kzt wrote:Castenea wrote:Would powering a Missile pod require the equivalent of 1 KM of 10CM fire hose rated for plasma? That might be a little difficult to store on a ship with plenty of other demands for cubage.
No, a single superconducting cable about the size of an outdoor 12 gauge power cable should do fine. All you are doing is running the tractors, and a cable that handle a couple of gigawatts should be fine for that.
If all you are doing is hauling the missile pods externally, yes.
But if you want to be able to deploy and fire those missile pods, you need much, much more power. You need to be able to:
1) Supply sufficient power to operate the tractors holding the missile pod to the ship.
2) Supply even more power (over and above the amount in 1 above) to start-up the fusion plant on-board the missile pod that supplies power that enables the missile pod to:
a) Power the missile pods on-board electronics and communications equipment that control the pod and act as an interface with the on-board missiles and the controlling ship's fire control.
b) Power the tractors that will hold the missile pod in a towed position astern of the ship ready to fire.
c) Power up all of the missiles' fusion reactors that will power the missile in flight.
d) Power the missile pod's grav-drivers that launch the missiles into space and get the missiles far enough apart that wedge fratricide does not occur when the missiles activate their impeller wedges.
I suspect that the amount of power required for 2 above (the amount of power required for start-up of the on-board fusion reactor) is much more than a couple of gigawatts.