Possible way to take out the OBS

Max wrote:

Duckk wrote:If there were any sort of evidence that Langhorne was a Good Guy, I could accept the potential existence of such a plot twist. The problem is that there is literally zero basis for it in both the text and David's posts here on the board. One could just as easily suggest that Pei and Langhorne decided to team up and solve crimes as the unlikeliest pair of detectives, every Thursday night at 10/9 central. That's the problem I have with every Langhorne Was a Good Guy theory - the overwhelming preponderance of evidence points otherwise.

No, Langhorne was not a "Good Guy"; he liked the religious solution way too much for that. But Pei did not know the details of what was going on; the OBS move was a surprise to her and all the other tech people. It's just that the tech enclave wipe-out was necessary if the colony was to stay secret long enough; it was not wiped-out on Langhorne's whim; they had to go to save the plan for safety of the colony.

Instead, this explains why he remained in charge. The decision to go with the religious solution came late. Langhore took it and pushed it into the damnable thing that it is, but the milder version was arrived at through a rational process. That makes a wake up call "real soon now" a distinct possibility.

As for the continued evolution of the sims during the flight, that would depend on the level and kind of detail the sims used. For that matter, there could still be sims running on the systems under the Temple. (And they are an element that has been under-developed plot wise. OWL simply can not be the only computer intelligence in the series. There has to be something distracting them...)

I thought it was clearly stated that without outside interaction, AIs/Virtual Reality Personalities can and do go crazy given time. And that any such under the Temple couldn't have been active, otherwise it would have done something to correct things centuries ago, and would be inactive waiting on a timer to reactivate.

There may be something along those lines involved with the Return. That actually seems fairly likely.


Tell me, how does the "religious solution" work better than the secular solution that was the Plan?
Also, if the Official Plan changed, there's no way that the senior staff involved wouldn't have been informed, that the change would have been restricted to Langhorne and Bedard. Plus, they wouldn't have need to "stack the deck" in the Executive Council to change things while Shan-Wei was busy terraforming Safehold. They simply could have used the new official orders/plan.

Also, there's nothing in the Tech Enclave that would have caused a detection risk. Per that plan, the only way the Gbaba would have found them would be to enter the system, in which case they're screwed anyways.


Also, the "wakeup" or Return is something that was probably only arranged after Langhorne's death, presuming Schueler's Key is connected to it and can cause it to happen early.

Kytheros wrote:I thought it was clearly stated that without outside interaction, AIs/Virtual Reality Personalities can and do go crazy given time. And that any such under the Temple couldn't have been active, otherwise it would have done something to correct things centuries ago, and would be inactive waiting on a timer to reactivate.

...unless it had something heavy to work on. But, yes, that could be considered a kind of "crazy". On the other hand, why didn't OWL go crazy (or did he? Shutdown with a multi-century wake-up event??? IIRC, we do not get OWL sub-vocal monologues.)...

Kytheros wrote:There may be something along those lines involved with the Return. That actually seems fairly likely.

Tell me, how does the "religious solution" work better than the secular solution that was the Plan?

It's easier to wake it up when that needs to be done. It takes time and phasing to do it, but it can be done. The secular solution is much less "stable"; it either grows and exposes itself; turns into a degenerate oligarchy, or dies. Also, how do you turn the secular solution around when the time comes to do that?

Kytheros wrote:Also, if the Official Plan changed, there's no way that the senior staff involved wouldn't have been informed, that the change would have been restricted to Langhorne and Bedard. Plus, they wouldn't have need to "stack the deck" in the Executive Council to change things while Shan-Wei was busy terraforming Safehold. They simply could have used the new official orders/plan.

But the "Official Plan" did not change. Some if the implementation details changed. Yes, GROSS, under-handed and more than a little dis-honest, but just barely covered by the original mission parameters.

Kytheros wrote:Also, there's nothing in the Tech Enclave that would have caused a detection risk. Per that plan, the only way the Gbaba would have found them would be to enter the system, in which case they're screwed anyways.

