Le mercredi 5 octobre 2016 06:14:52 UTC+2, nu...@bid.nes a écrit :   
      
   >   You're also talking travel times of at least months for all of those   
   independent looping trajectories to converge. In that time your targets can   
   *move* for any number of reasons like natural disasters screwing up their   
   roads or other supply routes,    
   technological innovations, and so on. For that matter, their whole defensive   
   posture may have changed for political or other reasons, meaning the defenses   
   you targeted aren't there any more, and the command centers might get moved to   
   another state.    
   Suppose they build stuff you don't know about.   
      
   Months or even years, actually. But I doubt strategic targets move that often.   
   The Pentagon, Kremlin, Portsmouth Naval Base, St Dizier Airbase, Kourou Space   
   Centre and pretty much any city of importance are where they stood for   
   decades, despite their    
   vulnerability to ballistic missiles or smuggled strategic weapons during the   
   Cold War. Strategic targets can sometimes move, but that is by far the   
   exception.   
   Space stations/habitats could change orbit, but they won't do so without a   
   good reason, given the cost in dV and the need of general traffic to have a   
   known destination.   
   If the target knew an attack is inbound, they may do something, which is the   
   reason for having stealth missiles in the first place.   
      
   >   How good is your spy system? Your enemy likely won't be announcing this   
   stuff in the newspapers.   
      
   Even without a good enough spy system, you should be able to mark as target   
   anything that may be worthwhile, for example anything with a big enough   
   thermal signature.   
   If you fear you missed something, fire a few more stragglers that can impact   
   days or weeks later, so you can target new threats that were hidden during the   
   initial strike. Or forego stealth altogether and press your now overwhelming   
   military advantage to    
   mop up whatever is left.   
   The only thing you have to be absolutely sure to get is a possible enemy   
   shroud gun, but those should be hard to completely hide and have landed on the   
   "potential targets" list.   
   Problems start if your budget is insufficient for an all-out attack, but the   
   Cold War showed that this may not necessarily be a concern. (What happens when   
   it _is_ a concern is another matter...)   
      
   >   Why are you assuming their spying efforts aren't equal to yours, and they   
   can't know exactly where your missile production lines are located and their   
   schedules? Why do you assume they don't know when you're moving them en masse   
   to the launchers?    
   Remember the Cuban missile crisis?   
      
   If their spying efforts are equal, they know you have this big installation   
   that may be a shroud gun, a secret test site, a superlaser emitter or anything   
   else with a big powerplant (or at least, big heat-maker). So they know it is a   
   military target,    
   even if they are not sure what it does.   
   If you see one of those on the other side, it will certainly end up on the   
   target list, even if no detail of what it is exactly is known.   
      
   When firing, massive heat is produced. With its own heatsinks, this heat is   
   re-emitted progressively, and when not firing, an on-board powerplant produces   
   equivalent heat (it can be simply dumped into resistors or used for side   
   projects as it sits here).    
   That way, heat production is constant and nothing is known about how it is   
   produced.   
   Subtler techniques may be needed to avoid Newton's third law to uncover   
   launches with changes in the station's movement, in the case of an orbital or   
   Sun-orbital gun. A ground launcher with a web of launch cannons and a   
   multitude of exit points would    
   probably use seismic generators to mask the seismic signature of the launches.   
   Contrary to the projectile, the goal of the shroud is not to hide the gun but   
   to obfuscate what it is doing.   
      
   >   Yes, I got that. But as I said, once they're detected (say during   
   turnaround a million km out) all that needs to be done is to place any solid   
   matter in its path before it hits the target, causing it to expend most of its   
   momentum shattering itself    
   into less-damaging pieces.   
      
   Even if it means more bulk for more coolant, turnaround should be kept   
   invisible. If this is impossible and the enemy has means to intercept the   
   projectile, forget turnaround and just pack your effective projectile as   
   payload inside.   
   This may be a nuclear weapon, or a smaller piercing projectile stored   
   lengthwise, that will discard the stealth craft at the last second (literally   
   if possible) and activate strong, short RCS to turn in an instant, without   
   bothering to slow rotation down    
   as impact should occur right when it is correctly oriented.   
   This all makes the projectile bigger, or more projectiles needed, but this   
   design scales well and we're on a Cold War budget.   
      
   >   What about observation platforms stationed at the Lagrange points of   
   planets they control? They don't stand still, they have to do little   
   kidney-shaped orbits around those points, making continuous corrections   
   because those little orbits are chaotic.    
   They'll be nearly impossible to hit.   
      
   If it is a space station, it is necessarily expanding little dV for   
   station-keeping, so little dV is required to correct it. And that is if for   
   some reason it refuses to keep a regular orbit and wants to be a pain.   
   If it has enough dV to screw around, it is a spaceship, not a space station,   
   and probably not in the "strategic targets" category.   
      
   > > As for vertical acceleration, this is only for the catapult launch. This   
   > > would have tremendous acceleration for a very short time.   
   >    
   >   Yes. You are still trying to pretend late-phase large lateral   
   accelerations will never be needed, but they will especially for turnaround.   
      
   If they are, you are either aiming at the wrong target, using the wrong   
   payload or screwed something up in the design.   
   In the normal course of things, those are simply not necessary.   
      
   >   Ask the people who design such electronics for use in physics labs. Some   
   of them are regulars in sci.electronics.design.   
   > snip   
      
   Interesting, I'll have to dig more on the subject...   
      
   >   It may take separate electronic systems that only come into play when the   
   temperature changes. In the described scenario these should already be   
   off-the-shelf available and the only new work would be making them play nice   
   together.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)