Very interesting post...
I have a question for you, please, do you think that a smaller bomb like the gadget may fits in a V2?
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Very interesting post...
I have a question for you, please, do you think that a smaller bomb like the gadget may fits in a V2?
The bomb was developed specifically because American scientists were afraid that the Germans were building one themselves. As for Japan, they were the only major belligerent to use Chemical weapons during WW2.
Look at this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein-Szilárd_letter
As for the Nuke - yes, US and Germany tried to build them and even though Hiltler started it ealrlier, US - in the end - had much more human ("brains") resources available.
As for chemical weapons - no, Germany used a lot of them (mostly gas) on the Eastern Front.
there is a significant issue that isn't being understood regarding trying to simply enlarge the missile.
yes, you are right, to move 5 times the payload, you need to exert 5 times the effort, this requires 5 times to fuel to maintain nominal range. to keep the issues as they appear as simple and uncomplicated as possible, this will be done one step at a time, starting with the default V-2 specs.
weight 12,500kg, warhead 980kg, fuel 8720kg, 206km max range.(have you noticed your fuel is 9 times heavier than your warhead?) the missile isn't noted individually for its weight, just the combined weight, so, 12,500-980-8720=2800kg, just for the missile.
ok, so, lets double the size of the missile, to accomodate a warhead twice as large
missile 2800kg*2=5600kg, warhead 980kg*2=1960kg, fuel 8720kg, total weight 16280kg. your thrust to weight ratio, which determines your acceleration, is now 77% of what it was. to stick to simple math, moving a mass from point A to point b requires work, this is your fuel expenditure, which we did not increase. since 8720kg can move 12,500kg a distance of 206km, it follows that it should move 16280 something approximately near 160km. we have lost range AND acceleration, this isn't good. it gets worse, your missile has a larger internal volume, which results in greater drag as it must move more air out of the way to move forward, so we have now lost speed as well, this too will reduce range and acceleration, compounding the performance losses.
but all is not lost, we can always add more fuel, after all, this missile is twice as big, and we didn't give fuel its share. in so doing, we will now weight in at 25,000kg, we have accomplished our doubling completely. and now resumes the problems. we haven't redesigned the throttle assemblies, or the fuel injectors/inputs/feeds, or the nozzle. so we aren't generating any more thrust than before, but weight twice as much now. so, on with it, we are back to 206km range thanks to increased fuel you might think, this is not so, we can't maintain the speed that gave us this range for that fuel ammount because of our increased drag, so range is still down. we weight twice what we did before reducing thrust/weight to a mere 50%, acceleration further penalised by drag as before.
but so what, we can always burn more fuel in the same time period right? it stands to reason that if we consume more energy in the same time period, we have more energy to work with, and can rectify this thrust problem!. this is true, to a point. how much of a pressure increase can your manifolds take, can your fuel pumps give you the increased flow(or should we replace them for larger more powerful models even tho they are both bigger, increasing drag when the missile is enlarged to make room, and reducing acceleration), can the fuel lines handle the newly increased pressures. suppose all of this is true, you can handle the larger pressures, then we can easily double the fuel, to burn it twice as fast and our range will remain, right? wrong, double the fuel, and you increase the weight of the missile by ALOT. but lets ignore that, there is another more pressing issue looming now. if you do double the fuel rate, can sustain the pressures and keep from exploding, then you will oxidize twice as much fuel in the same period of time, ths releases twice as much energy, this includes heat. can the metals that compose your missile handle temperatures twice as much without weakening which is really bad, or melting, which would be catastrophic?
any redneck can understand that twice as much is just that, and if it needs something, then being twice as much means it needs twice as much, so supplying twice as much will solve that problem. but Nasa doesn't eploy rednecks, they never have. if rednecks could grasp rocket science, there would still be highly gifted persons at nasa, as there is alot of complicated maths that occur there not directly related to rocketry, and the rednecks would be involved with that. Nasa employs the best and the brightest because the straight forward lets just make it bigger pilosophy fails far more often than it succeeds.
