How much Technology was Stolen

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.

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

Excellent points. Also, I'd point out that at this point Manticore hasn't had a real fight against Frontier Fleet or Battle Fleet units.

Yes there was the battle of Monica, but its easy for the SLN to write that off an neobarbs with 3rd rate surplus BCs who didn't know how to use them.

So until Mike provided a pointed lesson on the SLN's technical deficiencies (by cleanly punching out Bing's flagship) the SLN didn't really believe how advanced Mantie military tech was (and conversely how high a priority they should set on retrieving some for reverse engineering). And even the few who believed there was some truth to the rumors were thinking the MDMs and FTL comms would have to be so large that only SDs could hope to carry them; so even they wouldn't have believed that tech could be found in DDs (even large ones).

I'm not an engineer or physicist so if anyone has a better idea of what would happen please post corrections.

What I think happens when a DD is hit by 50 grasers (simultaneously)

So generally I imagine the action of a laser/graser etc. to be vaporising whatever solid surfaces it intersects with and turning anything within the beam into extremely high energy plasma. Because of the high energy levels of the beam (Gamma Rays!!!) plasmafied matter will also be giving off all sorts of radiation as well.

The path of each graser strike will be more of a 'slice' than a straight 'stab'.

Everything will be occurring very very quickly.

Whenever there is an intersection between graser/laser and matter there will be a 'bloom' (impulse?) of energy in a 360 degree sphere. All this radiation will hit surrounding matter and turn it into plasma as well, releasing more energy until many meters away matter is merely being vaporised/melted/heated. This kind of event occurs instantly and propagates at something below light speed but still far faster than the speed of sound within any material.

All the vaporised, plasmafied and superheated matter means that the internal environment of the ship experiences a sudden, catastrophic increase in pressure (explosion?).

This 'explosion' imparts an outward force away from the axis of the laser/graser strike. Physical objects and parts of the ship are experiencing enormous concussive forces and changes in momentum. This will have the effect of deforming anything that experiences sufficient force. This will also have the effect of blasting the ship apart in all directions, once the effects of 50 graser strikes are all factored in.

However the explosion (and its effects) is outpaced by the thermal/radiation bloom/impulse generated by the beam interacting with matter in its path. If enough energy is transferred and re-radiated this way then all the pieces of the ship will be vaporised or turned into plasma before it can fly away 'intact'.

Note that when I say 'intact' I mean 'solid'. Any surviving part would look like it lost a fight with a metal compactor.

So if X number of Solarian BC grasers can impart enough energy to turn 150,000 tonnes of matter into plasma (with a reasonable fudge factor for 'overkill' or 'burn-through') then there will be no pieces left to salvage.

----

Don't forget Byng talking about how the exaggerated performance and firepower of Haven sector navies was probably because of mislabelling ships - e.g. 150kt "destroyers".

No, the dd was targeted by a lot of weapons, ones that did not seem to be run by the most awesomely fast thinking crews in the universe. So it not all that likely that the crews are immediately ready to shoot, so some weapon mounts will fire a lot faster than the others. The first hit or two would have destroyed it, with the rest of the weapons hitting the rapidly expanding debris cloud.

kzt wrote:No, the dd was targeted by a lot of weapons, ones that did not seem to be run by the most awesomely fast thinking crews in the universe. So it not all that likely that the crews are immediately ready to shoot, so some weapon mounts will fire a lot faster than the others. The first hit or two would have destroyed it, with the rest of the weapons hitting the rapidly expanding debris cloud.

I was under the impression that all a ship's weapons could be fired from the bridge, the on-mount crews are for damage control and to take over if the control runs from the bridge to the mount are severed. That would suggest that, assuming the weapons were powered up, the whole broadside could be fired with the press of a button.

Dafmeister wrote:

kzt wrote:No, the dd was targeted by a lot of weapons, ones that did not seem to be run by the most awesomely fast thinking crews in the universe. So it not all that likely that the crews are immediately ready to shoot, so some weapon mounts will fire a lot faster than the others. The first hit or two would have destroyed it, with the rest of the weapons hitting the rapidly expanding debris cloud.

I was under the impression that all a ship's weapons could be fired from the bridge, the on-mount crews are for damage control and to take over if the control runs from the bridge to the mount are severed. That would suggest that, assuming the weapons were powered up, the whole broadside could be fired with the press of a button.

I think that's exactly how Weber has described how it works in the pearls. Manual targeting (on-mount) is only when control from the bridge/aux is lost.

All the weapons had already been run out and the trigger happy Solarians would have had them targeted on the destroyers already, so the only variations would have been the time it took for the signal to travel from the bridge to the computers and slight variations in how long it took the firing signal to reach each mount (presumably negligible).

