SLN Reserve

George J. Smith wrote:I would think it would be prudent to have the reserve anchorages inside the hyper limit.

Gas giants are large enough to have there own hyper limits. HotQ the planet Urile has a hyper limit of about 5 LM.

saber964 wrote:

George J. Smith wrote:I would think it would be prudent to have the reserve anchorages inside the hyper limit.

Gas giants are large enough to have there own hyper limits. HotQ the planet Urile has a hyper limit of about 5 LM.

Does it matter if it the hyper limit of the system star, or of one of the system gas giants.

The point is to have the anchorages situated where an attacking fleet could not hyper in within SDM or energy weapon range, thus giving the defenders time to mobilise their assets and/or send a dispatch boat to request reinforcements.

saber964 wrote:

George J. Smith wrote:I would think it would be prudent to have the reserve anchorages inside the hyper limit.

Gas giants are large enough to have there own hyper limits. HotQ the planet Urile has a hyper limit of about 5 LM.

Yes, but that's much shallower than the 20+ LM hyper limit of most stars; so you got much less reaction time / defensive depth if you stick your anchorage out by a gas giant. (Against Apollo virtually no depth - IIRC it's good for at least 4.5 LM of FTL control range.
Not that the League would have had reason to account for MDMs or Apollo when siting their reserves; but still they're more vulnerable to a raid out there because the smaller hyper limit lets notional attackers pop out closer in so you've less time to react.

Jonathan_S wrote:

saber964" quote="George J. Smith wrote:I would think it would be prudent to have the reserve anchorages inside the hyper limit.

Gas giants are large enough to have there own hyper limits. HotQ the planet Urile has a hyper limit of about 5 LM.

Yes, but that's much shallower than the 20+ LM hyper limit of most stars; so you got much less reaction time / defensive depth if you stick your anchorage out by a gas giant. (Against Apollo virtually no depth - IIRC it's good for at least 4.5 LM of FTL control range.
Not that the League would have had reason to account for MDMs or Apollo when siting their reserves; but still they're more vulnerable to a raid out there because the smaller hyper limit lets notional attackers pop out closer in so you've less time to react.[/quote]


It also depends on the system involved. According to planetary scientists the Sol system is pretty unique in its make up. One of the first Exo-planetary systems discovered had 3-5 gas giants that were 3 to 10 times Jupiter size all orbiting the star inside the orbit of Venus. Another exo-system that was just announced had seven earth sized planets with 3 or 4 in the goldilocks zone. Still another has its system make up opposite of ours namely gas giants in close and rocky outer planets.

saber964 wrote:It also depends on the system involved. According to planetary scientists the Sol system is pretty unique in its make up. One of the first Exo-planetary systems discovered had 3-5 gas giants that were 3 to 10 times Jupiter size all orbiting the star inside the orbit of Venus. Another exo-system that was just announced had seven earth sized planets with 3 or 4 in the goldilocks zone. Still another has its system make up opposite of ours namely gas giants in close and rocky outer planets.

Exoplanetary science is still very new. The Kepler telescope was only launched in 2009, for example. It works by watching planets cross in front of their stars. Therefore, it tends to spot and confirm planets with closer orbits and will manage it more frequently than it can outer planets.

Jupiter takes 12 T-years to orbit our sun and Neptune takes 165. If we're to spot a similar system makeup to Sol's, then we need to be watching those stars for potentially two or three times as long as that. More than half a millennia to confirm the presence of Neptunian gas giants.

Our system could still be the norm, or at least typical for our star type. We can't possibly know for at least another 16 to 28 years.

saber964 wrote:
It also depends on the system involved. According to planetary scientists the Sol system is pretty unique in its make up. One of the first Exo-planetary systems discovered had 3-5 gas giants that were 3 to 10 times Jupiter size all orbiting the star inside the orbit of Venus. Another exo-system that was just announced had seven earth sized planets with 3 or 4 in the goldilocks zone. Still another has its system make up opposite of ours namely gas giants in close and rocky outer planets.