The titanic wasn't much more than a massively larger motorboat, and any idiot could build something that will float, and strap a motor to it and sit a fuel tank in it, and have a motor boat, some will even achieve some decent performance. none of these people stands much chance at getting something on the scale of titanic going, and more, at that scale, its an entirely different ballgame. And rocketry is no different.
You can't simply make it bigger and get better from that. the problems that arrise become monstrously huge faster than you approach your goals. This is why miniturisation is the godsend it is, same performance from this part, at a fraction of the size/weight. Higher temperature and strength limits allow to withstand those higher pressures/temperatures. better fuel compositions to provide greater endurance and thrust at the same volume. and so on.
All of these factors combined with significantly greater understanding of the forces at work is what lead to the Saturn-V rockets, from the early days of the V-2. Do you understand ther basic concepts of a combustion engine? if your answer is yes, then you are effectively on the same page as von Braun was with rocketry, now, could you build a 400 horsepower motor on your own, no store bought parts(tools permitted obviously), that would fit under the hood of a car? this is the leap that a few decades of intensive research and miniaturisation resulted in.
bigger is not always better.
yes, you are right, to move 5 times the payload, you need to exert 5 times the effort, this requires 5 times to fuel to maintain nominal range. to keep the issues as they appear as simple and uncomplicated as possible, this will be done one step at a time, starting with the default V-2 specs.
weight 12,500kg, warhead 980kg, fuel 8720kg, 206km max range.(have you noticed your fuel is 9 times heavier than your warhead?) the missile isn't noted individually for its weight, just the combined weight, so, 12,500-980-8720=2800kg, just for the missile.
ok, so, lets double the size of the missile, to accomodate a warhead twice as large
missile 2800kg*2=5600kg, warhead 980kg*2=1960kg, fuel 8720kg, total weight 16280kg. your thrust to weight ratio, which determines your acceleration, is now 77% of what it was. to stick to simple math, moving a mass from point A to point b requires work, this is your fuel expenditure, which we did not increase. since 8720kg can move 12,500kg a distance of 206km, it follows that it should move 16280 something approximately near 160km. we have lost range AND acceleration, this isn't good. it gets worse, your missile has a larger internal volume, which results in greater drag as it must move more air out of the way to move forward, so we have now lost speed as well, this too will reduce range and acceleration, compounding the performance losses.
but all is not lost, we can always add more fuel, after all, this missile is twice as big, and we didn't give fuel its share. in so doing, we will now weight in at 25,000kg, we have accomplished our doubling completely. and now resumes the problems. we haven't redesigned the throttle assemblies, or the fuel injectors/inputs/feeds, or the nozzle. so we aren't generating any more thrust than before, but weight twice as much now. so, on with it, we are back to 206km range thanks to increased fuel you might think, this is not so, we can't maintain the speed that gave us this range for that fuel ammount because of our increased drag, so range is still down. we weight twice what we did before reducing thrust/weight to a mere 50%, acceleration further penalised by drag as before.
but so what, we can always burn more fuel in the same time period right? it stands to reason that if we consume more energy in the same time period, we have more energy to work with, and can rectify this thrust problem!. this is true, to a point. how much of a pressure increase can your manifolds take, can your fuel pumps give you the increased flow(or should we replace them for larger more powerful models even tho they are both bigger, increasing drag when the missile is enlarged to make room, and reducing acceleration), can the fuel lines handle the newly increased pressures. suppose all of this is true, you can handle the larger pressures, then we can easily double the fuel, to burn it twice as fast and our range will remain, right? wrong, double the fuel, and you increase the weight of the missile by ALOT. but lets ignore that, there is another more pressing issue looming now. if you do double the fuel rate, can sustain the pressures and keep from exploding, then you will oxidize twice as much fuel in the same period of time, ths releases twice as much energy, this includes heat. can the metals that compose your missile handle temperatures twice as much without weakening which is really bad, or melting, which would be catastrophic?
any redneck can understand that twice as much is just that, and if it needs something, then being twice as much means it needs twice as much, so supplying twice as much will solve that problem. but Nasa doesn't eploy rednecks, they never have. if rednecks could grasp rocket science, there would still be highly gifted persons at nasa, as there is alot of complicated maths that occur there not directly related to rocketry, and the rednecks would be involved with that. Nasa employs the best and the brightest because the straight forward lets just make it bigger pilosophy fails far more often than it succeeds.
