Geosurvey MIRV

[Yonder (OP)]

I have read several of the topics that have covered current missile mechanics, so I know the general geosurvey requirements of "Have ship with arbitrary FC, range not important" and using waypoints to send a missile to a body and remain there.

My question is, is it possible to MIRV that Geosurvey missile so that you could have multiple survey targets. For example, make a large, long range bus with three small Geosurvey missiles as the payload. Then fire that bus at Mars, and when the bus gets their and deploys, redirect two of the three payloads to Deimos and Phobos.

Another question, in http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=5684.0 someone mentioned that they had an issue when they made a buoy that "couldn't keep up with the planet".

Did he mean that his initial bus wasn't fast enough to get to the planet in the first place, or does the waypoint method not entail the buoy actually entering orbit? Can a missile run out of fuel during the Geosurvey process and fall away from the planet?

[83athom]

In short, no it wouldn't work. The reason is that even when you separate the secondary stage, it will have the same target and they cant retarget planets. And on the note of the buoy, the buoy is a stationary missile (as in 0 speed) and the planets are always moving, so the buoys couldn't stay over the planet as they "couldn't keep up"meaning the planet simply moved away.

[Yonder (OP)]

Thanks. So if the missile actually has to "move" to stay on the planet, does that mean that they need to be really, really long range so that they keep up with the planet until the finish surveying? Or is fuel not tracked for this, and it's enough that the missile is just theoretically capable of moving fast enough to keep up?

[Sematary]

I don't think its possible to use it like you are asking, but a geosurvey MIRV might be really useful to make a long range bus and then have a much smaller missile that is just a geosurvey sensor.

[Prince of Space]

If you have pinned the waypoint to the moving planet, once the missile reaches the waypoint the deployed buoy (or just the spent missile) will follow the waypoint as the planet moves. Regarding "keep[ing] up with the planet," I suspect that the missile was so slow and/or the planet was so fast that the missile couldn't reach the planet before the five day increment moved the planet again.

[Garfunkel]

Prince of Space is correct - the most likely culprit is that the bus was so slow that it couldn't catch the planet. Because it's not aiming ahead of the planet but directly towards it. It's quite possible to create a bus at TL0 or TL1 that is too slow.