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Possible way to take out the OBS

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Re: Possible way to take out the OBS
Post by Expert snuggler   » Sun Feb 21, 2016 1:58 pm

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If it's a phase conjugate mirror, the odds are excellent.
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Re: Possible way to take out the OBS
Post by Michae   » Mon Feb 22, 2016 8:11 am

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On the subject of nannites,would it be possible to use them to remotely hack the OBS and disable it? I assume they'd be small enough to evade the weapon systems defending it.
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Re: Possible way to take out the OBS
Post by Dauntless   » Mon Feb 22, 2016 10:26 am

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RFC has been very quiet on how much the Terran Federation could do with nanites.

they seem to have been primarily used for medical purposes, and given all the way weaponised nanotech can go wrong I can see there being a law saying that it is only to be used medically.
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Re: Possible way to take out the OBS
Post by Bluestrike2   » Mon Feb 22, 2016 1:39 pm

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Dauntless wrote:RFC has been very quiet on how much the Terran Federation could do with nanites.

they seem to have been primarily used for medical purposes, and given all the way weaponised nanotech can go wrong I can see there being a law saying that it is only to be used medically.


He might not have been explicit in it, but the entire idea of a "fabrication module" suggests the use of nanotech. You can't really get the sort of flexibility it's already demonstrated without nanotech. Producing steel alone would require all sorts of industrial processes that you can't really scale down to fit into something that small. And they'd be anything but clean.

He's pretty quiet about it in the Honorverse as well, though he's commented on here that it's used in a lot of industrial applications (hulls are grown, etc.). I guess he just doesn't want to get bogged down with the behind-the-scenes tech.
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Re: Possible way to take out the OBS
Post by Theemile   » Mon Feb 22, 2016 3:17 pm

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Bluestrike2 wrote:
Dauntless wrote:RFC has been very quiet on how much the Terran Federation could do with nanites.

they seem to have been primarily used for medical purposes, and given all the way weaponised nanotech can go wrong I can see there being a law saying that it is only to be used medically.


He might not have been explicit in it, but the entire idea of a "fabrication module" suggests the use of nanotech. You can't really get the sort of flexibility it's already demonstrated without nanotech. Producing steel alone would require all sorts of industrial processes that you can't really scale down to fit into something that small. And they'd be anything but clean.

He's pretty quiet about it in the Honorverse as well, though he's commented on here that it's used in a lot of industrial applications (hulls are grown, etc.). I guess he just doesn't want to get bogged down with the behind-the-scenes tech.



Weaponized nanotech can be an EE violation in the Honorverse - it's mentioned in HoS that Ellen D'Orville lost her life fighting a Nanotech weapon outbreak, saving 1+ million people directly.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: Possible way to take out the OBS
Post by Dauntless   » Mon Feb 22, 2016 3:37 pm

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Bluestrike2 wrote:
Dauntless wrote:RFC has been very quiet on how much the Terran Federation could do with nanites.

they seem to have been primarily used for medical purposes, and given all the way weaponised nanotech can go wrong I can see there being a law saying that it is only to be used medically.


He might not have been explicit in it, but the entire idea of a "fabrication module" suggests the use of nanotech. You can't really get the sort of flexibility it's already demonstrated without nanotech. Producing steel alone would require all sorts of industrial processes that you can't really scale down to fit into something that small. And they'd be anything but clean.

He's pretty quiet about it in the Honorverse as well, though he's commented on here that it's used in a lot of industrial applications (hulls are grown, etc.). I guess he just doesn't want to get bogged down with the behind-the-scenes tech.


an excellent point.

