How much Technology was Stolen

Weird Harold wrote:When Adm Gold Peak arrived, there were only four destroyers than had moved from the positions when Chatterji was destroyed. She assumed they moved to do SAR, but as noted above, the space station was also in need of some SAR work.

SAR is normally performed by things that don't move by producing massive grav fields that destroy anything they touch. Like small craft on reaction drive.

kzt wrote:SAR is normally performed by things that don't move by producing massive grav fields that destroy anything they touch. Like small craft on reaction drive.

I can only go by the textev:

"Basically, Ma'am," Tersteeg continued, "there's been no change. We have these three destroyers here"—a green sighting ring enclosed three of the icons—"that have shifted orbits. They're about eleven hundred klicks outside and well ahead of the rest of their formation. It looks like they were probably moved out towards where Commodore Chatterjee's ships were destroyed, maybe for search-and-rescue. Aside from that, they haven't moved as far as I can tell."

It was only three destroyers, and an evaluation by the flag tactical officer, but essentially as I recalled the scene.

I'm pretty sure they probably used small craft to do the actual SAR, but they did so from closer than they had been parked before.

As was stated early on in this zombie thread, I'm pretty sure that no Solarian ships left the planet between Byng's attack and Henke's arrival. Therefore, even if some intelligence was gained by the SAR, none of it got back to the League.

SWM wrote:As was stated early on in this zombie thread, I'm pretty sure that no Solarian ships left the planet between Byng's attack and Henke's arrival. Therefore, even if some intelligence was gained by the SAR, none of it got back to the League.

One ship did leave New Tuscany. A Dispatch Boat was out near the hyper-limit and witnessed the battle and Sigbee's surrender. So any hardware that got picked up was likely too be small and not very much of it anyway. Then you have Crandell?? and what do you think she would do with any hardware that the DB may have been carrying.

SftS:

“How the hell did they get here so quickly?” Alesta Cardot demanded. “For that matter, why are they here at all? It’s been barely three weeks, and no one’s left the system except a couple of merchantships, not dispatch boats. So how could they even know anything happened here?”

I see a lot of talk about things Byng could have done, but no evidence that he did do them. And as has been discussed earlier in this thread, it's very hard to conceive of a plausible chain of events which would have let the tech survive, get captured by Byng, and make it out of the system before the rest of Tenth Fleet came back.

Duckk wrote:SftS:

“How the hell did they get here so quickly?” Alesta Cardot demanded. “For that matter, why are they here at all? It’s been barely three weeks, and no one’s left the system except a couple of merchant ships, not dispatch boats. So how could they even know anything happened here?”

I see a lot of talk about things Byng could have done, but no evidence that he did do them. And as has been discussed earlier in this thread, it's very hard to conceive of a plausible chain of events which would have let the tech survive, get captured by Byng, and make it out of the system before the rest of Tenth Fleet came back.

My information comes from MoH. The passage you are quoting referrers to ships departing after the New Tuscany Incident but before the arrival 10th Fleet

Well, we know that, due to the timing, the courrier boat that escaped has since reached the SL area. But even at the end of the last book, when Rajampet and his successor were discussing what options they had in order to fight The Grand Alliance, they never mentionned that they had been able to put their hands on some Manty tech. Considering their situation, and the content of the discussion, I really doubt that they would have failed to mention it if they had some hope to crak at least one part of the manty tech.

So if we look at it:

- Destruction of the DD was very violent, leaving probably very few things recoverable at best, possibly none at all;
- the space station exploded close to the DD and it is likely that what was left of the station mixed with what was left from the DD (if anything survived the SL Grasers of course);
- being in orbit around a planet means that, very probably, at least part of the pieaces that may have survived were probably sent more or less in the direction of the planet, and were thus destroyed while entering it's atmosphere, the bigger one may even have been blown to pieces (if any were there for starter) by the solarians to prevent an involuntary kinetic bombardment of an inhabited planet;
- the rest of the space station was the immediate priority regarding SAR teams, seeing that they were more people on board (and that it became soon very clear that it was NOT in the interest of the SLN to recover any survivors of the DD), which gave time for the pieaces of the DD (if any remained) to disperse, mix with others stuff in orbit or fall on the planet;
- The SLN had such a domination for so many centuries that it probably considered at best a low priority to recover any sort of material from destroyed ennemies. May even have been strengthened by the fact that, at that moment, Manticore was not at war with the Solarian league;
- it was not in the interest of Byng to recover anything that may have contained data regarding who really fired and what happened to the station;
- except for the courrier boat, no occasion to send anything back to the league. It would have been very unfortunate if the only boat (in more thant 20 ships) able to escape was THE one where all recovered materials happened to be;
- no mention later that any tech was recovered.

Everything points in the direction: the Solarian do not have any manty tech coming from those three DD.

EDIT: and I do not even mention the security protecting manty technology and preventing it to be analysed in the first place....

Hello OlorinNight,

Welcome to the forums; please enjoy your favorite simulated beverage on the simulated forum.

