What, no planet kablooey?

noblehunter wrote:Assume a perfectly spherical side-wall?

Do we know how fast a wedge can accelerate in a practical sense? For ships and missiles, it's limited by the inertial compensator's ability to preserve the the object being accelerated but that's not a limit if the desire is just to get something moving as fast as possible as quickly as possible.

Louis R wrote:That theory is for the mathematical construct that is the wedge itself. Like your typical 1st-year dynamics exercise, it assumes that all dimensions and masses not specifically given are zero. In the real world, using real nodes to generate that wedge with finite power, near-infinite accelerations don't - and can't - happen.

Plotline in most Sci-Fi medias forbids hyperspace initiation inside a star or planet's gravity well with varied consequences ranging from the imminent destruction of the planet in the Star Trek universe to the destruction of the offending ship in other worlds. In-between, is the plain old inability to activate such systems within a planet or star's gravitational influence because of its effect on the ship's engines, to navigational difficulties which amounts to the "directional compass needle" going haywire to hyperspace engine monsters.

The Vagaari possessed gravity well projectors known as ship nets on some of their ships which were used to prevent their victims fleeing to hyperspace. Chiss Commander Thrawn and his warriors of the Chiss Expansionary Defense Force managed to capture one of these devices from the Vagaari and later put it to use in the Outbound Flight crisis.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Gravity_wells
http://scifi.stackexchange.com/question ... vity-wells

There are actually real world theories attempting to calculate what would happen during one of these events.

And of course, Fred Saberhagen's Bezerkers. Destroying their planet is probably the quickest way to be rid of Bad Life.

In Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the Earth is a computer built to find the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Or rather it was before a Vogon fleet destroyed it to make way for a hyperspatial express route.

In Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, it is not known whether the Great A'Tuin has any predators, but it must probably die eventually, since it lays eggs from which miniature discworlds are born. Well, it's not really science-fiction anyway, is it ?

RFC in the Starfire series used scorched Earth tactics to wipe out the arachnids (The Shiva Option). Ender destroyed worlds in Ender's Game.

Dr Who destroyed the Daelect world, and may or may not have destroyed Galifrey (depending on timelines).

While the Lensman series has been mentioned world destruction was a common ploy.

Lensman universe--not only was there the negasphere but also the n-space planet. Since the Lensman universe uses a non-inertial stardrive relativistic (although the universe is Newtonian anyway) kinetic weapons aren't an option. Killing a planet requires hitting it with something of planetary scale and even then it wasn't easy--a free planet poses basically no threat and important planets would have their own drives--and a free planet can run rings around an inert planet.

We only saw three planets killed. One by negaplanet (which do pose a threat even when free), one by being squashed between two planets while held in place by a fleet (the fleet pinned it in place, being free didn't protect it from being squashed) and one by the n-space planet (15x lightspeed--no time for the defenders to react and go free.)


There's a good reason for a lack of planet-killers in the Honorverse, though--there simply is nothing in the universe that operates at anything remotely like the needed level. The sun puts out 3.8E26 J/sec, the gravitational binding energy of the Earth is 2E32 J. With perfect efficiency you still need nearly a million seconds of sunpower to destroy it.

Starship drives don't scale up to large enough objects to kill a planet with a kinetic weapon and everything else plays honestly with the energy.

munroburton wrote:

cthia wrote:Eridani Edict!

This Edict is responsible for something else missing in the Honorverse -- a planet killer! And relatedly, attitudes that wish to destroy planets -- though not always human -- and oftentimes not -- throughout my media excursions.

What follows are some examples, though in no way even close to exhaustive. I guess we should be thankful that RFC deviated from the norm. The worry is there, less the effort.

RFC did turn it up to 11 in his Dahak series. One of the empires at one point had more than a quarter million warships of similar size to the Death Star, not to mention the latest generation of the gravitionic warhead in book 3...

Say what? Let me count that again...

Yep, a quarter million Death Stars?

Listen, needless to say, I haven't read any of the Dahak series, but I've only one question. DOES ANYONE SURVIVE IN THAT WORLD???

They should get Dahak outta there!

cthia wrote:Listen, needless to say, I haven't read any of the Dahak series, but I've only one question. DOES ANYONE SURVIVE IN THAT WORLD???

Pretty much no. I mean, except for one planet collapsed to a pre-industrial society and another settled by the crew of a "death star" that was stuck there after a semi-successful mutiny, the entire population of the empire that built a quarter million of the things died off without using them against what they were designed to fight.

Of course, that planet settled by the crew of one of the "death stars" - that later became known as "earth".

drothgery wrote:

cthia wrote:Listen, needless to say, I haven't read any of the Dahak series, but I've only one question. DOES ANYONE SURVIVE IN THAT WORLD???

Pretty much no. I mean, except for one planet collapsed to a pre-industrial society and another settled by the crew of a "death star" that was stuck there after a semi-successful mutiny, the entire population of the empire that built a quarter million of the things died off without using them against what they were designed to fight.

Of course, that planet settled by the crew of one of the "death stars" - that later became known as "earth".

No big deal. Archaelogical evidence in the Dahakverse suggests humanity(indeed, any life forms) was wiped out to one or two planets with relatively low populations at least four times, possibly up to fourteen(IIRC, there was a mess between what they referred to as the First and Second Eras).

Nothing like a little billion-years-long war to stimulate the military-industrial complex!

cthia wrote:Listen, needless to say, I haven't read any of the Dahak series, but I've only one question. DOES ANYONE SURVIVE IN THAT WORLD???

drothgery wrote:Pretty much no. I mean, except for one planet collapsed to a pre-industrial society and another settled by the crew of a "death star" that was stuck there after a semi-successful mutiny, the entire population of the empire that built a quarter million of the things died off without using them against what they were designed to fight.

Of course, that planet settled by the crew of one of the "death stars" - that later became known as "earth".

munroburton wrote:
No big deal. Archaelogical evidence in the Dahakverse suggests humanity(indeed, any life forms) was wiped out to one or two planets with relatively low populations at least four times, possibly up to fourteen(IIRC, there was a mess between what they referred to as the First and Second Eras).

Nothing like a little billion-years-long war to stimulate the military-industrial complex!

It's been a rough few hundred million years for this part of the galaxy, with the Achuultani roaming in to wipe out everything theoretically threatening every so often. And if you get missed and get back to the stars, you find out before long what's happened with the broken planets and remains floating about. Under those conditions, you WANT a quarter million Death Stars (which is putting it mildly; Dahak is bigger and nastier than one of those, and the later generations were vastly scarier).

I'll email a sentiment@dahakverse.come-on!

I'm sorry. I just can't wrap my head around that much senseless killing. After awhile -- alright already! What in the Universe of a conflict can fuel that sort of a grudge? Or is it something simple -- like coffee beans developing a universal blight. Hey, only thing I can figure is a lack of coffee that can fuel that source of animosity.


****** *


I just remembered another planet killing source. Remember The Fifth Element? If it hadn't been for the lovely Milla Jovovich (Fifth Element), Earth would have been reduced to so much space dust.

Curious. Even in the Honorverse, as readers, we've often surmised the possibility of planet destruction by tossing huge asteroids at them. An option some of us thought available to the Masadans.

I'm curious, has anyone come across an incident where that particular method was actually used to destroy a planet? It would have happened in Armageddon if not for our unlikely band of heroes, but that was a random asteroid.

If so, please broadcast the transponder on the book. I'd like a read.