What, no planet kablooey?

cthia wrote: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!

Calling Dahak a Death Star is an insult!

Argh! I thought we had spoiler tags here. Hmmm... I don't know exactly what the color should be but this is enough like the background.

A Death Star is puny in comparison. While Dahak's beam weapons are nasty indeed they're nothing like the Death Star's superlaser. Instead, Dahak carried missiles with gravitonic warheads--enough hits and a planet is disrupted. We see Iapetus blown to dust this way in the second book. The missiles are hyper missiles--useable clear across the inner solar system.

Furthermore, Dahak is more than just a mobile fortress--such ships were meant for multi-decade deployments and in an emergency could do an infinite deployment as they are full-blown cities in their own right and carry the industrial capacity to repair anything onboard or even build a new ship.

Besides, their targets aren't limited to planets. In the second book a group of ships takes out a star--without even firing a shot. They have a hyper drive and a gravitonic drive, the latter doing nasty things when triggered in a planetary system. A group of ships goes in close to a star and trigger their drives at exactly the same instant. The star explodes, the enemy fleet is deep within the hyper limit and only has hyper drives, it can't escape.

Nevermind, I didn't realize it was about planets actually being destroyed by impacts, rather than just being wiped out.

George J. Smith wrote:It is alluded to in Mutineer's Moon the first book of the Dahak series, the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars is the result of a planet being destroyed by the Alchuutani using c fractional rocks

Where do you get that the rocks were c-frac? The Fifth Imperium universe uses non-inertial drives, they would be hard pressed to boost a c-frac rock.

cthia wrote: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.

Think Gbaba. It is all actually explained pretty well. There are a TON of things in that trilogy, particularly the third book that David Weber clearly says, "you know I was on to something here".

I am surprised you have not had a chance to read it, I highly recommend it, it was how I got started on Mr. Webers work.

There was the Sun Crusher from Star Wars, or... was from Star Wars, past tense now that Disney threw it all out. Anyways it made stars go supernova, which would pretty much ruin local real estate values of any inhabited planets in the system. Not only that it was tough enough that it could survive the ensuing explosion. It once even took a direct hit from a death star and kept on going.


Also there are the Hypergates from Jack Campbells the lost fleet. While not originally intended as a weapon, at least by the human builders, it could be made to collapse with a resulting explosion that ranged from next to nothing, upwards to a supernova blast. It all depended how you brought down the tether supports. Another species used the same technology to create mines, which were a strait up weapon. Even if the species who did it used them for defensive purposes.

cthia wrote:...Zip...
Thanks for broadcasting George. I'm interested because I'm curious of the mechanics that an author would utilize to actually get even a moon to nudge. I would think that Sci-Fi writers would steer clear of taking on such a herculean project -- other than as a passing reference -- because of the huge weight associated with the explanation of the plausible physics demanded by would be readers.

I'd surely find a blow by blow account of such an undertaking quite fascinating, even in a fictional world.

From a not-so-serious point of view, you can just put some sort of engine on the moon and wait for it to take effect.
In Little Big Adventure 2 the Esmers build a big reactor on the Emerald Moon to smash it into planet Twinsun. Fortunately they come to their senses after they are freed from FunFrock's influence (and the hero repairs their planet's environment) and destroy the reactor in time.

Wait, wasn't that the sound of a Dinofly crashing in the garden ?

Loren Pechtel wrote:

cthia wrote: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!

Calling Dahak a Death Star is an insult!

Argh! I thought we had spoiler tags here. Hmmm... I don't know exactly what the color should be but this is enough like the background.

A Death Star is puny in comparison. While Dahak's beam weapons are nasty indeed they're nothing like the Death Star's superlaser. Instead, Dahak carried missiles with gravitonic warheads--enough hits and a planet is disrupted. We see Iapetus blown to dust this way in the second book. The missiles are hyper missiles--useable clear across the inner solar system.

Furthermore, Dahak is more than just a mobile fortress--such ships were meant for multi-decade deployments and in an emergency could do an infinite deployment as they are full-blown cities in their own right and carry the industrial capacity to repair anything onboard or even build a new ship.

Besides, their targets aren't limited to planets. In the second book a group of ships takes out a star--without even firing a shot. They have a hyper drive and a gravitonic drive, the latter doing nasty things when triggered in a planetary system. A group of ships goes in close to a star and trigger their drives at exactly the same instant. The star explodes, the enemy fleet is deep within the hyper limit and only has hyper drives, it can't escape.

There's exactly one capacity in which the Death Star outperforms Dahak: FTL speed.

Granted, exact measurements aren't a thing in Star Wars, but the passage from Alderaan to Yavin took not much time. Those systems were further apart than Bir and Sol, which Dahak took months to traverse.

Loren Pechtel wrote:Nevermind, I didn't realize it was about planets actually being destroyed by impacts, rather than just being wiped out.

My apology Loren. The thread is meant to shed light on complete planetary destruction of any kind by any means. It just occurred to me during some particular research, that I hadn't ever come across a planet actually being destroyed by a large body of mass vectored and used as an intentional weapon. So I thought I'd call on the accumulative knowledge of all posters, thinking someone may have hypered into a universe that had used huge bodies as planetary killers.

