Post-Yawata Strike Survivors in Grayson

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote: As a result of that, they should have learned something from the Yawata Strike and the recent Beowulfan disaster. I assume Haven's Space Stations would be targeted. If they are as close to the planet as the Manticoran stations, then shouldn't they move them further out?

What do you think that Haven should learn, aside from the lessons that Manticore is applying to the construction of their new stations? We have no inkling of what Beowulf will do in that regard.

I do not remember any discussion of space stations for Haven; although there must be some, since ship building and repairs are not done on the ground. We know that their ship building industry is not concentrated at one planet. It may be that the main planet only has the capitol fleet overhead.

They should have learned that you shouldn't build too close to your front lawn, even when building in space. You don't want to worry every day if the "scaffolding" is going to fall on your house.

They might have learned that it's time to tow the space stations further out.

They may even have learned, if they're smart, that they may receive a visitor at some appointed time in the future. And their likely targets.

Possible lessons from the Yawata Strike.

There is an entity, with stealth weapons, that did not like the Manticoran side of the war. Is that because they favor Haven, or more malignantly wish to prolong the war? Who that might be would not become clearer until the return of Zilwicki and Cachet. That would also make clear they favor war in general.

There is a trade off between building important facilities close to the defense forces guarding population centers versus building them farther away. If there is no good early warning of these stealth weapons, then for now it is better to put them farther away. In either case, important facilities need bubblewall protection (which they had, but were not active for Manticore - we do not know about Blackbird).

If anyone can determine how the Beowulf orbitals were attacked, then a possible solution might be the total segregation of industrial from residential blocks: perhaps connected by transport tubes, like a cartoon dumbbell.

Can Mycroft be built with bubblewalls, leaving communication portals to Keyhole stations?

It's obvious that Beowulf residential attacks were internal.

Which is, BTW, why the whole idea of the OB attacks were dumb. The stations at Manticore are the break of bulk point for shipments to anywhere in the system. So they get endless shipments. And given that a freighter is delivering like 8000 ~100 ton containers in a matter of a few hours, extremely difficult to effectively screen.

And you don't even need to deliver anything or have anything that customs can find. Just docking to the station means that if a ship pops reactor containment the entire station will be destroyed.

So yeah, that was the MA putting on the stupid hat. There were solutions that would be 90% as effective without clearly signaling there was an unknown advanced technology opponent.

tlb wrote:Possible lessons from the Yawata Strike.

There is an entity, with stealth weapons, that did not like the Manticoran side of the war. Is that because they favor Haven, or more malignantly wish to prolong the war? Who that might be would not become clearer until the return of Zilwicki and Cachet. That would also make clear they favor war in general.

There is a trade off between building important facilities close to the defense forces guarding population centers versus building them farther away. If there is no good early warning of these stealth weapons, then for now it is better to put them farther away. In either case, important facilities need bubblewall protection (which they had, but were not active for Manticore - we do not know about Blackbird).

If anyone can determine how the Beowulf orbitals were attacked, then a possible solution might be the total segregation of industrial from residential blocks: perhaps connected by transport tubes, like a cartoon dumbbell.

Can Mycroft be built with bubblewalls, leaving communication portals to Keyhole stations?

I'm still struggling with the physics that would cause pieces of an orbiting structure to fall just because the orbiting structure gets blown up. It reminds of those SF stories about disaster resulting from a geosynchronus skyhook (aka "beanstalk") getting cut. The individual portions of the vast majority of the structure have enough angular momentum and potential energy to remain in orbit.

kzt wrote:It's obvious that Beowulf residential attacks were internal.

Which is, BTW, why the whole idea of the OB attacks were dumb. The stations at Manticore are the break of bulk point for shipments to anywhere in the system. So they get endless shipments. And given that a freighter is delivering like 8000 ~100 ton containers in a matter of a few hours, extremely difficult to effectively screen.

And you don't even need to deliver anything or have anything that customs can find. Just docking to the station means that if a ship pops reactor containment the entire station will be destroyed.

