Honorverse system destroyer

Louis R wrote:Ummm... no.

What Loren described would be a sort-of 'no degenerate' Type 1a supernova, which accumulating evidence indicates involves one or 2 white dwarfs up near the Chandrasekhar limit but still far from the mass range for core-collapse SNe.

No, that would require 2 stars, generally 1 white dwarf and one larger star, likely a giant that orbit together. The cooler white dwarf strips material off its companion until the combined mass of the WD and its stolen mass exceeds its limit to hold up that mass. In the "non-standard" Type IA, it can also be due to the collision of 2 white dwarfs combining their masses together without significantly increasing their temperatures. If they are both large enough (upper limits for a white dwarf) them they may produce a Type 1A. The explosion of a star due to its disruption from an artificial source, without significant mass increase, would likely result in a regular nova due to the unlikelihood of a habitable planet orbiting a massive giant star (with its high corresponding luminosity and radiation output). It would make more sense to use impeller/art-grav tech to produce a gravity 'funnel', (a cone shaped gravity field) from a distance and forcing the surface of one star to transfer at a high rate to the other until it reaches critical mass, and causing a type IA in that way, no 'kamikaze' needed.

MAD-4A wrote:It would make more sense to use impeller/art-grav tech to produce a gravity 'funnel', (a cone shaped gravity field) from a distance and forcing the surface of one star to transfer at a high rate to the other until it reaches critical mass, and causing a type IA in that way, no 'kamikaze' needed.

The wedge mechanics would fail here, by the time existing (known) wedges could possibly be setup in such a manner to transfer the hot plasma from one star to another you have 2 major fail points:

Failure point one, would be that you couldn't possibly armor or shield the nodes well enough to keep them operating while the plasma is being 'funneled' through from one star to another, or at least not for more than perhaps a few seconds.

Failure point two is actually the important one, and that's wedge sizes. Even the largest (known) super dreadnoughtss like the Medusa-B is only 342 square kilometers. To get suction from the bow end of the impeller, sucking the hot plasma from star A to star B will only travel the 342 km's from front to back. Now gravitational force might extend that a good bit, but hell even 600 to 1000 kilometers is spitting distance for stars. They'd already have been transferring mass long before a wedge could be inserted to, let's say accelerate the process.


Now if this topic were in free-range, we could fairly easily say the Fifth Imperium and their gravitonics could easily do this. With sufficient computing power, it becomes possible Tisiphone could also use her powers to move star mass around (but Alicia would need to be hooked into the equivilent of a supercomputer not just her Alpha-Synth). Some of the BOLO stories (Old Soldiers for one, I think) may have gotten sufficient technology increases they could start considering star-effecting technologies.

But the Honorverse, no existing known technology can have an effect on stars, or if they could, it wouldn't matter because the process would have been happening whether or not people got involved. So we almost certainly won't see, say MAlign forces seeking revenge, by blowing up a couple hundred suns in retaliation for their plan for galactic domination being stopped.

Somtaaw wrote:The problem is any "suicidal" kamikaze ship in the Honorverse has to actually survive, relatively intact, to physically impact a star to even try to get any effect to happen.

And their particle screens, and even sidewalls + a bow wall aren't enough to get the wedge to make physical contact with a star to pull it off. The screens would fail well before the ship makes contact, the sidewalls + bow-wall might last a little longer than the particle and other screens, but still wouldn't last long enough to cover the ship the whole way. And once those screens and sidewalls drop, the ship itself would physically start melting before impact, which would quickly cause deformation around the impeller nodes would would quickly cause the wedge to fail, again all before impact.

And without the wedge, even a 7 million ton superdreadnought moving at 0.7c or higher isn't going to make a notable dent in a stars mass and/or cause some form of flare, or other activity. Assuming of course, that in the time of melting the ship doesn't actually pull apart into two or more distinct pieces, which would split the mass up.


Would need a napkin math warrior to actually start crunching the numbers, but I highly doubt without an active/intact wedge an Honorverse ship could ever affect a star.