The titanic wasn't much more than a massively larger motorboat, and any idiot could build something that will float, and strap a motor to it and sit a fuel tank in it, and have a motor boat, some will even achieve some decent performance. none of these people stands much chance at getting something on the scale of titanic going, and more, at that scale, its an entirely different ballgame. And rocketry is no different.
You can't simply make it bigger and get better from that. the problems that arrise become monstrously huge faster than you approach your goals. This is why miniturisation is the godsend it is, same performance from this part, at a fraction of the size/weight. Higher temperature and strength limits allow to withstand those higher pressures/temperatures. better fuel compositions to provide greater endurance and thrust at the same volume. and so on.
All of these factors combined with significantly greater understanding of the forces at work is what lead to the Saturn-V rockets, from the early days of the V-2. Do you understand ther basic concepts of a combustion engine? if your answer is yes, then you are effectively on the same page as von Braun was with rocketry, now, could you build a 400 horsepower motor on your own, no store bought parts(tools permitted obviously), that would fit under the hood of a car? this is the leap that a few decades of intensive research and miniaturisation resulted in.
bigger is not always better.
Last edited:
Is the gadget so much smaller? I though It was only a prototype for fat man. If you can find the weight of it you can know if the V2 got enough thrust to carry it. I doubt it however since V2 got a diameter of 1.65 meter and the gadget looks to end up around 2m diameter.Cardus said:
Actually drag isn't such a major problem you want to make it. Two reasons:
# Alot of Fuel is burned during liftoff where drag is negligable.
# The Volume to Area scale still applies. A Rocket of x2 Size will only Increase drag by sqrt(2) = 1.41
Ofcourse its still a factor.
Why I need to ask you again would you not put two engines (or one twice as large) on the rocket? Without doing that I will argue that "accomplished our doubling" is in no way complete. Two Identical Engines sitting next to each other would be even easier to acomplish from an engineering standpoint (and a popular solution too, Saturn V had 5 engines instead of V2 that had a single one).
Now don't start arguing two engines are hard to balance, our original example called for three, four or five that can easilly be arranged symetrically.
This is the only Engineering problem I will really admit to beeing critical.
We have twice the amount of heat generated with only sqrt(2) = 1.41 surface area to let it escape through. Thats the core of the problem here.
Does this mean it can't be solved in 6 years? I have a hard time believing that.
But If the single engine can cool itself enough to not affect outside components, then it should not affect nearby engines much either. Once again a multi engine approach seems to be the best solution.
The hardest part for me is how Germany would be able to fund both a Nuclear and a Rocket program enough for both to have results. I hope the rocket one requires a little more research effort in HoI3. I think we both have shown that there is a reason we call something "Rocket Sience". But Its quite fun, and IMO It warrants a little more than 2-3 techs (thats very quick with rocket test facilities)
Developing a short/medium range nuke delivery rocket is much easier then developing a ICBM, And this is what I hope we also can get. As research in rocketry advances several parallel models become more efficient. I belive a Short range, Medium range and Long range(ICBM) variant is warranted. Where its only feasable to arm the short or medium range one with a nuke before 1948.
Last edited:
Please refer to this http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showpost.php?p=9423496&postcount=113. The nuke part of the gadget was less then 4 kg for a picture please refer to this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_gadget.
My point is that if you have the air superiority and long range bombers (like USA) then you can design a bomb without being so much worried about its weight. On the other hand if you have V2 rockets its better that the bomb fits the rocket instead of to wait for the development of the improved version of the V2. So, instead of a blast of 20 kilotons maybe you can be still happy with the half.
