From the Begining New Chapter Added (9/12/06)

[Hunpecked]

El_Phil writes: "...where did you get that railgun length from..."

A railgun that accelerates a projectile from velocity 0 to velocity "v" in "t" time has to be at least as long as the distance the projectile travels in that time. That distance "d" is given by

d = (1/2)*a*tE2

where "a" is the acceleration. We get "a" from

a = v/t

Approximating "c", the speed of light, as 3E8 m/s and using 1s or 10s for "t", we get the numbers in my earlier post.

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Edit: Actually, I was off 10-fold on the 1-second rail gun (damn decimal point!). The 1-second rail gun has to be 15,000 km long, not 1,500.

Mea culpa
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I was frankly surprised when I saw the results, until I remembered the post calculating Newtonian acceleration to "c" at 1 G: hundreds of days consumed and trillions of kilometers traveled.

If we settle for projectile speeds of a few km/s, as illustrated at the "Atomic Rockets" web site, rail gun lengths become more practical.

[El_Phil]

Hmm does seem to work, but as you say ridiculously huge. Well not ridiculous obvioulsy, but very big.

Bloody obvious maths actually. I clearly wasn't thinking well that night, I spent years doing that sort of maths. I've got to stop doing even basic physics/maths in late night posts. I make far too many fundamental mistakes or just miss stuff entirely.

Still just do it in a micro second and you can get to 0.1c in only 150m. You are accelerating the slug at ~3E12m/s/s admitedly but that small technical problem aside it's a fine plan.

[Starhawk]

2444.9
The Royal Palace was a buzz of activity as the combined staffs of the Praetor, Grand Admiral of the Navy, Commandant of the Marines and General of the Army scuttled about to carry out their various jobs even some aides wearing the Black tunics and blue pants of the Federal Security Division roamed the halls of the palace carrying out their various assignments.
This buzz of activity was the result of Praetor Rodric calling for the first strategic meeting of all of the heads of each of the respective branches of service actively responsible for the security and expansion of the Empire, as well as the Secretary of the Treasury, the head of the Bureau of Personnel and the Woman responsible for the massive construction efforts throughout the whole of the Empire and the Chief of Science for the Naval Technologies Bureau.

“Alright Tanya I’d like to hear from the navy first.” Rodric said in a far more casual tone then anyone but these select few people would ever hear.
The Grand Admiral smiled courteously at her Praetor as she walked over to the massive holo projector; as she reached the panel she reached into her pocket and took out a memory chip and placed it into one of the data scanners.
After a few seconds the holo projector began to hum and an image came to life, filling the entire northern half of the room with a three dimensional image of a map of the Icaran Empire with several systems flashing either blue or red amid the ocean of green dots representing “normal” Icaran systems.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the blue systems are where our fleets are currently stationed, as you can see we have three flashing, the one down here.” She pointed toward the sector that had once been the Christerian Republic and highlighted the blue flashing sphere with her laser pointer “Is where the first fleet is escorting warper zero zero one five in closing the last warp point in that sector that leads to Mantisoran space, after that the first fleet will finally return home to answer the recall order we gave three years ago.” She frowned at the map as if she was seeing something the others were not.
“This over here.” She continued in the same lecturing, level tone she had before “Is the fifth fleet they were carrying out a similar assignment to the first fleet by sealing off the warp points in these regions.” The laser pointer drew a red line around the former Corian and Magellan corp territories.
“Both the first and fifth fleets will return to Icara next month and proceed to the rally point over New Icara in about five weeks, after that we will worry about replacing casualties and getting their fleets up to snuff with the new formation policy.” She paused and turned to her “audience” waiting for questions, and was not very surprised to see the secretary of Federal Security raise his hand.
“Yes Secretary Kline?” the Naval officer did not much like the Federal Security Division or anyone who represented it, she saw them as little more then planetary militia except with fancy uniforms and a private fleet of fast transports that the navy had to waste warships to escort.

