Re: Ships in closed airspace

> Date: Thu, 23 Aug 90 11:14:02 MET DST
> From: [email removed]
> Subject: (1488) Re: Ships in closed airspace
>
> > Date: Tue, 21 Aug 90 11:25:00 BST
> > From: [email removed]
> > Subject: (1479) Peformance of Starships/Shipsboats in Close Airspace
> >
> > Hi List,
> >
> > I'm currently writing a mercenary scenario, and I was thinking about the
> > situation where fighter aircraft, jets and helicopters came against
> > ships boats or even starships armed with lasers and missile racks.
> > Are the spacecraft going to be like whales in sky, easily shot down or
> > are they flying fortresses, impervious to the weapons of, say, earths
> > current tech level.
>
>   Largely impervious, unless the weapons are exceptional.

Most combat vessels have more than the standard armour, thus even more
impervious and if its a starship with a nuclear damper...

>
> > ie who would win, a group of tornados or the modula cutter?
>
>   If the tornados could carry mavericks, I'd put my money on them, otherwise
> they couldn't harm the cutter.

Highly dependant on the armament (on both sides)
>
> > Any ideas? What is the generally accepted performance and normally space-
> > bound vehicles inside close airspace?
>
Speed and agility aren't the entire point. The streamlining is. If the
ship is streamlined its max atmospheric speed is 1000 kph, it will be a
whale in the sky. If however the stremlining is airframe the top speed is
90% of its vaccuum movement. a 6-G fighter/ship would go .9*4800 (I think
this figure is accurate) 4320 kph. As this is 1200 m/s (Mach 3.5) and the
ship's acceleration is 59 m/s/s (in any direction) and of course unlimited
ceiling it would be a nasty opponent for an aircraft especailly a modern
(earth) aircraft. Note that a 500000Ton battleship with 6G and airframe hull
would perform almost identically (probably a larger turning radius unless its
agility was higher) an impressive sight.

The ships lasers are essentially 250Mw beam or pulse lasers. I thought that
there was a (space) fighter described in the CoACC book?

>   If you cought the ship on the ground, on the other hand, it would be a sitting
> duck to any B52 or B1 equivalent with a bombbay full of laserguided 1000kg
> iron bombs and with a forward observer on the ground to point a laser at the
> ship.

Don't forget there is also point defense weapons. I don't know if the lasers
can act as point defense. Repulsors and possibly the lasers as they can fire
at incoming missiles, the usual bombing height of a B52/B1 plus the nice
lasers (assuming laser detectors) make the tracking of the bombs easy and/or
destruction of the FO.

Instead of attacking all these civilian-type cutters and ships, try a
military target, things will not be as easy. Think of the effect of an
EM pluse from an air-burst nuke from a military ship on the local
(air) fighters/bombers. (assuming fib computer on the ship).

					-Dan

Dan Corrin, System Manager, Mechanical Engineering, UWO, London, Ontario
TML FTP site coordinator:  [email removed]    ...!watmath!julian!engrg!dan