Does this makes sense to you?
Yes this is what I was thinking. If the rocket and nuke can be researched, built and deployed together before Dec. 31st 1947 then I would hope that Germany's research over the last 11 years has almost entirely been focused on these two and related techs. Not to say that they could not research other things, but the leadership points and money involved should make such a strategy questionable at best.
Hi Bullfrog, please note that Hitler stopped all not immediately applicable research for 3 years. This means that you have to cut about 2 years from the development of "special techs".
Even so, the inclusion of nuclear armed rockets before the 1948 end date would be cutting 5 years off of the historical timeline for such a weapon. Therefore, regardless of your decision to not cut unvital research as Germany, the tech rushing would be fairly cost inefficient.
I'm sorry because I cannot get you. Earlier you said "If the rocket and nuke can be researched, built and deployed together before Dec. 31st 1947" and now you says end of 1948? Which one is the right date to you?
Well they've stated the timeline as 1936-1948...does anyone know if they mean the end of 1948 or the beginning?
And, for my two cents, I think if Germany had thrown much of their (with hindsight) pointless research out the window (for instance subs and super-heavy tanks), it's feasible that they might have a) developed the A-10 (a multi-stage intercontinental V-2) and b) developed an atomic warhead for it by 47/48. The reallocated money just might have been enough, even with the comparative lack of physicists.
Purely conjectural, of course. There's no telling what the situation in Europe and/or Germany might have been had the war continued until 1947/8 - but, had the war with Russia been avoided somehow, there would have been a whole hell of a lot more resources to go around. Even half (or less) of the 1941/2 Wehrmacht could have easily stopped any invasion of Europe by the Western powers.
And, for my two cents, I think if Germany had thrown much of their (with hindsight) pointless research out the window (for instance subs and super-heavy tanks), it's feasible that they might have a) developed the A-10 (a multi-stage intercontinental V-2) and b) developed an atomic warhead for it by 47/48. The reallocated money just might have been enough, even with the comparative lack of physicists.
Purely conjectural, of course. There's no telling what the situation in Europe and/or Germany might have been had the war continued until 1947/8 - but, had the war with Russia been avoided somehow, there would have been a whole hell of a lot more resources to go around. Even half (or less) of the 1941/2 Wehrmacht could have easily stopped any invasion of Europe by the Western powers.
Last edited:
Paradox. And IIRC the original HoI2 ended on new year's eve '47, as it had the same timeline.
Sorry for not being clear. I meant Dec.31st, 1947. But we tend to use that date and 1948 interchangeably.
So for Paradox the timeline is end of 1947. Is that correct?
Regarding the cost of the nuke development program within the Axis please find below some comments
1) Germany and Italy were technologically far ahead in nuke research respect then the Allies. This wasn't anymore true after:
a) Fermi left Italy
b) an Hitler order to stop all researches not immediately applicable issued after the France's defeat
2) It seems that the cost was 1/3 of the cost of all tanks produced by the USA between 1942 and 1945. Please see:
http://virtualology.com/MANHATTENPRO...anproject.net/
The Manhattan project was 6% of the total cost substained by the United States for the World War II.
3) According to this site http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpag...61563737&pn=15
Germany and Italy together spent $366 so 6% more than USA ($341 millions including $50 billion for lend-lease supplies).
4) The Axis had the greatest scientists in physics: Fermi (but he left Italy), Bohr (but he escaped in 1943), Heisenberg, etc.. The great potential of the Axis should be discussed: if we leave out of the game "bad things" that we cannot mention here then the Axis would keep all the scientists they had (for example the Axis will keep Einstein as well) plus a % of the scientists/leadership in the conquered countries (we can still assume that a French scientist is not very happy to work for the occupier).
Last edited:
1. Maybe in 1939, but after 1941 when the US started the Manhattan project, they had unlimited manpower, funds and proper facilities to work with, where the German team had a lack of all those things.
