Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster Bay

Galactic Sapper wrote:My guess is in the next book 10th Fleet is going to find a clue in a Manpower database on Mesa that was not sufficiently sanitized. It won't tell them the location of the other terminus but will definitively tell the GA that the wormhole was surveyed and transited safely. Where the GA goes from there, only RFC knows.

That would be my guess too. Sigs is right hat the non-survey of the WH is suspicious as hell, but I still maintain it's not enough to warrant the risk of simply transiting. However, with Dr. Kare's further math and a bit of intel from Mesa, they should become reasonably comfortable that the WH works.

How to force it, we don't know. From all the tech we've seen so far, there's no way to force your way through a defended wormhole, much less one that you don't have complete survey info on.

kzt wrote:Well, a 2m diameter nickle-iron meteoroid masses somewhere about 30 tons. This is probably more than the wreckage of an MDM is going to be. When you hit them with a PD (which you will - laser heads are used because missiles can't survive to reach burn or especially boom range) you are going to either crack the reactor or the plasma capacitor, so what it going to hit the particle screen is essentially plasma.

It depends on how far out you tag it. A cloud of relativistic plasma is still quite deadly. You have to kill the missile and then zig out of the way of the plasma.

Theemile wrote:Advanced laserheads have a stand-off range of ~50,000 km, so the pdlc (with a range of 100-120,000 km) has 50-70,000 km to hit them. The Original, older laserheads have a stand-off range of 20,000 km, meaning they need to travel 1/2 again as far through the pdlc envelope as advanced laserheads, increasing the intercept time of the clusters by %50. Missiles using the Boom setting have to get even closer, increasing the opportunities for multiple cluster hits to take them out.

However, the MDM has changed the whole dynamic of missile interception. You used to get multiple shots at every inbound, detonating as far out as possible reduced the number of shots the defender could take. Now, however, after it's full run an MDM crashes through the defense zone fast enough every defense unit gets only one shot. If a missile survives to standoff range there are no defenses left, it can continue in as close as it's trajectory permits. (You can't do that with every missile because then the defenders would hold back their laser clusters to increase their accuracy.)

Theemile wrote:The entire time a missile is in PDLC range, the missile body isn't maneuvering and is setting up for detonation. you are saying that during this critical, exposed time, if you increase the loiter time before missile firing by 50%, you will not increase the possibility of one of an Invictus' 992 broadside pd lasers (62 clusters of 16 lasers) hitting you? Really? if it takes 2 seconds for 1 laser to cycle, with roughly a thousand lasers, one will be firing every .002 seconds.

No. You have 992 shots to be expended as desired, not 1 shot per 2 milliseconds. They will all have been expended.

Loren Pechtel wrote:
It depends on how far out you tag it. A cloud of relativistic plasma is still quite deadly. You have to kill the missile and then zig out of the way of the plasma.

The RMS velocity of hydrogen at 10 million degrees is 15,793,482 m/sec according to google. So I doubt it's a big threat given it will be a cloud 31 km in diameter in a millisecond.

After the Final Flourish, there is dam little left of Alignment records on Mesa. What is not clear is if any of those bombs were directed against Manpower major installations or records retention.
Of course, if the Alignment was so careful to not leave any (ANY) data in records on Verdant Vista, what makes you think that they didn't also make sure that any records were expunged from any Manpower (or subsidiary's or contractors) databases.
While it is possible that the Manpower operation on Torch knew that the company had commissioned a survey for possible wormholes, they probably were not involved in anything more than being aware it was being done. They don't have to know what the results were except probably that the results were negative.

Who would have done the survey? That depends on your belief of level of paranoia with the Alignment. They certainly could have their own system/wormhole survey crews. Give that we know there is that whole secret wormhole network and Darius, they probably do. In any case, when not actualy working, they would be being kept inside the Alignment secret network. I also would have to wonder about the security systems on those ships and if their people were ever allowed off (or anybody else allowed on) when they were away from Darius.

Give this is the Alignment, anybody involved in that kind of activity is either going to end up dead or more-or-less safely tucked into places they can't be reached by outsiders. It's not like they don't have places - now- that they can train their people on doing wormhole exploration, even if it is practice on what they hold in secret. They also have what appears to be a fairly sophisticated network that obtains, maintains and operates undercover ships doing all sorts of things. Heck, it is even possible that some of the companies/ships that are professional wormhole explorers are Alignment and operating at a level such as those Mannerheim SDF officers. They are in deep cover and operating in plain sight.

kzt wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:
It depends on how far out you tag it. A cloud of relativistic plasma is still quite deadly. You have to kill the missile and then zig out of the way of the plasma.

The RMS velocity of hydrogen at 10 million degrees is 15,793,482 m/sec according to google. So I doubt it's a big threat given it will be a cloud 31 km in diameter in a millisecond.

The blown reactor is going that fast and poses no threat. The missile body is far heavier elements and nowhere near as hot.

And it's expanding as a sphere, not a disk, the majority of the mass won't be going sideways nearly as fast as the temperature says.

How about a different approach on finding records?

The MAlign is reasonably competent (but they think they're far more competent than they are) and has good computer support, I seriously doubt there's anything on Mesa that points to Darius. However, we know they have hidden stations around, we saw Beowulf going after some of them. We also know some of those stations were used in Houdini.

On Mesa they're going to figure out a bunch of people were extracted but not what became of them. Beowulf will capture another station that will point them in the right direction.

Loren Pechtel wrote:How about a different approach on finding records?

The MAlign is reasonably competent (but they think they're far more competent than they are) and has good computer support, I seriously doubt there's anything on Mesa that points to Darius. However, we know they have hidden stations around, we saw Beowulf going after some of them. We also know some of those stations were used in Houdini.

On Mesa they're going to figure out a bunch of people were extracted but not what became of them. Beowulf will capture another station that will point them in the right direction.

One thing that always bothered me was the entire Zach McBryde and his new girl friend( whose name escapes me at the moment) subplot that occupied significant portions of multiple books - and then appeared to go nowhere.

When was the last time that RFC dropped in a subplot that had no purpose at all? Part of it might be the tracing of ships - they we just leaving when Torch took the way station, so there might be info there - or at least leads that will let things go further on. I suspect that there is going to be a significant subplot on Darius, in which those two will play a major role, but who knows.

fallsfromtrees wrote:
When was the last time that RFC dropped in a subplot that had no purpose at all? Part of it might be the tracing of ships - they we just leaving when Torch took the way station, so there might be info there - or at least leads that will let things go further on. I suspect that there is going to be a significant subplot on Darius, in which those two will play a major role, but who knows.

Oh there was, but the torchies machined gunned the lifeboats, killing everyone who could tell them what was going on.