How do missiles work in space?

Brian

Brian
Abysinth said:
Unless the payload was also used as propellant. That way, the further away the target the less damage it would do; then, once it ran out of fuel it would be no more dangerous that an asteroid.
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They should "Soft detonate" after the fuel runs out, just like an RPG. (That is, when the propellant runs out the warhead goes bang!)

Brian :)
 

Abysinth

Abysinth
Nicodemus said:
Depends if the asteroid is moving at speed or not. If it's not moving it won't do a lot of damage unless you collide with it. If it's moving at speed it'll cause a lot of damage. Popular theory is that a moving asteroid is what helped wipe out the dinosaurs.

If you accelerate a missile it'll keep going until it hits something, even if the warhead is inactive the impact alone will cause a lot of damage. The trouble is, the missile may not ruin your day, but it is pretty likely to ruin someone else's at sometime and at some place in the future.
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Oh, I was not suggesting that an asteroid wasn't dangerous, just that an asteroid was less dangerous than an exploding asteroid.
 

Cosmos

C
Noogillim said:
How do missiles work in space?

We have all seen them, they all appear to have a single booster and fins.

Exactly like traditional atmospheric missiles, that use the fins for steering.

So will missiles be like mini exploding spacecraft?

IE Main forward propelling booster with steering boosters? I would imagine control for these actually hitting a target would be a difficult balancing act!

Would it be all thrusters leaving little room for payload?

Answers on a postcard to...................:)
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The fins would be useful when the missile is fired in a planetary atmosphere.. when we get planetary landings :)
 

KarriK

K
Certain modern air combat missiles already have fixed aerodynamic surfaces and rely on thrust vectoring alone; ASRAAM and AIM-9X off the top of my head. Tangential RCS is best used for situations where constant forward acceleration is not desired.

One balancing act could be a very limited maneuvering time for missiles; they would achieve a tremendous speed in just a few seconds and then continue toward the calculated intercept point purely ballistic; it would remove an arbitrary "maximum range" and instead the missile would behave very differently against lumbering behemoths and agile small ships. It would also balance some deflection angle; you could fire the thing to any angle from your ship, but large off-axis angles would require much more fuel (speed cancellation) and the interception would be less energetic and far easier to evade, or the missile might not even catch up with a receding target.
 

Rroff

R
The fins on a space based missile are probably more part of the system for mounting on ships and or as part of the firing/loading mechanism where appropriate i.e. tube launched and as part of the system to restrain them for maintenance/rearming/storing.
 

Brian

Brian
Fins would be absolutely in space. They need an atmosphere to bite into to be of any use. The only methods that would work are the gimbal method, or RCS thrusters.

Brian :)
 

SuperG

S
A missile would be a small unmanned space craft with warhead or use its kynetic mass for it. A agile missile would have some thusters. If also be usefull in atmosfhere it needs also be some what for high speeds aerodynamic but no fins as in space they got no use and trusters works in both situations.
 

Johnson

J
Missiles dont need an impact to be effective.
Most modern day air to air missiles have a proximity dethonation. Now im not much of a space physics guru but I can immagine that there wont be much of a blastwave from an explosion due to the lack of air.

If I would create a space missile:
-the missle will have an initial booster rocket to hurl it to the target (or intercept point)
-will have some small manouvering thrusters and or a main thruster with gimbals for corrections
-It would have a tracking system. Either infrared, laser or radar.
-it would carry a powerfull warhead that explodes and hurls depleted uranium likeca hail shotgun shot towards his target.

I would call it the
SGM-1 "Hailstorm"
 

NealBeforeZod

NealBeforeZod
Laton said:
I think in HHGTTG there was some mention of how misslies were illegal in space, as once they were fired they'd fly infinitely until they hit something even if it were light years away.
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I may be wrong here, but I think this was the explanation given in the original (BBC Micro) Elite literature to explain why your missiles exploded after a set period.
 

LubeckDave

L
In one of Tharg's future shocks there was a tale of a launched missile missing it's target and continuing off into deep space and eventually encountered an alien world where it promptly latched onto and destroyed one of their vessels
 

Tibruk

Tibruk
Spinward Fringe

kaserei said:
There is no reason why "missiles" couldn't have hyperspace drives, and be fired at targets from another system, assuming you have a target location to fire at, and a big enough launcher.

Anyone read Randolph Lalondes Spinward Fringe series? He mentions hyperspace capable weaponry launched from stations, he also uses some interesting damage mitigation manoeuvres in the early books that would apply to specific shield presentation in ED.
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I loved the Spinward Fringe books, I loved the battles, but the way the dealt with replacing old characters was very interesting...
 
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