Note that melting isn't a serious factor for a C-frac strike. The question is whether it gets deep enough before it's brought to a stop by all the mass it's running into.

Loren Pechtel wrote:..snip..
Note that melting isn't a serious factor for a C-frac strike. The question is whether it gets deep enough before it's brought to a stop by all the mass it's running into.

The problem with a C-fractional strike is that any kind of "missile" is going to turn into plasma when it hits the outer layers of a star due to the fact that it will be like hitting a solid wall at those speeds and particle density.

It will probably produce some kind of flare depending on the size and speed of the strike, but I doubt you can make a star go nova.

On the other hand, if you have the technology to shield the missile so it can penetrate deep enough to affect the core you may get some interesting results. Although the missile have to be able to pass through the star and the density is kind of iffy for that. The Sun's core density for example is about 150 g/cm³, ie. about 18 times denser than steel and the radiative zone is between water & gold in density so it's a non-trivial task.

Somtaaw wrote:The wedge mechanics would fail here, by the time existing (known) wedges could possibly be setup in such a manner to transfer the hot plasma from one star to another you have 2 major fail points.

(1st) it's sci-fi - there is no such thing as "existing" wedges they're made up so you can make them up however you want to.(2nd)

Somtaaw wrote:Failure point one, would be that you couldn't possibly armor or shield the nodes well enough ...

the nodes are neither shielded nor armored
(3)

Somtaaw wrote: well enough to keep them operating while the plasma is being 'funneled' through from one star to another, or at least not for more than perhaps a few seconds.

the stellar mass wouldn't be funneled "through" the nodes. the nodes produce a field of gravity 100s of miles across, with a sufficiently designed node (purpose built) you would project a funnel or cone shaped field between the 2 stars (the nodes would be well away from 'inside' the field) and the star-matter would flow between the stars through the funnel-shaped wedge, not the nodes.

Somtaaw wrote:Failure point two is actually the important one, and that's wedge sizes...

and you can't put a grazer into a missile, until you do it. It may take some engineering and development, perhaps multiple node projectors along the path (under stealth platforms perhaps) but the basic tech is there. I didn't say it was something you could just rig up out of one of the old captured SL SDs just that that's the more practical way for someone in the Honorverse to go about it.

(PS. really!? "Honorverse" isn't in the sites basic spellcheck dictionary, correction needed!)

Joat42 wrote:The problem with a C-fractional strike is that any kind of "missile" is going to turn into plasma when it hits the outer layers of a star due to the fact that it will be like hitting a solid wall at those speeds and particle density...

As far as melting, the speed may actually be the answered to the problem. If you know how, you can actually put your hand into molten lead without getting burned, the trick is speed, in&out before the heat has time to transfer. a ship traveling at sufficient speed may be able to reach the core before it melts. As to the 'solid' wall, the shield are the answer there. Yes, hitting still water flat is like hitting concrete. that's due to 2 factors, 1) surface tension 2) the incompressibility of water. I don't know what the (further) compressibility of solar plasma is at a given depth but it is sub-liquid in form and can be pushed out of the way. the trick would be pushing it aside fast enough. As to surface tension, that would be broken by the wedge/shields not the ships bow. If you really want to hit a solar core with a physical ship, I think a more practical way to go would be to (somehow) overcome the gravity shadow in hyper. race in at c+ then drop across the Alfa-wall inside the core. Yes, I know that would require engineers having to overcome many other (made-up) issues such as gravity stresses etc... but may require fewer issues be overcome than a c- strike. Plus, they were able to overcome the Alfa-wall in the first place so why not? That would put a whole new crimper on system defense since the same anti-gav-well tech could be used to insert invasion fleets directly into an inner-systems.

MAD-4A wrote:

Joat42 wrote:The problem with a C-fractional strike is that any kind of "missile" is going to turn into plasma when it hits the outer layers of a star due to the fact that it will be like hitting a solid wall at those speeds and particle density...

