3 ms·

The exact numbers in the books are often inconsistent. In Persepolis Rising, the forces that surround the Tempest form a bubble almost three light seconds acros

The exact numbers in the books are often inconsistent. In Persepolis Rising, the forces that surround the Tempest form a bubble almost three light seconds across. And railgun rounds take less than a minute to reach the center. My overall impression from the books was that the typical engagement distance is from seconds to tens of seconds at railgun speed (relative to the target), whatever that speed is. Anything beyond that, and random course corrections would make hitting anything with an unguided round effectively impossible, no matter how accurate your weapons are. And if you hit a missile at that distance, the random corrections will probably also get you out of harm's way.

grues-dinner 2y ago
Yeah, and my point is, a guided missile capable of multi-G course correction coming in at tens of km per second is very unlikely to be stopped by a machine gun. And you do hit it with a bullet by a miracle, you'll only do so at a range that's means you're in the debris shower, which is all going multiples of times faster than a shaped charge detonation. You certainly won't have time to pirouette about firing multiple guns photogenically while a bunch of missiles and the ship are all in one frame. The missiles seem a lot scarier than the railguns which you actually might be able to dodge given the ranges, as long as you saw the firing happen. Not least because a solid rocket motor actually could do quite a lot of that today.
- jltsiren 2y ago
  The debris will likely miss due to the evasive maneuvers both the missile and the target did, and due to the lack of thrust after the destruction of the missile. Plus the standard practice seems to be pointing the main engine (with exhaust velocity measured in percent of light speed) at the approaching missiles. To avoid being vaporized, the missiles must be intentionally trying to miss and then do aggressive last-moment maneuvers once they are close enough to the target.

grues-dinner 2y ago

Yeah, and my point is, a guided missile capable of multi-G course correction coming in at tens of km per second is very unlikely to be stopped by a machine gun. And you do hit it with a bullet by a miracle, you'll only do so at a range that's means you're in the debris shower, which is all going multiples of times faster than a shaped charge detonation. You certainly won't have time to pirouette about firing multiple guns photogenically while a bunch of missiles and the ship are all in one frame. The missiles seem a lot scarier than the railguns which you actually might be able to dodge given the ranges, as long as you saw the firing happen. Not least because a solid rocket motor actually could do quite a lot of that today.

jltsiren 2y ago
The debris will likely miss due to the evasive maneuvers both the missile and the target did, and due to the lack of thrust after the destruction of the missile. Plus the standard practice seems to be pointing the main engine (with exhaust velocity measured in percent of light speed) at the approaching missiles. To avoid being vaporized, the missiles must be intentionally trying to miss and then do aggressive last-moment maneuvers once they are close enough to the target.