I think you can't know this for a certainty. The initial set-up had that property, but it would not be a forever state of affairs. There would be a constant risk that the enclave would grow and "leak tech". The way it got shut down is definitely a strike against Langhorne's and the others character though...

Kytheros wrote:Also, the "wakeup" or Return is something that was probably only arranged after Langhorne's death, presuming Schueler's Key is connected to it and can cause it to happen early.

Fair, but just as probably it's what the developed agenda called for. RFC gets to make this call...

Owl didn't go crazy because Owl wasn't active/self-aware during the time Nimue was down. At most, there were "dumb" autonomous subroutines for maintenance purposes.



The "Tech Enclaves" would have been employing non-broadcasting technologies, and certainly not the FTL broadcast hyperrelays that Word of Weber says is in large part what tipped the Gbaba off to other colony attempts.

The lightspeed emissions from what high technology (most of it stealthed and/or otherwise low signature) would have been in use would not have noticeable at any real distance. IIRC, Word of Weber is that the Gbaba would basically need to be in the system already, in which case you're screwed no matter what.

As for turning the non-religious tech enclave plan and lower tech rest of the planet into a fully industrialized and technologized planet, that's relatively simple. You keep the knowledge that the Gbaba want Humanity dead alive and that much use of high technology during the waiting/lying low period risks exposing humanity to extinction. Anybody who wants to go into R&D can move to the tech-enclaves.
The Tech Enclaves "growing and leaking tech" ... do you mean to the rest of the planet or to the Gbaba?
If you mean the rest of the planet, yeah. That's the plan, at least, eventually. And there would be a fair chunk of original crew around to see the plan through until some point after the tech restrictions are lifted. If you mean to the Gbaba, then, no, that's not really a concern - either they're exposed to the Gbaba because they're insystem, in which case it doesn't matter, or the Gbaba pick up lightspeed EM or neutrino signals ... from their bases light centuries away.
You can't use Religion and drip-feed technology advances, because then you basically turn Humanity into what it is fighting.


The Official Plan included implementation details. If implementation details were officially changed, the Official Plan was changed, and there would have been something Official that Langhorne could have used to justify it to Pei and Shan-Wei, and their supporters. Plus, if it had been an Official Change, Pei and Shan-Wei should have been aware as senior officers of the project and on the Executive Council.

n7axw wrote: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.

The latter option is better IMHO ... You get examples of TF level tech to play with and show people, and you can show people that the Rakurai where a human-made thing and not really the Wrath of God(TM). Okay, the true believers won't be persuaded but then nothing will persuade them, but you might persuade a few waverers in such a fashion.

As for taking out the OBS, well in addition to the defences we know it's got I'd assume it has an expendable bunch of decoys, chaff and flares (or the TF equivalent thereof) and I'd further assume that it can manoeuvre so hitting it might be much harder than people are assuming.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

jgnfld wrote:Werewolves could suddenly appear out of nowhere and eat the OBS.

Oh wait. Been there.

Wasn't werewolves. It was vampires.

I was assuming some variability!

I for one am surprised that no one is sugesting a vern cannon.http://forums.davidweber.net /posting.php?mode=quote&f=7&p=218448#

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.

Of course this action could cause the system to wake up what ever is sleeping under the early.

Another problem is that even if the OBS is damaged into a nonworking state. The orbit of the entire system could decay leading to an uncontrolled MASSIVE strike on the surface.

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.

Another option could be to send a small robotic space craft to the asteroid belt or a comet and get it to sculpt an anechoic surface on it and then use it to swat the OBS.
BTW Verne guns have been built (and in one case I am aware of launched an object into interstellar space (on 27 August 1957))(Look up Pascal-B (Pascal A might have too but B they have film of the plug departing)). Having the projectile survive to orbit is an interesting question and Pascal-B generated 300 ton's of TNT equivalent yield.

mathewritchie wrote:I for one am surprised that no one is sugesting a vern cannon.http://forums.davidweber.net /posting.php?mode=quote&f=7&p=218448#

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.

