XKCD What If KEWs

I don’t post much, so this may have already been covered, but I was just reading the first “What If” from Randall Munroe. For those who are unfamiliar with Mr Munroe, he was a roboticist at NASA, and he has an asteroid (4942 Munroe) named after him. He also has a very interesting sense of humour!

Reading this, it made me think of c-frac missiles and KEWs. I thought you guys might be interested in reading it. What I find particularly interesting is that at that speed, the difference between a KEW and a nuke is academic; both involve thermonuclear detonations.

https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/

Yeah, it's pretty clear that David Weber hadn't thought deeply about the what a frac C missile would do in HotQ.

Walks Alone wrote:I don’t post much, so this may have already been covered, but I was just reading the first “What If” from Randall Munroe. For those who are unfamiliar with Mr Munroe, he was a roboticist at NASA, and he has an asteroid (4942 Munroe) named after him. He also has a very interesting sense of humour!

Reading this, it made me think of c-frac missiles and KEWs. I thought you guys might be interested in reading it. What I find particularly interesting is that at that speed, the difference between a KEW and a nuke is academic; both involve thermonuclear detonations.

https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/

I hate to be a smart ass, but as temperatures increase beyond a certain point (tens of millions of degrees) fusion reaction cross sections decrease. The atoms from the dissociated air molocules will actually have a better than 90% chance of flowing right through the ball. The collissions that do occur are so energetic that the atomic nuclei involved are torn apart. The ball will become a very dense mass of expanding plasma that spews gamma rays, electrons, protons and neutrons in all directions. The energy yield prior to reaching the batter will be on the order of 100 kilotons.

Things will not get really ugly until the ball impacts the bat, the batter or the catcher; then the concrete backstop behind the batter. Then all of the kinetic energy of the ball gets liberated as radiation on the order of about 8 Megatons.

KZT and some NAMELESSFLY that was exiled from this forum were perhaps ungentle in pointing out that Mr Weber had FUBARed by not appreciating that the kinetic energy of a nuke impacting at .9 C is about a hundred times greater than the yield of the nuke. That nominal yield 20 Megaton shipkiller missile massing some 100 tons will do as much damage as about 1,000,000 Megatons. Just one missile is an ELY, Extinction Level Event.

I would just note that a KEW is not necessarily a c fractional projectile. The physics for basic KEWs is pretty well known. You don't need a massive thrust on a large metal projectile dropped down a well to do massive damage without causing a thermonuclear reaction.

You weren't alone in pointing this out fly. Honorverse physics doesn't do Relativity well.
A high c fractional missile has gained a lot of mass from the "free energy" supplied by handwavium being converted in a reversal of E=MC2, which then converts back on impact.

The nature and destructiveness of KEWs vs. nuclear strikes has been commented upon extensively in the recent novels. It's also the reason why the Honorverse has the Eridani Edict as a threat to everyone in a position to violate it. Habitable planets are not so common that you can afford to either irradiate their atmospheres or cause an ELE. What probably prevented the Masadans from launching c-fractional attacks was the limitations of their technology. They could launch a nuclear strike, in violation of the Eridani Edict, but as RFC commented upon the past, they weren't punished for it by the League because it either happened before contact with the rest of the galaxy was established or else the violation was dealt with locally by Grayson. Moreover, you need to consider that the Honorverse takes into consideration the need for particle shielding and that the reason you can only reach 0.8 c in normal space is that no shielding is effective beyond that speed. And you also need sufficient time, space and energy budget to achieve such speeds.

So the concern in HotQ over nukes is still valid, given the limitations of Masadan technology and what ships they knew the Peeps had in system at the time. It was also predicated upon their experience with the PRH at the time, and their belief that the Peeps would never hand over control of such powerful ships to Masada outright. And it was correct given that Theisman and Yu commanded Breslau and Saladin respectively and that key positions were controlled by Havenites. It's true that RFC retroactively added a mention of the Eridani Edict into HotQ in later versions (I have one of the original versions without it), but he has explained this gap as much as possible and apologized for the inconsistencies when they cannot be explained away.

Jerry Pournelle came up with the idea and a team at Boeing studied them in the 1950s-60s. There were concepts for small to large ones with different yields, well below the thermonuclear stage.

thanatos wrote:The nature and destructiveness of KEWs vs. nuclear strikes has been commented upon extensively in the recent novels. It's also the reason why the Honorverse has the Eridani Edict as a threat to everyone in a position to violate it. Habitable planets are not so common that you can afford to either irradiate their atmospheres or cause an ELE. What probably prevented the Masadans from launching c-fractional attacks was the limitations of their technology. They could launch a nuclear strike, in violation of the Eridani Edict, but as RFC commented upon the past, they weren't punished for it by the League because it either happened before contact with the rest of the galaxy was established or else the violation was dealt with locally by Grayson. Moreover, you need to consider that the Honorverse takes into consideration the need for particle shielding and that the reason you can only reach 0.8 c in normal space is that no shielding is effective beyond that speed. And you also need sufficient time, space and energy budget to achieve such speeds.

So the concern in HotQ over nukes is still valid, given the limitations of Masadan technology and what ships they knew the Peeps had in system at the time. It was also predicated upon their experience with the PRH at the time, and their belief that the Peeps would never hand over control of such powerful ships to Masada outright. And it was correct given that Theisman and Yu commanded Breslau and Saladin respectively and that key positions were controlled by Havenites. It's true that RFC retroactively added a mention of the Eridani Edict into HotQ in later versions (I have one of the original versions without it), but he has explained this gap as much as possible and apologized for the inconsistencies when they cannot be explained away.

it was also touched on, several times, that the Masadan's hadn't even experimented in the slightest with their "new toys". Remember when they were performing their asteroid operation, to bait the last Manticoran destroyer into attacking? The first attack wave flew way too close before they launched their missiles, and because of that they lost a ship. Then again, later Sword Simonds after he stole Thunder realized exactly why Yu had been so confident he could conquer Grayson (after Honor had started shooting up Thunder for little meaningful damage).


Masadan's didn't care about Eridani violations or any other 'rules', they're religious nutbags who believed God would protect them from any consequences. When Simonds moved to attack Grayson to devastate their population after they'd realized Macabeus failed, if he'd been 'smart' he should have launched nukes that intentionally went ballistic the moment he came out of hyper. Honor never would have seen them, and Grayson would have become a glassed billiard ball behind her long before she'd ever gotten into range to panic him into trying to run away for a few hours.


I'll try to dig up some of the relevant passages concerning the lack of Masadan experience with the new technology. Even excluding the bits that Yu (and Theisman) hadn't fully trained them, the Masadan's just didn't even use the simulators at all.

I always thought that the Masadans wanted Grayson. Glassing the planet would be the last thing they wanted

The Masadans did want Grayson, but they wanted to hurt the Grayson people far more. They'd have settled for turning Grayson into a glass slate if it destroyed the Grayson unfaithful though they'd have preferred not to do that so they could capture real-estate and more people to add to their population as defacto slaves.