Insipred by the commerce raid thread I decided to design both space mines and a delivery system using FF&S.
The mines themselves are not very difficult. They will be at the sizes of 0.5DT and smaller.
The real challenge will be to design the delivery system. As I try to prevent designing missiles, the mines will be without effective drives. They may contain some compressed gass for station keeping and rotation of the hull to point the laser rods towards any target detected.
There is basically two ways to deliver the mines. Drop them directly from the ship as you orbit the target planet. Fine if the planet is under your control. Not so fine if this is a enemy planet. In this case you would like to deliver the mines from afar.
Ordinary space missile launcher does not consume power, so I guess they only are a enclosed rail system where the missile starts from using their thrusters (EAPLAC or HePlar). As teh mines does not have a drive, they need some help with the launch. I tried to design a mass driver, but it became quite massive. For a 0.2DT missile it ended up in the 300ton range (weight).
Any ideas how to make a reliable and good delivery system for inserting mines from afar?
The mines themselves are not very difficult. They will be at the sizes of 0.5DT and smaller.
The real challenge will be to design the delivery system. As I try to prevent designing missiles, the mines will be without effective drives. They may contain some compressed gass for station keeping and rotation of the hull to point the laser rods towards any target detected.
There is basically two ways to deliver the mines. Drop them directly from the ship as you orbit the target planet. Fine if the planet is under your control. Not so fine if this is a enemy planet. In this case you would like to deliver the mines from afar.
Ordinary space missile launcher does not consume power, so I guess they only are a enclosed rail system where the missile starts from using their thrusters (EAPLAC or HePlar). As teh mines does not have a drive, they need some help with the launch. I tried to design a mass driver, but it became quite massive. For a 0.2DT missile it ended up in the 300ton range (weight).
Any ideas how to make a reliable and good delivery system for inserting mines from afar?