I've been reading a series called the wondering engineer, all about galaxy after an gabba like species visited. most of their tech/construction is based about "replicators" which use nanites to make what people want. now after the war civilastion has back slid and barely has space travel and again and again people start going nuts when they are told these machines use "nanites" to do stuff.

could be that a lot of federation citizens had no clue what went on inside their "fabractiors".

plus RFC has always been quiet about of the lot of the TF tech except for things like the snarcs because it would just get in way of telling the story of safehold
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Re: Possible way to take out the OBS
Post by evilauthor   » Tue Feb 23, 2016 2:42 am

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thanatos wrote:I doubt it would be that easy. Moreover, we must remember RFC's general approach to technology in the Safehold series. Textev indicates that orbital bombardment platforms are located inside a defensive perimeter. We must also assume, given the existence of nanotechnology and its widespread usage in the TF that the platforms themselves are self-repairing, with swarms of nanites going throughout the system and fixing damaged circuitry or replacing broken down installations. What I am curious about is the maintenance cycle itself and how the platforms get the raw materials needed to replenish the nanites as they inevitably burn out as well as more critical systems. The OBS would need to have SNARCs and remotes (who would have their own maintenance cycles) to perform the periodic shopping spree to acquire the necessary materials from the local asteroid belt. Couldn't Merlin send out his SNARCs or even the Recon Skimmer to intercept these resupply runs? Obviously that raises the question of whether the platforms react to that as well.


Given that Merlin, OWL, and everything in Nimue's cave is perfectly functional after a thousand years of mostly inactivity, i don't see why the the OBS would be any different. If the OBS needs material resupply runs, it's going to infrequent enough that raiding it is impractical. I can easily see a general stockpile of raw materials lasting for more than a thousand years given the OBS hasn't been doing anything but sitting there.
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Re: Possible way to take out the OBS
Post by Randomiser   » Tue Feb 23, 2016 7:43 pm

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Dauntless wrote:RFC has been very quiet on how much the Terran Federation could do with nanites.

they seem to have been primarily used for medical purposes, and given all the way weaponised nanotech can go wrong I can see there being a law saying that it is only to be used medically.


The Fabricator certainly uses nannites; in LAMA we find the following, (at location 9808 in the Kindle version. Otherwise section xxii Nimue's Cave etc)


“You mean you could build PICAs, Owl?” Merlin asked very carefully. ... [Just one] ... How long would it take?” Merlin asked after a moment. “The processes are complex, but none are especially time-consuming,” the AI said calmly. “The time requirement would be approximately six local days, plus or minus three hours, from the moment I enabled the nannites.”
 (my bold)

Dauntless has it right.
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Re: Possible way to take out the OBS
Post by Jonathan_S   » Wed Feb 24, 2016 4:31 pm

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Bluestrike2 wrote:
Dauntless wrote:if it can detect and destroy stealthy snarcs then why do you assume it can not track and eliminate space junk that just happens to be about to hit it?


A kinetic strike wouldn't be easy to disrupt. Enough rocks, moving at sufficient speed, would easily take it out despite its built-in defenses. Owl would just have to crunch the numbers to make it work. Actually taking the OBS would be easy since they already have fabrication facilities and access to orbit. I can't remember where on here, but RFC said that he had a number of ideas on how Merlin could easily knock out the OBS.
Doesn't this assume that either the TF's shield technology is incapable of shrugging off multiple 206 MJ kinetic impacts, or the OBS failed to be equipped with the kinds of shields routinely placed on TF warships.

If the shields (or armor) can simply take the damage then it doesn't matter if there are too many steel balls for active defenses to knock them all down.

[size=70]Baseball has roughly 210 cm^3, I used a density of steel of 8,050 kg/m^3, and an impact speed of 15,646.4 m/s (twice the orbital velocity of the Space Shuttle - assuming the steel balls are coming on a reciprocal low earth orbit orbit)
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Re: Possible way to take out the OBS
Post by Michae   » Thu Feb 25, 2016 7:44 pm

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[/quote]Doesn't this assume that either the TF's shield technology is incapable of shrugging off multiple 206 MJ kinetic impacts, or the OBS failed to be equipped with the kinds of shields routinely placed on TF warships.
[/quote]

You have to remember that they were supposed to be hiding from the Ghaba,so wouldn't that kind of tech be the equivalent of shining a spotlight to them?Given that the command crew thought that they had reprogrammed the colonists well enough that noting would be able to take the OBS down and it was protected by Orbital weapons as well,they probably thought that the risk was too great and unnecessary as well.
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