How To Abandon Ship?

cthia wrote:Are any of the crew ever told the truth?

"There's a nuclear bomb onboard mate. And she has a tendency to want to blow."

"There's a nuclear bomb onboard mate. Piss her off and she'll have a meltdown."

"There's a nuclear bomb held in captivity mate. And she has a tendency to try and escape."

Grashtel wrote:

cthia wrote:Are any of the crew ever told the truth?

"There's a nuclear bomb onboard mate. And she has a tendency to want to blow."

"There's a nuclear bomb onboard mate. Piss her off and she'll have a meltdown."

"There's a nuclear bomb held in captivity mate. And she has a tendency to try and escape."

What makes you think that the various ways fusion reactors can go wrong isn't common knowledge for anyone who studies starship engineering in anything but the most cursory fashion? Let alone anyone who is trained in engineering on a warship

Theemile wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:I understand that the "gunport" in the sidewalls are created by the equipment on the ship opening them in the sidewall and that it would be extreemly bad luck for some enemy missile to happen to detonate it's laserhead at just the correct moment for one of the beams of energy to go through an open gunport.
There must be seperate systems for each of the gunport (both shipkiller tubes and CM tubes as well as possible drone tubes) such that you only open ports for tubes that are being fired.
Since we are talking about being in the middle of an engagement and damage is being suffered, probably on both sides, what happens if the equipment that creates one of the gunports fails (electronics etc) and while the systems cycles when that tube is fired, the gunport isn't actualy opened (power to the circuit but not enough to open a hole in the sidewall) and the weapons is launched and starts through the cycle to power up and engage it's impellers?
You you get the weapon detonating inside the sidewall (I suppose that would depend on when the warhead armes after fireing) or would the sidewall destroy it- and what would the resulting release of energy "inside" on the ship side of the sidewall do to the ship?

Just curious. Somebody must have a thought on this.

Sidewalls were designed in response to the impeller missile - the sidewall is powerful enough to blow out the nodes on the missile and shred the physical body almost instantly.

I would think that a missile that missed it's gunport would just get swallowed by the sidewall out of hand. ...eerrp...

PeterZ wrote:As I understand it, the gun ports are always open. These ports are part of the sidewall generators' programmed settings. They are too small to allow missiles to enter, but energy weapons can fire in through them at any time.

cthia wrote:By the same logic a reactor's ejector port might always be open? What is the size of missiles vs reactors?

I wonder about the mechanism that would allow the sidewall generators to have such fine control. If they have such fine control, can they close off missile ports while keeping CM and autocannon ports open? Considering the scene where Fearless? took all of the Havenite's fire w/o shooting back. If they are not shooting back, why leave every port open if there is such fine control? And if there is such fine control, then it would seem that an assigned port would be opened only at the moment of jettisoning a runaway reactor.

cthia wrote:... why leave every port open ...

Theemile wrote:

cthia wrote:By the same logic a reactor's ejector port might always be open? What is the size of missiles vs reactors?

I wonder about the mechanism that would allow the sidewall generators to have such fine control. If they have such fine control, can they close off missile ports while keeping CM and autocannon ports open? Considering the scene where Fearless? took all of the Havenite's fire w/o shooting back. If they are not shooting back, why leave every port open if there is such fine control? And if there is such fine control, then it would seem that an assigned port would be opened only at the moment of jettisoning a runaway reactor.

Single drive missiles are between 78 and 130 tons.

Starship Reactors are in the range of 2500-10,000 tons.

However the sidwlls are 50 km fro the ship, a jetosoning reactor will immediately fall behind an accelerating ship. Even if the core hit the sidewall, the sidewall's gravity would just swallow the plasma.

Theemile wrote:However the sidwlls are 50 km fro the ship, a jetosoning reactor will immediately fall behind an accelerating ship. Even if the core hit the sidewall, the sidewall's gravity would just swallow the plasma.

Theemile wrote:However the sidwlls are 50 km fro the ship, a jetosoning reactor will immediately fall behind an accelerating ship. Even if the core hit the sidewall, the sidewall's gravity would just swallow the plasma.

Loren Pechtel wrote:
Unless the ship has multiple reactors it's not going to be accelerating after a jettison.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Theemile wrote:However the sidwlls are 50 km fro the ship, a jetosoning reactor will immediately fall behind an accelerating ship. Even if the core hit the sidewall, the sidewall's gravity would just swallow the plasma.

They’re only 10 km off each broadside. Still the compensator field doesn’t normally extend anywhere near that far.

Loren Pechtel wrote:
Unless the ship has multiple reactors it's not going to be accelerating after a jettison.

All warships (except LACs) carry at least 2 reactors - so that isn’t such a big concern.