough it can be as cool as an asteroid, and then if your ship is where an asteroid ought to be it won't be distinguished from the asteroid by an IR scanner.

In other words, you can hide behind, on, and perhaps even near an asteroid.

You can bank heat for a little while by, say, melting ice in an insulated container. But you need a surprising lot of ice to keep your ship's skin as cold as it has to be to hide just the heat of the crew and life support systems and the sunlight falling on your sunward side. Once you light up any sort of spaceship drive all bets are off.

There is. The 3 K microwave background. Which is about 1/100,000,000 times as bright as the thermal radiation of a body at room temperature. The objective in hiding a spaceship from thermal detection would be to keep its radiator and its external skin down near 3 K (-454°F) so that it is the same IR (microwave) colour as the background. The problem is that you radiate very little heat at 3 K, and need a radiator one hundred million times as big as you would need with a 300 K radiator.

Mine was in '83.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

The context of that comment was not superscience. The context was a claim that no-one can predict what technologies may result from future scientific advances in reality, what may be actually possible in the future.

Stop gibbering about superscience. This conversation is not about superscience, it is about TL9 realistic spacecraft.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

A sensor array can't be [core] only [hull].

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Nuclear pellets are very expensive in G:Spaceships. This craft uses $3B of fuel per trip.

A much cheaper alternative, though with somewhat less dV, would be to use a fusion rocket. This would knock $1B off the price tag and drop the fuel cost per journey down to a mere $60M.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Admittedly, the cost of the nuclear pellets is a problem - but when you take into consideration the Von Braun's fabricator, it becomes somewhat less of a problem. A Von Braun is able to construct nuclear pellets from asteroids, taking fifty hours to refill one five thousand ton fuel tank. It takes just under two weeks to refill a single Von Braun or Neil Armstrong-class ship.

For a mission into the main asteroid belt, a fusion rocket-based Armstrong class ship would take two weeks longer to get into the belt and would need to leave two weeks earlier due to the delta-V hit. Going out to any of the other outer planets means an even larger time penalty.

When you take this into account, the fusion pulse drives are much, much more attractive - the extra delta-V translates into extra time on station, which the logistics supply ship will use to refill the tanks while the parasite ships will carry out their mission. The only benefit, then, is to the reduced cost of the original ship or to large, multi-ship task groups which go to one location, do their thing, and then leave quickly.

There are benefits to both types of ship, of course - the Armstrong-class of ships, however, is more for a mobile base than a ship that makes hit-and-run style attacks.


EDIT: Oh, and yeah, you're right about the missile pod's tactical array. It doesn't belong in the Core section - I should probably switch that out with something else, but I honestly can't think of what I'd want it to be right now.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Only of course if it can find asteroids rich in fissionables. That would likely be months of prospecting.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Er, no. The Fusion Pulse Drive doesn't use fissionables. Nuclear pellets are made from hydrogen isotopes and the like, not uranium or anything like that. It should be relatively easy to find the stuff required for the fusion pulse drive, while the external pulsed plasma drives for the smaller craft need small enough amounts of fissionables that I think they can get them from asteroids easily enough.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

In TS (Deep Beyond p 152) there is a pellet factory - it takes 5000 tons of rock and 5 pounds of He3 to make 84 tons of nuclear pellets in a month (and lots of interesting by-products).

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

I don't have the Transhuman Space books, so that doesn't really help - especially without knowing how large the pellet factory is. Also, without knowing what an actual nuclear pellet would be made from or what the actual average asteroid's composition is, it's impossible to say how many asteroids would be needed. I made some estimates on asteroid composition using the rules for raw material costs in Spaceships 2 and what I could find about asteroid composition through a google search, coming up with each ton of asteroid being worth four thousand dollars, which makes it so a ship with mining and refining modules can directly supply that ship's fabricator's raw material requirements for maximum-speed production.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

With a pod attached this becomes 1G/14,4 mps right?

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

That's right - doubling the mass halves the acceleration and delta-V.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Generally I don't think so. The fuel tank delta-V multiplier is based off what proportion of the ship's mass is fuel. Doubling the mass halves the proportion of the ship that is fuel mass. So your number of tanks delta-V multiplier would reduce as if you had half that number of tanks.

Of course if you have less than 6 tanks to start with it makes no difference.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Good point, its probably easiest to halve the number of tanks and calculate dV from there.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Well, that didn't take long.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17518210

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Plus, everyone in the solar system with line of sight saw you rendezvous with the asteroid, and didn't see you leave it.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Well, assuming that there's a lot of traffic but not a concerted effort to track every single ship, you can basically "hide in the crowd". If there a few hundred legitimate mining vessels flitting around among the asteroids, no one will notice one more. In the TS setting the Deep Beyond is basically the Wild West, with all sorts of independent communities set up by prospectors, survivalists, renegades and revolutionaries.

Eh, I don't think that'll actually go very far in making ships harder to spot; the thermal energy still has to go somewhere. Perhaps you'd be able to direct it away from a particular opponent, but you'll shine all the brighter in your other arcs. And that still won't do anything to mask an active engine.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

In the TS setting, wouldn't something with the exhaust plume of an EPP engine pretty much scream "I'm important, look at me"?

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

True. I suppose "pirates" would need to use ships that at least resemble mining or trading vessels, rather than warships. If they have high-thrust engines like EPP, NTR or HEDM, they'd need to have an additional "civilian" engine that they rely on for clandestine travel, breaking out the extra acceleration only for pursuit.

Even with that though, space is big enough that they're only likely to achieve surprise if there's a reason for the two ships to be in the same spot - ie, at an mineable asteroid or spacestation. It's simply not feasible to "jump out" from behind an asteroid that happens to be in the flight path of the target vessel.

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Those are very important tactical considerations in using a stealth approach. My point is that "stealth in space" as TL^ is probably no longer a tenable conclusion. It now looks to be TL9, with lots of caveats. And given that ultrablack material, visible light cloaking, and other aspects of this metamaterials revolution are also underway, you may well have for all practical purposes the ability to greatly reduce your signature regime in a number of ways. That's generally how "stealth" is defined.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14788009
http://www.popsci.com/science/articl...blackest-black

Re: [Spaceships] TL9 Military Spaceships
 

Design suggestion for MA-1 Shiva
Does it need sensors? Could it target its missiles based on data from the carrier or deploying vessels?

Thinking in terms of survivability: dDR5 won't stop anything worthwhile; the moment you launch, the enemy will reply and destroy your pod, making the extra 4 loads of missiles redundant.
I'd dump the armour and add an extra 9 launchers.

If you're into house-rules:
consider that the ammunition for a launcher averages 2/3 of its mass, therefore, instead of one launcher and 4 re-loads, you could have 3 launchers. Instead of a 45 missile salvo with 4, possibly redundant, reloads, you get 162 single-launch systems in a disposable unit - if it survives, it can be recovered and reloaded.
If your target can survive a 162 missile salvo,
maybe an outsized spinal mount energy weapon is needed. You could mount 2x100mj UV pulse lasers and outrange anything smaller than a 32cm missile - but it's all houserules:)