“That is all well and good Grand Admiral but we still have the problem of what the red systems represent, three entire systems engulfed in riots that are just short of full on rebellions, now I don’t mean to sound like I am criticizing you Tanya but when does the navy plan on finally dealing with these?” Kline seemed almost oblivious to how Tanya Bright and her staff felt about his branch of the service and so he really did sincerely seem to have respect when he addressed the leaders of the “real” military branches.
“Secretary Kline, I am afraid that the navy stands by our decision not to send in a battlefleet to pacify these regions, we would have to deploy army regiments and ships that we need elsewhere, and though I don’t want to speak for General of the Army Scollet I think we can not afford to waste our assets on cleaning up some mobs of people who don’t realize they’ve been conquered just yet.” Tanya tried to keep her voice polite and respectful as she acknowledged the genuine thought going into Kline’s question.
And after all he is better then that idiot Secretary Clarence of the old StateSec. she admitted to herself grudgingly as thoughts of the slow witted, spiteful woman who used to be in charge of the old StateSec branch.

“Well Grand Admiral I actually do have a suggestion regarding that once you are finished with your report, if you would not mind giving me your opinion.” Kline said with a smile.

“Very well Secretary if Praetor Rodric does not mind.” She said politely as she inclined her head toward Rodric who simply nodded back with what she could have sworn was a grin.

“Anyway the main problem the navy has at the moment is the sheer size of enemy space, I know that 6 mobile fleets and Home Fleet seem like a lot but you have to remember that we are dealing with enemy space several thousand light years in diameter and close to a thousand inhabited planets are in that sector, once we begin the offensives again we are going to be spread thin.” Her voice quieted as her eyes seemed to focus in on Treasury secretary Harper. “We need more ships, I would like at least 12 combat fleets of the new pattern, excluding home fleet, before we begin a full fledged offensive into Mantisoran space.” The Naval Officer forced herself not to flinch as the treasury secretary’s face went pale; every eye in the room seemed to focus on Secretary Harper and suddenly his pale face turned red with embarrassment.
“Lord Harper what is your opinion on this?” Rodric’s voice cut through the silence and Harper visibly shook himself and cleared his throat.
“Well. Highness our economy is going to be strained to pull this off, with each superdreadnought costing thirty-three billion crowns, and with a total of one hundred and forty-nine in a “new pattern” fleet that alone is over four trillion crowns, add that to the two trillion crowns a battlemoon costs and the one hundred billion crowns of a flag monitor and we are talking about each fleet costing about.” He paused and ran the numbers through his head-which Rodric found remarkable every time he saw the man do that kind of math without a calculator- “About seven trillion one hundred and seventeen billion crowns, and some change.”
“I think we can do it but our people are going to have to tighten their belts a little bit, I don’t think that will be a problem for the true Icarans but some of the frontier worlds who are still more used to their former governments and lifestyles could be a big problem; I mean taxes as they are, are the primary cause of the three systems that are currently rebellion since their former government did not even require taxes as individuals.” Aaron Harper shrugged as his Praetor looked at him blankly for a moment.
“No taxes? How the hell did they fund anything?” Rodric asked slightly more enthusiastically then he meant, not that he would let that show to any of his subjects.
“Well sir it was a bizarre form of corporate levies, apparently each warship was funded by a company, same with the army, their civil productions were all private sector as well.” The secretary’s matter of fact tone hid his own baffled thoughts as to how such a strange form of government could work even for as long as it had before Icara conquered them.

“Well I’m afraid we are going to have to tell our people to buckle down and deal with the additional taxes, my biggest fear actually comes into the labor department.” Rodric turned toward the woman in charge of the Bureau of Personnel.
“We currently have close to ten million men and women in the military, but even with that Highness our civilian sector has a lot of people to draw from so we won’t be seeing negative effects in that area for a long time. Our biggest problem right now is finding people who can work in the new shipyards we are building, and considering each sphere world we build requires a little over a billion human workers and close to two billion xeno workers we are going to run short of civilian construction workers and dockyard people sooner then I’d like.” The dark skinned woman from the former Rebel Alliance world of New Haven tossed her hand up in a throw away gesture as she put the pad with the numbers back in her pocket book.

