Possible way to take out the OBS

ChaChaCharms wrote:I still find it entertaining that we are still discussing ways to destroy the OBS... There is absolutely no reason to do so until the Temple is under the control of the EoC. Destroying the OBS may trigger a pre-designed response that does who knows what. There is a lovely saying that asks if you poke a sleeping bear; in this case, I feel the best course of action is to simply leave it alone until you have gained control of all areas that the command crew controlled during the War of the Fallen.

Good point. I still believe the Hamilcar is somewhere close by and was not destroyed as intended.

And the Hamilcar will make the OBS look like a potato cannon...

CRC wrote:

ChaChaCharms wrote:I still find it entertaining that we are still discussing ways to destroy the OBS... There is absolutely no reason to do so until the Temple is under the control of the EoC. Destroying the OBS may trigger a pre-designed response that does who knows what. There is a lovely saying that asks if you poke a sleeping bear; in this case, I feel the best course of action is to simply leave it alone until you have gained control of all areas that the command crew controlled during the War of the Fallen.

Good point. I still believe the Hamilcar is somewhere close by and was not destroyed as intended.

And the Hamilcar will make the OBS look like a potato cannon...

This is a chicken or egg discussion. Do you take out the OBS to deprive what is under the Temple the means of enforcing its will, or do you gain control of what's under the Temple to render the OBS harmless? You pick. Variants of both perspectives have been advocated here on the forum sinse I have been active.

Don

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Does Clyntahn have a way to attract "Divine Aid" in the form of an Archangel? if not then when Clyntahn and the Church fall, it may be possible to deactivate the OBS. If he, or someone else can trigger the TOTT to wake-up and take notice, things are going to probably go from bad to worse to catastrophe in short order.

Chraris and allies are doing a lot of things that have pushed the boundries of the Church's regulations in the technical realm and there is no telling what TOTT would decide needed to be obliterated to correct things. Where would it draw a distinction? Metal warships (or any metal ships) sailing on the oceans probably weren't on the list of permissible things. Just what level of sensors are either already deployed or could be deployed to find out what has been going on.

If Merlin is correct in his fear of getting the PICA too close to the Temple- even if Charis is brings down the old Church, who is going to be able to go in and look for a way to access the presumed command and control center without bringing the entire system (including the OBS) to full alert and start compiling a list of potential targets. It IS possible that "only" a regime change of the Church to the Church of Charis isn't going to trigger a bombardment. Of course, there is always the possibility that one of the options sitting in the queue is to slag the facility under the Temple if things have gotten so vastly out of control that the human population as about to get control of it and jumpstart the rise to a spaceflight culture.

I suspect that the OBS is going to react poorly to getting pelted with a hail of kenetic weapons. Presumeing that there is some level of AI aboard and currently in stasis, having the OBS defensive systems go to alert and have to deal with that kind of attack will bring the AI up dam quick. When it survives, there will be hell to pay, probably. If it doesn't survive, it will also probably have already at least attempted to contact the system under the Temple to report the problem and to coordinate defenses.

The key is going to be dealing with the system under the Temple and preventing it from taking any action. Just how to convince the (again, probably an AI in there) TOTT not to take any destructive action and stand down the proscriptions is the question. Merlin doesn't have enough information and at this point no way to find out. Catch 22. Break the Church from the hands of those like Clyntahn and then work quietly to get information.

Brigade XO wrote:Does Clyntahn have a way to attract "Divine Aid" in the form of an Archangel? if not then when Clyntahn and the Church fall, it may be possible to deactivate the OBS. If he, or someone else can trigger the TOTT to wake-up and take notice, things are going to probably go from bad to worse to catastrophe in short order.

Chraris and allies are doing a lot of things that have pushed the boundries of the Church's regulations in the technical realm and there is no telling what TOTT would decide needed to be obliterated to correct things. Where would it draw a distinction? Metal warships (or any metal ships) sailing on the oceans probably weren't on the list of permissible things. Just what level of sensors are either already deployed or could be deployed to find out what has been going on.

If Merlin is correct in his fear of getting the PICA too close to the Temple- even if Charis is brings down the old Church, who is going to be able to go in and look for a way to access the presumed command and control center without bringing the entire system (including the OBS) to full alert and start compiling a list of potential targets. It IS possible that "only" a regime change of the Church to the Church of Charis isn't going to trigger a bombardment. Of course, there is always the possibility that one of the options sitting in the queue is to slag the facility under the Temple if things have gotten so vastly out of control that the human population as about to get control of it and jumpstart the rise to a spaceflight culture.

I suspect that the OBS is going to react poorly to getting pelted with a hail of kenetic weapons. Presumeing that there is some level of AI aboard and currently in stasis, having the OBS defensive systems go to alert and have to deal with that kind of attack will bring the AI up dam quick. When it survives, there will be hell to pay, probably. If it doesn't survive, it will also probably have already at least attempted to contact the system under the Temple to report the problem and to coordinate defenses.

