How much Technology was Stolen

Crown Loyalist wrote:Probably the closest example we have in the series of the kind of firepower that each DD suffered is the destruction of PNS Rapier at Cerberus. She was struck down the throat by the graser fire of four battlecruisers, four heavy cruisers, and two light cruisers. Her fusion bottle let go, and the resulting explosions "consumed [the splintered fragments of her hull] in the instant that they consumed them along with her entire crew."

There was nothing at all left of PNS Rapier.

Now, PNS Rapier was caught without sidewalls because she had her T crossed, but Rapier was a heavy cruiser and was struck down the throat, which if you're going to be hit without sidewalls is at least the part of the hull with the most armor. She also was a heavy cruiser, with heavy cruiser armoring.

The Rolands were struck by more graser fire each than Rapier was. They were smaller targets, they were unarmored, and they're much, much more fragile than a Sword-class Heavy Cruiser. There's a reasonably good chance that the battlecruisers had shots at the completely vulnerable tops and bottoms of Chatterjee's ships, because none of them had their wedges up. And, on top of all that, the range was much shorter than it was at Cerberus.

There was nothing left of Chatterjee's ships.

Potato wrote:Byng did not have a single solitary clue about what he was facing when Tenth Fleet showed up to kick his butt. That alone is proof that he did not recover anything regarding Manticore's tech.

Furthermore, the other posters are dead on when they say that no ships had left New Tuscany, so there is no way that the information could have even left the system to make its way to the SLN. Tenth Fleet made sure to scrub all of Byng's surviving ships clean, so there is nothing for the SLN to build on. This is all quite clearly laid out in the text.

HB of CJ wrote:Assume is a dangerous word. Lots of us here are just ASSUMING because of many different reasons, but could some of it just be because assuming makes one feel good because it rubs your funny bone correctly?

Never assume. If a solution, opinion or decision makes you feel "good" or seems "logical", then it is probably wrong. There is always wreckage. There is always the potential for human survivors. To assume otherwise is very dangerous indeed.

Yeah, all of this is imaginary. A very very good book series that lets us relax and have fun. Not to be taken too seriously. All I am saying is that we may find out later in future books....

.... that the Sollies did in fact recover all sorts of neat things. Small bits, tiny bits, some large bits. How about some intact blasted off closed up compartments with human survivors? Something always survives.

My read only. I love this forum. HB of CJ (old coot) The Sollies may have gotten it all. It will take some time to figure it all out and then reverse engineer, but not that much time. Yikes!! The sleeping giant!

wastedfly wrote:For all we know, said fusion plants, even at Stand by power levels are equivalent of 1 Gton bombs. That would vaporize the entire ship. Of course that is what the books says, so... I will go with finely vaporized ship.

kzt wrote:No, the books show that a single failed fusion reactor is roughly equivalent to a 25,000 gigaton weapon. Which I think would have had some seriously adverse effects on the SLN squadrons, not to mention setting afire the entire hemisphere of the planet facing.

So I think we can safely say that no reactors blew up.

thinkstoomuch wrote:Not going into the real world physics or anything but a PRN BC at Hades survived its consort Attilla's reactor explosion blowing up at 600 km range. Though a CA closer did not. And the commander thought if more than one reactor went off then it probably would not. EoH end of Chap 46 for all the details that we have.

smr wrote:When the 3 destroyers were destroyed in the Talbot sector at New Tuscany, how much technology survived on the destroyed destroyers.

Did they take some of Mark 16 missles?

Did any of the ghost rider platforms survive?

Did any of the ship's impellar rooms survive?

Did any of the main computers survive?

kzt wrote:The BC that survived had a half-meter of armor vaporized (which is how you can determine the effective yield). That's an enormous impulsive shock imparted to the ship, so I'd bet it wouldn't have been marked as fully mission capable on the next inspection.

A lot less impulsive shock than that would tend to break lots of important things on a ship, not the least of which is the crew.


Plus I wasn't joking about setting the entire hemisphere afire, I've seen calculations that you could use a single 100MT bomb at high elevation to ignite the entire US eastern seaboard on a clear day in the fall (when you have lots of dry leaves). So I'd tend to argue that you didn't get a fusion reactor blowing up, as the global firestorm probably would have been mentioned in the planets complaints to the SLN...