Of course this action could cause the system to wake up what ever is sleeping under the early.

Another problem is that even if the OBS is damaged into a nonworking state. The orbit of the entire system could decay leading to an uncontrolled MASSIVE strike on the surface.

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.

A couple of points...

There is no indication that wiping out the tech enclave was needed at all under the mission orders Operation Ark was under upon leaving earth. That only became neccessary because of Langhorne's alteration of the plan and the abandonment of the mission orders.

Secondly, the mission orders envisioned that tech would be recovered after a period of time had elapsed that was long enough to be reasonably certain that the Gbaba were no longer looking for humanity. IIRC, that was 500 years. Langhorne with his anti-tech bias, by way of contrast, wanted to bury humanity permanently in an anti-tech hole not just for 500 years but forever.

The tech enclaves, Alexandria and Zion, were to be the means of that recovery and, IIRC, the ships thst were to be hidden someplace out of the way after the colonists had embarked would also have served that purpose. If the original mission orders had been carried out, Safehold would have been well on its way to technological recovery and Nimue's mission would have been unnecessary.

Don

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This is another series I am going to have to reread for details. I might be wrong, but I thought I saw a section early on that described the Gbaba going after a non-space-faring race that exposed itself through its radio emissions. That was the main justification for no electronics...

Max

The original mission plans called for the Federation's technical knowledge to be conserved in the enclave's with a functioning but minimal industrial footprint (and it could be very minimal with Fed-level tech!). The Gbaba would have to pretty much pass through the system to detect even a wide-open tech base, given the background radiation of the star, and the existing tech on Safehold was supposed to be very heavily stealthed (as, in fact, it is in the case of the Temple and Nimue's Cave). The life-extending technologies were also supposed to be maintained, which would have meant most of the first generation of command crew born on Safehold would would still have been alive at the end of the 300-year period in which the rest of the planet was supposed to be without tech. The long life spans of the command crew --- both the original crew and its descendants born on Safehold --- would have gone a long way towards preserving both the knowledge of the Gbaba and the sense of mission (and the reasons for secrecy).

Pein Shan-wei knew exactly what the original mission orders were and she and her fellows were determined to carry them out. They suspected (correctly), however, that Eric Langhorne wasn't tightly enough wrapped to follow the original plan, hence all of their efforts to craft an insurance policy. Had he, in fact, followed his original mission orders, Shan-wei would have awakened Nimue's PICA in a century or so, and Nimue could have gone right on being Nimue. Langhorne's refusal to adhere to the original mission plans (for whatever reason and following whatever chain of logic) made that impossible.

There was one other aspect to the destruction of Alexandria which has not yet been discussed in the books because even Nimue didn't know about it. Let's just say that the rakurai strike on Alexandria actually killed a lot more people than Nimue thinks it did.

I mean, a lot more people.

Merlin will not be happy when he learns about it.

n7axw wrote:A couple of points...

There is no indication that wiping out the tech enclave was needed at all under the mission orders Operation Ark was under upon leaving earth. That only became neccessary because of Langhorne's alteration of the plan and the abandonment of the mission orders.

Secondly, the mission orders envisioned that tech would be recovered after a period of time had elapsed that was long enough to be reasonably certain that the Gbaba were no longer looking for humanity. IIRC, that was 500 years. Langhorne with his anti-tech bias, by way of contrast, wanted to bury humanity permanently in an anti-tech hole not just for 500 years but forever.

The tech enclaves, Alexandria and Zion, were to be the means of that recovery and, IIRC, the ships thst were to be hidden someplace out of the way after the colonists had embarked would also have served that purpose. If the original mission orders had been carried out, Safehold would have been well on its way to technological recovery and Nimue's mission would have been unnecessary.

Don

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