The key is going to be dealing with the system under the Temple and preventing it from taking any action. Just how to convince the (again, probably an AI in there) TOTT not to take any destructive action and stand down the proscriptions is the question. Merlin doesn't have enough information and at this point no way to find out. Catch 22. Break the Church from the hands of those like Clyntahn and then work quietly to get information.

Assuming you could get out of orbit, hitting it with an asteroid may be an option as its AI wouldn't know who to shoot back at. If you blew the asteroid up shortly before what the AI assumed would be a near miss your probability of success would probably increase significantly at the expense of contaminating the orbital area (Safehold ends up looking like Saturn). Turning the OBS off from ground level may be easier and safer if you are planning on getting back into space in the next century or so (that being how long it would take for the low orbitals (200 to 1000km) to decay enough to permit a new space based presence). You can forget geostationary for millennia.
Having an asteroid hit it a reasonable percentage of light speed should minimize orbiting debris however (anything above 0.1c should do, particularly as you cant track a 0.1c projectile with conventional radar (Doppler shift is out of sight of a tuned circuit (blue shift on the way in)(actually 0.01c would probably do)).

AirTech wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:Does Clyntahn have a way to attract "Divine Aid" in the form of an Archangel? if not then when Clyntahn and the Church fall, it may be possible to deactivate the OBS. If he, or someone else can trigger the TOTT to wake-up and take notice, things are going to probably go from bad to worse to catastrophe in short order.

Chraris and allies are doing a lot of things that have pushed the boundries of the Church's regulations in the technical realm and there is no telling what TOTT would decide needed to be obliterated to correct things. Where would it draw a distinction? Metal warships (or any metal ships) sailing on the oceans probably weren't on the list of permissible things. Just what level of sensors are either already deployed or could be deployed to find out what has been going on.

If Merlin is correct in his fear of getting the PICA too close to the Temple- even if Charis is brings down the old Church, who is going to be able to go in and look for a way to access the presumed command and control center without bringing the entire system (including the OBS) to full alert and start compiling a list of potential targets. It IS possible that "only" a regime change of the Church to the Church of Charis isn't going to trigger a bombardment. Of course, there is always the possibility that one of the options sitting in the queue is to slag the facility under the Temple if things have gotten so vastly out of control that the human population as about to get control of it and jumpstart the rise to a spaceflight culture.

I suspect that the OBS is going to react poorly to getting pelted with a hail of kenetic weapons. Presumeing that there is some level of AI aboard and currently in stasis, having the OBS defensive systems go to alert and have to deal with that kind of attack will bring the AI up dam quick. When it survives, there will be hell to pay, probably. If it doesn't survive, it will also probably have already at least attempted to contact the system under the Temple to report the problem and to coordinate defenses.

The key is going to be dealing with the system under the Temple and preventing it from taking any action. Just how to convince the (again, probably an AI in there) TOTT not to take any destructive action and stand down the proscriptions is the question. Merlin doesn't have enough information and at this point no way to find out. Catch 22. Break the Church from the hands of those like Clyntahn and then work quietly to get information.

Assuming you could get out of orbit, hitting it with an asteroid may be an option as its AI wouldn't know who to shoot back at. If you blew the asteroid up shortly before what the AI assumed would be a near miss your probability of success would probably increase significantly at the expense of contaminating the orbital area (Safehold ends up looking like Saturn). Turning the OBS off from ground level may be easier and safer if you are planning on getting back into space in the next century or so (that being how long it would take for the low orbitals (200 to 1000km) to decay enough to permit a new space based presence). You can forget geostationary for millennia.
Having an asteroid hit it a reasonable percentage of light speed should minimize orbiting debris however (anything above 0.1c should do, particularly as you cant track a 0.1c projectile with conventional radar (Doppler shift is out of sight of a tuned circuit (blue shift on the way in)(actually 0.01c would probably do)).

Maybe if you know what to hit. The OBS is dispersed into six cells. If there is a central node and if you are able to isolate it, you might accomplish something this way...

Don

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AirTech wrote:Assuming you could get out of orbit, hitting it with an asteroid may be an option as its AI wouldn't know who to shoot back at. If you blew the asteroid up shortly before what the AI assumed would be a near miss your probability of success would probably increase significantly at the expense of contaminating the orbital area (Safehold ends up looking like Saturn). Turning the OBS off from ground level may be easier and safer if you are planning on getting back into space in the next century or so (that being how long it would take for the low orbitals (200 to 1000km) to decay enough to permit a new space based presence). You can forget geostationary for millennia.
Having an asteroid hit it a reasonable percentage of light speed should minimize orbiting debris however (anything above 0.1c should do, particularly as you cant track a 0.1c projectile with conventional radar (Doppler shift is out of sight of a tuned circuit (blue shift on the way in)(actually 0.01c would probably do)).

