Spaceships: Missile launchers and their individual mass

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

For a really space-operatic treatment that doesn't leave basic mechanics for dead in an alley, you'd probably need to justify missiles with warheads rather than kinetic munitions. Pseudovelocity missiles maybe? Or in Star Wars-level stuff acknowledging that space speeds are substantially under 0.5 mps.

Yes, something like this. Missile damage is multiplied by speed and can easily grow to levels that one shot the largest ships.

You could also try saying that all Spaceshiips Force Screens are like UT Barrier Screens and form a sphere some distance away from the ship. If all KE missiles explode when they hit a screen that reduces damage. Effectively only proximity hits woudl be possible.

However, that won't be enough by itself. Even at only 7 miles per second a kinetic missle explodes with force equal to 20x it's weight in TNT (and that's the whole missile weight and not just the warhead). Damage will go up as the square of velocity. Levels equal to nuclear warheads are easily possible.

For example, One set of ships launches from Mars at 1G and another set launches from Earth as soon as possible to intercept them. At close approach the trip would take only 2 days.

86400 seconds (1 day) x 32 fps equal 523 miles per second. The two fleets would apss each other going over 1000 miles per second. Unless I'm doing the math wrong that would result in explosions with each lb or missile weight equal to over 200 tons of TNT. The ships could probably fire buck shot at each other with lethal effect.