The Fall of Grendlesbane - alternative timeline

And if your tractors happen to fail, like it happened to a poor LAC in HotQ you're going to massacre a lot of people...

Duckk wrote:And if your tractors happen to fail, like it happened to a poor LAC in HotQ you're going to massacre a lot of people...

Man, you are grim.... Correct...., but still grim.

I really wonder how common tractor issue like that are - Tractors are designed specifically to tow other ships - That was their main use prior to the re-introduction of missile pods. At Spindle, Rolands were sent to grab the hulks of Scientist SDs. In Silensia, Honor used several of her 282s to catch and haul back a Pirate DD. Tractors were used in several Grav wave battles to tow off wounded ships. Yes, you'd need to keep accel down to within what Grav plates will handle (Or in the case of the Rolands, 1 G since the Scientists were dead hulks.), But towing Large masses "long" distances is what Tractors are for. I doubt I'd want to rely on them for more than a day or 2, but towing things is their job....

Duckk wrote:And if your tractors happen to fail, like it happened to a poor LAC in HotQ you're going to massacre a lot of people...

I thought someone just failed to install the 50 ton test straps on the fire extinguisher, not that the tractor failed.

I think it is both.

i'm sure i remember that a tractor failed on one run, and on another the crew returned to the LAC to find something had come loose and wreaked it while they were aboard PNS Sultan (or Thunder of God , if you prefer)

Dauntless wrote:I think it is both.

i'm sure i remember that a tractor failed on one run, and on another the crew returned to the LAC to find something had come loose and wreaked it while they were aboard PNS Sultan (or Thunder of God , if you prefer)

You remembered correctly. I went back to look at the exact text from HotQ

Honor of the Queen: Ch wrote:Normally, that would have been little more than an interesting parlor trick, but Valentine had taken the entire idea one stage further. No LAC crew could survive the sort of acceleration ships routinely pulled in hyper for the simple reason that their inertial compensator would pack up the instant they tried it. But if they took the entire crew off and removed or secured all loose gear, Valentine suggested, there was no reason the ships themselves couldn’t take the acceleration on the end of a tractor beam.
Yu had thought he was out of his mind, but the engineer had pulled up the numbers on his terminal and demonstrated the theoretical possibility. Simonds had jumped at it, and to Yu’s considerable surprise, it had worked.
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.

But for this proposed insanity if you kept the accel down to, say, 3g then people and structure would probably be fine even with a partial or complete tractor failure. But it'd take a couple days to get out to the hyper limit at that rate.

OTOH The habitats would have grav plates. If those grav plates are warship grade then they can 'sink' 50g without any impact on the interior. That'd get you to the hyperlimit in under half a day. But I suspect at even 50g the structure might have issues with the stresses if you suffered a partial tractor failure; though they wouldn't be nearly as bad as what the Masadan LAC faced at ~390g.

50g is still not good enough if you're fleeing in the face of the enemy; but given the alternate timeline proposed here with a couple days warning it might just be possible without overly risking the occupants.

I would think that with 2 days advance notice the following could have been done (assuming a decision was made to abandon station):

1- Out of the 67 (I believe) hulls being worked on, I think the odds would be in favor of at least 1 being capable of moving on its own (likely 2 or 3), even if it is without weapons or sensors or stuff. The key here wouldn't be to use them in a bluff, but to both carry workers and important equipment back to Manticore. Basically, stuff the hulls that could get to Manticore with the most valuable stuff in the yards in order to minimize your losses.

2- With 2 days and their proverbial lives at stake, I'm sure that many engineers and yard dogs could have found a way to jury rig a SD to carry at least 1,000 extra bodies for a 2-3 week trip. The air may get bad towards the end and stress the systems, but it would work. And allow the RMN to get everyone home (sadly, only to be killed in Oyster Bay - but that knowledge cannot be used here). And, having an extra 25k trained engineers and yard dogs could certainly have helped with the python lump (if only by freeing up people to build still more docks and slips to build more ships).

3- All of the ships that were destroyed would have survived to fight another day, along with all of the trained crews. It isn't a huge number in terms of subsequent casualties, but every additional trained sailor is one more for BeauPers to play with.

That would have turned Grendlesbane from the huge setback that it was into something that cost a lot in terms of materials but nothing in terms of personnel, so a lot better.