MILSPEC-555: "EVACUATING A PLANET"

We know from Echoes of Honor that the Longstop troop transport can haul forty thousand troops, plus the ships crew. I am not sure how big this ship is, so if it were scaled up to the size of an SD what would be its capacity? Could its shuttles also be scaled up to allow it to load faster?
The next question is would people have to live long term in space or are these transports to another location? If long term then there is also the need for specialized ships for mining and food processing (perhaps growing krill as a main food source).
If really long term then a substantial fraction would need to be in cryo-storage at any given time.

This all assumes that there is enough time to put it all together. If there is not time, then how much effort to add the enormous amount of life support and living modules to a standard freighter to turn its cargo bays into spaces to transport people?

Jonathan_S wrote:

pappilon wrote:OMG we got hundreds of obsolete Solly SDs just floating in orbit, lets finally admit there's a better use for them than just sending them t the breakers

Warships do famously have lots of redundant life support to have enough left after battle damage. Let’s assume they can temporarily handle 5x their normal 6000 person crew (I think it’s more like 3x but let’s be generous). A hundred of them could then move 3 million people - (Though if you want repeat trips you need a thousand or so each to fly them back, letting you evac only 2.5 million each trip).
Just 500 trips or so to evacuate Manticore. /sarcasm

Wait, doesn't the solarian league have like 20k obsolete dreadnoughts? You'd be down to like three trips.

(Pedantic) Point of Order: I think this should be a field manual (FM), not a milspec, since a milspec describes an item and this is outlining (at best) a process.

Jonathan_S wrote:With a few months lead time even a single old-style LAC should be able to prevent something the size of the Chicxulub impactor from hitting a planet.

I would think the LAC could save the planet with a mere hours notice, but it would presumably be a suicide mission. Ram at the maximum speed you can attain in the available time, roll the wedge just before impact. If your wedge is as big as the rock the deflection will be total. If it's not you punch a chunk out of the rock but you impart an awful lot of energy to the material you don't punch out--it's going to be leaving sideways at considerable speed.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:With a few months lead time even a single old-style LAC should be able to prevent something the size of the Chicxulub impactor from hitting a planet.

I would think the LAC could save the planet with a mere hours notice, but it would presumably be a suicide mission. Ram at the maximum speed you can attain in the available time, roll the wedge just before impact. If your wedge is as big as the rock the deflection will be total. If it's not you punch a chunk out of the rock but you impart an awful lot of energy to the material you don't punch out--it's going to be leaving sideways at considerable speed.

It’s got an exawatt graser, and a bunch of missiles. It can blow it into many small pieces that will mostly miss the planet.

cthia wrote:

H A R V A R D B O G O T A C A M P U S

Lecture: Atmospheric wedge landings.

Traditionally, wedges are not permitted to land because of damage to the atmosphere?

If that is the case, in permanent evacuations, wedge landings will be permitted if wedge landings are possible. Perhaps specialized landing sites will have to be built.

1) The damage to the atmosphere is major. A wedge reduces stuff to it's constituent atoms--all that O2 and N2 are reduces to monoatomic states. They'll react with whatever is around--can you say "nitrous oxide"?

2) That's not even the important bit. What happens when the wedge touches the ground?

kzt wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:I would think the LAC could save the planet with a mere hours notice, but it would presumably be a suicide mission. Ram at the maximum speed you can attain in the available time, roll the wedge just before impact. If your wedge is as big as the rock the deflection will be total. If it's not you punch a chunk out of the rock but you impart an awful lot of energy to the material you don't punch out--it's going to be leaving sideways at considerable speed.

It’s got an exawatt graser, and a bunch of missiles. It can blow it into many small pieces that will mostly miss the planet.

Engaging a big rock at a range of hours would be a very bad idea. The debris would not miss the planet. All it would do is spread out a bit and make the damage even worse. (Damage radius goes at the third root of energy, thus the damaged area goes at the 2/3 root of the energy. Split 1 impactor into 8 and you double the damage.)

For a close-in engagement the only weapon is the wedge.

D E M P S E Y S

In a booth...

My friends are saying it would be worse than the Hindenburg trying to land in the angriest lightning storm in history.

They are even questioning the varying difficulty in attempts on a high gravity planet vs a low.

Some are claiming that it would ignite the atmosphere. It is interesting to say the least. Has it ever happened in textev? I doubt spontaneous combustion of the atmosphere or there'll be many deaths in textev because I find it extremely difficult to believe that there have been no wedge on atmosphere accidents throughout the history of the tech.



At any rate, I never proposed an Earth landing. I was proposing some sort of suspended air landing via counter-grav landing zones. But I don't know if that kind of control would be possible in atmosphere. Surely thrusters would be of no use then.


I'm beginning to wonder if it would be feasible to build counter-grav ability into our ships for counter grav assisted landings with wedge shut down?

What are the limitations of counter-grav technology?

kzt wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:I would think the LAC could save the planet with a mere hours notice, but it would presumably be a suicide mission. Ram at the maximum speed you can attain in the available time, roll the wedge just before impact. If your wedge is as big as the rock the deflection will be total. If it's not you punch a chunk out of the rock but you impart an awful lot of energy to the material you don't punch out--it's going to be leaving sideways at considerable speed.

It’s got an exawatt graser, and a bunch of missiles. It can blow it into many small pieces that will mostly miss the planet.

Loren Pechtel wrote:Engaging a big rock at a range of hours would be a very bad idea. The debris would not miss the planet. All it would do is spread out a bit and make the damage even worse. (Damage radius goes at the third root of energy, thus the damaged area goes at the 2/3 root of the energy. Split 1 impactor into 8 and you double the damage.)

For a close-in engagement the only weapon is the wedge.

Loren, you covered that in Armageddon as well.

There are a fair number of filthy rich Manticorans. How many own their own personal shuttle? Is there individually owned space transportation? People own their own planes here on Earth. What is the smallest ground to space vehicle that a private citizen may own? Would it be a shuttle or can they be made even smaller?