Solarian Military Catchup Attempts

Thanks, both SWM and Johnathan_S, in pointing out that the SLN are low in experienced ship handling from lack of practice. And now that I think about it, how much ship handling, and dancing in tight formations was ever needed, when you're an 800 lb gorilla swatting flies?

But hey, we're talking about the Sol system where Top Gun was created. Time to dust off the manuals?

cthia wrote:Thanks, both SWM and Johnathan_S, in pointing out that the SLN are low in experienced ship handling from lack of practice. And now that I think about it, how much ship handling, and dancing in tight formations was ever needed, when you're an 800 lb gorilla swatting flies?

But hey, we're talking about the Sol system where Top Gun was created. Time to dust off the manuals?

Hehehe. Thanks for that image, That made me laugh. I saw SD pilots(drivers?) trying to maneuver their SDs like fighter jets while listening to Danger Zone and the commanders and higher ups onboard are asking 'wtf is he/she doing?!'

Zakharra wrote:I'd also think that they are thinking about system defenses; SDFs and static missile launchers/pods that can easily survive near nuclear blasts. Given that they can be stationed in space and that the GA and SL/SLN both have tech that can stay in system for months/years with little adverse effects from solar radiation/flares and such, unless a nuke goes off almost on top of it, I can't see it being that difficult or expensive to EMP hardening missile pods. After all how is a magaton nuclear bomb going off nearby worse than a massive solar flare?

I'm not sure why it should be, but I think if it was easy to harden pods against EMP that Manticore or Haven would have done so at some point in the almost decade they fought with "use them or lose them" pods prior to the deployment of SD(P)s. (And even then you have issues with EMP if you try to deeply stack pods after your initial salvo)

Although for system defense you can get a lot of the same benefit simply by dispersing your pods a lot more (though that may cost you some on the fire control end)

Zakharra wrote:

cthia wrote:Thanks, both SWM and Johnathan_S, in pointing out that the SLN are low in experienced ship handling from lack of practice. And now that I think about it, how much ship handling, and dancing in tight formations was ever needed, when you're an 800 lb gorilla swatting flies?

But hey, we're talking about the Sol system where Top Gun was created. Time to dust off the manuals?

Hehehe. Thanks for that image, That made me laugh. I saw SD pilots(drivers?) trying to maneuver their SDs like fighter jets while listening to Danger Zone and the commanders and higher ups onboard are asking 'wtf is he/she doing?!'

"Luna Tower, this is Ghost Rider requesting a flyby."

"Negative, Ghost Rider, the orbital pattern is full."

dreamrider wrote:My suggestion was predicated on the very early explanation that impeller drives in general can inherently accel at enormous rates. As I understand it, it is the sensitivity of the payload within the wedge (often - people), and sometimes the need for stealth, which constrain the accel rates of impeller drives.
dreamrider

Given that the wedge accelerates what is inside, and that damage can occur without a compensator: There must be in some way uneven acceleration. If everything was accelerated on the same vector just by the gravity waves, there would be effective free fall, which doesn't fit the described physics. The compensator must even things out in some manner. I wonder how the destructive forces relate to the actual acceleration? Is it something like tides, changing with varying distances from some aspect of the gravity waves? Is it weaker than the actual overall acceleration?

The compensator drop of effectiveness as size goes up might then be an artifact of the work of the compensator dropping as distance from some point of application increases. Total ability increasing with the strength of the "sump," would then increase the volume of effectiveness.

DDHv wrote:

dreamrider wrote:My suggestion was predicated on the very early explanation that impeller drives in general can inherently accel at enormous rates. As I understand it, it is the sensitivity of the payload within the wedge (often - people), and sometimes the need for stealth, which constrain the accel rates of impeller drives.
dreamrider

Given that the wedge accelerates what is inside, and that damage can occur without a compensator: There must be in some way uneven acceleration. If everything was accelerated on the same vector just by the gravity waves, there would be effective free fall, which doesn't fit the described physics. The compensator must even things out in some manner. I wonder how the destructive forces relate to the actual acceleration? Is it something like tides, changing with varying distances from some aspect of the gravity waves? Is it weaker than the actual overall acceleration?

The compensator drop of effectiveness as size goes up might then be an artifact of the work of the compensator dropping as distance from some point of application increases. Total ability increasing with the strength of the "sump," would then increase the volume of effectiveness.

The impeller does not act on everything inside its field. It appears that the impellers act directly on the ship hull, or perhaps just on the impeller nodes which are attached to the hull. In the absence of a compensator field, everything else is subject to inertia. So, as the ship hull is accelerated at 600 gees, the stuff inside would hit the back wall at high velocity. So, no, it doesn't act they way you hypothesize. There is no varying field effect within the impeller wedge--the impeller is only accelerating the ship hull. Everything else would not be accelerated (and thus be crushed against the back of the hull) unless you have an inertial compensator.