Something else that occurs to me. In a series, like Dahak, where there is this sort of massssss extinction, how does a series continue? For instance, in the Honorverse, if Haven and Manticore destroyed each other's planets then game over.

Even the League wouldn't last long if a few key planets are obliterated.

Also, it seems that with that kind of an energy budget, conventional warfare and ships would be pointless.

Also, there must be many prisoners busting up little rocks to make material in the far reaches of space to fuel the industrial needs in the dahakverse. Even if they're using modern machinery. Talk about man hours.

As evidenced by the astronomical projections of our piddly hypothetical attempt...

In 2012–13, a proposal on the White House's web site urging the United States government to build a real Death Star as an economic stimulus and job creation measure gained more than 30,000 signatures, enough to qualify for an official response. The official (tongue-in-cheek) response was released in January 2013 and noted that the cost of building a real Death Star has been estimated at $850 quadrillion, while the International Business Times cited a Centives economics blog calculation that at current rates of steel production, the Death Star would not be ready for more than 833,000 years. The White House response also stated "the Administration does not support blowing up planets" and questions about funding a weapon "with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship" as reasons for denying the petition.

I'm blown away by the proposed destruction of entire stars and universes as well. Gees!

As a young reader just cutting my teeth on Sci-Fi, one of the most disturbing reads I ingested was about a race that destroyed Earth by slowly draining the energy from our sun.

Temperatures plummeted over months with people killing each other to relocate to the warmer regions of Earth. I never found the sequel and can't remember the read.

This is like Hiroshima on steroids in space.

With the industrial capacity to build a quarter of a million Death Stars, why not just build an impenetrable Dyson Sphere around your entire system, like experienced in Star Trek? With access to enormous powers directly from the sun and other technologies that can vaporize anything entering the system without invitation.

A quarter mil Death Stars outta be equivalent to at least the cornerstone of the cornerstone of the Sphere. LOL

Seriously, I always thought it was a sad waste of resources with all the ships being destroyed in the Honorverse. I'll ease up on them now.

E. E. Smith "Gray Lensman"

1. The Negasphere

A planet-sized mass of some sort of negative matter or antimatter-like substance.

2. The Nutcracker

Take two gas giants with large and opposite intrinsic velocities. Construct two gigantic Bergenholm inertial nullifiers. Transport them to the appropriate bracketing positions, turn off the Bergenholms, and watch them crush the target planet between them. Used against the final Boskone headquarters, Jarnevon.

3. The Sunbeam ("Second Stage Lensman")

Never used against a planet, but the total power of a star used as a directed energy weapon would certainly do the job.

Arthur C. Clarke "Childhood's End"

The evolved children destroy the Earth during their ascension.

Robert A. Heinlein "Stranger In A Strange Land"

Valentine Michael Smith reveals that he can destroy a planet with his Martian-trained mental powers.

Robert A. Heinlein "Have Space Suit, Will Travel"

The alien court's sentence on the "wormfaces" is to rotate their planet into another dimension - without its sun.

Roger Zelazny "Creatures Of Light And Darkness"

The Hammer That Smashes Suns.

Larry Niven "The Hole Man"

A scientist turns off a gravitic transmitter device on Mars containing a micro black hole, releasing it to eventually consume the planet.

Another story concerned an interstellar lightsail trading ship. If they could not get a planet to build a booster laser to send them to their next stop, they had a device that could make a star go nova and get their boost that way.

Greg Bear "The Forge Of God"

Alien self-replicating machines build a vast number of fusion bombs on the ocean bottom, but for the final event they drop masses of neutronium and anti-neutronium into the core.

James Blish "Cities In Flight"

An entire planet is used as a weapon to destroy the last Vegan orbital fort.

Alan Dean Foster "The End Of The Matter"

The white-hole-maker would be very bad for any planets in its vicinity.

Alan Dean Foster "Trouble Magnet"

The Tar-Aiym "super-Krang" weapon platform could easily destroy planets.

Other:

Any KK-drive ship could destroy a planet with its drive.

The Ulru-Ujurrians could certainly destroy planets if they wanted to.

Some of the Xunca artifacts had enough power to destroy planets.

James P. Hogan "Inherit The Stars"

50,000 years ago the fifth planet was destroyed by nucleonic bombs, creating the asteroid belt.

James P. Hogan "Giant's Star"

Some of the Thuriens' major engineering works could be turned to planet-killing.

David Weber/Steve White "The Stars At War"

At the end, they fortify three large asteroids and use them to smash the last Bug hive planet.

David Brin "Earth"

The 1908 Tunguska Event was caused by aliens dropping a small black hole on us. By 2038 it has nearly reached the critical size that will cause it to consume the planet in a matter of days.

Gregory Benford "Tides Of Light"

The Mechs use a spinning cosmic string to extract a planet's iron core.

Julian May "The Adversary"

It is implied that "Abaddon" (Paramount Grand Master metapsychic Marc Remillard) could destroy a planet.

Men In Black 2

Serleena destroys multiple planets, although no details about her weapon are ever provided.

In the Babylon 5 series both the Vorlons and the Shadows had planet killers.
From memory the Shadows one stripped a planet back to bedrock though.



Sent from my SM-G920I using Tapatalk