Attacking Earth

darrell wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:Another possibility comes to mind:

Attach an anti-tampered nuke to the freighter's hull.

"Report to Manticore for your vessel's internment, you will not be taken captive. Your vessel and it's cargo will be released at the end of hostilities."

Sure, they wouldn't have to go to Manticore but if they don't their vessel will be destroyed. What do you think they'll do?

freighter crew: cut a big chunk of the hull out, continue on your way with a big hole in the side. Spending a week or two in skinsuites is better than a year or two as a pow.

There is nothing that is tamper proof, proceed to your next destination, let the bomb squad difuse it. If it works, great, if it doesn't the ship is denied manticore and the crew can join another ship.

Did you miss the part where the message said they will not be detained? And note the released-at-end-of-hostilities bit--comply and they get their ship & cargo back intact. Resist and hope they can defeat the anti-tamper and that won't be easy. A simple one comes to mind: A capacitance sensor. You can buy a crude one today for a few bucks. Measure how much capacitance the hull has, if it drops too low (too little hull), detonate. You very well might have one in your house now--it's how touch-sensitive lights work.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

StealthSeeker wrote:If the GA ship doesn't have a prize crew for the freighter, space everything from the freighter but food, clothing and farm equipment. We don't want them to think that we are trying to starve anyone to death or kill civilian crews.

Another possibility comes to mind:

Attach an anti-tampered nuke to the freighter's hull.

"Report to Manticore for your vessel's internment, you will not be taken captive. Your vessel and it's cargo will be released at the end of hostilities."

Sure, they wouldn't have to go to Manticore but if they don't their vessel will be destroyed. What do you think they'll do?

I like my alternative option I listed earlier.

Capture the freighter, remove the crew, put on a prize crew long enough to reposition the freighter so some location relative to a space object, say the sun of the system where you capture the ship. Put it out there at a "standard" position, say directly north of the system's sun as determined by a the elliptic path of the system's planets at a range of 5 times the hyper limit of the system. Then power it down and just leave it there. The prize crew goes back to their ship and keeps the crew complement full.

If I recall correctly, RFC has set the precedent that very few ships travel in the space around a solar system outside of the system's elliptical orbit of the planets. So if that is part of space which is never travelled and the ship is a powered down black hole in space, nobody will ever find it.

After the conflict, you can tell everybody where they can go find their ships. Or, you know where to send a real prize crew to pick it up. But if you don't like that, have a uninhabited planet in an out of the way unused system picked out, where fighting ships operating in an area will take these freighters and put them in orbit around the planet. It would serve as a "drop off" point where a ship with a bunch of prize crews can be brought to collect what has been left.

In any case the fighting ships keep a full crew.

Loren Pechtel wrote:Did you miss the part where the message said they will not be detained? And note the released-at-end-of-hostilities bit--comply and they get their ship & cargo back intact. Resist and hope they can defeat the anti-tamper and that won't be easy. A simple one comes to mind: A capacitance sensor. You can buy a crude one today for a few bucks. Measure how much capacitance the hull has, if it drops too low (too little hull), detonate. You very well might have one in your house now--it's how touch-sensitive lights work.

I don't think that a capacitance sensor, alone, would provide enough anti-tamper capabilities. Consider what would happen to the charge on a ship when:

1) The ship activates/deactivates its particle/radiation shielding.
2) The ship raises/lowers its wedge.
3) The ship switches from wedge to sail or the reverse.
4) The ship enters/leaves hyperspace.
5) The ship enters/leaves a gravity wave.
6) The ship transits a wormhole.

I suspect there would be too many false positives for a capacitance sensor used by itself for an anti-tamper device.

StealthSeeker wrote:...

Capture the freighter, remove the crew, put on a prize crew long enough to reposition the freighter so some location relative to a space object, say the sun of the system where you capture the ship. Put it out there at a "standard" position, say directly north of the system's sun as determined by a the elliptic path of the system's planets at a range of 5 times the hyper limit of the system. Then power it down and just leave it there. The prize crew goes back to their ship and keeps the crew complement full.

