Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster Bay

Galactic Sapper wrote:That's great and all, but how do unarmed civilian ships deal with the same debris? Even freighters would need the equivalent of Star Trek's navigational deflector arrays to survive everyday travelling.

Brigade XO wrote:I don't think your average DB is going to handle even several months in hyperspace. Interesting idea, don't give it much chance of success.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Galactic Sapper wrote:That's great and all, but how do unarmed civilian ships deal with the same debris? Even freighters would need the equivalent of Star Trek's navigational deflector arrays to survive everyday travelling.

They avoid the problem in the first place. They don't run up to 0.8c in normal space and they stick to well-cleared and controlled traffic lanes. There will be no debris in that lane bigger than pebbles and it's going to be moving at speeds comparable to orbital.

Galactic Sapper wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:They avoid the problem in the first place. They don't run up to 0.8c in normal space and they stick to well-cleared and controlled traffic lanes. There will be no debris in that lane bigger than pebbles and it's going to be moving at speeds comparable to orbital.

0.6c is not in any way comparable to orbital speed unless you're orbiting a neutron star at spitting range.

Brigade XO wrote:A thought about sending a bunch of outmoded SDs though That Wormhole with a DB hidden in the mass transit to scoot away (presuming it survives a massive weapons attach and the wormhole is not actually the killer).

1st, per RFC you can't send an unmanned ship through a wormhole on automatic. You have to have crew to to make the decisions, the last second adjustments and handle the change to sails, go through and back to sails then bring up the impellers. So just maybe you could have all X obsolete SD's controlled by the SD but that might be a bit more than a non-trivial excercise.

2nd, you are talking about A DB. Otherwise a small soap bubble that is going into something that is probably going to spread multiple SDs with incomming fire. Said soap bubble is going to have to deal with all sorts of debris comming at it from exploding SDs which just might be a little hazardous to it's health.

3rd, you are talking about going through a wormhole for which you have NO IDEA where it comes out and, presuming the DB can get get up enough speed to the hell out of the powered missile envelope of whatever was waiting on top of the exit lane for the wormhole, it still needs to find it's way---home?
Well, the Harvest Joy was Star Knight heavy cruiser refitted as a survey ship to explore potential wormholes. It had a good sized crew, was optomised to both research the wormhole it was going to enter and then do the same job on the other side (to come back) plus do a very intense astro survey of wherever it found itself to discover where the wormhole lead to. And, along with the capacity to handle long term deployments with that crew, it had a lot of extra supplies on board. Why, because if you can't- for any reason- go back through the wormhole (probably because the tranist broke something you can't fix to get the sails back up) you are going to have to do it the "old fashioned way". After figuring out where you are you have to get into hyper and head for someplace you can identify before your food and environmental endurence runs out.
A DB doesn't have much room to start with and a minimal crew. It doesn't have much in the way of cargo space to begin with, mostly it carries information/dispaches and perhaps a couple of passengers (in less that palatial space and comfort).
So, with the presumption that said DB can get the hell into hyperspace -and get away from any attempted pursuit before it can be killed by whatever was camped out on the incomming lane of the wormhole, you have to next figure out both where you are and what that position is to anyplace you can get to with what you have on-board. The guy that was running the Harvest Joy's research program for the transist that ended up at the Lynx teminus (but didn't go along on the attempted transit from Torch) talked about months and months of time getting back to anywhere on a research trip where they couldn't take the ship back through. I don't think your average DB is going to handle even several months in hyperspace. Interesting idea, don't give it much chance of success.

Brigade XO wrote:A comprehensive search of the surviving databases of Verdant Visa once it became Torch failed to turn up any mention of the wormhole, or at least any mention of research and exploration of it. That included the database(s) in the planitary command bunker that appeared to have been taken intact and was being used by Ruth, amoung other people.

Given that WE know that the Alignment had a full squadron of Mannerheim SDF parked at the Twins side of the wormhole specifialy to rotate ships up to cover the arrival lane and destroy anything that came thorough, WE (the readers) know that the Alignment knew all about the wormhole. Our best conclusion- which is something that I think Ruth also raised- was that Manpower (since she had no idea about the Alignment) deliberatly stripped any mention of the possible wormhole out of the information they had on the planet. The question was why.
She came to that conclusion based on the routine scouting of newly settled, or at least investigated star systems, to look for any indication of a wormhole relative to the star. That planet represented a major potential revenue source for Manpower- the pharmaceutical sales potential from the biosphere alone was massive. Manpower was not so strapped for resources that it wouldn't spend at least a comparitvely small amount to look for any readings that could indicate that there might be a wormhole. Manpower had, if recall correctly, reasonably good in-house charting of the Torch System so why not go to the next step? Again, if I remember correctly, there wasn't any mention- for or against even looking for a potential wormhole in all that captured data. Data that was very much in the most secure place Manpower could put a bunker on Verdant Vista. That absence of information given that the potential wormhole was quickly noticed by the new owners of Torch is one of those things that begs questioning. Something like " the intial exporation crew found no indication of any potentially valuable resources outside the local equivelenet of the Kuiper Belt and no follow up is contemplated at this time" would have been expected in the various records and pointed at nobody from Manpower thought it was worth it at the time.

If it was something specifically excluded from the records, there must be a reason.....and, then the Harvest Joy doesn't come back. But the cost of sending another ship into that wormhole appears to be too much at this point. It's not like the crew of the Harvest Joy was either inexperinced, rash (any more than any explorer may be), prone to sloppiness or just careless.

Jonathan_S wrote:It'd probably be less suspicious that Manpower didn't want to let it be known that they were the second group to ever lose a wormhole exploration vessel than it was that they'd never mentioned anything about exploring the wormhole.

And anyone finding that "hidden" record in the database would probably be even slower to send their own exploration ship through.

Theemile wrote:
The Emergence lane.

Anything leaving the wormhole will be stuck in the emergence lane of the wormhole for between 1 and 6 minutes - depending on the wormhole. The emergence lane is a grav wave in normal space, you are under sail, you cannot maneuver, you cannot raise your wedge, you cannot fire missiles. You are vulnerable on all aspects from energy weapon and laserhead fire (the standoff range of a laser head is enough to blanket the width of the emergence lane. The wormhole defense can sit far enough from the wormhole that your energy shots cannot penetrate their sidewalls, but their shots can still do damage to your unprotected hull, and can fire missile at you.

so all you can do for 1-6 minutes is ride out the Gauntlet of the emergence lane...

Then comes the breakout attempt.

TheMadPenguin wrote:Exploring a (probable) hostile WH:

Bolt/tractor two ships together at right angles.

One raises sails and enters/exits the WH. (tugs can help get there and get aligned for entry). The two ships then appear on the other end of the WH. The Sail ship will experience a time penalty before it can either raise wedges, or return through the WH on the anti-vector. That's why the second ship is tractored/bolted to the first.
The second ship has hot nodes configured for wedge, but wedge OFF. Upon arrival, the second ship enters hyperspace, taking the first ship with it.

Weaponry (in case the LZ is hot): Each Graser is swapped out for EMI/Lorelei/Mistletoe/keyhole emitters. Each missile tube is loaded with counter-missile canisters. Both ships have tractored LACs configured for EMI/CM duty. Upon exit from WH, both ships drop LACS and FIRE EVERYTYHING. That should give time for the second ship to enter hyper. Now we know what's at the other end, and we've survived it. We can hyper a LY in some random direction, drop back to nspace, and figure out where we are.