BobfromSydney wrote:
I think that's exactly how Weber has described how it works in the pearls. Manual targeting (on-mount) is only when control from the bridge/aux is lost.

All the weapons had already been run out and the trigger happy Solarians would have had them targeted on the destroyers already, so the only variations would have been the time it took for the signal to travel from the bridge to the computers and slight variations in how long it took the firing signal to reach each mount (presumably negligible).

Even worse, IIRC they had a preset fireplan ready and waiting, which at least sounded like it was squadron-wide, which would mean that ALL weapons would probably fire within less than a second or so.

Severe ouchy doesn´t even begin to describe it.
It´s like using a hundred flamethrowers to kill 3 mosquitoes at a few meters range.

It´s a case of where normally excessive exclamations like "atomised" or "blown to molecules" might actually be *correct*.

Tenshinai wrote:

BobfromSydney wrote:
I think that's exactly how Weber has described how it works in the pearls. Manual targeting (on-mount) is only when control from the bridge/aux is lost.

All the weapons had already been run out and the trigger happy Solarians would have had them targeted on the destroyers already, so the only variations would have been the time it took for the signal to travel from the bridge to the computers and slight variations in how long it took the firing signal to reach each mount (presumably negligible).

Even worse, IIRC they had a preset fireplan ready and waiting, which at least sounded like it was squadron-wide, which would mean that ALL weapons would probably fire within less than a second or so.

Severe ouchy doesn´t even begin to describe it.
It´s like using a hundred flamethrowers to kill 3 mosquitoes at a few meters range.

It´s a case of where normally excessive exclamations like "atomised" or "blown to molecules" might actually be *correct*.

I tried to look up references to graser energy output but the closest I could find was a thread discussing the 'enough energy to shatter a small moon'. I believe a single SD broadside was described as potentially delivering an equivalent of 1 teraton of TNT in energy. How this compares to 17 SLN BC's firepower at point blank range I don't know. Lets assume the firepower is equivalent to a 'conservative' 100gigaton output for the combined 'broadside'.

This equates to 4.18x10^20 joules of energy.

divide by 3 ~= 1.4x10^20 joules

assuming the Roland is 1.5x10^11 grams of iron with a specific heat of 0.450

That the average temperature of the Roland is 25 degrees C.

Given that the boiling point of iron is 2750 degrees C (minus 25 = 2725).

Not calculating the additional energy required for state transitions (because I can't be bothered).

The energy required to boil a 150kt iron 'Roland' is 2725x0.450x1.5x10^11 = 1.84x10^14 joules if I didn't screw up the maths somewhere.

This means the Rolands would have experienced close to six orders of magnitude of overkill. That's a LOT of overkill!

If you factor in elements with higher specific heat and state transitions and the energy converted to kinetic energy or radiated out into space etc. etc. etc. that is still more than enough overkill to assure complete gasification of the entire ship.

Hi BobfromSidney,

I believe it was in TSVW that 'enough energy to shatter a small moon' was referenced regarding HH's BC squadron live fire practice before Nike's [#413] fusion reactor was repaired.

I think heat transfer would be a long way second after energy transfer, ie the DD's were blown to pieces before they could melt.

Other than that, a great and educational analysis.

Thanks, again.

L

BobfromSydney wrote:

Tenshinai wrote:*quote="BobfromSydney"*

I think that's exactly how Weber has described how it works in the pearls. Manual targeting (on-mount) is only when control from the bridge/aux is lost.

All the weapons had already been run out and the trigger happy Solarians would have had them targeted on the destroyers already, so the only variations would have been the time it took for the signal to travel from the bridge to the computers and slight variations in how long it took the firing signal to reach each mount (presumably negligible).*quote*

Even worse, IIRC they had a preset fireplan ready and waiting, which at least sounded like it was squadron-wide, which would mean that ALL weapons would probably fire within less than a second or so.

Severe ouchy doesn´t even begin to describe it.
It´s like using a hundred flamethrowers to kill 3 mosquitoes at a few meters range.

It´s a case of where normally excessive exclamations like "atomised" or "blown to molecules" might actually be *correct*.

I tried to look up references to graser energy output but the closest I could find was a thread discussing the 'enough energy to shatter a small moon'. I believe a single SD broadside was described as potentially delivering an equivalent of 1 teraton of TNT in energy. How this compares to 17 SLN BC's firepower at point blank range I don't know. Lets assume the firepower is equivalent to a 'conservative' 100gigaton output for the combined 'broadside'.