Blowing the asteroid up wouldn't be a problem if it's moving fast enough. Any asteroid bits that weren't stopped by hitting the OBS platforms would fly on out into deep space again. You would only have the debris from the OBS system itself and that's going to happen no matter how you destroy it.

msmitsc wrote:Has anyone thought of reflecting the laser defense system of the OBS back on it. All it would take would be laser quality mirrors set up in the X,Y Z axis. Released in an orbit that would bring them close enough to trigger the defense lasers, this would result in any laser fired at the reflectors being sent right back to the source.


So my suggestion is that OWL constructs a swarm of these reflectors to have on standby to be released into orbit take out the OBS if needed for a last ditch defense.

Simply speaking - this would never work. The mirror would send away the unfocused beam - i.e. no more harmful on even a few kilometers than simple searchlight. You need a really complicated mirror and lenses system to re-focus the beam and send it again. Basically, if you could build something like that, you could just build a laser cannon of your own.

And don't forget, no mirror are perfect. Any mirror surface would have SOME inpurites, some defects - which would be a weak point, because the beam energy would be less reflected here, and the surface in those points would heat much more rapidly. Then... the weak points start to melt (or even evaporate) and the mirror surface around them would lost thier relflection ability. Then - BANG! - and your mirror would melt of shatter at al.

Umm... There is at least one false premise underlying this line of questions. It's an Orbital Bombardment System; known as a Rail Gun in other contexts. IIRC it was built on the QT in the last functioning transport (or whatever you want to call it) which means you might have to take out the transport to get rid of it, and that is very likely to be a bad idea.

Now to hijack this line of questions...

We really do not have that much insight into Langhorne's reasoning for changing the mission parameters. We do not even really know that he meant for the down-grade to be permanent. We do know that he wanted it to be thorough but that might have been because he thought the Gabba would come a-hunting and wanted no radiation ring for them to latch onto. There is something due to happen shortly (in a decade or two...) that might just be a release of the tech prohibitions.

There is also the point that the orbital factory represents a huge stepping stone on the way back into space; you do not want to wreck it.

Max wrote:Umm... There is at least one false premise underlying this line of questions. It's an Orbital Bombardment System; known as a Rail Gun in other contexts. IIRC it was built on the QT in the last functioning transport (or whatever you want to call it) which means you might have to take out the transport to get rid of it, and that is very likely to be a bad idea.

Now to hijack this line of questions...

We really do not have that much insight into Langhorne's reasoning for changing the mission parameters. We do not even really know that he meant for the down-grade to be permanent. We do know that he wanted it to be thorough but that might have been because he thought the Gabba would come a-hunting and wanted no radiation ring for them to latch onto. There is something due to happen shortly (in a decade or two...) that might just be a release of the tech prohibitions.

There is also the point that the orbital factory represents a huge stepping stone on the way back into space; you do not want to wreck it.

Hm, I suggested once the possibility, that the Langhorne actions was, actually, the original plan that was REALLY designed by the expedition planners. After all, they agreed, that they need to hold colony on the pre-technology level for centuries. What could be the best solution than the religious control?

The Shain-Wei "original" design of the carefully hidden high-tech enclaves that was supposed to "observe and control" the situation are obviously flaved. The main question - why do we need the rest of population, outside the high-tech enclaves? Why not have only enclaves - if they are shielded enough that Gbaba wouldn't be able to find them anyway?

More than that, the idea of "high-tech enclaves that control the pre-tech population" is even more prone to problems that the Church. In a few generations we could pretty easily have the "enclaves elite and outside commoners" - and this definitely would pose a large problem of social strife.

So, it actually seems at least worth suggesting that the Langhorne plan was the real one that the mission planners designed. After all, how else Langhorne was able to persuade almost everyone in the positions of power? And the Pei version... well, this may be the "nice looking" version for common knowlege. After all the idea "we would build totalitarian religious dictature" looks really bad in PowerPoint presentations on staff meetings...

Hm, I suggested once the possibility, that the Langhorne actions was, actually, the original plan that was REALLY designed by the expedition planners. After all, they agreed, that they need to hold colony on the pre-technology level for centuries. What could be the best solution than the religious control?

If the expedition planners thought that was necessary, then they would have cut orders to that effect, and selected a better fitting command team that would have followed those orders. Operation Ark's planners had draconian authority in how the colonists were selected and the mission was organized, so they could set up the mission however they wanted. They would not have had to do an end run around themselves, like you are suggesting. Langhorne had to go to substantial lengths to replace much of the original command team with his own supporters, and even then, only after dispatching a large block of them to terraform Safehold. Jumping through that many hoops to get an even quasi-legal grip on authority is clear proof that Langhorne's plan was never what the mission planners wanted.