Reserve destruction

Relax wrote:There has never been a problem in manning the reserve. That is a completely BS baloney sandwich red herring brought up by the author.

Why do even bother reading anything in the Honorverse? You seem to be unable to accept the Author's vision and denigrate virtually everything in the series.

On manning the SLN reserve would take a rather large number of people. I once figured it out, because SD's in the SLN are more manpower intensive than RMN ships I used a crew size of 6500. Which when multiplied by the number of SD's in the reserve gives a manning requirement of 54 million people. Now coupled with the manning of the other ships in the reserve you could potentially need upwards of 60-70 million people.


The next big problem is the age and obsolescence of the ships. This also raises other questions like do we have anyone trained on these older systems, do we have spare parts or are currently manufacturing the parts.

Another question is are these ships intact, has some admiral been padding his/her retirement fund selling off parts of the ships. I can see a greedy admiral selling off anything he could pry off the ship like computers, PDLC's, AC's, CM launchers and maybe grasers and lasers if s/he thought they could get away with it.

Jonathan_S wrote:Just a nitpick, although it only expands on your "warship in the wrong place". But a missile doesn't have to have a higher terminal velocity than the ballistic, wedge-down, LACs to intercept them. Even an SDM with a terminal velocity of .27c can hit a 0.8c LAC if the firing warship can detect the LAC more than 180 seconds out AND the LAC passes 82,000 km of the warship.
That would let it lead the LAC and put a laserhead within range as the LAC came screaming by.

I consider that to be part of what I was talking about--a warship close enough to fire a missile crosswise and get the LAC within the warhead's envelope. The portion of space that any such basket covers is minuscule, though.

Furthermore, against a wedge-down LAC I would be very surprised at a detection at 10-second range--and at .8c 80% of that will be used up waiting for the lightspeed signal to get back. Thus the LAC will be only 2 seconds away when detected. Can they get off a missile in those two seconds? I very much doubt it.

The more I think about it the more I think the only real defense against such a tactic is FTL-comm recon drones. LACs should be able to do high speed raids against any fixed target the Sollies have that doesn't have a wedge and sidewall.

An MDM however could exceed the LAC's max velocity - though in a stern chase the overtake speed after burnout is low enough (less than 9,000 km/s) the LAC could certainly dodge.

There wouldn't be any reason to dodge. At 9,000 km/s overtake the missile would spend an eternity in the point defense zone before closing to detonation range. It's ballistic, no wedge for laser protection and the LAC would have a very good solution.

Besides, does an MDM have a powerplant for such a long chase? If it was fired as the LAC passed it's going to be something like an hour to overtake.

saber964 wrote:Another question is are these ships intact, has some admiral been padding his/her retirement fund selling off parts of the ships. I can see a greedy admiral selling off anything he could pry off the ship like computers, PDLC's, AC's, CM launchers and maybe grasers and lasers if s/he thought they could get away with it.

Interesting thought--the older ships at least are probably gutted.

Without a wedge up you have a severe heat issue. The wedge offers some way of dumping your thermal signature. Without the wedge you have a huge very hot reactor that will take quite a while to cool off. And if you fully shut it off and let it cool off to as close to ambient as it will get it might take a while to bring back up. Not to mention that the LAC itself isn't going to have a hull temp of 4K.

Jonathan_S wrote:An MDM however could exceed the LAC's max velocity - though in a stern chase the overtake speed after burnout is low enough (less than 9,000 km/s) the LAC could certainly dodge.

Piling on the nitpicks, a Newtonian 3DM could reach 0.81c from a standing start, but with the relativistic correction, it only gets to 0.67c. Even a 4DM only gets to 0.79c.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=7150&start=32

Bill Woods wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:An MDM however could exceed the LAC's max velocity - though in a stern chase the overtake speed after burnout is low enough (less than 9,000 km/s) the LAC could certainly dodge.

Piling on the nitpicks, a Newtonian 3DM could reach 0.81c from a standing start, but with the relativistic correction, it only gets to 0.67c. Even a 4DM only gets to 0.79c.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=7150&start=32

Yep. but the numbers RFC quotes in the books (especially range vs endurance) show that somehow missiles 'cheat' and get to use Newtonian acceleration. The numbers just don't line up if you apply relativistic acceleration (not only would the relativistic 3-drive MDM not hit 0.81c but it would also burn out before reaching its canonical 67 million km powered range)


One possible 'in-universe' explanation is that the wedge's grav tech 'magic' supplies the extra acceleration necessary to keep the relativistic mass accelerating as if it was the non-relativistic mass. (And somehow pulls all the extra power required for that from hyper - so it doesn't drain the fusion reactors any faster either)
(The out-of-universe explanation is probable simpler; RFC now wanting to mess with the more complicated formula when writing )


However given that it'll be interesting to see what the terminal powered velocity of a 4-drive MDM gets announced as.

kzt wrote:Without a wedge up you have a severe heat issue. The wedge offers some way of dumping your thermal signature. Without the wedge you have a huge very hot reactor that will take quite a while to cool off. And if you fully shut it off and let it cool off to as close to ambient as it will get it might take a while to bring back up. Not to mention that the LAC itself isn't going to have a hull temp of 4K.

What's the detection range for being warm vs the detection range for the wedge, though?

Loren Pechtel wrote:

kzt wrote:Without a wedge up you have a severe heat issue. The wedge offers some way of dumping your thermal signature. Without the wedge you have a huge very hot reactor that will take quite a while to cool off. And if you fully shut it off and let it cool off to as close to ambient as it will get it might take a while to bring back up. Not to mention that the LAC itself isn't going to have a hull temp of 4K.

What's the detection range for being warm vs the detection range for the wedge, though?

Real world, thermal detection is very easy and very long ranged. It's based on T squared, where T is in Kelvin (Room temp is ~285K) and the square root of the surface the observer can see. A shrike is maybe 400 square meters nose on. So using modern technology you could see it at 21.8 million km assuming the entire hull was at about room temp. Less if you somehow cooled it, more if it was heated up from the reactor.
See: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/r ... h_In_Space


I have no idea how David is handing this.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Bill Woods wrote: Piling on the nitpicks, a Newtonian 3DM could reach 0.81c from a standing start, but with the relativistic correction, it only gets to 0.67c. Even a 4DM only gets to 0.79c.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=7150&start=32

Yep. but the numbers RFC quotes in the books (especially range vs endurance) show that somehow missiles 'cheat' and get to use Newtonian acceleration. The numbers just don't line up if you apply relativistic acceleration (not only would the relativistic 3-drive MDM not hit 0.81c but it would also burn out before reaching its canonical 67 million km powered range)

Actually, it runs a bit further: 69.5 e9m. One way of looking at it is that because of time dilation, the missile burns for 10 minutes in the rest frame of the launching ship.

One possible 'in-universe' explanation is that the wedge's grav tech 'magic' supplies the extra acceleration necessary to keep the relativistic mass accelerating as if it was the non-relativistic mass. (And somehow pulls all the extra power required for that from hyper - so it doesn't drain the fusion reactors any faster either)
(The out-of-universe explanation is probable simpler; RFC now wanting to mess with the more complicated formula when writing )

Yeah, an unreliable narrator. It didn't matter until he invented 2D missiles, and didn't really matter until 3DMs. But, you know, presumably he isn't doing calculations with pencil & paper. He's got a spreadsheet or a set of look-up tables. You or I could provide him with new ones....

However given that it'll be interesting to see what the terminal powered velocity of a 4-drive MDM gets announced as.

Heh.