(SPOILERS) The reasons for the Archangel's return

Highjohn wrote:OrlandoNative
If you cannot answer yes to the question, "Do you believe there is a god?" then you are an atheist. I suppose one could have some mental illness that prevent one from knowing what they believed but otherwise it is that simple. Agnostic is usually(every time I have heard it defined by someone not deriding it) use in reference to what one believes about the evidence. For instance an atheist might('might', some do some don’t) say that they know god doesn’t exist. An agnostic would probably say that they think the there isn’t enough evidence to know whether god exists. The difference between theist and atheist is not what they think about the evidence for and against the proposition(that might be why one is one or the other though). The difference is whether one does or does not believe there is a god.

Agnostics are not atheists, and are not theists. An atheist doesn't believe in God, a theist does, and an agnostic doesn't know one way or the other, but admits the possibility either could be correct. You suggested Langhorne had no religious beliefs. That's certainly possible. It's also possible he just didn't hone to any particular belief system; but wasn't actually sure one way or the other as to the actual existence (or lack thereof) of God.

Highjohn wrote:See my previous Final Note for my take on what the bible does or does not endorse.

No matter what your "take" may be, the fact is that almost *any* position, even diametrically opposed ones, can find some degree of support - at some point in time at least - in the Bible. True, if one goes by the "latest" recorded incident, that might not be true, but most people who take the Bible as the "Word of God" do so in it's entirety.

Highjohn wrote:I wasn't talking about the rest of the world. If you require that the entire world be used in any analogy than you will always be able to find some place that bucked the trend. As for the short time period, well what do you expect? Almost any place on earth that completely stagnated for too long got invaded and taken over. Also Safehold isn't earth. Safehold is one society. I will concede your point about the crudity of Homo Sapiens starting point though.

Humans are, by and large, curious creatures. Even given the relative "uniformity" of the artificial Safeholden society, some places were more "progressive"/creative than others. For example, Charis vs Harchong. Humans are also basically lazy. Most "advancement" during the ages came as a result of someone wanting to find some way of doing something with less expended effort. No matter what importance society, religion, or whatever is going to place on a "work ethic", in the end it's the *results* that tend to end up mattering in the long run. So it's unlikely any human society is going to remain completely static for too long.

In any case, the point I was trying to make is that 1000 years is a long time. We went from swords to spaceships, superstition to science and technology, in less time than that. *If* some serious, unplanned, disruption of Langhorne's plan were to have occurred, waiting 1000 years to find out about it might easily make the damage unrecoverable.

Highjohn wrote:Why the return will not be an end to Langhorn's plan. I said end not a progress check. It could be a onetime progress check, but it cannot be an end. Otherwise, you have the same problem as Gilligan building a boat.

Mmmm... if I remember correctly, Gilligan and the crew *did* eventually leave the island. Also, they *had* a boat, even if damaged, that several episodes showed them attempting to repair. So I'm not sure what point you're trying to make...

At some point, this saga is going to have an end. While RFC knows (probably) what that end will be, and we don't. Depending on the outline he's using, it could be prior to the Return, shortly after, or even thousands of years later. We don't know. All we can do is speculate.

I've read most, if not all, of David's books (not just the Safehold series), and probably most of his short stories, and if you don't think any of those ever came to a "premature ending"; or completely skipped over story parts that would have been of interest to his readers, then you obviously haven't read as many as I have. Now it's probably true some of that was done intending to write follow-on or expanded novels in a series, but there's no certainty of that. It certainly hasn't happened *yet*.

Highjohn wrote:You could have the first of say, five visits. However planning on actually having something physical last tens of thousands of years is insane(actually insane, evaporation might be a problem if you left something that long). Plus repair can only go so far, what do you do when data is simply lost. A thousand years in the future the Holocaust Deniers could have a point(then, not now). We could very well have lost almost all of the evidence by then and certainly lost much of the original physical evidence to decay.

Sheer speculation. We have only the Wylsyn family "myth" of a Return at this point 1000 years after the beginning. We have absolutely *no* data to suggest there will be any "follow on" Returns at this point. Arbitrarily extending this to a sequence of Returns over tens of thousands of years without any such suggestion so far in the saga as if it were fact isn't realistic.