“We need to continue building sphere worlds that’s a given, but we also need those shipyards online as soon as possible so do what you can to find a balance without requiring xenos to work at our shipyards.” Rodric frowned a moment and looked back at Tanya Bright who was still standing at the holo projector, looking rather sheepish.
“I’m sorry Grand Admiral, please continue.” He managed to sound less amused then he was as she simply clicked her heals and turned back to the display.
“It will be a few more months before we are ready to move on even our initial objectives but once we do I would like to have at least two fleets hitting any of the major systems of the Mantisorans, after the recent….um……incident with the Home Fleet I don’t want to risk being caught outgunned by one of their worlds again.” Her mouth twisted in a disgusted frown as she remembered the casualty list that came in from the Home Fleet after it seized a Mantisoran world in Icaran space, though Tanya beleived it wasn’t Admiral Yu’s fault she still had her under review until a commission could prove there was nothing Yu could have done to prevent it.

“So needless to say we are going to be short of ships as the early stages of the offensive commence, though as we do take our initial foothold systems I will order the fleets to spread out and hit more targets as quickly as possible; unfortunately we know that the Mantisorans are building both ships and planetary weapons platforms so it’s going to be bloody no matter what we do.” As she finished she pulled the data chip from the projector and bowed to the Praetor before turning to return to her seat.

“Secretary Kline you wished to say something about those three systems?” Rodric forced himself not to grin as he saw Bright blush ever so slightly, he understood all to well that no naval officer or any military officer liked being caught short like she had been but he also knew that there was a reason his ancestors had formed the now defunct StateSec generations ago, they were there to stop the riots and keep order while the military protected the Empire from external threats.

“Yes Highness, it has come to my attention that in those three systems we have already lost twenty-seven merchantmen and their crews to terrorists who think they can drive the Empire out by killing innocent civilians and destroying millions of crowns worth of property.” He paused and turned to the military officers who were all looking very shocked at the numbers of merchant ships lost to civilian hijackers and terrorists.
“Now as Grand Admiral Bright has already said we can’t throw the navy into every system with pirates who have visions of glory, so what I and several of my advisors have come up with is the plan to create a FedSec fleet.” The military officers gasped in shock at the proposal and Bright visibly forced herself from standing and saying something. It was unheard of to allow a security service to have a battle fleet of it’s own, in fact it was against the law for them to have any ships of capital status.
“Before our Military friends have a stroke I’d like to clarify, we do not want anything the size of a superdreadnought or even a dreadnought, all we want is to create battleship and battlecruiser sized ships that are capable of defending themselves in space and also deploying Intervention battalions on planetary surfaces.” Kline turned towards the military officers with a, naughty schoolboy grin before turning back to the Praetor.

“Battleships? Secretary Kline; our empire has never built battleships.” Rodric barely hid his confusion at the prospect of building battleships for a security force, Icaran naval designers never considered the low tonnage warship worth building once dreadnought hulls became available, and up until then battlecruisers had served the fleets for less cost in both construction and maintenance.
“Well I would like to point out that battleships are no longer capital class vessels compared to the more modern warships, for that matter neither is a battlecruiser, especially once you take into account the troop carrying capability of each ship reducing both armaments and shields quite a bit.” He shrugged and his expression suddenly grew somber “Though I do find the idea of shocking my colleagues amusing I would like you to consider this seriously Highness, the FSD would never be able to replace the Navy’s combat units we would just be able to lighten up the load for the Marines and Navy, not even mentioning the Army regiments we could free up from peacekeeping duties.”

