How much orbital traffic does Mesa have? (ToF TextEv)

Just routine. By now, two weeks later, Trimm had only a vague memory of having done an additional check on the Hali Sowle. That was in the records, of course. But she was no more likely to check old records for no reason—the volume of traffic in and out of Mesa was truly enormous—than she would be to start going to work with a hop, skip and a jump rather than taking the perfectly functional tube.

Among the other cybernetic systems which were damaged were those of Mesan customs. The damage was . . . odd, and seemingly quirky.
E.D. Trimm stared at the main screen in her operations center, unable to believe what she was seeing. All the many ships were still shown. They could still track any of them, whether approaching or leaving or in orbit. Presumably, if they scrambled furiously, they could open up manual lines of communications if any of the ships was in danger of colliding with another.
But the rest of the information was lost. Gone. Vanished.
"Which ship is which?" she half-wailed.
"I can still figure out tonnages," said Gansükh Blomqvist. "I . . . think."
"Oh, wonderful. My day is complete."
...
"There goes another one, E.D. What do you want me to do?"
Helplessly, Trimm stared at the screen. Yet another ship was leaving orbit. That was hardly unusual, in and of itself, given the traffic that came in and out of the Mesan system. But there were now at least twice as many ships leaving as there normally would have been.
Whatever had happened down on the surface of the planet to have caused this chaos, it had obviously spooked a lot of ship captains.
She still had no idea which ship was which. But—for once—that jackass Blomqvist had proved to be useful. His jury-rigged system for gauging ship tonnages seemed to be working pretty well. So at least E.D. could separate the big boys from the flotsam and jetsam.
"What's their mass?"
He studied the screen for a few seconds. "I make it about a million tons. Give or take a quarter of a million, you understand."
Trimm waved her hand. "Doesn't matter. It's a small fry. No point in worrying about it with everything else on our plate. I'm not sending out what few pinnaces we have available to check anything smaller than four million tons."

GregD wrote:Torch of Freedom, Chapter 45, 3rd paragraph:

Just routine. By now, two weeks later, Trimm had only a vague memory of having done an additional check on the Hali Sowle. That was in the records, of course. But she was no more likely to check old records for no reason—the volume of traffic in and out of Mesa was truly enormous—than she would be to start going to work with a hop, skip and a jump rather than taking the perfectly functional tube.

GregD wrote:Torch of Freedom, Chapter 45, 3rd paragraph:

Just routine. By now, two weeks later, Trimm had only a vague memory of having done an additional check on the Hali Sowle. That was in the records, of course. But she was no more likely to check old records for no reason—the volume of traffic in and out of Mesa was truly enormous—than she would be to start going to work with a hop, skip and a jump rather than taking the perfectly functional tube.

Weird Harold wrote:How many of the ships in Mesa orbit are couriers, yachts, in-system taxis, and other "irrelevant" types? Traffic control would need to track all of them. With the loss of transponder info, all of the "irrelevants" become the same as the 4 MTon and bigger monsters.

Actually, no spaceship is irrelevant, but there's not really info on the nature of the traffic in and out of the system are. CoG lets us know that the arrival of a private Yacht is no big deal for Mesa Traffic Control, even if it just sits around for a few months.

Given the number of transstellars on Mesa's governing board, I'd expect a lot of small traffic like couriers and yachts. Not to mention the MAlign's traffic requirements to manage all of their nefarious plots.

Vince wrote:Torch of Freedom, Chapter 45, 3rd paragraph:

Just routine. By now, two weeks later, Trimm had only a vague memory of having done an additional check on the Hali Sowle. That was in the records, of course. But she was no more likely to check old records for no reason—the volume of traffic in and out of Mesa was truly enormous—than she would be to start going to work with a hop, skip and a jump rather than taking the perfectly functional tube.

Weird Harold wrote:How many of the ships in Mesa orbit are couriers, yachts, in-system taxis, and other "irrelevant" types? Traffic control would need to track all of them. With the loss of transponder info, all of the "irrelevants" become the same as the 4 MTon and bigger monsters.

GregD wrote:Actually, no spaceship is irrelevant, but there's not really info on the nature of the traffic in and out of the system are. CoG lets us know that the arrival of a private Yacht is no big deal for Mesa Traffic Control, even if it just sits around for a few months.

Given the number of transstellars on Mesa's governing board, I'd expect a lot of small traffic like couriers and yachts. Not to mention the MAlign's traffic requirements to manage all of their nefarious plots.

Pus all the Solarian League news dispatch boats that were there to cover the 'Ballroom attacks on Mesa' and Mesa's response to it (the massive attacks on the seccie's).

ldwechsler wrote:...

Weird Harold wrote:

ldwechsler wrote:...

Would you please learn to parse quotes without screwing up the attributions?

GregD wrote:Thank you, all of you, for making my point.

