The fate of the Dawn Star and the Archangels

Aha, here it is:

3) Safehold is hundreds of light years beyond the Gbaba's sphere, and the overwhelming evidence at the time of the Gbaba's attack on humanity was that the Gbaba do not aggressively patrol beyond the borders of their own sphere. Rather, they react to incursions into their sphere with the equivalent of a "hot pursuit" response and the extermination of the interloper to be sure he'll never come back. This means that even if Safehold was radiating radio energy out the wahzoo, it would be centuries — quite a few of them, in fact — before any of their radiated energy could be detected by the Gbaba unless the Gbaba happened to be in the area looking for it.

http://www.davidweber.net/faqs/index/series:6/page:2

So, Gbaba aren't actually expanding. If they have any actual expanse, they wouldn't be so stagnant (and quite probably wouldn't be so agressive also). They basically live in their own corner of space, until they pick someone nearby.

Dilandu wrote:Aha, here it is:

3) Safehold is hundreds of light years beyond the Gbaba's sphere, and the overwhelming evidence at the time of the Gbaba's attack on humanity was that the Gbaba do not aggressively patrol beyond the borders of their own sphere. Rather, they react to incursions into their sphere with the equivalent of a "hot pursuit" response and the extermination of the interloper to be sure he'll never come back. This means that even if Safehold was radiating radio energy out the wahzoo, it would be centuries — quite a few of them, in fact — before any of their radiated energy could be detected by the Gbaba unless the Gbaba happened to be in the area looking for it.

Good, and thank you, but it still leaves questions.

The Gbaba encountered humanity and attacked. They continued attacking every time they encountered humanity, and went actively looking for more humanity. They located all of the TF colonies, and finally Earth itself, by following traces use of technology left behind.

Just what sort of trail were they following? Electricity is limited to speed of light, so it would take a long time for things like radio and TV transmissions to reach them, assuming the signals hadn't attenuated beyond detection level by the time they did reach a possible Gbaba observer.

There is brief mention in OAR of "hypercom", which is presumably an FTL communications system permitting TF colonies and Earth to talk to each other without sending ships carrying messages, but we have no details on it. If I had to make a guess they could detect and trace hypercom transmissions, and that was the breadcrumb trail they followed.

So, Gbaba aren't actually expanding. If they have any actual expanse, they wouldn't be so stagnant (and quite probably wouldn't be so agressive also). They basically live in their own corner of space, until they pick someone nearby.

Possible. But they are certainly willing to go beyond their own boundaries to hunt for and destroy other sentient species, witness what happened to Earth. They may not be expanding in the sense of new worlds to add to their polity, buy they might sweep well beyond it to look for potential future threats.

I'd be reluctant to bet the existence of humanity on the notion that they'd never venture into Safehold space.
_______
Dennis

DMcCunney wrote:
Just what sort of trail were they following? Electricity is limited to speed of light, so it would take a long time for things like radio and TV transmissions to reach them, assuming the signals hadn't attenuated beyond detection level by the time they did reach a possible Gbaba observer.

Well, it was assumed that they captured enough data on destroyed Federation colonies to determine the location of major Federation worlds. After all, it hardly was a secret before Gbaba came: probably any civilian encyclopedia mentioned all the colonies of Federation.

So, they probably knew the exact size of Federation and the Federation's worlds locations since their first attacks. They badly underestimated the Federation capabilities - that's why the initial Gbaba attack was repelled, and Federation was even able to start the counterattack - but they knew all the Federation colonies all along.

Just what sort of trail were they following? Electricity is limited to speed of light, so it would take a long time for things like radio and TV transmissions to reach them, assuming the signals hadn't attenuated beyond detection level by the time they did reach a possible Gbaba observer.

You mean, in searching the possible Federation hidden colonies? Simple astrophysics. They knew, which conditions are suitable for humankind. They took their Gbaba's astronomical atlases for all star systems in some range (a few hundred lightyears or so), and noted all that have planets, capable of supporting human life. Then they send scouts/probes to scan for electromagnetic emissions, comparable with industry.

I'd be reluctant to bet the existence of humanity on the notion that they'd never venture into Safehold space.

Well, we don't knew, how far the Safehold from Gbaba space. Probably far enough, that such possibility was considered neligible - that Gbaba just accidently stumbled upon the planet. After all, it's all inverse square law: with the increase of distance from the center, the ammount of space rises exponentially.

After all, Gbaba didn't notice Earth for centuries, and the Earth was much close to their space than Safehold. So, the authors of Ark plan made a reasonable assumption, that Gbaba would not start to check EVERY star system in the Galaxy, just in case that some humans escaped. After all, the main idea of Ark project was to persuade Gbaba that the breakaway of colony fleet FAILED!

