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Post by dwwolf on May 11, 2017 14:56:11 GMT
In my view KKVs are great at killing whatever is near the biggest/hottest radiator on the enemy ship.
That tends to be fuel, the electrical plant or the propulsion, given how most ships are setup.
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Post by Enderminion on May 11, 2017 15:58:31 GMT
In my view KKVs are great at killing whatever is near the biggest/hottest radiator on the enemy ship. That tends to be fuel, the electrical plant or the propulsion, given how most ships are setup. PROPELLANT NOT FUEL
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Post by dwwolf on May 11, 2017 16:12:16 GMT
A*** retentive obsession ?
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Post by vegemeister on May 11, 2017 16:29:36 GMT
If the ship is designed with the fact that missiles all go for the geometric center of the radiators in mind, the only thing under there is going to be propellant tanks, which will be multiply redundant. Venting some of the propellant won't take the ship out of the fight, and it probably won't even keep it from limping home on MPD.
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Post by dwwolf on May 11, 2017 16:42:03 GMT
Well that depends on the propellant. It might count as a mission kill though.
Furthermore that still leaves the chance of the missile hitting the radiator and that puts the functioning of whatever that radiator was cooling at risk.
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Post by zorbeltuss on May 11, 2017 17:25:47 GMT
KKVs kind of suck though, in my experience. The first one makes a small hole through the center of the radiators, and every subsequent missile goes through the same hole. They probably are a good answer to pointy ships that fight nose-on, though, since a KKV has a good chance of coring the ship if it hits from that aspect. Currently I feel that KKVs are the only ones that do not suck, but that is due to the game crashing if payloads go off.
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Post by nerd1000 on May 11, 2017 22:44:37 GMT
If you are building a KKV i dont see a point in using a 50 kg inert rad shield pill as the payload. Part of that weight would be better off as a carbon steel nose cone underneath the anti-thermal armor. It should help negating the whipple shield if the impact is nose on. And still Better yet would be to use most of the extra mass as fuel. Not necessarily. There's a proof floating around somewhere that the mass ratio that maximizes kinetic energy for a given wet mass is e^2. That's approximately 7.389, and it corresponds to Δv equal to twice your engine's exhaust velocity. Though starting from the specified 5 km/s Δv in this thread, more fuel is going to be the answer for most reasonable engines. KKVs kind of suck though, in my experience. The first one makes a small hole through the center of the radiators, and every subsequent missile goes through the same hole. They probably are a good answer to pointy ships that fight nose-on, though, since a KKV has a good chance of coring the ship if it hits from that aspect. Mass balloons rather fast when you use a lower Isp engine to get closer to that 7.389 mass ratio with a given payload mass (flak bombs used instead of KKV penetrator to avoid making new modules): That face-melting terminal acceleration almost makes the absurd wet mass worth it...
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Post by vegemeister on May 12, 2017 2:22:53 GMT
Not necessarily. There's a proof floating around somewhere that the mass ratio that maximizes kinetic energy for a given wet mass is e^2. That's approximately 7.389, and it corresponds to Δv equal to twice your engine's exhaust velocity. Though starting from the specified 5 km/s Δv in this thread, more fuel is going to be the answer for most reasonable engines. KKVs kind of suck though, in my experience. The first one makes a small hole through the center of the radiators, and every subsequent missile goes through the same hole. They probably are a good answer to pointy ships that fight nose-on, though, since a KKV has a good chance of coring the ship if it hits from that aspect. Mass balloons rather fast when you use a lower Isp engine to get closer to that 7.389 mass ratio with a given payload mass (flak bombs used instead of KKV penetrator to avoid making new modules): That face-melting terminal acceleration almost makes the absurd wet mass worth it... Er, not exactly. The e^2 result is for fixed wet mass and Isp. Total Δv is a free parameter. If instead you've fixed Δv, (5 km/s in this case), then kinetic energy is maximized by minimizing mass ratio. That means choosing a high-Isp engine, within the constraint of reasonable acceleration. In general, you can always improve the performance of a rocket by increasing exhaust velocity, provided that doing so doesn't require violating some other constraint (initial acceleration, cost, reliability, etc.). The only possible exception is that, if you have multiple types of engines on board that have separate propellant tanks, it's best to use the low-Isp engines first. They were able to stretch the payload capacity of the space shuttle a little that way, by burning the OMS engines during ascent.
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Post by nerd1000 on May 12, 2017 2:43:03 GMT
Mass balloons rather fast when you use a lower Isp engine to get closer to that 7.389 mass ratio with a given payload mass (flak bombs used instead of KKV penetrator to avoid making new modules): That face-melting terminal acceleration almost makes the absurd wet mass worth it... Er, not exactly. The e^2 result is for fixed wet mass and Isp. Total Δv is a free parameter. If instead you've fixed Δv, (5 km/s in this case), then kinetic energy is maximized by minimizing mass ratio. That means choosing a high-Isp engine, within the constraint of reasonable acceleration. In general, you can always improve the performance of a rocket by increasing exhaust velocity, provided that doing so doesn't require violating some other constraint (initial acceleration, cost, reliability, etc.). The only possible exception is that, if you have multiple types of engines on board that have separate propellant tanks, it's best to use the low-Isp engines first. They were able to stretch the payload capacity of the space shuttle a little that way, by burning the OMS engines during ascent. So If I set my wet mass to 1000kg, a mass ratio of 7.389 will give me the maximum kinetic energy regardless of what my engine Isp is (though the exact amount of kinetic energy will vary depending on engine performance). But if I set my deltaV, my ultimate kinetic energy will be a function of Isp. Is that right?
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Post by Enderminion on May 12, 2017 4:19:06 GMT
this thread exploded again when added to the list of challenges up top...
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Post by L5Resident on May 12, 2017 5:50:03 GMT
:^) pls no ban
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Post by nerd1000 on May 12, 2017 8:39:11 GMT
A Fusion rocket? On a missile? HAAAAX!
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