I read those articles too - That statement was a bit of BS, which was never true, and has since been proven very untrue. I don't know why it was stated, but a simple look at the techniques used to see exo-systems shows the idiocy of the statement.
(Before I continue, in the 90's I studied Exo-Planetary Geophysics under Dr. Philip James (the first person to "take" a photo with the Hubble - it was the picture of Mars on the cover of Time Magazine). I was in the group who was supposed to be analysing the direct HD camera take from the Mars Observer craft, that was lost in '93)

All the first exo-planets found were gas giants orbiting close to the star. The reason? Early on, the techniques pretty much guaranteed it would be what was found. The Techniques used are of 2 varieties.

1) The "Wobble technique" detected large gravitational disturbances to the star itself - as a revolving mass pulled on a star, it causes the star to move very slightly from it's predicted path. So, the larger the mass, and the closer the mass is to the Star, the larger the distortion and the shorter the orbitial radius (ie period of the wobble), the easier it is to detect and study. The smaller the revolving mass, the smaller effect on the star; and the further the mass is from the star, the effect is also smaller, and the period longer, requiring longer observation to detect wobble and determine the planet's details..

So a Rocky planet, with a Venus/Earth/Mars orbital radius, has a very small effect on the star's wobble, as well as a longer period, requiring longer observations, by much more sensitive equipment. So of course, a SuperJupiter, with a sub-Mercury orbit is going to be MUCH easier to spot.

2) The "Transit technique". this involved watching stars for their light to dim. This requires a planet to occlude the light of the star traveling to us enough to be noticed, So it has to be large, relative to the star, and has to dim the star enough to be noticed. Also, it has to be noticed, repeatedly, to get enough data, so shorter orbital radii are necessary for it to be an observed pattern. (And most importantly, the orbital path must be almost perfectly between us and the star, or else it doesn't block the star for us.)

Once again the Rocky planets in the Habitable zone of Sol are so small and so far out, that even a perfect alignment would be visual worthless. Earth, sitting on the Sun's surface, would only occlude the Sun by ~.00008 (>1% of 1%).

Both of these techniques require details from multiple orbital periods to acquire the necessary data to determine the period and size of the exo-planet. There are lots of stars to study, and lots of data to slowly wade through to pull out those nuggets of truth.

We still use the same techniques, but now we have over a decade of data, with better equipment, and are seeing more systems with more planetary configs. Those first systems with huge, close planets were the low hanging fruit which fell out of the data easily with "relatively" little observation and number crunching using the existing hardware. Stating that they were the only ones to exist, was like staring at a forest from a distance and stating that the only thing that grew in it were large trees.

The Sol like systems are simply harder to detect using the techniques available to us, not necessarily any more or less prevalent that other solar formations.

Theemile wrote:
We still use the same techniques, but now we have over a decade of data, with better equipment, and are seeing more systems with more planetary configs. Those first systems with huge, close planets were the low hanging fruit which fell out of the data easily with "relatively" little observation and number crunching using the existing hardware. Stating that they were the only ones to exist, was like staring at a forest from a distance and stating that the only thing that grew in it were large trees.

The Sol like systems are simply harder to detect using the techniques available to us, not necessarily any more or less prevalent that other solar formations.

To me, the amazing thing is we are detecting so many this soon.

When I was growing up in the era of Star Trek (Original Series) the accepted estimation was that perhaps one star in ten would have planets, that one planet in ten solar systems would be an Earth type world capable of supporting life as we know it.

Methinks those estimates were off by about a factor of eight or nine since it seems most stars host a solar system and many of those have planets of roughly the right size and in the "goldilocks zone" to MAYBE support life as we know it.

I'm thinking I was born about two centuries too soon to take part in the next great age of exploration.

DRAT!

robert132 wrote:
To me, the amazing thing is we are detecting so many this soon.

When I was growing up in the era of Star Trek (Original Series) the accepted estimation was that perhaps one star in ten would have planets, that one planet in ten solar systems would be an Earth type world capable of supporting life as we know it.

Methinks those estimates were off by about a factor of eight or nine since it seems most stars host a solar system and many of those have planets of roughly the right size and in the "goldilocks zone" to MAYBE support life as we know it.

I'm thinking I was born about two centuries too soon to take part in the next great age of exploration.

DRAT!

I know, totally annoying.

Tenshinai wrote:
I know, totally annoying.

I intend to live long enough to teach Picard his business.

robert132 wrote:

Tenshinai wrote:
I know, totally annoying.

I intend to live long enough to teach Picard his business.

Sounds like an excellent ambition!