Kudos for your excellent points and summary, albeit reiterating some made much earlier.

The dispatch boat got to Meyers, who sent the news to
Terra etc, perhaps in the same db, but that detail doesn't matter in this thread, but it should be obvious if any tech had been picked up, it would have been referenced not only by Rajampet and Kingsford, but by Daud and Teague etc since that's their job.

There were 200 times as many people aboard the station as the DD crews though the SLN didn't know that, the low kiloton device [200Kt? IIRC] didn't vaporize the whole station immediately [the low yield of the explosive should have told Byng it was a pretty pathetic missile if the RMN had launched it] while the energy weapon target of 22 SLN warships at very close range with no wedges or sidewalls ought to argue little was left before any ship's fusion bottles let go etc.

Given all the energy transfer from up to 300+ SLN lasers and grasers, I'd expect some slight amount of debris to fall into the sun, while the larger relatively 'untouched' wreckage knocked out of orbit would take roughly only 47 minutes to burn up in the atmosphere, not much time when most of the SAR effort is devoted to rescuing any potential survivors from the space station, and the SLN didn't know or suspect there was anything worth looking through the RMN wreckage in the first place.

L

OlorinNight wrote:Well, we know that, due to the timing, the courrier boat that escaped has since reached the SL area. But even at the end of the last book, when Rajampet and his successor were discussing what options they had in order to fight The Grand Alliance, they never mentionned that they had been able to put their hands on some Manty tech. Considering their situation, and the content of the discussion, I really doubt that they would have failed to mention it if they had some hope to crak at least one part of the manty tech.

So if we look at it:

- Destruction of the DD was very violent, leaving probably very few things recoverable at best, possibly none at all;
- the space station exploded close to the DD and it is likely that what was left of the station mixed with what was left from the DD (if anything survived the SL Grasers of course);
- being in orbit around a planet means that, very probably, at least part of the pieaces that may have survived were probably sent more or less in the direction of the planet, and were thus destroyed while entering it's atmosphere, the bigger one may even have been blown to pieces (if any were there for starter) by the solarians to prevent an involuntary kinetic bombardment of an inhabited planet;
- the rest of the space station was the immediate priority regarding SAR teams, seeing that they were more people on board (and that it became soon very clear that it was NOT in the interest of the SLN to recover any survivors of the DD), which gave time for the pieaces of the DD (if any remained) to disperse, mix with others stuff in orbit or fall on the planet;
- The SLN had such a domination for so many centuries that it probably considered at best a low priority to recover any sort of material from destroyed ennemies. May even have been strengthened by the fact that, at that moment, Manticore was not at war with the Solarian league;
- it was not in the interest of Byng to recover anything that may have contained data regarding who really fired and what happened to the station;
- except for the courrier boat, no occasion to send anything back to the league. It would have been very unfortunate if the only boat (in more thant 20 ships) able to escape was THE one where all recovered materials happened to be;
- no mention later that any tech was recovered.

Everything points in the direction: the Solarian do not have any manty tech coming from those three DD.

Suppose the SLN forces recovered a Mk-16 from one of the Rolands. If that had happened, why is there no mention of it by anyone? Why was literally everyone, even Maitland Askew (the one SLN officer at New Tuscany who actually predicted the existence of MDMs), surprised when Tenth Fleet fired on Jean Bart?

Suppose the SLN forces recovered a Hermes buoy or Ghost Rider recon drone. If that had happened, why is there so much shock that the Alliance has FTL comm capability when encountered at New Tuscany? Byng flatly dismisses the possibility that they had FTL comms on anything that small.

The answer to both of those questions is that no one bothered to salvage anything from the Rolands. No one (not even Byng) could possibly be so stupid as to not immediately see the implications of the multidrive configuration on an MDM, the miniaturized FTL comm on a RD or Hermes buoy, and/or microfusion plants on either. And even if Byng by some miracle did ignore the physical proof even when it was in his own possession, there's no way that the Frontier Fleet officers would have ignored it. But every single sign from every SLN viewpoint was that they had absolutely no clue about any of the Alliance tech about to be employed against them at New Tuscany. Therefore, they cannot possibly have had any of the tech in their possession.

lyonheart wrote:Hello OlorinNight,

Welcome to the forums; please enjoy your favorite simulated beverage on the simulated forum.

Kudos for your excellent points and summary, albeit reiterating some made much earlier.

Thanks! However, I think I'll go for the real beverage in my very real fridge .

I indeed tried to collect some of the points made earliers and gather them into a single post, but I think it may have been necessary, since some still seemed to believ that some Manty tech could have been somehow "smuggled" out of Tuscany by Byng. demonstrating that: a)survival of said tech was unprobable; b)recovery of said tech was unlikely; c) analyse of said tech was close to impossible; d) shipping of said tech to Terra was unprobable and e) said tech was not mentionned by the power that be in the SL seemed thus to be the best way to remind everyone where exactly we are in regard to hte possibility of manty tech in the hands of the solarian due to Byng's actions...