A new idea for sandcasters...

Yes, I'm normally the first person shutting down the use of Sandcasters in the Honorverse in 1920pd...

But...

What if ships attempting to invade a system using a wormhole use Sandcasters to defend themselves as they sail through the emergence lane. Enough "sand" would block defender's sensors and protect the Invaders from laser and graser fire, and the invader ships couldn't accelerate away from the cloud, nor would the wedge suck it up.

Thoughts???

Theemile wrote:Yes, I'm normally the first person shutting down the use of Sandcasters in the Honorverse in 1920pd...

But...

What if ships attempting to invade a system using a wormhole use Sandcasters to defend themselves as they sail through the emergence lane. Enough "sand" would block defender's sensors and protect the Invaders from laser and graser fire, and the invader ships couldn't accelerate away from the cloud, nor would the wedge suck it up.

Thoughts???

Totally unnecessarily and counterproductive. Might be useful fir assaulting a WH, though.

Theemile wrote:Yes, I'm normally the first person shutting down the use of Sandcasters in the Honorverse in 1920pd...

But...

What if ships attempting to invade a system using a wormhole use Sandcasters to defend themselves as they sail through the emergence lane. Enough "sand" would block defender's sensors and protect the Invaders from laser and graser fire, and the invader ships couldn't accelerate away from the cloud, nor would the wedge suck it up.

Thoughts???

You can't use the Sandcaster until you have finished the transit of the wormhole, by which time it is too late. A bubble sidewall (I believe that Weber has at least implied that they can be used with sails) would be much better. I don't know if anybody (other than possibly the Solarian League) would try to build squadrons of superdreadnought- sized wormhole assault ships.

Weird Harold wrote:

Theemile wrote:Yes, I'm normally the first person shutting down the use of Sandcasters in the Honorverse in 1920pd...

But...

What if ships attempting to invade a system using a wormhole use Sandcasters to defend themselves as they sail through the emergence lane. Enough "sand" would block defender's sensors and protect the Invaders from laser and graser fire, and the invader ships couldn't accelerate away from the cloud, nor would the wedge suck it up.

Thoughts???

Totally unnecessarily and counterproductive. Might be useful fir assaulting a WH, though.

That was my point, using them as a defense during a wormhole assault by the attacker during the glide into the system in the emergence lane, a time when they cannot use wedges,nor sidewalls, and cannot accelerate. Otherwise Sandcasters do not make sense in the Honorverse.

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:

Theemile wrote:Yes, I'm normally the first person shutting down the use of Sandcasters in the Honorverse in 1920pd...

But...

What if ships attempting to invade a system using a wormhole use Sandcasters to defend themselves as they sail through the emergence lane. Enough "sand" would block defender's sensors and protect the Invaders from laser and graser fire, and the invader ships couldn't accelerate away from the cloud, nor would the wedge suck it up.

Thoughts???

You can't use the Sandcaster until you have finished the transit of the wormhole, by which time it is too late. A bubble sidewall (I believe that Weber has at least implied that they can be used with sails) would be much better. I don't know if anybody (other than possibly the Solarian League) would try to build squadrons of superdreadnought- sized wormhole assault ships.

No sidewalls cannot be used in the emergence lane. Bubble sidewalls can be used in Hyperspace with sails, but not in wormholes

Yes you would have the initial seconds without coverage, but the emergence lane of the SKM wormhole is over 5 minutes long.... The grasers on the forts 2 light seconds back from the wormhole are not going to fire until the IFF systems are certain you are an enemy, that's at least 8 seconds you can pump out sand before the grasers will start to fire.

(Assuming no processing lag, 2 seconds for your sig to be seen by the fort, 2 seconds for the IFF signal to hit you, 2 seconds for your IFF to return to the station, 2 seconds for the Graser to hit you. So a minimum of 8 seconds in the IFF chain. Since no one wants to smear a merchie, it's probably actually somewhere closer to 15 seconds, even if there is an FTL component involved.)

Theemile wrote:[That was my point, using them as a defense during a wormhole assault by the attacker during the glide into the system in the emergence lane, a time when they cannot use wedges,nor sidewalls, and cannot accelerate. Otherwise Sandcasters do not make sense in the Honorverse.

I suppose that sending a sacrificial 'sandblaster' ahead of the first real assault-ship would work. It might even survive.

I don't think sand has the density to affect laser/graser fire at the ranges Manticore's "new" graser platforms are going to be. Those kind of grasers can shatter small moons, you'd need a truly enormous amount of sand to make this work - far more than can be brought through a wormhole's maximum mass ceiling.

(Assuming no processing lag, 2 seconds for your sig to be seen by the fort, 2 seconds for the IFF signal to hit you, 2 seconds for your IFF to return to the station, 2 seconds for the Graser to hit you. So a minimum of 8 seconds in the IFF chain. Since no one wants to smear a merchie, it's probably actually somewhere closer to 15 seconds, even if there is an FTL component involved.)

The fort saw you emerge and start throwing sand. It knows where your ship was at that time. It knows your exit speed is no higher than 15-20g of accel for several minutes. Sails are still on gravitic sensors, bracketing your location and signalling any movement changes.

A well-designed Q-ship could quietly wait out its exit from the wormhole and then explode into action, but doing anything unusual prior to that only draws attention and triggers alarms.

munroburton wrote:I don't think sand has the density to affect laser/graser fire at the ranges Manticore's "new" graser platforms are going to be. Those kind of grasers can shatter small moons, you'd need a truly enormous amount of sand to make this work - far more than can be brought through a wormhole's maximum mass ceiling.

(Assuming no processing lag, 2 seconds for your sig to be seen by the fort, 2 seconds for the IFF signal to hit you, 2 seconds for your IFF to return to the station, 2 seconds for the Graser to hit you. So a minimum of 8 seconds in the IFF chain. Since no one wants to smear a merchie, it's probably actually somewhere closer to 15 seconds, even if there is an FTL component involved.)

The fort saw you emerge and start throwing sand. It knows where your ship was at that time. It knows your exit speed is no higher than 15-20g of accel for several minutes. Sails are still on gravitic sensors, bracketing your location and signalling any movement changes.

A well-designed Q-ship could quietly wait out its exit from the wormhole and then explode into action, but doing anything unusual prior to that only draws attention and triggers alarms.

We know there is nothing you can do to change your vector in the emergence lane, so they are going to have you localized no matter what.

So, the only question is can you put out enough "Sand" to reflect or absorb the grasers. As you point out, with the power of the grasers involved, all a sand caster might be is a way to allow your enemies to sandblast your hull with superheated silica plasma.

Given that anything in the ingress/egress lane is in a grav wave and will be ground into molecular scale dust if not protected by a sail, how does this even work?

kzt wrote:Given that anything in the ingress/egress lane is in a grav wave and will be ground into molecular scale dust if not protected by a sail, how does this even work?

Krud - I forgot you need sails throughout the emergence lane.

Curses, KZT! - you foiled my plans again.

But wait... I want dust - lots and lots of dust. The more dust the better. Unfortunately, that means I can't tune the particles to the beam wavelength, but there will be lots of media to interfere with beam coherency.

But, being a grav wave, will there be a grav current to pull the sand in a particuliar direction (i.e. away form protecting the invading ship)? And as mentioned above - will there be enough to absorb/ deflect the graser without becoming the universe's biggest sandblaster?