Because private yachts are going to have good scanners, and are likely to have people who actually pay attention to them.

When Manticore and Haven went back to war with each other, I hated that plot line, and searched hard for holes in it.

In this case, I neither love nor hate the plot line. It's just that it makes no sense to me, at all.

By everything I've read in the "Crown of Slaves" series, there were > 10 ships above Mesa that would have seen any missiles fired at the surface. Mesa is a planet that has recently suffered a large number of "indigenous" explosions.

I simply can not wrap my head around how any even remotely rational human being could go from "there were multiple non-GA ships that would have seen anything fired down at the planet. No one saw anything" to "Guess it must be the GA's fault."

So I'm wondering if the issue is that ToF & CoG gave Mesa much more orbital traffic than RFC wanted it to have.

"Tramp freighters" might be sloppy about communications & sensor checks. The crews on expensive private yachts are not going to be nearly so lackadaisical.

JohnRoth wrote:

GregD wrote:Thank you, all of you, for making my point.

Because private yachts are going to have good scanners, and are likely to have people who actually pay attention to them.

When Manticore and Haven went back to war with each other, I hated that plot line, and searched hard for holes in it.

In this case, I neither love nor hate the plot line. It's just that it makes no sense to me, at all.

By everything I've read in the "Crown of Slaves" series, there were > 10 ships above Mesa that would have seen any missiles fired at the surface. Mesa is a planet that has recently suffered a large number of "indigenous" explosions.

I simply can not wrap my head around how any even remotely rational human being could go from "there were multiple non-GA ships that would have seen anything fired down at the planet. No one saw anything" to "Guess it must be the GA's fault."

So I'm wondering if the issue is that ToF & CoG gave Mesa much more orbital traffic than RFC wanted it to have.

"Tramp freighters" might be sloppy about communications & sensor checks. The crews on expensive private yachts are not going to be nearly so lackadaisical.

I thoroughly agree - RFC needs the MAlign be successful in ducking down the rabbit hole and pulling it in after them as far as the rest of the galaxy is concerned - otherwise there is no plot hook for Honorverse - The Next Generation!

This, however, makes no more sense than any other Deus Ex Machina - except that the God Machine made total sense in its proper environment. Those were religious plays, and the playwright would have been lynched if the god hadn't shown up at the end.

GregD wrote:Torch of Freedom, Chapter 45, 3rd paragraph:

Just routine. By now, two weeks later, Trimm had only a vague memory of having done an additional check on the Hali Sowle. That was in the records, of course. But she was no more likely to check old records for no reason—the volume of traffic in and out of Mesa was truly enormous—than she would be to start going to work with a hop, skip and a jump rather than taking the perfectly functional tube.

This was for a ship in planetary obit, nowhere near the Terminus.

Torch of Freedom, Chapter 54:

Among the other cybernetic systems which were damaged were those of Mesan customs. The damage was . . . odd, and seemingly quirky.
E.D. Trimm stared at the main screen in her operations center, unable to believe what she was seeing. All the many ships were still shown. They could still track any of them, whether approaching or leaving or in orbit. Presumably, if they scrambled furiously, they could open up manual lines of communications if any of the ships was in danger of colliding with another.
But the rest of the information was lost. Gone. Vanished.
"Which ship is which?" she half-wailed.
"I can still figure out tonnages," said Gansükh Blomqvist. "I . . . think."
"Oh, wonderful. My day is complete."
...
"There goes another one, E.D. What do you want me to do?"
Helplessly, Trimm stared at the screen. Yet another ship was leaving orbit. That was hardly unusual, in and of itself, given the traffic that came in and out of the Mesan system. But there were now at least twice as many ships leaving as there normally would have been.
Whatever had happened down on the surface of the planet to have caused this chaos, it had obviously spooked a lot of ship captains.
She still had no idea which ship was which. But—for once—that jackass Blomqvist had proved to be useful. His jury-rigged system for gauging ship tonnages seemed to be working pretty well. So at least E.D. could separate the big boys from the flotsam and jetsam.
"What's their mass?"
He studied the screen for a few seconds. "I make it about a million tons. Give or take a quarter of a million, you understand."
Trimm waved her hand. "Doesn't matter. It's a small fry. No point in worrying about it with everything else on our plate. I'm not sending out what few pinnaces we have available to check anything smaller than four million tons."

So they have 3+ pinnaces, and they're saving them for questionable 4 million ton + freighters. Which means they have to have at least 3, and almost assuredly more, 4 million ton + freighters in the vicinity.

That makes me think they probably have a dozen+ 1 million ton or less freighters in orbit at the start of the fun.

Unless the GA deliberately kicks those ships out, they're not going to want to leave without cargo. Which is why I assume there's multiple non-GA ships sitting in orbit when the final MAlign bombs go off. None of whom will have seen any missiles fired.