Expended missiles

Why is it that people think killing a few billion people is something trivial? That there won't be extremely serious repercussions? Every time the Edict comes up, there's always a sizable minority who thinks it's perfectly acceptable to go ahead and more or less utterly destroy a planet. The persistence of this belief makes me think that said minority doesn't understand how the universe as written works.

wastedfly wrote:

Mobryan wrote:
Should be substantially less then that, since the velocity will be dropping constantly. OTOH, that same frictional loss means less damage if/when the missile finally covers the distance.

Matt

"Velocity dropping constantly."

Uh hem... It is a vacuum...

As my calculations demonstrate, at one atom per cc, the vacuum of space is not quite vacuum.

However; while the Kinetic energy of impact with 5 grams of hydrogen atoms over a 100 LY interstellar journey is equivalent to 25 kilotons which will vaporize the missile, it will not significant affect the kinetic energy or momentum of the missile. The result will be an expanding cloud of particularly massive and energetic atomic nuclei which will either be diverted by the stellar wind or planetary magnetic fields or absorbed by the atmosphere.

Question to ponder?

Are all cosmic rays the debris from battles between aliens who use ships and missiles that travel at a high fraction of Cee?

Does this explain why we have never contacted them?

Have all the aliens exterminated themselves or each other?

Should we perhaps quiet our radio emissions or even crawl back into our caves so that the aliens will not notice us?

Duckk wrote:Why is it that people think killing a few billion people is something trivial? That there won't be extremely serious repercussions? Every time the Edict comes up, there's always a sizable minority who thinks it's perfectly acceptable to go ahead and more or less utterly destroy a planet. The persistence of this belief makes me think that said minority doesn't understand how the universe as written works.

First off, the EE is not relevant unless someone is willing and able to enforce it.

Weber has provided repeated examples of situations where the EE was not enforced.

A classic example were the early Masada vs Grayson wars where the Masadans did launch nukes and kinetic strikes on Grayson. Manticore effectively enforced the EE many decades later only after Honor Harington defeated THUNDER OF GOD. It is possible that the SL did nothing because they simply had not heard about those battles. Ditto for the RMN. However; the fact that the RMN's enforcement of the EE did not win them a propaganda victory in the SL undermines the SL's moral authority.

The SL's legalistic rationalization that the massive civilian casualties that resulted from the
Oyster Bay attacks were not EE violations because they were neither intentional, wanton or targeted at the space station undermines the validity of the EE. I am certain that systems such as Yilden who are space based because they have no planet are not protected by the EE are delighted to learn that the SL has declared open season on them. This might explain their hostility.

The SL's eagerness to exploit the Oyster Bay attacks by sending Fillarta with 400+ SDs to attack
Manticore certainly demonstrates a callous disregard to the principle that genocidal attacks are forbidden.

The seemingly routine use of KE strikes by the OFS and SLN at Mobius certainly suggests that the SL's high sounding rhetoric about the EE notwithstanding, the SLN is THE major violator of the EE.

Since the EE is the one thing that the SL members claim to agree on, the fact that the SLN has been busy violating rather than enforcing the EE is going to seriously undermine SL morale.

It is sort of like how the recent incident where a Clackamas County Oregon Sheriff's deputy walked into a crowded bar to fatally shoot his wife and two other women before committing suicide with his service weapon undermines that law enforcement agency's credibility.

Now that Adm Crandal and Adm Fillarta have had their butts kicked, the SLN no longer has the aura of invincibility that would make them a credible guarantor of the EE.

It is open season on planets until the GA establishes itself as the new enforcer of a no doubt revised EE that does not have so many loopholes.

First off, the EE is not relevant unless someone is willing and able to enforce it.

Weber has provided repeated examples of situations where the EE was not enforced.

A classic example were the early Masada vs Grayson wars where the Masadans did launch nukes and kinetic strikes on Grayson. Manticore effectively enforced the EE many decades later only after Honor Harington defeated THUNDER OF GOD. It is possible that the SL did nothing because they simply had not heard about those battles. Ditto for the RMN. However; the fact that the RMN's enforcement of the EE did not win them a propaganda victory in the SL undermines the SL's moral authority.

Which is exactly what happened. No one knew about the Edict violation until well after the fact. The Graysons chose to leave Masada alone when they were in a position to neuter them, so any failure to follow up on it is on them.

The SL's legalistic rationalization that the massive civilian casualties that resulted from the
Oyster Bay attacks were not EE violations because they were neither intentional, wanton or targeted at the space station undermines the validity of the EE. I am certain that systems such as Yilden who are space based because they have no planet are not protected by the EE are delighted to learn that the SL has declared open season on them. This might explain their hostility.

