Wildstar says:
>I went looking through Peter Alway's new book, _Rockets of the World_
>... for a sounding rocket that was about 7000kg.
>
>I found one: the Viking Model 2, a sounding rocket designed by the Naval
>Research Laboratory. Its loaded weight was 6800kg, and it carried a 230kg
>payload to an altitude of up to 252km. The rocket was 45 inches in diameter,
>and 505 inches long (including a 121 inch conic nose cone).
I did some calculations using Brilliant Lances, and frankly, using the
listed Hull materials, TNE missiles cannot be that big. For a 1 DTon
hull with Armor-3, Bonded SD weighs 6.6 tons. This just the skin of
the missile, without innards!
The results of my fiddling are not yet in, since we don't know the
volume or mass of the nuke-to-laser warhead, but I'm looking at a
missile between 0.2 and 0.4 DTons (2.8 to 5.6 m3). Too small, you say?
The smaller end of my range is still the size of an old-fashioned
phone-booth, and even that is a bit large to be pushing around during
combat reloading.
The other argument against a 1 DTon missile is the turret size and
shape. A 3-ton missile can holds 2 missiles. Assuming that they call
them "Cans" for a reason (ie. they are cylinders), the only way to
fill two-thirds of the can with a pair of smaller cylinders is to
make them _shorter_, not narrower. Two missiles with half the diameter
of the can, sitting side-by-side, will only fill half the volume of
the can, not two-thirds. Thus the missiles are smaller, with more
volume in the can dedicated to launch and guidance.
Remember also that turret cans come complete with the gunner's
workstation. If this workstation is the same as those elsewhere on the
ship, it takes up a ton all by itself.
James Kundert [email removed]
There was a young lady named Bright,
Whose speed was much faster, much faster than Light.
She departed one day in a relative way,
And returned on the previous Night.
--Albert & the Heart of Gold