Dilandu wrote:

DMcCunney wrote: The main concern would be a possible Gbaba automated probe survey looking for other sentient species for the Gbaba to destroy. We don't know what they were doing when the encountered humanity, and there's no guarantee they weren't expanding and wouldn't eventually reach Safehold's neck of the galactic woods.

If I'm not mistaken, RFC stated in one Infodump that Gbaba did NOT roam the Galaxy, searching for species to destroy. They stayed in their own, pretty compact, part of space, and acted ONLY if someone appeared in their neighborhood. They are not expansionists: they are, actually, isolationists.

Xenophobes, actually.

The Federation "stumbled" over the Gbaba by encountering one of the systems they destroyed. It would not be unreasonable to postulate that in each such system the Gbaba might have left some sort of sensor suite for the purpose of ensuring their "sterilization" operation was, indeed, thorough. It was probably a notification from such a source that caused the Gbaba to launch their "pre-emptive" strike. They probably recognized that while the new potential invaders weren't the same species, it was also likely that at some point soon they'd actually reach inhabited Gbaba space. If your goal is to ensure isolation by eliminating any species in close proximity that is capable - or even getting close to capable - of interstellar travel, then it's far better to do so before they know enough about you to significantly retaliate.

OrlandoNative wrote:The Federation "stumbled" over the Gbaba by encountering one of the systems they destroyed. It would not be unreasonable to postulate that in each such system the Gbaba might have left some sort of sensor suite for the purpose of ensuring their "sterilization" operation was, indeed, thorough. It was probably a notification from such a source that caused the Gbaba to launch their "pre-emptive" strike. They probably recognized that while the new potential invaders weren't the same species, it was also likely that at some point soon they'd actually reach inhabited Gbaba space. If your goal is to ensure isolation by eliminating any species in close proximity that is capable - or even getting close to capable - of interstellar travel, then it's far better to do so before they know enough about you to significantly retaliate.

Well, no one knew, what the actual goals of Gbaba WAS when they still were able to formulate them. They are not expansionistic: so, whatever happened thousand years before, it's more likely that someone came to THEM. Someone bad enough, that Gbaba basically reshaped all their culture - probably even biology - along the idea of "preemptive xenocide".

Dilandu wrote:

OrlandoNative wrote:What "heat"? It's never been noted anywhere that whatever powers the skimmers generates any.

Any action generates heat. This is the basics of termodynamic.

Unless the Federation found ways to circumvent the termodynamics - and in that case I couldn't see any way how they could lose the war against Gbaba (basically, if you have such technology, you have more than Clarktech - you have Godtech, and could just rebuild the basics of the Universe) - they are still forced to deal with them. And any energy degraded to heat.

The gravity is pretty weak, actually. Unless some mass is VERY BIG, you could not have much use for gravity. Of course, mass&energy are connected, and so you could substitute (in theory) one for other... But you need A LOT of energy. And because no process is 100% effective, producing and using such energy would produce heat. A lot of heat.

Actually, the laws of thermodynamics don't specifically address heat itself, they address entropy. We tend to associate the two because of what we've here to fore observed. The old term of the end of the universe being the "heat death" is somewhat of a misnomer, in that it's quite likely the final universal temperature isn't going to be all that high after all. Indeed, it will probably be quite cold. What it *really* means is that the energy gradient of the entire universe will be the same, so any energy transfer would no longer be possible. And it's the *transfer* of energy that we use as a power source; in various forms.

Also, the laws of thermodynamics function on a universal scale. While the Second Law says that entropy can only increase, we all know that in a specific locale, entropy can be made to decrease, but only by having at least a corresponding *increase* elsewhere.

And perhaps I should have said, in the case of the skimmer, "generates *much*". Today's aircraft tend to generate a fair amount of heat as well, but stealth aircraft run the hot exhaust through baffles and heat exchange devices, and thus reduce the temperature enough to remain virtually undetectable.

Today most of our energy conversion/generation methods aren't all that efficient, I'd agree. And while 100% efficiency may actually be unattainable, I don't doubt that many processes we use today, and may discover in the future, can be made more efficient. Maybe even to 99% with some additional .9's tacked onto it. Not perfect, no, but the net loss depends on not only the efficiency of the process but on the gross magnitude of the source.

Again, I would point to Merlin. He's nuclear powered. He's also man-sized. Yet he doesn't give off any more heat than a normal human. So the efficiency of the Federation's energy conversion methods *must* be of a much higher order than anything we have today. It's quite likely the power source for the skimmers, and, for that matter, most Federation gear is similar.