The SL's eagerness to exploit the Oyster Bay attacks by sending Fillarta with 400+ SDs to attack
Manticore certainly demonstrates a callous disregard to the principle that genocidal attacks are forbidden.

Completely irrelevant. As David has pointed out in past infodumps, Manticore doesn't consider Oyster Bay an Edict violation either. They're pissed off about the sneak attack, but no one thinks it violates any of the provisions of the Edict either. You're allowed to destroy military facilities, and if civilians get caught in the crossfire because they were put there, that's on the defenders, not the attackers.

The seemingly routine use of KE strikes by the OFS and SLN at Mobius certainly suggests that the SL's high sounding rhetoric about the EE notwithstanding, the SLN is THE major violator of the EE.

First of all, as described in multiple places, you're allowed to do things to your own system if in response to armed rebellion. See the Leveler Uprising. So the SLN has some legal cover there.

Second of all, even if you reject that interpretation, that gets right back to the whole point I am making: there are serious repercussions for violating the rules and laws of war. You can bet the RMN is going to use the events at Mobius to help their overall strategy.

Actions have consequences. Skimper's notion of just lobbing missiles willy nilly at planets completely ignores the very predictable consequences, which is exactly why people don't attack planets with shipboard weapons.

Since the EE is the one thing that the SL members claim to agree on, the fact that the SLN has been busy violating rather than enforcing the EE is going to seriously undermine SL morale.

It is sort of like how the recent incident where a Clackamas County Oregon Sheriff's deputy walked into a crowded bar to fatally shoot his wife and two other women before committing suicide with his service weapon undermines that law enforcement agency's credibility.

Now that Adm Crandal and Adm Fillarta have had their butts kicked, the SLN no longer has the aura of invincibility that would make them a credible guarantor of the EE.

It is open season on planets until the GA establishes itself as the new enforcer of a no doubt revised EE that does not have so many loopholes.

Which, again, is why I said there were serious consequences behind violating the Edict. I never said the consequences were solely about the SLN showing up to enforce its provisions. The point was that violating the Edict is enough of an atypical war crime that it has ramifications in the realms of politics and grand strategy. And those ramifications are tattooed on the backs of every naval officers' eyelids, so they're fully aware that they don't want to fire on planets just for giggles (assuming they were sufficiently deranged to even consider it in the first place).

Hi NamelessFly,

I seem to recall some reference in a pearl or recent book of using freighter wedges to protect a planet.

So around ~708 could theoretically cover the 200 million square kilometer half of earth [flat area not curved hemisphere] if they had a radius of only 300 km, granted the largest freighter wedges are up to 500 km and Manticore has built a lot of them; NTM wedge separation requires at least a couple of layers, but given the tens of thousands of freighters or more the MMM has that were back in Manticore, I wasn't too worried about Sphinx being hit by any SLN strays from Filaretta because there were plenty to completely cover Sphinx, which they might have decided to do after the Yawata Strike.

L

namelessfly wrote:

Duckk wrote:Why is it that people think killing a few billion people is something trivial? That there won't be extremely serious repercussions? Every time the Edict comes up, there's always a sizable minority who thinks it's perfectly acceptable to go ahead and more or less utterly destroy a planet. The persistence of this belief makes me think that said minority doesn't understand how the universe as written works.

First off, the EE is not relevant unless someone is willing and able to enforce it.

Weber has provided repeated examples of situations where the EE was not enforced.

A classic example were the early Masada vs Grayson wars where the Masadans did launch nukes and kinetic strikes on Grayson. Manticore effectively enforced the EE many decades later only after Honor Harington defeated THUNDER OF GOD. It is possible that the SL did nothing because they simply had not heard about those battles. Ditto for the RMN. However; the fact that the RMN's enforcement of the EE did not win them a propaganda victory in the SL undermines the SL's moral authority.

The SL's legalistic rationalization that the massive civilian casualties that resulted from the
Oyster Bay attacks were not EE violations because they were neither intentional, wanton or targeted at the space station undermines the validity of the EE. I am certain that systems such as Yilden who are space based because they have no planet are not protected by the EE are delighted to learn that the SL has declared open season on them. This might explain their hostility.

The SL's eagerness to exploit the Oyster Bay attacks by sending Fillarta with 400+ SDs to attack
Manticore certainly demonstrates a callous disregard to the principle that genocidal attacks are forbidden.

The seemingly routine use of KE strikes by the OFS and SLN at Mobius certainly suggests that the SL's high sounding rhetoric about the EE notwithstanding, the SLN is THE major violator of the EE.

