MILSPEC-555: "EVACUATING A PLANET"

cthia wrote:

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?

There is textev in Flag in Exile where impeller head missiles were used to bring down Honor's shuttle, whether or not larger wedges would react with the atmosphere is not known.

tlb wrote: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?

We should get as many of them in-system as possible.

I am banking on the higher estimate of 200,000 on the Redneks. And build times of 4-6 months.

cthia wrote:

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?

George J. Smith wrote:There is textev in Flag in Exile where impeller head missiles were used to bring down Honor's shuttle, whether or not larger wedges would react with the atmosphere is not known.

Interesting.

cthia wrote:Lab: Milspec-555
Professor: Hard Nose Grindstone III PhD.


Ladies and Gentlemen,
It has fallen to me to stress the utmost importance of the success of this mission. It appears to the Admiralty that convincing you underlings of the grave circumstances that belie this project is more difficult than the project itself. I will begin by submitting this to you...

It has long been known that every citizen of this great planet will not be evacuated in time. There will be sacrifices. Since you personally do not wish to take part in this exercise, then we will assure you that the only fair thing to do is leave you and all of your family behind.

Be that as it may. Let us make one thing perfectly clear. If anyone is found to leak this classified project, or your unwanted notions of the impossibility of the task at hand, to the unsuspecting public, at risk of panic, WILL BE SUMMARILY EXECUTED!!!

We have less than a year to pull this off gentlemen. We are wasting time. If you have nothing to offer the salvation of your home planet or loved ones, withdraw from the course in a dishonorable disgrace. The notion that a spacefaring species cannot save a percentage of its population in the midst of an imminent planetary catastrophe is absurd.

Tell that to the many rich Manticorans on the richest planet in the richest star system in the galaxy, who want off.

Necessity is the mother of invention. Impending disaster < 12 months.


If applicable, please turn in your course card. Transcript will be sent via registered mail to CO.

You have failed to smell the stench of death.

Jonathan_S wrote:The obviously solution is a coup to overthrow the insane idiots threatening to execute a majority of a planetary population for failing to accomplish an impossible task. The death toll of the revolt with be vastly lower than the death toll of the evacuation attempt

I'm not sure Manticore, which probably sees the highest traffic density in all of space courtesy of the Junction, sees enough ships to carry even 500 million people in a year, much less the nearly 3 billion system(s) population. Building a new ship takes the better part of a year, even for the most efficient yard, and without sitting on a major wormhole network simply letting getting the message out that you need (and are somehow paying for) emergency convergence of all the people carrying ships you can find will take months on its own. Even for a all costs hero project you're looking at a lead time of 10-20 years, not 12 months, to build the infrastructure and ships necessary to evacuate a whole planet or system.

It is hilarious that you think the angry mob will give a shit about me—the insane asshole trying to save them, than you—the insane asshole proposing to kill them all with passivity.

At any rate. We are not THREATENING! We are GUARANTEEING! Do you have any idea why it is unlawful to wrongly yell fire in a crowded venue? For the same "insane" reason, it is also unlawful to yell planet killer inside a gravity well. You could cause the entire population to self-destruct, panic and doom everyone. Trust me, if you cause undue panic, YOU WILL BE EXECUTED ON THE SPOT!

For not doing your job we simply claim your course card, kick you out of the class and send you back to the CO that recommended you.

cthia wrote: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?

I doubt you'd get more that local ignition in the atmosphere - there just isn't a fuel source for the oxygen to react to. And small, short duration, wedges are used in the atmosphere - the surface to air missiles are small impeller heads, as are the ground attack missiles carried by assault shuttles. When Honor's pinace is shot down on approach to Harrington Steading that's by an impeller head SAM operating in the atmosphere.

Still there's a huge difference between a man portable missile's wedge, that might be a few meters wide, a pinnace's that's a few km wide, and a starship's that over 100 km wide. The larger wedges are more powerful, as well as covering more area, so they should impart higher velocity to anything they touch and they'll touch a larger volume of air (or ground)

As long as you don't mind hitting things with extremely powerful plasma streams thrusters should work just fine in the atmosphere. But using them to land, even with assistance from counter-grav, would melt or fuse the ground plus since you're hitting it with fusing plasma also make it radioactive. I'm unconvinced that landing a ship is actually a quicker more efficient way to load that using a lot of small craft designed for planetary landing. Though at a bit more risk you could probably load people into rescue balls, stick them in a big shipping container, and have a shuttle snag it with tractors and haul it to orbit. That'd maximize flying time by separating the loading and unloading of evacuees from the actual craft flying up and down (since you'd presumably have enough rescue balls and cargo containers to have several loading and unloading for each shuttle in transit - allowing that to occur while the shuttle is making its next round trip.

cthia wrote: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?

Well Honor owns, as an individual, both a intra-system runabout and a hyper capable yacht (each with their own shuttle to get between them and the planet. So I think it's safe to same people can own their own ships - but for costs they're probably more like a personal Gulfstream than a personal Piper Cub.

