Possible way to take out the OBS

Joat42 wrote:Is it? I must have missed any text saying that it's fusion powered.

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3248&p=73429

But that leads to another question: how is it refueled?

If the thing only turns on to fire the system, it's a pretty irrelevant question. They could have tons of fuel up there. Besides, hydrogen catcher fields are a real thing. They could just harvest the hydrogen atoms floating in space.

Weird Harold wrote:

Joat42 wrote:But that leads to another question: how is it refueled?

It sucks up all the sand that people have sent in retrograde orbits at it over the years?

Sand = SiO2, fusing oxygen requires a temperature in excess of 1,500,000,000 Kelvin and a density in excess of 2,600,000,000 kg/cm3. Fusing silica takes a lot more energy and pressure.

It seems using sand as a fusion fuel is a mite unpractical...

Unless you are a star that is, but then they tend to explode after fusing silica...

fallsfromtrees wrote:
Only if you are talking Geosynchronous orbits. A non Geosynchronous polar orbit will cover all of the planet within a fairly short time (depending on how high is the orbit), and there is no texted (to my knowledge) indicating that the OBS has to have immediate response, since it is likely to be used against stationary targets.

Exactly.

Joat42 wrote:
The only conclusion I can draw from the textev is that OBS is very badly designed. It should be easy to take out with the resources Merlin has at hand even though OWL says in OAR it's not possible. Since it's solar powered, why not just use bunch of high speed sand casters on the panels? Casters are very easy and cheap to manufacture. I can't see how laser-defenses are going to be able to shoot down grains of sand. Just keep lobbing casters in retrograde orbit compared to the array until it runs out of energy.

Joat, this system was placed in orbit as strategic weapon. It was designed to took out CONTINENTS, after all, and continents could not move.

I really doubt that the current Rakurai array was ever designed to attack moving targets. This simply make no sence: for such tactical strikes, Archangels during the war have more effective weapons. The main goal of the array was to provide the ability of strategical strikes, which the other side lacked entirely.

Duckk wrote:

Joat42 wrote:Is it? I must have missed any text saying that it's fusion powered.

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3248&p=73429

But that leads to another question: how is it refueled?

If the thing only turns on to fire the system, it's a pretty irrelevant question. They could have tons of fuel up there. Besides, hydrogen catcher fields are a real thing. They could just harvest the hydrogen atoms floating in space.

So, my suggestion still stand. Use sand to ablate the solar array. The fusion reactor kicks in so the maintenance system can fix the problem. Then you just keep ablating the solar array which means the fusion reactor has to be running the whole time.

It's trivial to get the OBS to expend energy continuously. At some point it has to refuel.

And, if you want the explanation that cover ALL factors - here it is:

- The current state of Rakurai Array is "standby mode". I.e. the platforms are NOT supposed to be used in that mode. They are positioned - probably in Lagrange points, to save energy and reaction mass - so, that they would be as safe as possible, but they aren't currently able to launch strikes execept against area targets.

- When the Archangels returns (and if they decided to use Rakurai) the array would be repositioned on the geostationary orbits around the planet, to provide all-around cover of all planetary surface.

I.e., when the War ended, the Archangels put the Rakurai array on standby mode util their eventual return. They moved the bombardment platforms from low orbits to the Lagrange point - where they could hung indefinitedly, without many corrections - and surrounded them with defense platforms. So the array would hung there, safe and solid, outside from any danger.

When Archangels return, they would switch the array in ready mode - i.e. they would move the platforms on more effective orbits, from where they would be able to provide total coverage of Safehold surface.

How is THAT as explanation?

Joat42 wrote:So, my suggestion still stand. Use sand to ablate the solar array. The fusion reactor kicks in so the maintenance system can fix the problem. Then you just keep ablating the solar array which means the fusion reactor has to be running the whole time.

It's trivial to get the OBS to expend energy continuously. At some point it has to refuel.

Or at some point it would send signal to the Temple and order some Archangel to deal with problem.

Joat42 wrote:Sand = SiO2, ...

I didn't realize you were planning on using ultra-pure sand. Seems like an awful lot of refining to be used as a ballistic weapon.

What it doesn't use as fusion fuel, it can vitrify into reloads for the KEW cells. Glass isn't as dense as steel, but that isn't going to make a whole lot of difference to the target.

Joat42 wrote:So, my suggestion still stand. Use sand to ablate the solar array. The fusion reactor kicks in so the maintenance system can fix the problem. Then you just keep ablating the solar array which means the fusion reactor has to be running the whole time.

It's trivial to get the OBS to expend energy continuously. At some point it has to refuel.

Only if you persist in thinking that the OBS is just a dumb cannon floating in space, and that the designers couldn't take precautions against obvious threats a 10 year old would have come up with.

Congratulations, you successfully attacked the OBS (assuming it doesn't have other defensive systems). What else does it do? Does a simple program recognize it's gone into degraded operation and thus activate any number of contingencies? Does it decide to just level all the population centers on the (good) assumption it's hostile human action and thus needs to be neutralized before it goes offline? Does it wake up whatever is under the Temple? Something worse than that? As David said before, this is a mistake you only get to make once. If nothing happens, great, but you still have the Temple to deal with. If something does happen, then that's it, game over.

PS: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6161&p=158146

My two cents...for what it's worth, probably very little!

I think that what we have here are six cells under one control center. The cells are orbiting the planet, spread out to cover all of Safehold. The control center orbits above the Temple for direct line of sight between the two. The control center is probably the most heavily defended and what Owl tried to attack.

This is only one plausible scenario. But I don't think that it makes sense to talk about the system being centralized if you are talking about six cells.

Don

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n7axw wrote:My two cents...for what it's worth, probably very little!

I think that what we have here are six cells under one control center. The cells are orbiting the planet, spread out to cover all of Safehold. The control center orbits above the Temple for direct line of sight between the two. The control center is probably the most heavily defended and what Owl tried to attack.

This is only one plausible scenario. But I don't think that it makes sense to talk about the system being centralized if you are talking about six cells.

Don

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I really doubt that you need centralized control for the relatively simple system.