“And where do you plan on getting the money from Secretary Kline?” Rodric’s tone was serious yet curious as he was obviously considering the implications of a Federal Security combat fleet capable of dealing with pirates and deploying FS brigades unescorted.
“We already have more then enough money in our budget Highness; in fact thanks to my rather ingenious financial staff we have quite a nice reserve of cash for emergency or other situations.” Kline smiled sheepishly as he admitted that his was probably the only Branch of service that was not running even close to breaking point with it’s budget, especially since he knew that the budget meetings were coming up later in the day.
“Indeed?! Well then I will definitely consider it more thoroughly.” Rodric smiled and was unable to hide the amusement from his voice, even some of the military officers-including Grand Admiral Bright- were grinning at Kline’s admission, and remarkable lack of taking credit.

“Well before we recess I would like to hear from Chief of Science for the Naval Technology Bureau.” Rodric inclined his head towards a short man in his mid nineties who was just beginning to go a little bit grey, -more because of stress then age thanks to the sustain surgeries and drugs which allowed centuries long life spans-, the man stood up and walked over to the same display Admiral Bright had used earlier and confidently placed a data chip in the reader.
Two images appeared on the screen, one of a massive capital ship the size of a flag monitor, yet Admiral Bright noticed the shape was all wrong and there wasn’t a single gun turret visible. The other image was off a large swept wing craft that had four under slung missiles and two large chin mounted weapons, to Bright it looked like a scaled up cutter but she couldn’t quite put the pieces together until COS Martell tabbed a control on the holo display and the image of the flag monitor sized ship grew and showed several dozen massive open areas on the outer hull.

“Ladies and gentlemen this is, or rather will be HMS Manticore she is the newest breed of carrier, now I know you all remember the rather disastrous and expensive use of the Hallice class carriers and their Viper and BullShark fighters and I am proud to say this is nothing like that.” He highlighted portions of the ship on the display and grinned “This is the main difference, these shield generators are much more powerful then any previous carrier concept, and these….” He highlighted another portion of the ship that would have been where the secondary broadside turrets were on a normal ship “Is the new singularity torpedo launcher that we have been working on for the past few years, granted they don’t fire very fast and do not have the range of a standard ship’s broadside but unlike the Hallice class, anyone who gets in close to this carrier isn’t going to enjoy it very much.” His grin grew wolfish as he noticed the expression on the face of Grand Admiral Tanya Bright.
“My God you finally got those damned things working?” Bright practically hissed as memories of the dozens of failed attempts at creating singularity torpedoes, one such experiment killed two dozen scientists and her own aid when the containment fields failed and the torpedo exploded in the middle of a crowded lab.
“Yes Ma’am we did, we decided we would go for the short range version our earlier theories suggested would be possible, it requires less containment power and has much less chance of becoming unstable before launch because we use less energy in the warhead its self.” Martell frowned sympathetically before bringing up a display of the smaller ship.
“This is the Hurricane class assault gunship, it is seventy five kilotons, has a much better shield and propulsion system then previous generations of attack craft and carries a crew of eight men and women.” Martell’s voice was back to the lecturing tone it had been before he was reminded of the unfortunate earlier experiments with singularity torpedoes. “Now we have included advanced vectored thrust, thrusters into her forward and aft hull allowing her to turn on a the spot, we have also incorporated the latest generation quantum stream engines, and afterburners allowing her to accelerate much more rapidly then any previous generation attack craft.” The scientist paused long enough for his information to sink in before highlighting the weapons points of the gunship “Now here’s the big difference, the Hurricane carries four cataclysm torpedoes and two high yield incinerator class anti-hydrogen stream cannons.”
“What is a cataclysm torpedo Doctor?” General of the Army Scollet spoke for the first time in the meeting and he like all of the others looked a little skeptical of the idea of bringing back fighters after the earlier dismal failures.
“Well to use a layman’s terms it’s an antimatter warhead that has a thirty two gigaton yield, and each Hurricane can carry four.” Martell’s grin returned quickly at the muttered sounds of awe from his audience.
“Now the reason we don’t include these on capital ships is because each one weighs three kilotons and has a range roughly that of a spitball out of a straw, but with our new gunships we can slip even these spitballs into weapons range, and once they are well our best estimates say five gunships could kill a superdreadnought in a single pass, and each Manticore class carrier will be able to hold one hundred and eighty-nine.”
“Now obviously the main drawbacks are very short range and one shot capacity, once a gunship fires its torpedoes they’re gone and it will have to rely on it’s energy mounts from there on out, add to that they are unfortunately very fragile compared to a capital ship and we are talking about a weapons system that is best used in concert with fleet formations and not on it’s own.” Martell winked at Bright and added “So don’t worry these gunships will never replace your superdreadnoughts and battlemoons Admiral.”
“One would hope not after all the money we’ve put into them.” Secretary Harper threw in causing a ripple of chuckling among the gathered personnel.
“Well another main disadvantage is it will take two point seven years to get even one carrier’s load of gunships built and since we are going to run a full scale real battle test of the first Manticore before launching any more it will be a long time before we see carriers in every fleet.” Martell added somewhat sourly as his scientific curiosity wanted to see his pet project in action sooner rather then later.
But at least they have no choice but[/i]to produce these carriers.[/i].” Martell thought somewhat bitter over his earlier failure with the first generation of carriers that did nothing but cost the Icaran government money and people. [/i]”And this time I’ve gotten it right damn it.”[/i] he added as he picked up his data chips and headed for the doors.