The reason I say "Myth" at this point is simply because there doesn't appear to be any *other* source within the Church that has an inkling at this point. If a 1000 year Return was common knowledge in the Church, don't you think it would have entered into the Group of Four's decision making process? Especially given the current state of the Jihad? Certainly there should have been a normal, human inclination to let the "returning" Archangels "handle the mess"; since they should obviously be far more powerful and capable than any of the "ordinary" humans on Safehold.

Highjohn wrote:The temple was built with Federation technology so it would be 'Angels' doing the work. So no "God says" scenario. The point I am making her was that ONE person couldn't have done it. I am saying nothing about twenty.

Again, speculation. True, the "Angels" would have to supervise, but any "uneducated" person could pour raw materials into a hopper without understanding how the "finished product" was made. It would just be a "miracle" to them. We have no documentation as to exactly how the Temple was built, nor, for that matter, how the area was decontaminated after the initial destruction. No matter how "clean" a nuclear bomb might be in and of itself, a surface detonation creates fallout.

On the other matter, though, we're not talking about the entire Temple construction project. We're talking about a sub-project, at most. To the un-informed, they're just building rooms. To the semi-informed, they might have some idea as to what the rooms are for, but in the end, only the group - or possibly even an individual - who actually programs or configures the controls will know *exactly* what's being done or what the intended result will be. We have that happen today. "Need to know".

Highjohn wrote:We do know that RFC plans for the Gbaba to return at some point. So unless the big G are returning before the 'return' we will see the return. Also, no anything cannot happen. RFC is constrained by his own writing style and past event in the series. Therefore, what won't happen is Merlin dying a pointless death in despair as all his friends die. That could happen in the Dune series but RFC doesn't write that way. See Honor Harrington's 'death' and the almost universal happy endings for RFC’s ‘good guys’.

We do? I mean, yes, it's obvious that at some future time it's likely that humans and Gbaba will meet again, but there's not a smidgen of inference at this point that the Safehold series will continue to that point.

Highjohn wrote:If the bombardment platform really is just junk than the entire series is pointless. Merlin could have destroyed all the fleets and armies of the temple from his skimmer(or similar vehicle) and the series would be over. See the horror of all the pointless deaths for why that won't happen.

Not at all. The point is that *no one knows*. The threat is *potentially* there, and that's all it needs to be. The "uncertainty factor" limits Merlin's available options, and makes the story plot more interesting. After all, Merlin *could* have just fired some energy weapons rather than set up steam engines in that uninhabited location to *really* test the platform's sensor's capabilities. That would have told him for sure if the platform had the sensors he speculated it did, with no risk to Charis or the rest of Safehold. After all, an orbital bombardment platform isn't going to be able to hit a skimmer unless it remains stationary. A kinetic weapon doesn't have homing capability.

It's actually rather *dumb* that he hasn't tried that, especially with all the "high speed" trips he's made that *haven't* set off any response from the platform. It's almost impossible that any atmospheric trip of the duration and speed he's done up to now could be considered a natural meteor event.

I'm sure most of us have encountered story plots elsewhere where the characters took extreme caution in scenarios where it later turned out there was no such need. Could be the same here.

Highjohn wrote:I did say the "Merlin had a thought that they might have been insane enough..." and if they did try, some of them might beat the odds. If the odds were 99:1 then put 100 people into stasis and five hundred years later, you get out one person. Heavy attrition but you do get biological people.

True to a point. The question would be just *how* many were left after Commodore Pei's nuke? I also suspect - even though it's not mentioned explicitly - that survival rates are probably higher for younger people than older. Obviously, they probably couldn't spare *many* people until close to the very end of getting everything up and running like they wanted. Even with the life prolonging techniques of the Federation, those folks were probably fairly old by then.

Highjohn wrote:Not all that imaginative is not an argument. That said see the next point I made. You quoted it next in your post. See below for requite.

No that won't happen RFC isn't an complete asshole.

Not all stories have "happy endings", even if we would wish they did. We have no idea what kind of ending RFC is trending to at this point.

Highjohn wrote:Yes they might. On the other hand what percentage of the population are those people? You can still find believers(sincere and possibly on this forum) who believe in Thor, Poseidon or Zeus. The point is that the vast majority of people I the Southern United States felt that way and now the vast majority in the Southern United States don't. There was a change of religious beliefs. If want an even more obvious change in religious belief see the Roman Catholic Church and limbo. They actually have decreed the change in belief and they formulated limbo earlier too. So there were too changes in belief. One limbo exists. Two no it doesn't.