Darcwar wrote:In my original post I stated that the ship would be reconfigured.
Why you use need all that storage spaces? What would really be needed is the AI, manufacturing facilities, med labs and engine to land. By the time you reconfigure the ship it might look allot different. But I do agree that sending the ship on path so it would return in 1000 years would be a good idea. Then on it's return either it would active what's under the temple or what's under the temple could active the ship. Either way I think the ship and it's AI could be very important to advancing Savehold.

You're talking about a *spaceship*. I doubt the kind of "reconfiguration" you're talking about would be possible outside of an actual construction facility. One could possibly move some interior walls (as long as they didn't serve a structural purpose) but I doubt you could actually make one resemble a normal *building* given what was available to be worked with.

Dilandu wrote:

DMcCunney wrote:
Just what sort of trail were they following? Electricity is limited to speed of light, so it would take a long time for things like radio and TV transmissions to reach them, assuming the signals hadn't attenuated beyond detection level by the time they did reach a possible Gbaba observer.

Well, it was assumed that they captured enough data on destroyed Federation colonies to determine the location of major Federation worlds. After all, it hardly was a secret before Gbaba came: probably any civilian encyclopedia mentioned all the colonies of Federation.

Actually, it was mentioned in OAR that the one previous breakaway colonizing attempt that initially succeeded was discovered through their emissions generated by their activities at their destination. That was the whole idea of going "low tech" for the first several centuries. It was apparently assumed that after such a long duration, new signals from somewhere much farther away wouldn't generate enough disturbance to the Gbaba to force them into any immediate response. Whether that would actually be the case or not wasn't known for certain. That was what probably provided the initial impetus for Langhorne and his cronies to modify the original plan and try to suppress the development of anything that might create detectable emissions *forever*.

Today most of our energy conversion/generation methods aren't all that efficient, I'd agree. And while 100% efficiency may actually be unattainable, I don't doubt that many processes we use today, and may discover in the future, can be made more efficient. Maybe even to 99% with some additional .9's tacked onto it. Not perfect, no, but the net loss depends on not only the efficiency of the process but on the gross magnitude of the source.

Again, I would point to Merlin. He's nuclear powered. He's also man-sized. Yet he doesn't give off any more heat than a normal human. So the efficiency of the Federation's energy conversion methods *must* be of a much higher order than anything we have today. It's quite likely the power source for the skimmers, and, for that matter, most Federation gear is similar.

Yes, but Merlin power requirements are, actually, pretty limited. To move the generally human-sized body with near-human mass, you don't need megawatt scale powerplant. And you are completely right: there are quite a lot of possibilities for improving the effectivness of many technology, like servomotors.

So the actual heat emission of Merlin... probably are even less than human body. Just because his servos are more effective than human muscles on the same power. His nuclear reactor is, probably, more like some kind of boosted isotopic generator: after all, how many energy PICA may need?

Dilandu wrote:Aha, here it is:

3) Safehold is hundreds of light years beyond the Gbaba's sphere, and the overwhelming evidence at the time of the Gbaba's attack on humanity was that the Gbaba do not aggressively patrol beyond the borders of their own sphere. Rather, they react to incursions into their sphere with the equivalent of a "hot pursuit" response and the extermination of the interloper to be sure he'll never come back. This means that even if Safehold was radiating radio energy out the wahzoo, it would be centuries — quite a few of them, in fact — before any of their radiated energy could be detected by the Gbaba unless the Gbaba happened to be in the area looking for it.

http://www.davidweber.net/faqs/index/series:6/page:2

So, Gbaba aren't actually expanding. If they have any actual expanse, they wouldn't be so stagnant (and quite probably wouldn't be so agressive also). They basically live in their own corner of space, until they pick someone nearby.

I don't think that necessarily follows. Most expanding species tend to be the most aggressive. Most stagnant ones are less. We see that on earth today. Predators generally stake out territory and will defend it. Or else seek out new territory if there's none available where they are.

Even herd animals compete for "status" in the herd, with the loser sometimes being "exiled".

Most "stagnant" species are that way because they can't compete with others surrounding them. There may be some sort of barrier that generally protects them from those outside influences, but once outside of that protection they can't survive.

The Gbaba are more like that. Though, in this case, the "barrier" that protects them is an artificial one - namely their fleet, their philosophy of exterminating any local rivals or potential rivals, and their "buffer zone" of destroyed systems surrounding their own space.

You tend to be safer if you control your immediate environment, and that seems to be exactly what the Gbaba decided to do, possibly eons ago.

What caused them to take this mindset, whether it was evolutionary on their original planet, or because of repeated disastrous encounters with other space faring species once they became capable of leaving it, we don't know. And, realistically, it doesn't *matter*, since what the Safeholder's have to do is survive in the present and, hopefully, future. Gbaba behavior is now so ingrained it might as well be, and maybe is, instinctual.