Starship Construction Techniques In The Honorverse ...

Was the Dorado loaded or unloaded at the time?

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Annachie wrote:Was the Dorado loaded or unloaded at the time?

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Loaded - was part of a convoy of merchies. Don't remember what the Dorado was loaded with, though.

Theemile wrote:It's not the acceleration that is an issue - it is the CHANGE in acceleration over time that is the issue. 0-650 Gs in a millisecond, does much more damage than increasing from an acceleration of 0-2000gs in 1 second.

Why should that be the case? The forces on the ship's structure are proportional to the acceleration.

Is it a materials-science issue of some sort?

With regards to the Dorado, it was probably wrecked inside in the first instant, outside of areas speficially designed to handle such energy transfers. Areas such as engineering spaces (in case of an incomplete reactor scram), the framing members and the impeller rings associated with them (energy levels associated with nodes are extremely high and catastrophic failures of individual nodes do appearantly occure on occation).

HungryKing wrote:With regards to the Dorado, it was probably wrecked inside in the first instant, outside of areas speficially designed to handle such energy transfers. Areas such as engineering spaces (in case of an incomplete reactor scram), the framing members and the impeller rings associated with them (energy levels associated with nodes are extremely high and catastrophic failures of individual nodes do appearantly occure on occation).

The towed LACs mentioned in HotQ, Ch. 17 comes to mind as an example of what can happen without a compensator - "So far, they'd lost only two of the tiny ships. The LACs were just big enough it took three tractors to zone each of them, and one tractor had lost lock during acceleration. That LAC had simply snapped in half; the second had survived the journey only to have its crew find a ragged, three-meter hole torn half the length of their ship where a twelve-ton pressure tank had come adrift and crashed aft like an ungainly cannonball."

FLHerne wrote:

Theemile wrote:It's not the acceleration that is an issue - it is the CHANGE in acceleration over time that is the issue. 0-650 Gs in a millisecond, does much more damage than increasing from an acceleration of 0-2000gs in 1 second.

Why should that be the case? The forces on the ship's structure are proportional to the acceleration.

Is it a materials-science issue of some sort?

It is called basic mechanics of how all materials fracture.

The proper term that Theemile is talking about is called "jerk". Mathematically it is the 3rd derivative of position. Position, velocity, acceleration, Jerk. Mechanics equation derivatives perspective: Load, Moment, deflection, rate of deflection. How fast a structure has to expand/contract due to stretching is what creates the shear forces.

Everything is elastic. Think of it like electrical tape. Electrical tape is extremely hard to break if you apply the stretch slowly, but if you 'jerk' it, it snaps and viola you have a piece of tape. The load is the force stretching the tape, since it is all in tension there is no "moment applied", but the tape deflects due to strain the force applies. The rate of deflection due to strain ultimately breaks the tape depending on how fast the force is applied.

Think of it this way: A BIG hammer, swung SLOWLY has more destructive power than a SMALL hammer, swung quickly. Energy transfer. One bounces, with minimal localized destruction whereas the other pushes long enough due to moment of inertia and its rate of vector change(rebounding) that the overall DEFLECTION is vastly greater to whatever is being HIT, and therefore also the RATE of deflection as well.

For this reason, a Mach 10 railgun sounds like a great idea, Its fast!, but in reality, it will be near useless as a weapon of war unless one can use it with an explosive warhead increasing the area of impact.

..... How does the warhead know when to explode? Will have to be done electronically via magnetic principles, without a typical mechanical plunger backup making such missiles/bombs multipurpose. Of course a magnetic fuse only works against materials with strong magnetic fields. Then there is that wee slight problem that an electro-MAGNETIC railgun completely fried the fuse when it was FIRED and probably exploded in the barrel of the gun! Thus, why all railgun testing has been done without a warhead.

Think of the old battles between Battleships and destroyers, the round went completely THROUGH the DD's doing very little harm as they never exploded.

With regard to the Dorado, I'd take the story with a large grain of salt.

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Annachie wrote:With regard to the Dorado, I'd take the story with a large grain of salt.

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Not too large a grain. The story was written by Timothy Zahn, who in addition to writing the two 'Charles' short stories (of which With One Stone is the second), has co-written two of the Travis Long books (other co-authors Tom Pope and David Weber) and is currently working on a third.

I was hoping to get more clarity from this thread regarding warship hulls. But it seems I'm the only retarded member in class. lol

I can't attain a proper image of hulls. Throughout the series it's been "an availability of hulls." Which to me implies a battle steel structure akin to domed monkey bars.
http://www.domeclimber.com/8ft.php

But then, how is access to the internal structure obtained through the succeeding stages? I suppose the open area of the bays would provide clearance for large equipment etc. to complete the internal superstructure. And I suppose that the armor is then grown in place around the battle steel skeleton, which I can't shake as a metal concrete pouring. lol


At any rate, though the Pearls contain much information regarding hulls, the most general information isn't there.

Also, I live on the East coast and I've seen various ships in construction. The hull and the superstructure of current Earth distorts my vision of Honorverse shipbuilding.

And I always envisioned huge mechanical cranes (arms) built in as part of an Honorverse building slip. I have a feeling my visions are embarrassingly distorted.

Also, the Pearls mention hulls, internal hulls, armor, hulls, armor. I suppose that a skeletal hull (and I see visions of these things being towed to building slips) are so huge that individual openings supply access. As opposed to traditional wet navy ships whose completed hull does not impede crane access etc. Just build up!

Can someone draw me a clearer image?

The phrase "availability of hulls" is a general phrase referring to the limited number of ships. Hulls is simply a synonym for ships in that phrase. It does not refer to how ships are constructed.

Ship skeletons are constructed in the slip. They are not built elsewhere and dragged into a slip. The entire ship is built inside the slip, starting with the keel. My understanding is that, unlike an ocean vessel, a starship keel is not necessarily on the exterior. It is probably just the primary beam through the ship around which the rest of the ship skeleton is attached.

I suppose there might be cranes and such in a yard slip. But I think small construction flitters probably take the place of cranes in a lot of cases--maybe small 3 or 4 man short-haul ships with massive manipulating arms. They would be used to maneuver the larger objects into and around the partially-constructed ship.

I imagine most of the larger equipment is normally put in place before the hull itself is finished.