Note: If slavery was reinstituted it probably would be racially based. Racism is the most likely justification for that and there is plenty of racism to go around. The other real option would be some sort of indentured servitude or selling oneself to clear debt.

Note 2: The quotes are used as markers, nothing else. I am trying to reduce the length of the post(Yes I know the length is my fault). So I am using small excerpts to make it easy to find what I am responding to.

Just because something "official" has been said doesn't necessarily denote actual "change".

For example, the Mormons had to "officially" give up polygamy as part of their religious dogma for Utah to become a state. (One could make an interesting comment about just how that fits into the "separation of Church and State "officially" guaranteed by our Constitution ) However, that hasn't kept some of them from still practicing it "unofficially". People, and, for that matter, organizations and institutions don't always say what they really feel. Otherwise, we wouldn't have that saying about "Do as I say, not as I do".

As for "limbo", who knows? Maybe at some point they'll reverse themselves yet again. Even the US has done similarly. Originally - liquor is ok (taverns) Prohibition - liquor is bad Repeal liquor is ok. Just because a change is made doesn't mean it's permanent.

As for the issue of slavery, at this point I think it would be more likely to be based on either ability or possibly education rather than just racial groupings.

SWM wrote:

Keith_w wrote:Would it not be possible to slingshot KEWs around 1 or more planets (although, as I recall, we don't know if there are more than 1 planets in this system, how come there's no mention of astronomy?) on a course which could intersect something in space? I do recognize that the object in space could simply move out of the way of an unpowered missile, but is it possible?

I think you are misunderstanding how the KEW works. The KEW doesn't have rocket engines or anything like that. The kinetic energy of the weapon comes from falling. The gravitational potential energy is changed into kinetic energy. A weapon like that only works when dropped downward. It doesn't have rockets to fling it outward. There will be some kind of launcher to make the KEW go down instead of continue in orbit, but the launcher won't be very powerful. If you did launch the KEW outward, it would lose kinetic energy instead of gaining it. It would be useless as a weapon aimed outward.

Mmmm.. not quite. There are basically 2 kinds of KEW's. One would be something used by a ship. It *would* have some means of propulsion, but the obvious problem is that it can't really change course quickly, if at all. However, it could be used against relatively stationary objects, or one's whose course could be plotted and not expected/able to be changed. Indeed, in OAR the Gbaba actually used KEW missiles against the planets they attacked.

Using such a weapon against a ship is more difficult, as it can dodge.

An orbital bombardment system is somewhat different. The planet's gravity well provides most of the propulsion, while the projectile has some minor steering capability while still in space. It is still a KEW, but a much lower velocity one.

On another post someone was questioning destructive capability. One increases or decreases the destructive capability of such a system by selecting less or more massive projectiles. For example, if you wanted to take out a relatively small target, you might use a projectile massing maybe 100 pounds. Destroying a city might use something massing several tons. E=mc2, after all. Assuming an aerodynamic shape and a heat resistant coating (pieces melting off and changing the shape would likely cause atmospheric drag and inadvertent trajectory changes); one should be able to calculate the exact energy release for a given massed projectile on a particular target location.

OrlandoNative wrote:

Highjohn wrote:If the bombardment platform really is just junk than the entire series is pointless. Merlin could have destroyed all the fleets and armies of the temple from his skimmer(or similar vehicle) and the series would be over. See the horror of all the pointless deaths for why that won't happen.

Not at all. The point is that *no one knows*. The threat is *potentially* there, and that's all it needs to be. The "uncertainty factor" limits Merlin's available options, and makes the story plot more interesting. After all, Merlin *could* have just fired some energy weapons rather than set up steam engines in that uninhabited location to *really* test the platform's sensor's capabilities. That would have told him for sure if the platform had the sensors he speculated it did, with no risk to Charis or the rest of Safehold. After all, an orbital bombardment platform isn't going to be able to hit a skimmer unless it remains stationary. A kinetic weapon doesn't have homing capability.

It's actually rather *dumb* that he hasn't tried that, especially with all the "high speed" trips he's made that *haven't* set off any response from the platform. It's almost impossible that any atmospheric trip of the duration and speed he's done up to now could be considered a natural meteor event.

