?

penny wrote:* Is the reason the GA didn't send a peaceful and respectful mission to Galton first because they were afraid that Galton would do to their disrespectful messengers what King Leonidas did to the disrespectful messenger sent by the Persians?

No, though Galton might do that too. The issue was the tactical loss of surprise.

In any case, war had been declared on the Mesan Alignment and this system was part of the Alignment by its own admission. Ergo, it was a legitimate enemy. Honor asking for its surrender was perfectly legal.

penny wrote:Huh? Pulling creates resistance. Ever participated in a tug of war?

I fail to see how that passage changes anything.

tlb wrote:Where exactly is this resistance? It is not in the Alpha wall, because by the author's words the tractor beam will "lock onto the wall". It is not in the ship or missile, which is just floating in space (you write as though it was sitting on sand paper). The only resistance is inertial, which is NOT friction. Your are basing your argument on a bad analogy. A "tug of war" is another bad analogy.

penny wrote:Tlb says there is no resistance then he goes on to say that the only resistance is inertial.

You keep saying there is friction (or perhaps resistance). The only resistance that I can see is inertia. So I simply asked where this friction resides (the resistance that you previously wanted to talk about).

You seem to be claiming that friction against the Alpha wall (with attendant heating) will help the spider drive stop faster; but the author says the beams were "reaching out, locking onto the alpha wall and pulling in micro-spaced bursts", so no friction there.

Why do you talk about a mechanical breakdown as though it were indication of friction at the Alpha wall? We get that the tractor beams are strong enough to break objects that we create. But they are not as strong as a sail or a wedge which can create ripples on the wall and no one talks about friction with them.

PS: Honor's fleet at Galton was not a peace mission, the Malign had done too much; it was a "reconnaissance in force". She did give them a chance to explain and they admitted everything.

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penny wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:(You'd then, presumably, need to quickly release and grab a new point closer to you and repeat the process -- each grab from each drive projector implying a brief force that collectively works to cancel out your base velocity)

Yes! The truth is in your own words. You need to grab a point closer to you. What's even better is to grab the point closest to you. Which would be the same for a spider-drive as it is for a train. The point on the rails of a train which are the closest is where the train actually sits.

Very late edit: To be clear, each tractor is reaching out and grabbing the wall closest to it. Therefore, there are as many overpowered Brembo brakes as there are tractors.

But all the tractor-like beam constantly reaching and grabbing, pulling, and releasing in microbursts is exactly how the spider drive works to acceleration the ship -- so why should this same action pull harder when applying acceleration in the opposite direction (e.g. showing down)?

The spider node emitters are going going to be rated for so much pulling power. Their attachment to the ship structure is only going to be designed to be so strong -- making it capable of transmitting far more power than usual would have significant trade-offs. And the crew still can only survive so many gs -- so there's not much engineering point in building a drive with pulling power (or stopping power if those are different) and anchor points capable of applying far more force than the crew can take.

Also, it's not clear how much the spider node emitters -- which I'd assume need to be very solidly attached to the ship, to pull it along at up to ~300g in it's limited duration emergency power settings - are build with a wide arc they can aim at. The ones built into the MAlign's various spider ships may not be able to grab beside or behind the ship; since accelerating it seems to only require them to grab somewhat ahead of it. So we don't know whether it's range of motion could even allow it to grab the closest point (which would be beside the ship) and, like a wedge or rocket powered ship might have to flip over to slow down




So we might have a situation where, in theory, it might have more power slowing down but, in real-world practice, the limits or its engineering and physiological limits of its crew means i doesn't. (Kind of like, in theory, a wedge could accelerate instantly to lightspeed; but, in practice, things propelled by it very very much can't

ThinksMarkedly wrote:It would have eventually been found. You can't hide your entire civilisation in the EM bands, so a nearby neighbour with sufficient spare capital to invest in astronomy would notice you eventually once light from your system propagated there. David has not used this argument and I actually doubt he will, but I also doubt he'll fail it.

Do note that Galton is about 200 light-years away from Mannerheim and was founded just over 200 T-years ago. Those two numbers being close is not a coincidence: the colony couldn't have been much closer. I'm guessing Darius has no developed neighbours within 150 light-years either. Plus, Darius hasn't had much of a space industry for 150 of its 180 years of existence, so no one closer than about 20 light-years would have anything to note in the first place.

In fact, discovering Darius may be one of the things he's having add backstory for, because as we've discussed, there's no way the GA can find it unless the information comes from Darius itself (fifth column leaking information out, etc.)

Maybe it's hidden by stellar dust, like Calvin/Bolthole, thus no EM signatures of civilization may escape.

tlb wrote:Obviously Darius has to be found and revealed to be evil at some point. It seems logical that Galton would have to be revealed as a whipping boy as part of that process. I am just not ready to say that Galton's secondary status is glaringly apparent from what we currently know (even though there should have been myriads of Cataphracts waiting for Honor's fleet, not just the ones shot after the surrender).

I just remembered that in his first Interview for the "Honorverse Today" podcast, RFC himself hinted that Audrey O'Hanrahan might play a role in the Discovery of Darius.

She doesn't know where Darius is, but she knows that it exists, and still has contact persons or communication channels which could be traced back.

So seeded with enough doubts by Zilwicki & friends whether Galton or Darius are responsible for things like the bombs on Mesa and Beowulf space stations, she might give them the lead.