That would not be a stable orbit and thus the freighter would begin a long fall into the sun.

It's a perfectly stable orbit, assuming you don't dump the ship at zero velocity wrt the star. Me, I'd take the minor trouble to circularise the orbit, but you don't absolutely have to. It's also not going to be a terribly long orbit, and the orbital plane will precess something wicked, so if you really want people to find the ship again you'd better plot it pretty accurately.

drinksmuchcoffee wrote:

StealthSeeker wrote:...

Capture the freighter, remove the crew, put on a prize crew long enough to reposition the freighter so some location relative to a space object, say the sun of the system where you capture the ship. Put it out there at a "standard" position, say directly north of the system's sun as determined by a the elliptic path of the system's planets at a range of 5 times the hyper limit of the system. Then power it down and just leave it there. The prize crew goes back to their ship and keeps the crew complement full.

That would not be a stable orbit and thus the freighter would begin a long fall into the sun.

Louis R wrote:It's a perfectly stable orbit, assuming you don't dump the ship at zero velocity wrt the star. Me, I'd take the minor trouble to circularise the orbit, but you don't absolutely have to. It's also not going to be a terribly long orbit, and the orbital plane will precess something wicked, so if you really want people to find the ship again you'd better plot it pretty accurately.

The problem is that if you parked your prize ship in a stable orbit starting well north of the ecliptic is that that stable orbit would have the starship crossing the plane of the ecliptic. That might be fine. Like you said, you'd need to plot the orbit you parked a prize ship in pretty well.

As long as you are doing that, it might just be easier to carefully plot orbits in the system's Oort Cloud and park the ships there.

Doing that would certainly make sense. That way the ship won't have moved very far before you come back for it.

Of course, leaving it more-or-less where you found it would make even more sense. A powered-down ship orbiting near the hyperlimit is extremely unlikely to be tripped over, and this way nobody has to go charging all over creation to collect it

drinksmuchcoffee wrote:

Louis R wrote:It's a perfectly stable orbit, assuming you don't dump the ship at zero velocity wrt the star. Me, I'd take the minor trouble to circularise the orbit, but you don't absolutely have to. It's also not going to be a terribly long orbit, and the orbital plane will precess something wicked, so if you really want people to find the ship again you'd better plot it pretty accurately.

The problem is that if you parked your prize ship in a stable orbit starting well north of the ecliptic is that that stable orbit would have the starship crossing the plane of the ecliptic. That might be fine. Like you said, you'd need to plot the orbit you parked a prize ship in pretty well.

As long as you are doing that, it might just be easier to carefully plot orbits in the system's Oort Cloud and park the ships there.

Vince wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:Did you miss the part where the message said they will not be detained? And note the released-at-end-of-hostilities bit--comply and they get their ship & cargo back intact. Resist and hope they can defeat the anti-tamper and that won't be easy. A simple one comes to mind: A capacitance sensor. You can buy a crude one today for a few bucks. Measure how much capacitance the hull has, if it drops too low (too little hull), detonate. You very well might have one in your house now--it's how touch-sensitive lights work.

I don't think that a capacitance sensor, alone, would provide enough anti-tamper capabilities. Consider what would happen to the charge on a ship when:

1) The ship activates/deactivates its particle/radiation shielding.
2) The ship raises/lowers its wedge.
3) The ship switches from wedge to sail or the reverse.
4) The ship enters/leaves hyperspace.
5) The ship enters/leaves a gravity wave.
6) The ship transits a wormhole.

I suspect there would be too many false positives for a capacitance sensor used by itself for an anti-tamper device.

I was simply giving an example of a present-day tech that could defeat the idea of cutting the bomb out.

While all of the things you talk about would mess with the current state of charge of the hull they would not alter it's capacitance. I'm not picturing a static thing, but rather to keep measuring it. If it gets too low for too long the warhead detonates. (Docking will raise it, there's no reason to detonate for that.)