This equates to 4.18x10^20 joules of energy.

divide by 3 ~= 1.4x10^20 joules

assuming the Roland is 1.5x10^11 grams of iron with a specific heat of 0.450

That the average temperature of the Roland is 25 degrees C.

Given that the boiling point of iron is 2750 degrees C (minus 25 = 2725).

Not calculating the additional energy required for state transitions (because I can't be bothered).

The energy required to boil a 150kt iron 'Roland' is 2725x0.450x1.5x10^11 = 1.84x10^14 joules if I didn't screw up the maths somewhere.

This means the Rolands would have experienced close to six orders of magnitude of overkill. That's a LOT of overkill!

If you factor in elements with higher specific heat and state transitions and the energy converted to kinetic energy or radiated out into space etc. etc. etc. that is still more than enough overkill to assure complete gasification of the entire ship.

lyonheart wrote:Hi BobfromSidney,

I believe it was in TSVW that 'enough energy to shatter a small moon' was referenced regarding HH's BC squadron live fire practice before Nike's [#413] fusion reactor was repaired.

I think heat transfer would be a long way second after energy transfer, ie the DD's were blown to pieces before they could melt.

Other than that, a great and educational analysis.

Thanks, again.

L

Not quite. It was SVW, but it was in reference to HMS Bellerophon, a dreadnaught. She was departing a system for maintenance and refit when a Peep battlecruiser division appeared out of hyperspace right in front of her. The Peeps were planning to bushwhack a cruiser carrying out perimeter patrols, but their luck crapped out and they transited within energy range of Bellerophon. Their commander (Pierre's son, IIRC) panicked and opened fire with his bow chasers, but Bellerophon had turned enough to interpose her sidewall so the attack was ineffective. Bellerophon replied with her broadside (the 'enough energy to shatter a small moon') straight down the Peep's throats and wiped them out in a single salvo.

Hello Lyonheart,

Thank you. It was educational for me figuring out how to calculate the energy and then finding the stats too.

Heat transfer can occur in three ways:
Conduction
Convection
Radiation

Now radiation propagates at the speed of light (with 'delays' when high energy photons are interacting with various atoms and molecules).

My [completely unproven and unsupported] theory is that:
1. The speed of the process of heat transfer via radiation outpaces the kinetic energy imparted to fragments of the ship via 'explosions'. i.e. the pieces are 'cooked' before they have time to travel away
2. There is sufficient heat transfer via radiation that all components of the ships are either completely vaporised or at least heated to a liquid state which completely erases any useful engineering information from any recovered components/fragments.

Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_ray# ... nteraction

If I am correctly understanding the explanation, the 50+ Gamma Rays hitting each destroyer will cause a front of high energy electrons, positrons and gamma radiation to blast out from the axis of impact where each graser intersects the ship's hull.

According to HoS the dimensions of the Roland are:
446 x 54 x 45 meters.

Assuming a cross section of 450x50m, hit by 50 shots coming from a perpendicular angle and that the SLN targeting computers have spread the hits evenly across the hull then the furthest away any portion of the hull would be from the beam of a graser would be 17 meters.

If the destroyer had its 'T' crossed by all 50 beams then the same number would be 3.5 meters.

This assumes that the grasers do not 'track' across the surface of the destroyers and that they 'penetrate' all the way through. A realistic number of the maximum distance any portion of the hull would be from the axis of any graser hit would range somewhere between about 10 to 25 meters.

Now obviously we do not expect to find anything solid within 1m of the intersection path of a beam. Do we expect anything solid to survive 5m away? 10m? 20m? 50m?

Something to keep in mind is that large parts of the ship are 'hollow'. So there are rooms, hallways, crawl-ways, tubes and chambers everywhere. So the energy of the graser hit is not trying to eat through meters and meters of solid matter.

If anything were to survive in solid form it would most likely be bits of outer hull and pieces of the hammerheads. Anything in the 'bullseye' of the Roland would be nothing but hot plasma.

The problem with saying definitively whether or not there were any solid remnants is that there are SO many variables and that at each stage you need to make assumptions because no solid data is available.

Also the other issue is that we have very little intuitive grasp of the scale of the energy at work here.

Thought experiment:
Assume it takes a 1000W microwave 1 minute to cook a single tomato.
What happens if you cook it for 10 minutes? Or an hour?
What if you used 5 orders of magnitude overkill and put it in a 10MW(Megawatt) microwave? (For an approximation imagine the tomato was hit directly by a bolt of lightning - roughly the correct amount of energy)

So using that as a guide, what happens if you use 5 orders of magnitude overkill (10,000 times the required energy to turn 150,000 tonnes of iron into gas) to cook a Roland?

It is possible that something survives, but it seems improbable to me.