Just because Scotty speculated that Haven could do it (which they did), with Erehwon tech transfers and info/materiel captures from Manticore, and gobs of performance and signature data does not translate into the SL doing it any time soon. The MAlign has been working on the concept for a lo-ong time, according to Ben Detweiler, basically since Manticore first demonstrated the capability in the field (or slightly before), and they THINK they might be getting an inkling.

Scotty's suggesting was before the erwhonese split off, hell it was before buttercup kicked off, (during his conversation with one of his LAC crews when they start working up the first LAC wings in Ashes of Victory), so the Havenites hadn't seen a single MDM and lived to tell about it, (one poor tac officer aside). He was speculating on what Haven could do right then with tech, that at best, is equal to what the SLN has.

Carl wrote:

Just because Scotty speculated that Haven could do it (which they did), with Erehwon tech transfers and info/materiel captures from Manticore, and gobs of performance and signature data does not translate into the SL doing it any time soon. The MAlign has been working on the concept for a lo-ong time, according to Ben Detweiler, basically since Manticore first demonstrated the capability in the field (or slightly before), and they THINK they might be getting an inkling.

Scotty's suggesting was before the erwhonese split off, hell it was before buttercup kicked off, (during his conversation with one of his LAC crews when they start working up the first LAC wings in Ashes of Victory), so the Havenites hadn't seen a single MDM and lived to tell about it, (one poor tac officer aside). He was speculating on what Haven could do right then with tech, that at best, is equal to what the SLN has.

But it's possible that Scotty was (at that time) unaware of the baffle 'trick' that made MDMs possible; and so was underestimating how hard it would be for Haven to replicate.

Alternatively he was discussing a hypothetical scenario where they managed to steal, reverse engineer, or invent that one key piece without also gaining access to the rest of the toys that made Manticoran MDMs as compact as they were (still larger than they'd become once microfusion was added to the mix)


And that's really what's holding the SLN back as well. Sufficient power and the extra impeller rings could be handled simply by making the missile bigger. But without "the baffle" as described in House of Steel you need really impractical physical separation of the rings (like maybe double or triple the length of a normal missile); otherwise the active ring will "rip hell out of the basic matrix of any other impeller node in its immediate vicinity" [HoS:IWBMHoS].

Given he was suggesting they'd be so big they'd be a missile to a pod at best i'm not sure they wouldn't be big enough, though that is interesting info.

dreamrider wrote:My suggestion was predicated on the very early explanation that impeller drives in general can inherently accel at enormous rates. As I understand it, it is the sensitivity of the payload within the wedge (often - people), and sometimes the need for stealth, which constrain the accel rates of impeller drives.
dreamrider

DDHv wrote:Given that the wedge accelerates what is inside, and that damage can occur without a compensator: There must be in some way uneven acceleration. If everything was accelerated on the same vector just by the gravity waves, there would be effective free fall, which doesn't fit the described physics. The compensator must even things out in some manner. I wonder how the destructive forces relate to the actual acceleration? Is it something like tides, changing with varying distances from some aspect of the gravity waves? Is it weaker than the actual overall acceleration?

The compensator drop of effectiveness as size goes up might then be an artifact of the work of the compensator dropping as distance from some point of application increases. Total ability increasing with the strength of the "sump," would then increase the volume of effectiveness.

SWM wrote:The impeller does not act on everything inside its field. It appears that the impellers act directly on the ship hull, or perhaps just on the impeller nodes which are attached to the hull. In the absence of a compensator field, everything else is subject to inertia. So, as the ship hull is accelerated at 600 gees, the stuff inside would hit the back wall at high velocity. So, no, it doesn't act they way you hypothesize. There is no varying field effect within the impeller wedge--the impeller is only accelerating the ship hull. Everything else would not be accelerated (and thus be crushed against the back of the hull) unless you have an inertial compensator.

And how does it manage this trick? If it only accelerates the nodes, the mechanical stress on the stalks the nodes are set on must be terrific. If it operates on the ship's hull and not on the contents, there needs to be something strange about the hull. I've never seen an explanation, credible or otherwise.

Frankly, the whole compensator thing has always seemed to me to be an authorial arm-wave to make the impeller drive physics match the needs of the plot.

JohnRoth wrote:
And how does it manage this trick? If it only accelerates the nodes, the mechanical stress on the stalks the nodes are set on must be terrific. If it operates on the ship's hull and not on the contents, there needs to be something strange about the hull. I've never seen an explanation, credible or otherwise.

Frankly, the whole compensator thing has always seemed to me to be an authorial arm-wave to make the impeller drive physics match the needs of the plot.

Given that the internal structures of ship hulls routinely survive compensator failures undamaged, this would not be beyond the capabilities of Honorverse starship engineering. Come to that, missiles don't have compensators at all and they survive accelerations two orders of magnitude greater than any ship is capable of.