I'm sure most of us have encountered story plots elsewhere where the characters took extreme caution in scenarios where it later turned out there was no such need. Could be the same here.

I believe the reasoning was that the routine use of Federation technology that the archangels and minor angels made - such as aircars at normal Terran Federation aircar speed (zoom zoom!) - was below the OBS' targeting thresholds, else the archangels would have risked setting it off whenever they went out and showed off their "angelic" power. It's entirely plausible that he did test that with an unoccupied recon skimmer at some point, or some drone mimicking one, and it simply was not mentioned.

Since then, it may be that Merlin and the Inner Circle are sneaking their way up to an OBS event slowly with the Barren Lands test emissions, rather than trying out blatant Terran Federation technology usage like energy weapons fire, in case whatever is driving it, or something smarter that may be roused in case of a dumber OBS system finding something to shoot, starts taking a more careful look once something does set it off aggressively.

So the caution there may not be excessive or dumb.

SWM wrote:quote="Keith_w" quote="SWM"
I think you are misunderstanding how the KEW works. The KEW doesn't have rocket engines or anything like that. The kinetic energy of the weapon comes from falling. The gravitational potential energy is changed into kinetic energy. A weapon like that only works when dropped downward. It doesn't have rockets to fling it outward. There will be some kind of launcher to make the KEW go down instead of continue in orbit, but the launcher won't be very powerful. If you did launch the KEW outward, it would lose kinetic energy instead of gaining it. It would be useless as a weapon aimed outward. /quote
I have been aware of how kinetic energy weapons work since I first read about Mike* guiding rocks on their trajectories to earth. They transfer gravitational energy to kinetic energy. There is nothing in that description that says that that the energy has to be accumulated on a direct line between the source and the destination. Missions to other solar system objects accumulate speed by passing near other solar objects such as planets or even the sun and transferring gravitational energy to themselves as velocity. This also slows down the visited object very slightly. The energy available at the termination of a voyage, whether one inch, one foot, one hundred miles or one billion miles is, if I recall correctly, one half mass times velocity, so yes, I do know how kinetic energy weapons work. They move fast, they hit hard.

Edited to add a comma
*second edit. Mike is a reference the supercomputer and practical joker in Robert Anson Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". TANSTAFL gospodin. /quote
Yes, I know how gravity assist works. I am a planetary scientist. My point is that the orbital KEW devices won't be able to launch a weapon out of Earth orbit. You won't be able to get the KEW to those other planets you want to get gravity assist from.

Even if you did manage to get one of these weapons launched toward another planet, the KEWs have rockets to help guide them or alter course. You would be firing blind. It would take years for the KEW to get out to the planet. How are you going to target an enemy ship after that? You are basically suggesting trying to kill someone by firing a bullet to ricochet off a distant wall and hit where you think your victim will be standing several years from now. That doesn't sound like a viable method of defending against the Gbaba.

Would you mind explaining WHY I couldn't get a KEW to another planet? I am glad that you are a planetary scientist, which I am not, so you should be aware that Safehold is a planet, which could be used to provide the initial gravity boost. We don't even know if there are other celestial objects in the solar system. There has been AFAIK no mention of astronomy on Safehold.

As for the rest, I didn't say that it would be particularly effective, just that it could be done. As it was pointed out in OAR, coasting missiles are easy to avoid for spaceships, but not for planets.

OrlandoNative wrote:Even the bombardment platform is an anomaly. Which is why I suggested that the staff that remained *after* Commodore Pei's nuclear revenge might not have known how, or had the remaining capability to, destroy it. That's certainly more reasonable than leaving it in orbit to possibly attract the notice of a Ghaba scout. It's not like orbital bombardment platforms are naturally occurring phenomena, after all

That doesn't suggest that those remaining Arch or minor angels didn't have *some* remaining technology. But it was probably construction and terraforming related, since that was still ongoing at the time. Space capable units were more likely to have been based at headquarters, and gone up in the blast

Thus, as far as where any Return might come from, that logically leaves somewhere "on planet". If so, the least likely to be disturbed place is under the Temple, since that's considered "Holy Ground". It's not like anyone is going to (or could) rebuild or add on to it. True, it could mean the return is then an avatar, a AI, a PICA, or a holovision, but whatever it is it makes sense for it to be in that location more than any others.

