How much Technology was Stolen

As an addendum to my last post would those SLN ships have had the radiation shielding up as well as full particle shields? If they were then even less damage if any would have resulted. That PRN task force had only "standard, station-keeping particle screens" up.

Not that it would matter to anybody but us and an unneeded detail for the story. But I am curious and falling down the rabbit hole of "what ifs".

Enjoy,
T2M

PS Must be getting near road trip time.

Hmm...

Keep in mind that those fusion reactors have variable power levels, so there is undoubtedly an operational level, a combat level, and a station keeping level (equivalent to how in WWII a docked ship only had one boiler lit off, with the steam load being switched regularly to even out the load). Chattejee's ships were station keeping, so odds are they were at those lower level settings. More than enough to destroy the ships utterly, but not at the high level the reactors were capable of which might damage a planet from orbit. After all, why burn bunkerage to have power standing by for compensators, nodes, and other things that aren't online? The reactors could be brought up to combat power far quicker than the wedge can be brought up (increase the hydrogen flow and the constrictor field, and you have all the power you need).

It's almost a certainty that the fusion bottles failed; 17 targeting 3, complete surprise, and the 3 =not= having wedges up, meaning the unarmored top and bottom aspects were utterly naked to incoming fire. Maybe some tiny fragments survived to be scattered. But Manticoran hardware is useless without its software. And the star empire apparently has the best security protocols out there.

Byng was being an idiot; he used a sledgehammer to try and make an omelet, with predictable results. He was chosen for thinking with his little head first, remember....

I think the most important aspect is not whether a fusion explosion destroyed parts.

It's that Manticoran technology is not like ours, as mentioned briefly above. There are no circuitry resembling ours. It's all programmable. And the Manticoran safeguards wipe it.

When the ship started to blow up, unless all the safeguards went pzzt, all that is recoverable is big mounds of formatted (and likely severely damaged!) circuitry with no sign of what it was for. Add to that the destruction that'd be there, and I don't think the exploded bits would give much information on their own - if any. If the Manticorans had a secret alloy or something maybe, but they don't as far as we know, it's all engineering and programming.

Garth 2 wrote:I don't think anything of value would have survived the explosion.

Doesn't mean that the SLNI (assuming some had any authority/brains to do so) or one of the SDF intelligence agencies hasn't managed to partial penetrate Manticore or one of the Manticore Alliance partners and acquire some specs.

We know by about IEHs, that some SDFs were starting to experiment with gravity pulse technology.

The only Alliance members with full specs were the Graysons and putting someone inside a culture like Grayson's is going to be really hard. Erewhon had first or second gen FTL, I think they got early gen compensators, no Beta Squared nodes, No fission plants, no LAC tech, sidewall bucklers or the newer laserhead tech. The tech that Erewhon had might sneak its way into Sollie hands but that avenue is working to supply Maya and aren't going to let the cat out of the bag any time soon on that front.

The most likely leaks would be either the Andies or Haven and Haven doesn't have much yet.

I think that it is very likely that the power levels of the fusion reactors were extremely low which would limit the damage. On other threads Ihave used Weber's description of Honor Harrington's ambush at Cerbus to calculate the fuel fraction and hence power consumption of Honorverse ships. The Rolland class DDs would have somewhere on the order of 20,000 tons of fusion fuel which they would consume in a few months.

Let us call it 20eex6 Kg consumed over 1eex7 seconds or 2 Kg per second.

This works out to about 1eex15 Watts, normal operating power.

What would the power level be when the impellar nodes, sidewalls and other systems are off line?

Call it 1eex9 Watts (equivalent to a modern nuke plant that can power a city.)

So stand by power is only one millionth of normal operating power.

Given the fact that the fusion reaction rate in the plasma is proportional to plasma density squared, plasma density and hence the latent energy of the reactor plasma is one thousandth of normal.

The reactor would fizzle, melting the ship but would not do crap to Bing's ships.

Dale B wrote:Hmm...

Keep in mind that those fusion reactors have variable power levels, so there is undoubtedly an operational level, a combat level, and a station keeping level (equivalent to how in WWII a docked ship only had one boiler lit off, with the steam load being switched regularly to even out the load). Chattejee's ships were station keeping, so odds are they were at those lower level settings. More than enough to destroy the ships utterly, but not at the high level the reactors were capable of which might damage a planet from orbit. After all, why burn bunkerage to have power standing by for compensators, nodes, and other things that aren't online? The reactors could be brought up to combat power far quicker than the wedge can be brought up (increase the hydrogen flow and the constrictor field, and you have all the power you need).

It's almost a certainty that the fusion bottles failed; 17 targeting 3, complete surprise, and the 3 =not= having wedges up, meaning the unarmored top and bottom aspects were utterly naked to incoming fire. Maybe some tiny fragments survived to be scattered. But Manticoran hardware is useless without its software. And the star empire apparently has the best security protocols out there.

Byng was being an idiot; he used a sledgehammer to try and make an omelet, with predictable results. He was chosen for thinking with his little head first, remember....

BrightSoul wrote:
The only Alliance members with full specs were the Graysons and putting someone inside a culture like Grayson's is going to be really hard. Erewhon had first or second gen FTL, I think they got early gen compensators, no Beta Squared nodes, No fission plants, no LAC tech, sidewall bucklers or the newer laserhead tech. The tech that Erewhon had might sneak its way into Sollie hands but that avenue is working to supply Maya and aren't going to let the cat out of the bag any time soon on that front.

The most likely leaks would be either the Andies or Haven and Haven doesn't have much yet.

If there´s a leak of Erewhonese tech, it´s highly unlikely to come from any Erewhonese people. Their societal norms works heavily towards secrecy as long as people are dealing fairly with them.

And they got an extra little noseburn from their not quite switching sides that is likely going to keep them extra cautious for a long time.

If the Andies were truly neutral, then they would be very likely yes, but with them being unofficially part of the merry grand alliance, and rather pissed off at the Malign plotting against them, they´re unlikely to do anything to risk the GA.
And they seem to have even better overall security than Manticore.

And with Haven probably only dealing with modern stuff at Bolthole, well they kept the place from even being found for a lot of years, unlikely to change now.

Hi KZT,

Where is the reference, please?

Usually when numbers pop up I footnote the heck out of them, but this figure of 25,000 gigatons is quite a surprise.

Even a gigaton seems far too much.

Thanks for any data,

L

kzt wrote:

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.

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.

The BC that lost .5 meters of hull armor at 600 km range in EoH .

kzt wrote:The BC that lost .5 meters of hull armor at 600 km range in EoH .

If Weber had done the math, he might not have described the explosion as so damaging to surrounding ships?

namelessfly wrote:

kzt wrote:The BC that lost .5 meters of hull armor at 600 km range in EoH .

If Weber had done the math, he might not have described the explosion as so damaging to surrounding ships?

Or alternatively had them in closer parking orbits. (Since he presumably had good plot reasons for that level of damage)