So yeah, that was the MA putting on the stupid hat. There were solutions that would be 90% as effective without clearly signaling there was an unknown advanced technology opponent.

I agree that it was obviously internal, but have they narrowed it down to malicious cargo containers?

Using a cargo or ship explosions would only get the space station near Manticore. Because of its size and the resulting distance between the civilian and military sections, the ships being built (the real target of the strike) might not even be scratched.

Another point, both the space station Giselle in New Tuscany and the Beowulf orbitals were command detonated; they needed a person on site to initiate the sequence. Without someone on site could the explosion still take place as needed?

Is it possible that the time pressure and the need to hit all of Manticore's space stations and the additional ship building sites and Blackbird at Grayson meant that this plan was the easiest to plan and execute? Although it meant revealing the existence of a hidden enemy, the hope and expectation was that either Haven or the SLN would take advantage to attack (without thinking too much about who or how).

PS. With regard to the physics, the blast pressure could have killed the orbital momentum of pieces of the station and perhaps even imparted some velocity in the direction of the planets. Yes, the net momentum of everything would still be sufficient for orbit; but some pieces will go forward or out, while others will go backward or down.

My guess is that accuracy a few milliseconds would be fine. For 3000 bucks I can buy rubidium timing module that's good to about plus or minus 1 second per 10 trillion seconds.

You set the timer when you are heading to unload, and then have some anti-tamper hardware that activates based on what you expect is the delivery cycle. Opening the container, going to zero-g, exposure to vacuum, gamma or x-ray illumination, stuff like that. So it's OK to put it in a vacuum en-route to the station and when transshipping to the next station, but not after it's been stationary for x days. Stuff like that.

And you could listen to both the auditory and electronic environment for signs of alarm. So if one bomb goes off prematurely the search for the rest will set them off.

kzt wrote:My guess is that accuracy a few milliseconds would be fine. For 3000 bucks I can buy rubidium timing module that's good to about plus or minus 1 second per 10 trillion seconds.

You set the timer when you are heading to unload, and then have some anti-tamper hardware that activates based on what you expect is the delivery cycle. Opening the container, going to zero-g, exposure to vacuum, gamma or x-ray illumination, stuff like that. So it's OK to put it in a vacuum en-route to the station and when transshipping to the next station, but not after it's been stationary for x days. Stuff like that.

And you could listen to both the auditory and electronic environment for signs of alarm. So if one bomb goes off prematurely the search for the rest will set them off.

I believe that you have mentioned this before. Assuming that works as you want (and I see no reason it would not), I do not believe this would manage to hit all the ships that are being built with Apollo capability (the reason for Oyster Bay).

What you have proposed is a way to attack the commercial side of the space stations. Similar to how the Beowulf orbitals or the New Tuscany station could have been attacked, if it had not been desired to coordinate with the SLN fleet.

It's all one connected station. Set off a few gigatons inside it and it will ruin everybody's day.

And yeah, you won't get the hulls. Good luck using them without fusion reactors, hyperdrives or missiles.

Its a 90% solution. But who is the obvious suspect that you can send your fleet to go crush?

And yes, it's one of my little hobby horses...

kzt wrote:And yeah, you won't get the hulls. Good luck using them without fusion reactors, hyperdrives or missiles.

Except for the missiles, the rest of those parts can be cannibalized from non-Apollo ships being decommissioned. In fact, you could cannibalize the captured SLN ships for some (but they do not have the new compensator nor the beta-squared nodes); so we may have come up with another use for them.

tlb wrote:

kzt wrote:And yeah, you won't get the hulls. Good luck using them without fusion reactors, hyperdrives or missiles.

Except for the missiles, the rest of those parts can be cannibalized from non-Apollo ships being decommissioned. In fact, you could cannibalize the captured SLN ships for some (but they do not have the new compensator nor the beta-squared nodes); so we may have come up with another use for them.

I dare to to figure out how to run a Ford with the power plant from the Enterprise. And who is going to be writing all the extensive code needed to try to glue the disparate systems together, once you get some e to manufacture all the needed interfaces?