You are incorrect. The surviving angels had the Hamilcar--Langhorne's command ship, which was equipped with a complete automated manufacturing plant. David has told us that the Hamilcar was used after the War of the Fallen to completely rebuild the Rakurai. Far from being unable to destroy the Rakurai, they actually replaced it with a new one. The Hamilcar was also used to build the current Temple, including all of it's built-in tech and armor plating. The angels had plenty of technology to build anything they wanted.

OrlandoNative wrote:

SWM wrote:I think you are misunderstanding how the KEW works. The KEW doesn't have rocket engines or anything like that. The kinetic energy of the weapon comes from falling. The gravitational potential energy is changed into kinetic energy. A weapon like that only works when dropped downward. It doesn't have rockets to fling it outward. There will be some kind of launcher to make the KEW go down instead of continue in orbit, but the launcher won't be very powerful. If you did launch the KEW outward, it would lose kinetic energy instead of gaining it. It would be useless as a weapon aimed outward.

Mmmm.. not quite. There are basically 2 kinds of KEW's. One would be something used by a ship. It *would* have some means of propulsion, but the obvious problem is that it can't really change course quickly, if at all. However, it could be used against relatively stationary objects, or one's whose course could be plotted and not expected/able to be changed. Indeed, in OAR the Gbaba actually used KEW missiles against the planets they attacked.

There is a reason that I said "the KEW". I wasn't talking about just any KEW system. I was talking specifically about the Rakurai, which is an orbital bombardment system which works just as I described.

Keith_w wrote:Would you mind explaining WHY I couldn't get a KEW to another planet? I am glad that you are a planetary scientist, which I am not, so you should be aware that Safehold is a planet, which could be used to provide the initial gravity boost. We don't even know if there are other celestial objects in the solar system. There has been AFAIK no mention of astronomy on Safehold.

We are talking about an orbital bombardment system. Such a system depends on using the gravity of the planet to accelerate the weapon downward. A system like that does not launch things upward. The system cannot provide enough force to launch the weapon with escape velocity.

No, Safehold cannot provide the initial boost. A gravity assist requires coming from outside the planetary gravitational field, coming up from behind the planet as it orbits around the star. Basically, the vehicle is falls toward the planet, being accelerated by its gravity. But the planet is moving in the same direction as the vehicle. In essence, this gives the vehicle more time to fall and be accelerated by the gravity. The vehicle eventually reaches closest approach, swings around the planet, and comes out at right-angles to the motion of the planet. Since the planet and vehicle are no longer moving in the same direction, the vehicle spends less time moving out of the gravitational field. So it doesn't lose as much energy as it gained while approaching. The planet gives up some of its kinetic energy while the vehicle gains some kinetic energy.

But this doesn't work if you are already in orbit around the planet. The planet is not moving away from you. If you fall toward the planet and swing around it, you will lose as much energy as you gained while falling. If you are in orbit, you cannot use a gravity boost around the planet. The only way to boost your weapon out of orbit to interplanetary space is by having a powerful launcher or by putting a rocket on the weapon.

Let me put some numbers on this, to help illustrate. Suppose you have an orbital weapon system orbiting at 20,000 kilometers radius. You launch your weapon towards the planet so it will miss. At that moment, the weapon has velocity v. The weapon gains kinetic energy as it falls. When it reaches closest approach (at, say, 5,000 km radius), it reaches maximum velocity, V. Then the weapon climbs back out of the gravitational field, slowing down as it goes. When it reaches 20,000 kilometers, its velocity is again v, the same velocity it had when it left the launcher.

There is no point in aiming toward the planet in this case. You don't get a gravity boost. You might as well aim the launcher upward. If the launcher is not powerful enough to throw the weapon out of the gravitational field, then you are out of luck, because the only extra energy given to your weapon is from the launcher. You don't get a gravity assist.

(If you want to be technical, the best angle to fire the weapon if you are trying to give it escape velocity is in the direction of motion around the planet. But it is still true--the only energy gained by the weapon is from the launcher. No gravity assist is possible when you are already in orbit.)