As for smallest, I'm not sure if a small cutter (countergrav and turbines + thrusters; no impeller wedge) or a civilian (unarmed) counterpart of stingship (which has less cargo/passenger capability, but does have a wedge and can operate out to high orbit) would be smaller or more available to individuals.
Either would have the advantage that you can fly them up from the planet's surface, but the disadvantage that you can't take them much further than an orbiting station or ship. For most people it's probably less hassle to take their aircar to a shuttleport and take a routine shuttle flight up to the stations - so I doubt there are a lot of people with their own cutters unless it's just for getting up to larger personal ship.

tlb wrote: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?

cthia wrote:We should get as many of them in-system as possible.

I am banking on the higher estimate of 200,000 on the Rednecks. And build times of 4-6 months.

Actually Theemile said 20,000 was the normal troop complement on the 4 million ton vessel in your reference. Which means it is already half the size of an SD! That is terrible; we would be lucky to get 50 to 60 thousand in an SD sized transport and so would need 100 of them just to move 5 to 6 million people in one trip. If 200,000 were feasible, then 100 of them could move 20 million in one trip.
Another thing with an evacuation of Manticore, for example. Suppose we needed to move the 1.5 billion people to Sphinx (because the emergency was confined to just the one planet): that might be done without constructing any special ships, but once moved how would they live? The population is more than doubled and Manticore was the breadbasket of the system, so food is now a major problem.

PS. I did not use the Redneck as an example because I could not find its regular troop capacity; that of the Longstop was given in the book.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote: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?

I doubt you'd get more that local ignition in the atmosphere - there just isn't a fuel source for the oxygen to react to. And small, short duration, wedges are used in the atmosphere - the surface to air missiles are small impeller heads, as are the ground attack missiles carried by assault shuttles. When Honor's pinace is shot down on approach to Harrington Steading that's by an impeller head SAM operating in the atmosphere.

Still there's a huge difference between a man portable missile's wedge, that might be a few meters wide, a pinnace's that's a few km wide, and a starship's that over 100 km wide. The larger wedges are more powerful, as well as covering more area, so they should impart higher velocity to anything they touch and they'll touch a larger volume of air (or ground)

As long as you don't mind hitting things with extremely powerful plasma streams thrusters should work just fine in the atmosphere. But using them to land, even with assistance from counter-grav, would melt or fuse the ground plus since you're hitting it with fusing plasma also make it radioactive. I'm unconvinced that landing a ship is actually a quicker more efficient way to load that using a lot of small craft designed for planetary landing. Though at a bit more risk you could probably load people into rescue balls, stick them in a big shipping container, and have a shuttle snag it with tractors and haul it to orbit. That'd maximize flying time by separating the loading and unloading of evacuees from the actual craft flying up and down (since you'd presumably have enough rescue balls and cargo containers to have several loading and unloading for each shuttle in transit - allowing that to occur while the shuttle is making its next round trip.

Actually, why do you need to use a wedge at all? Use countergrav to lift the evacuation ships off the surface into space & then use wedges of the impellor drive once you are at a safe distance.

Actually the countergrav may not even have to be built into the ship, they could be countergrav cradles which the ship is lying atop of, rather like a heavylift ship carrying another ship or even a drilling rig. This would save volume in the hull itself by not having nonessential systems; (unless you wanted to use the same system to land on another planetary surface.

Just my twopennorth.

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

AUDITORIUM

An amusing aside...

IF a planet has already been evacuated once in the Honorverse.

Humor me for a moment...

Consider the witching hour. Last minute evacuations are frantically being pulled off. Daring rescues heroically executed by the hair of their chinny-chin-chin. Space is crowded by people in ships that barely made it off. Imagine that they are in communication with their unfortunate loved ones that are still stranded on the doomed rock, when that cataclysmic moment that will live in infamy occurs. An unseen entity touting unprecedented stealth, executes an undetected launch that comes in and obliterates the planet. All the people in orbit hear the screams and sees the images of their loved ones still on the ground. Heart wrenching images that are debilitating to discuss much less watch. Would they be predestined to share a natural kinship with Clean Killer and his clan?

Would the survivors of this Honorverse Holocaust possess nothing less than a euphoric tasting mindglow to the 'Cats? Having survived the same unthinkable disaster? Fated bonded brothers? I would imagine they'd bond in droves.

"A certain classified status prevents me from telling you just how real that scenario is gentlemen." As he discreetly motions toward the Vid Screen. The slowly fading, shockingly horrid images of the last dying moments of mult-millions of people suffering macabre deaths, while their loved ones listened and watched from personal vid screens and combos in orbit, drowning in their own tortuous guilt, didn't appear to be a reenactment.



Perhaps now we understand each other, gentlemen.

It has been a very long time since I have logged in here however given the topic I thought people might be interested this video from a YouTube channel I watch, "Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur", which recently had an episode talking about the concepts behind evacuating a planet. Link below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW89tggdf6I