[spoilers]What happens when Shannon Foraker meets...

crewdude48 wrote:No, capacitor missiles are charged while in the loading systems. Fusion missiles are only ignited in the launch tube due to ... bad things happening if there is an issue. This is why capacitor missiles have a lower launch cycle time than fusion birds.

Sorry, poor wording on my part. I meant that the missiles are charged as part of the loading cycle, rather than having charged capacitors while sitting in the magazine racks.

Dafmeister wrote:

crewdude48 wrote:No, capacitor missiles are charged while in the loading systems. Fusion missiles are only ignited in the launch tube due to ... bad things happening if there is an issue. This is why capacitor missiles have a lower launch cycle time than fusion birds.

Sorry, poor wording on my part. I meant that the missiles are charged as part of the loading cycle, rather than having charged capacitors while sitting in the magazine racks.

But that's not a problem. The StateSec ships had missiles ready in their tubes, so they were already charged up. The only question is whether it would be possible to program missiles to bring up their wedges prematurely.

My memory is failing me here - did Harkness have to remove physical safety systems on the pinnace to get the wedge to come up, or was it all done with remote programming?

Dafmeister wrote:My memory is failing me here - did Harkness have to remove physical safety systems on the pinnace to get the wedge to come up, or was it all done with remote programming?

They had to physically cut the cables from the pinnance's sensors to its computers. The result was the computers safety programs thought that the pinnance was in deep space and allowed its wedge to be brought up.

Dafmeister wrote:

crewdude48 wrote:No, capacitor missiles are charged while in the loading systems. Fusion missiles are only ignited in the launch tube due to ... bad things happening if there is an issue. This is why capacitor missiles have a lower launch cycle time than fusion birds.

Sorry, poor wording on my part. I meant that the missiles are charged as part of the loading cycle, rather than having charged capacitors while sitting in the magazine racks.

Capacitor missiles are charged in the magazines, fusion powered missiles reactors are started in the launch tubes. See Missile power systems for the details.

I think it's easier to just blow up the charges that statesec put on their ships that were designed to be remotely activated. Safeties in missiles will tend to be very difficult to bypass and pretty much impossible without physical access to the missile and a box of tools.

kzt wrote:I think it's easier to just blow up the charges that statesec put on their ships that were designed to be remotely activated. Safeties in missiles will tend to be very difficult to bypass and pretty much impossible without physical access to the missile and a box of tools.

I largely agree with you. But it is interesting to speculate that Foraker was inspired by the Harkness maneuver.

SWM wrote:

kzt wrote:I think it's easier to just blow up the charges that statesec put on their ships that were designed to be remotely activated. Safeties in missiles will tend to be very difficult to bypass and pretty much impossible without physical access to the missile and a box of tools.

I largely agree with you. But it is interesting to speculate that Foraker was inspired by the Harkness maneuver.

I thought the ships just blew up, not destroyed by wedges being brought up. That would be relatively easy to do, just bypass the safeties on the fusion power plants and blow them, and/or explode the nuclear warheads on some of the missiles. Having just one of them go off (multi-megaton yields here) in the confines of the hulls would gut the ships, let alone five or more at once..

It could have been suicide charges, but would State Sec out that on their own ships? I know they had them on the regular RHN ships, but their own?

My impression was that she shut down the containment fields on their fusion reactors.

Zakharra wrote: I thought the ships just blew up, not destroyed by wedges being brought up. That would be relatively easy to do, just bypass the safeties on the fusion power plants and blow them, and/or explode the nuclear warheads on some of the missiles. Having just one of them go off (multi-megaton yields here) in the confines of the hulls would gut the ships, let alone five or more at once..

It could have been suicide charges, but would State Sec out that on their own ships? I know they had them on the regular RHN ships, but their own?

Warhead safeties are just as hard. For example, an artillery round requires a multi-thousand G shock and spinning like mad to unlock. People work really, really hard to avoid any possibility of premature function. Even a very small chance will likely lead to you losing multiple ships in a war, which had terrible effects on morale.

This is why I tend to think David's idea that missile self-destruct systems always work is total BS. Weapon users are much more tolerant of things that don't explode then they should than of things that explode when they should not.

And StateSec was created and run by professional paranoids who were willing to cripple their military in the middle of a war to satisfy their paranoia.