Re: Missiles was Re: UNSC beta and FB3

Ok, it's been some days, but still worth an answer.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jared Hilal" <jlhilal@yahoo.com>

> Additionally, inertial guidence without an external reference (such as
> GPS or terrain following), as would be the case in space combat unless
> you are defending your home system and have celectial navigation data
> for the missiles, is only accurate for quite a short period of travel.
>     This is long enough for sea skimmers, the longest of which is
about
> 6 minutes/60 miles, but not for land-attack cruise missiles.

First question would be: How long is a "short travel" in FT terms ? How
accurate does inertial have to be for FT purposes ? IIRC, Nuclear subs
rely
on inertial navigation for quite extended cruises.

A spaceship can easily sollect celestial navigation data when going into
battle. You can automatically collect the directions to, say, the 20
brightest stars visible and download these to the missiles.

> Mr. Heinz,

Minor point: My family name is Ranitzsch.( see my E-mail ID ). Karl
Heinz is
my first name(s). So if you like to be polite, it's Mr. Ranitzsch -
Dr.Ranitzsch, actually ;-)

> what makes you believe that modern sea-skimmers and NOE
> missiles have seekers "which presumably, is a bit more intelligent
than
> the FT missile ones"?

In the mail to which I answered, you had complained that FT missiles (as
per
the ruiles) are "really dumb". My comment referred to that.

I too, would assume that real future spaceship weapons would be quite
sophisticated

Greetings
Karl Heinz