1.b. You keep using this 3 year setback to augment your ideas. I do not agree. What I think you are talking about is Goering's order to halt weapon development that would not be able to go into production in 1941. While this set some projects back, most R&D deemed necessary was back in full swing in 1941, AFAIK. Do you have a source?
2. What is your point here?
Fine, I don't see the lend lease connection, and this link does not work.
The Axis scientists might have discovered fission, but after that they did not do much toward getting the bomb. Was there potential? Sure...but I still think that the bomb should not be attainable before 1944, maxing out the necessary techs. There should also be a random factor, just as the teams involved did not know everything, the player should not necessariily know the linear progression of techs that will produce the fastest bomb. Perhaps secret weapon techs could have a lesser chance of firing as unlock events?
More payload
Yes, effectively, if you 'double' the rocket (strap 2 V-2s together) you could carry the payload...the same distance as a regular V2s (you could probably do better if you got efficient with your packaging and saved a little weight - meh)
The issue is RANGE - not payload. Building a bigger rocket, as has been said, is easy. Building a rocket that can fly FARTHER is way, way harder. If you think about what a rocket REALLY has to carry, it is this:
The 'real' payload + the 'unburned fuel payload'
So if you wanted your 'super V2' to be able to fly 2x as far as the V2, you effectively need a rocket that can deliver an ENTIRE V2 to the '1st' halfway point. lets think about it in 2 stages. Stage 2 is a 'regular' V2 capable of flying a 980kg warhead to a range of 206 KM - stage 1 is a rocket capable of delivering itself + stage 2 to a range of 206km.
Here are your V2 specs: (stolen from a previous poster)
weight 12,500kg, warhead 980kg, fuel 8720kg, 206km max range. The missile isn't noted individually for its weight, just the combined weight, so, 12,500-980-8720=2800kg, just for the missile.
so your '2nd stage' weighs 12,000 KG - which is ~12 times the weight of the payload on the 'regular' V2.
And from what I talked about earlier, you can 'roughly' assume a linear increase in payload over the same distance for a straight scale up (if you tie 2 V2s together, you get 2x the payload - rocket scientists, I know it isn't that simple, but I'm painting with broad strokes here).
So, without improving the TECHNIQUE and EFFICIENCY of your rocket design, you need 12x the rocket to deliver the same 980Kg warhead to only double the distance. Or, you need a rocket that weighs ~
150,000Kg (or about 5% of the size of a Saturn V moon rocket . . .)
if you wanted to fly ANOTHER 206KM you would have to multiply by 12 AGAIN (since your 1st + 2nd stages now become the payload for the boost stage) - this would give you an all up weight of 1.8 million KG - giving you a rocket damned near the size of the largest rocket ever built to put a lousy 1000 KG bomb 600 KM away - you couldn't even fricking hit moscow with that. To do THAT - you would need to fly 1600 KM (which is 8x the ORIGINAL RANGE) so you would need to multiply the BASE WEIGHT of the rocket by 12^8 - or a factor of ~400 billion (making your 'rocket' something like 1/50th the size of mount everest. . . .)
Please note that there are alot of things left out of this explanation (like the true effects of accelartion, fuel consumption ETC - its only a simplification to give a general picture of WHY it works this way)
And there, in a nutshell is why it is almost all efforts to get 'more' range by making the rocket bigger don't work - the only practical way to increase RANGE is to improve your rocket's efficiency - the first us ICBM (Atlas) was capable of delivering a 1,363 kg payload almost 16,000 Km. If you notice they payload isn't much better than the V2 payload. ICMBs could do this because they could reach orbital/suborbital altitudes, and let ballistics, unhampered by wind resistance, do the 'work' of moving the payload so far.
Once you can get your projectile into space, you can effectively deliver it anywhere (with accurate guideance) so, once your efficiency is there (ratio of rocket to payload) you can probably put any size package you want, wherever you want it. The corallary is that until your efficiency goes up, is that you can't put ANY package outiside a maximum practical range. And this doesn't even take into acount the difficulty of HITTING a target (there is a reason that that there aren't conventional warheads on ICBMS - it is ()&)@# expensive to deliver a payload via ICBM, and hitting the right CITY is considered about right for accuracy).