As far as melting, the speed may actually be the answered to the problem. If you know how, you can actually put your hand into molten lead without getting burned, the trick is speed, in&out before the heat has time to transfer. a ship traveling at sufficient speed may be able to reach the core before it melts. As to the 'solid' wall, the shield are the answer there. Yes, hitting still water flat is like hitting concrete. that's due to 2 factors, 1) surface tension 2) the incompressibility of water. I don't know what the (further) compressibility of solar plasma is at a given depth but it is sub-liquid in form and can be pushed out of the way. the trick would be pushing it aside fast enough. As to surface tension, that would be broken by the wedge/shields not the ships bow. If you really want to hit a solar core with a physical ship, I think a more practical way to go would be to (somehow) overcome the gravity shadow in hyper. race in at c+ then drop across the Alfa-wall inside the core. Yes, I know that would require engineers having to overcome many other (made-up) issues such as gravity stresses etc... but may require fewer issues be overcome than a c- strike. Plus, they were able to overcome the Alfa-wall in the first place so why not? That would put a whole new crimper on system defense since the same anti-gav-well tech could be used to insert invasion fleets directly into an inner-systems.

I can't see a ship or missile boring itself through several hundred thousand miles of a star where the density starts approaching gold and then +8 times the density of steel. If you can make such a ship or missile you don't have to make a star go nova, just fire them at any other ship and they are toast since no wedge or shield could affect them.

Regarding your idea to exit hyper inside a star, uou forgot the hyper-limit, bad things happen when you try to exit hyper within that limit where the most benign is that you don't know where you will exit.

Well, the relativistic ramming of the star would clearly affect the solar system badly. It may not resul in nova - unless the neutronization limit is reached - but it would clearly create a LARGE exaust of solar mass into space. Probably everything in the system would be toast anyway.

MAD-4A wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:Failure point two is actually the important one, and that's wedge sizes...

and you can't put a grazer into a missile, until you do it. It may take some engineering and development, perhaps multiple node projectors along the path (under stealth platforms perhaps) but the basic tech is there. I didn't say it was something you could just rig up out of one of the old captured SL SDs just that that's the more practical way for someone in the Honorverse to go about it.

(PS. really!? "Honorverse" isn't in the sites basic spellcheck dictionary, correction needed!)

Space is big dude... a couple hundred kilometers is nothing for space between stars. And if the Honorverse ever gets wedges in the million km range, I think they'd have something a helluva deadlier than "hey let's go blow up somebodies binary star system" ideas. And since the captured SLN superdreadnoughts have both smaller tonnages than 'modern' RMN dreadnoughts and considerably older impeller node research (no beta-squares for example), that's making your argument of it being possible even weaker.

I'm not astronomer, but correct me if I'm wrong but the binaries we have detected still orbit each other at around a light-hour or more, which is just over a billion kilometers. Again, space is big, and wedges are tiny. You'd need dozens of ships lined up nose to tail (or rather, at a range that barely clears their wedges), and you'd need the entire SLN Reserve to even attempt it once.

and

MAD-4A wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:The wedge mechanics would fail here, by the time existing (known) wedges could possibly be setup in such a manner to transfer the hot plasma from one star to another you have 2 major fail points.

(1st) it's sci-fi - there is no such thing as "existing" wedges they're made up so you can make them up however you want to.

It's being debated in the Honorverse forum, so yes you actually do have to consider how the available book technology, and/or what we think could be coming out. Otherwise this debate should be getting moved to the Free-range.

MAD-4A wrote:As to surface tension, that would be broken by the wedge/shields not the ships bow. If you really want to hit a solar core with a physical ship, I think a more practical way to go would be to (somehow) overcome the gravity shadow in hyper. race in at c+ then drop across the Alfa-wall inside the core.

Except it's basic fact you literally CANNOT translate out of hyper that close to a star. The shortest range I've made a note of for a hyper limit, was Nuncio and I'll grab the exact distance for that hyper limit after I finish eating, and dig through Shadows of Saganami for the exact range. Off-hand, it was only something like 30 or 40 light-minutes, and most stars are considerably more, but I'm building a small database of every single mention of star type + hyperlimit I'll post that later when I finish the latest reading through all the books to ensure I catch them all.