Since the EE is the one thing that the SL members claim to agree on, the fact that the SLN has been busy violating rather than enforcing the EE is going to seriously undermine SL morale.

It is sort of like how the recent incident where a Clackamas County Oregon Sheriff's deputy walked into a crowded bar to fatally shoot his wife and two other women before committing suicide with his service weapon undermines that law enforcement agency's credibility.

Now that Adm Crandal and Adm Fillarta have had their butts kicked, the SLN no longer has the aura of invincibility that would make them a credible guarantor of the EE.

It is open season on planets until the GA establishes itself as the new enforcer of a no doubt revised EE that does not have so many loopholes.

lyonheart wrote:I seem to recall some reference in a pearl or recent book of using freighter wedges to protect a planet.

Not freighters, tugs -- of which there are less than a dozen for all three stations/planets.

There is, in fact a prohibition of impeller drives, other than tugs, within a specified distance of the planet and a "no lone zone" for tug pilots operating near the planets.

Weird Harold wrote:

Annachie wrote:Anyway, isn't it stated in the books that over runs self destruct?

Nope. As stated in the Pearl cited above, MWW never thought it necessary to deal with after battle debris.

Reread the Pearl. It states:

Accordingly, all missiles in the Honorverse are equipped with self-destruct software which is routinely set before the weapon is launched.

SWM wrote:Reread the Pearl. It states:

Accordingly, all missiles in the Honorverse are equipped with self-destruct software which is routinely set before the weapon is launched.

So it does ( http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/131/1 ) I thought that was the case earlier but didn't see it when I reviewed the pearl.

namelessfly wrote: However; while the Kinetic energy of impact with 5 grams of hydrogen atoms over a 100 LY interstellar journey is equivalent to 25 kilotons which will vaporize the missile, it will not significant affect the kinetic energy or momentum of the missile. The result will be an expanding cloud of particularly massive and energetic atomic nuclei which will either be diverted by the stellar wind or planetary magnetic fields or absorbed by the atmosphere...

Should we perhaps quiet our radio emissions or even crawl back into our caves so that the aliens will not notice us?

Question the first: So you are stating that 25 kilotons of energy (which is a bunch, whether you measure it in ergs or apples) applied steadily and gradually on the reciprocal vector of the missile, over 100ly and at least 111 T-years, will not affect the velocity of the object?

Question the second: The various "Here we are, come find us" signals we send are perhaps the most overt display of humanities' collective hubris known, at least if you accept that there are aliens out there.


Matt

Consider the issue from both a momentum and a KE perspective.

Missile masses 100 tons or 1eex5 Kg.

Hydrogen Gas masses 5 grams or 5eex-3 Kg

Missile collides with an aggregate total of 5 grams of hydrogen during its hypothetical, 100 LY. Voyage.

Change in momentum resulting from repeated collisions with individual atoms is given by:

(Mm+Mh) x Vr = (Mm x Vm) / (Mm + Mh)

Since the missile masses 1eex5/5eex-3 or about 2eex7 times much as the hydrogen gas, the Delta Vee from collisions will be on the order of 20 meters per second which is trivial.

From a Kinetic Energy stand point, the Missile KE = 1/2 x 1eex5 kg x (2eex8)^2

Missile KE = 2eex21 Joules or about one million times the KE of collisions with hydrogen gas.

It is reasonable to presume that the impact energy with each individual hydrogen atom will vaporize a small quantity of missile mass and that this mass will be ejected like a rocket jet that acts to slow the missile down. This effect might enhance the Delta Vee by a few kilometers per second. It is still trivial.

As to the issue of hubris, how are humans to understand that the universe might be full of hostile aliens who will react to any signals that reveal our presence by giving us a genocidal ass kicking?

Read THE FORGE OF GOD by Gregory Benford.


(Mm x Vm)

Mobryan wrote:

namelessfly wrote: However; while the Kinetic energy of impact with 5 grams of hydrogen atoms over a 100 LY interstellar journey is equivalent to 25 kilotons which will vaporize the missile, it will not significant affect the kinetic energy or momentum of the missile. The result will be an expanding cloud of particularly massive and energetic atomic nuclei which will either be diverted by the stellar wind or planetary magnetic fields or absorbed by the atmosphere...

Should we perhaps quiet our radio emissions or even crawl back into our caves so that the aliens will not notice us?

Question the first: So you are stating that 25 kilotons of energy (which is a bunch, whether you measure it in ergs or apples) applied steadily and gradually on the reciprocal vector of the missile, over 100ly and at least 111 T-years, will not affect the velocity of the object?

Question the second: The various "Here we are, come find us" signals we send are perhaps the most overt display of humanities' collective hubris known, at least if you accept that there are aliens out there.


Matt