So, to get back to the idea of nukes, Germany, WWII, and ICBMs.
'Yes' Germany could have made a 'nuclear payload' version of the V2 (strap 4 V2s together and away you go!)
'No' they couldn't have reached very far with it (they could have nuked the crap out of London, or put it on a train, driven it to the east front, and nuked Moscow - New York would be safe though)
'No' you couldn't have had a true ICBM in the timeline of WWII -it took the US another 12 YEARS to make an ICBM - and to do that, the ENTIRE SCIENTIFIC ESTABLISHMENT needed to advance for 12 years (not just the field of rocketry). We were working on it pretty damned hard at the time, too.
'No' you can't have half the 'boom' for half the payload - nukes are NOT conventional weapons - they are sort of a yes/no question. 12 Kg of fissionable material = A giant kaboom. 5 KG of fissionable material = no kaboom. Also, it really only takes like 10-30 KG of acutal fissionable material, the rest is all packaging, detonators, etc - so you need to haul that stuff along wether you are setting off a 'little' bomb or a big one.
Yes, effectively, if you 'double' the rocket (strap 2 V-2s together) you could carry the payload...the same distance as a regular V2s (you could probably do better if you got efficient with your packaging and saved a little weight - meh)
The issue is RANGE - not payload. Building a bigger rocket, as has been said, is easy. Building a rocket that can fly FARTHER is way, way harder. If you think about what a rocket REALLY has to carry, it is this:
The 'real' payload + the 'unburned fuel payload'
So if you wanted your 'super V2' to be able to fly 2x as far as the V2, you effectively need a rocket that can deliver an ENTIRE V2 to the '1st' halfway point. lets think about it in 2 stages. Stage 2 is a 'regular' V2 capable of flying a 980kg warhead to a range of 206 KM - stage 1 is a rocket capable of delivering itself + stage 2 to a range of 206km.
Here are your V2 specs: (stolen from a previous poster)
weight 12,500kg, warhead 980kg, fuel 8720kg, 206km max range. The missile isn't noted individually for its weight, just the combined weight, so, 12,500-980-8720=2800kg, just for the missile.
so your '2nd stage' weighs 12,000 KG - which is ~12 times the weight of the payload on the 'regular' V2.
And from what I talked about earlier, you can 'roughly' assume a linear increase in payload over the same distance for a straight scale up (if you tie 2 V2s together, you get 2x the payload - rocket scientists, I know it isn't that simple, but I'm painting with broad strokes here).
So, without improving the TECHNIQUE and EFFICIENCY of your rocket design, you need 12x the rocket to deliver the same 980Kg warhead to only double the distance. Or, you need a rocket that weighs ~
150,000Kg (or about 5% of the size of a Saturn V moon rocket . . .)
if you wanted to fly ANOTHER 206KM you would have to multiply by 12 AGAIN (since your 1st + 2nd stages now become the payload for the boost stage) - this would give you an all up weight of 1.8 million KG - giving you a rocket damned near the size of the largest rocket ever built to put a lousy 1000 KG bomb 600 KM away - you couldn't even fricking hit moscow with that. To do THAT - you would need to fly 1600 KM (which is 8x the ORIGINAL RANGE) so you would need to multiply the BASE WEIGHT of the rocket by 12^8 - or a factor of ~400 billion (making your 'rocket' something like 1/50th the size of mount everest. . . .)
Please note that there are alot of things left out of this explanation (like the true effects of accelartion, fuel consumption ETC - its only a simplification to give a general picture of WHY it works this way)
And there, in a nutshell is why it is almost all efforts to get 'more' range by making the rocket bigger don't work - the only practical way to increase RANGE is to improve your rocket's efficiency - the first us ICBM (Atlas) was capable of delivering a 1,363 kg payload almost 16,000 Km. If you notice they payload isn't much better than the V2 payload. ICMBs could do this because they could reach orbital/suborbital altitudes, and let ballistics, unhampered by wind resistance, do the 'work' of moving the payload so far.