[Hunpecked]

El_Phil writes: "Still just do it in a micro second and you can get to 0.1c in only 150m."

Indeed, although the power requirement goes up as the time goes down. Also the mechanical stress on the rails and their mount.

All solvable with a little engineering...

[El_Phil]

As I said, small technical problems.

I am assuming you have loads power to waste (which seems to be a constant in all sci-fi). Hell it wouldn't be the future if you didn't

[Starhawk]

Ahem guys plz do stop posting that here now I would rather people read my STORY for example did yah even notice i posted another chapter above your posts?

[Rasorow]

Starhawk said:
Ahem guys plz do stop posting that here now I would rather people read my STORY for example did yah even notice i posted another chapter above your posts?

Yes, and though silent (mostly) still reading so don't stop posting.

Currently ignoring the technobabble dispute because no one knows what tomorrow will bring let alone 2000 years from now.

Rasorow

[rdouglass]

I also am still reading and enjoying the story.

Maybe all the tech discussion could move to another thread?

[Hunpecked]

I'm still reading and enjoying the story, too. Comments:

It seems a bit late in the war for the first meeting of the Joint Chiefs and the War Cabinet. No doubt Icaran communication technology supports virtual meetings, so perhaps this is just the first face-to-face conference.

With regard to warship terminology, note that even the lowly escort (in stock SE IV) at 150 kT is larger than any terrestrial warship and can wipe out an undefended planetary population single-handed. The natural tendency would be to call the first such spacecraft "space battleships" or "dreadnoughts", but then what would you call subsequent classes that are several times bigger and more powerful? This problem is illustrated by the "Majestic" class of "battleships" (1895, 16,000 tons, 4x12" guns) which was surpassed only a decade later by the "Invincible" "battlecruiser" class (1908, 17,500 tons, 8x12" guns).

It might be better to drop wet navy terminology entirely and go with something more generic, like "Type 300 hull", or maybe "Intimidator class warship".

This approach also avoids terminology problems when SE IV's generic hulls are used for "non-standard" purposes, e.g. a battlecruiser minesweeper ("battlesweeper"?), cruiser-class colony ship ("colonuiser"?), or frigate transport ("frigport"?).

[kerensky]

On the point of ship sizes, I think it would be easier jsut to name the just the class of teh ship (eg Intimidator) and tehn refer to teh type of ship (eg battlecruiser) for size comparisons. This would also avoid the non-standard use of hull types. For example, the Mayflower class carrier is based on a monitor sized hull.

If you think of each ships classification as a size range for the ship to fit in, it should make things easier. For example, ships up to 150kt would be refered to as escorts, ships from 150kt to 200kt would be frigates, etc.