JeffEngel wrote:

OrlandoNative wrote:
Not at all. The point is that *no one knows*. The threat is *potentially* there, and that's all it needs to be. The "uncertainty factor" limits Merlin's available options, and makes the story plot more interesting. After all, Merlin *could* have just fired some energy weapons rather than set up steam engines in that uninhabited location to *really* test the platform's sensor's capabilities. That would have told him for sure if the platform had the sensors he speculated it did, with no risk to Charis or the rest of Safehold. After all, an orbital bombardment platform isn't going to be able to hit a skimmer unless it remains stationary. A kinetic weapon doesn't have homing capability.

It's actually rather *dumb* that he hasn't tried that, especially with all the "high speed" trips he's made that *haven't* set off any response from the platform. It's almost impossible that any atmospheric trip of the duration and speed he's done up to now could be considered a natural meteor event.

I'm sure most of us have encountered story plots elsewhere where the characters took extreme caution in scenarios where it later turned out there was no such need. Could be the same here.

I believe the reasoning was that the routine use of Federation technology that the archangels and minor angels made - such as aircars at normal Terran Federation aircar speed (zoom zoom!) - was below the OBS' targeting thresholds, else the archangels would have risked setting it off whenever they went out and showed off their "angelic" power. It's entirely plausible that he did test that with an unoccupied recon skimmer at some point, or some drone mimicking one, and it simply was not mentioned.

Since then, it may be that Merlin and the Inner Circle are sneaking their way up to an OBS event slowly with the Barren Lands test emissions, rather than trying out blatant Terran Federation technology usage like energy weapons fire, in case whatever is driving it, or something smarter that may be roused in case of a dumber OBS system finding something to shoot, starts taking a more careful look once something does set it off aggressively.

So the caution there may not be excessive or dumb.

The post I was responding to was about the capabilities of the platform sensors, *if any*.

Yes, the Archangels and their helpers had access to some varieties of aerial vehicles. However, your supposition that they "zoomed, zoomed" has no supporting evidence. We ban supersonic flight over the US, for example. Why wouldn't the Terran Federation do the same in planetary airspace? And Safehold? If anything, the low tech Safehold society they were intent on building would tend to lean towards more *less* frantic traveling, except in emergencies. Realistically, however, if there was *any* expectation of using aerial vehicles, it would make more sense to *not* have sensors set up to detect them. You wouldn't want the platform to try to intercept an emergency flight just because someone either neglected to exclude it or there was some sort of sensor glitch. Especially since it's unlikely it could, and the "collateral damage" would be the planetary surface over which it traveled.

In any case, you're basically making a value judgement as to whether it's better to "work up" or "work down". Given the current conditions on Safehold, from a military viewpoint it would be far more useful to start high rather than low. That way, if there was no response from the platform, you'd know you could use some of those more "exotic" weapons to both lessen the total casualty count *and* possibly influence people's attitudes via "miracles". Win win.

Keith_w wrote:Would you mind explaining WHY I couldn't get a KEW to another planet? I am glad that you are a planetary scientist, which I am not, so you should be aware that Safehold is a planet, which could be used to provide the initial gravity boost. We don't even know if there are other celestial objects in the solar system. There has been AFAIK no mention of astronomy on Safehold.

As for the rest, I didn't say that it would be particularly effective, just that it could be done. As it was pointed out in OAR, coasting missiles are easy to avoid for spaceships, but not for planets.

It's not so much that you possibly couldn't get a KEW to another planet, it's that a orbital bombardment system wouldn't be the *kind* of KEW one would use to do so. Such a system has minimal capabilities for flight. Basically a way to slow down (so the projectile falls from orbit) and possibly some steering capability while still in space.

For a projectile to travel to another planet, it would need the capability to boost itself out of the gravity field of the planet it's orbiting. That would require significant thrust. For example, the moon trips couldn't just "slingshot" themselves from Earth to Moon, though they could from Moon to Earth if they needed to; due to the Moon as a starting point being "higher" in the gravity well than low Earth orbit was.

"Slingshot" maneuvers require either (1) the projectile *not* being part of the planetary "system" being used for the slingshot (ie, having more than escape velocity to begin with) or (2) significant propulsive assist at some point during the trajectory. Otherwise, the velocity gained diving into the gravity well is lost again as the projectile climbs back out. Conservation of energy - you can't get something for nothing. It's really more of a course *correction* implementation; where one can alter course with minimal fuel usage.