Once you can get your projectile into space, you can effectively deliver it anywhere (with accurate guideance) so, once your efficiency is there (ratio of rocket to payload) you can probably put any size package you want, wherever you want it. The corallary is that until your efficiency goes up, is that you can't put ANY package outiside a maximum practical range. And this doesn't even take into acount the difficulty of HITTING a target (there is a reason that that there aren't conventional warheads on ICBMS - it is ()&)@# expensive to deliver a payload via ICBM, and hitting the right CITY is considered about right for accuracy).
So, to get back to the idea of nukes, Germany, WWII, and ICBMs.
'Yes' Germany could have made a 'nuclear payload' version of the V2 (strap 4 V2s together and away you go!)
'No' they couldn't have reached very far with it (they could have nuked the crap out of London, or put it on a train, driven it to the east front, and nuked Moscow - New York would be safe though)
'No' you couldn't have had a true ICBM in the timeline of WWII -it took the US another 12 YEARS to make an ICBM - and to do that, the ENTIRE SCIENTIFIC ESTABLISHMENT needed to advance for 12 years (not just the field of rocketry). We were working on it pretty damned hard at the time, too.
'No' you can't have half the 'boom' for half the payload - nukes are NOT conventional weapons - they are sort of a yes/no question. 12 Kg of fissionable material = A giant kaboom. 5 KG of fissionable material = no kaboom. Also, it really only takes like 10-30 KG of acutal fissionable material, the rest is all packaging, detonators, etc - so you need to haul that stuff along wether you are setting off a 'little' bomb or a big one.
No, you have the figures regarding money/resources and leadership....
Please refer to RAYMOND CARTIER, LA SECONDE GUERRE MONDIALE, LAROUSSE
The point is that the Manhattan project was expensive but affordable by USA as well as by the Axis.
Regarding the link please try this http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761563737_15/World_War_II.htm
Regarding the connection I'm talking about money/resources. I'm comparing the expenditures between the Axis and USA and I'm including the lend lease in this comparison.
Obviously, this because the Axis was not committed in that research but the scientists that worked on the Manhattan project believed that Germans were far ahead.
I agree with all this even if your simplification in the beginning to have 12 x V2s to double the range is a little flawed. Mostly because a mutli stage rocket got alot of other advantages because its much much easier (read requires less thrust/fuel) to keep a constant speed already attained then to accelerate. Another reason is that the second stage would start around V2s maximum altitude of 88km where air is so much thinner resistance is much lower.
Thus we should also note that its the V2s max vertical range thats 206km, Its parabolic range is 320km. Its horizontal range (if not needing to gain altitude at all, what we should be worring about when increasing range) is even longer.
Edit: Sorry if I turned this into a rocket thread
Cardus, do you have an online link source for that research halt order?
Also, I do not disagree with you about the potential...I think especially in HoI if you want to focus on something like rocketry or nuclear weapons, that should be allowed. I just think that the earliest a nation could get it, maxing out all their leadership and money into the project would be 1943-4...otherwise everyone will have nukes in a multiplayer game, or there will be some imbalance of some kind. It took the US four years of dedicated research and the use of great resources to make a bomb...so since that is our standard, from the 1939 discovery of fission as a baseline, 1943 would be the earliest...how does that sound?
Also, I do not disagree with you about the potential...I think especially in HoI if you want to focus on something like rocketry or nuclear weapons, that should be allowed. I just think that the earliest a nation could get it, maxing out all their leadership and money into the project would be 1943-4...otherwise everyone will have nukes in a multiplayer game, or there will be some imbalance of some kind. It took the US four years of dedicated research and the use of great resources to make a bomb...so since that is our standard, from the 1939 discovery of fission as a baseline, 1943 would be the earliest...how does that sound?