OOPS

Galactic Sapper wrote:The problem with that theory is that SDs, particularly the hammerheads, are designed and armored to resist fire of exactly that type. Enough grazer fire could do it eventually, but probably not the first salvo. Even from another SD's full chase armament, that's not going to be enough. And since they're all shooting each other in the hammerheads, the first salvo is going to wreck enough that there isn't going to be much of a second salvo.

Sure, they can resist graser fire at normal energy ranges - which is somewhere between 100,000 to 400,000km and usually a millisecond-length pulse. It's not going to do much at 500-1,000km against potentially continuous-mode fire.

At that range, accuracy will be astonishingly high. Shannon could have used the hammerhead missile launchers as the grasers' targets for sufficient offsetting to avoid premature mutual destruction.

Galactic Sapper wrote:The problem with that theory is that SDs, particularly the hammerheads, are designed and armored to resist fire of exactly that type. Enough grazer fire could do it eventually, but probably not the first salvo. Even from another SD's full chase armament, that's not going to be enough. And since they're all shooting each other in the hammerheads, the first salvo is going to wreck enough that there isn't going to be much of a second salvo.

munroburton wrote:Sure, they can resist graser fire at normal energy ranges - which is somewhere between 100,000 to 400,000km and usually a millisecond-length pulse. It's not going to do much at 500-1,000km against potentially continuous-mode fire.

At that range, accuracy will be astonishingly high. Shannon could have used the hammerhead missile launchers as the grasers' targets for sufficient offsetting to avoid premature mutual destruction.

Just so we all understand: continuous-mode does not mean a continuous beam, instead it is a stream of pulses at the highest repetition rate allowed. Even the graser torpedo could only maintain a beam until an explosive failure occurred. However there may not be an effective difference in the result.

Galactic Sapper wrote:I think we can safely ignore the power drop-off from the distance around the reactor for intra-ship purposes. Regardless of how such power levels are achieved, we know from canon that a single fusion plant blowing can vaporize armor off the unshielded hull of ship hundreds of kilometers away (PNS Atilla and PNS Farnese in EoH), and that was under typical operating regimes and not a deliberate overload. Of course, we see something similar from the ejected core from Fearless in OBS as well, but that's a smaller plant and IIRC a sidewall is involved.

It’s really odd how David didn’t talk about the huge firestorm that enveloped all the habitable planets in the manticore systems when dozens of ship reactors lost containment at the same time when the stations were destroyed.

kzt wrote:It’s really odd how David didn’t talk about the huge firestorm that enveloped all the habitable planets in the manticore systems when dozens of ship reactors lost containment at the same time when the stations were destroyed.

Would ships st the stations have their reactors at some minimum power level or perhaps even shut off?

munroburton wrote:Sure, they can resist graser fire at normal energy ranges - which is somewhere between 100,000 to 400,000km and usually a millisecond-length pulse. It's not going to do much at 500-1,000km against potentially continuous-mode fire.

At that range, accuracy will be astonishingly high. Shannon could have used the hammerhead missile launchers as the grasers' targets for sufficient offsetting to avoid premature mutual destruction.

Don't think that that matters. The beam penetrating the ship is going to vaporise everything outwards, including power couplings. Even if the emitters themselves don't get vaporised, a few microseconds later the power is going to go and they're going to stop firing.

If the ships were 1000 km away, the graser beams would arrive at each other 3.3 ms after being emitted. It's tricky synchronisation, but totally achievable.

Still, I think it's unlikely that it was mutual destruction. Each ship blowing itself up is more likely.

kzt wrote:

Galactic Sapper wrote:I think we can safely ignore the power drop-off from the distance around the reactor for intra-ship purposes. Regardless of how such power levels are achieved, we know from canon that a single fusion plant blowing can vaporize armor off the unshielded hull of ship hundreds of kilometers away (PNS Atilla and PNS Farnese in EoH), and that was under typical operating regimes and not a deliberate overload. Of course, we see something similar from the ejected core from Fearless in OBS as well, but that's a smaller plant and IIRC a sidewall is involved.

It’s really odd how David didn’t talk about the huge firestorm that enveloped all the habitable planets in the manticore systems when dozens of ship reactors lost containment at the same time when the stations were destroyed.

If you're looking for plot inconsistencies, a better place to start would have been how the hell did one reactor blow up that catastrophically and not breach the other reactors on the same ship?

Galactic Sapper wrote:If you're looking for plot inconsistencies, a better place to start would have been how the hell did one reactor blow up that catastrophically and not breach the other reactors on the same ship?

I once calculated the minimum energy needed to vaporize the hulls. It was something absurd. Like 53 trillion megatons.

tlb wrote:

kzt wrote:It’s really odd how David didn’t talk about the huge firestorm that enveloped all the habitable planets in the manticore systems when dozens of ship reactors lost containment at the same time when the stations were destroyed.

Would ships st the stations have their reactors at some minimum power level or perhaps even shut off?

In fission reactors there is only the chance of steam explosions, never atomic explosions.

In fusion reactors, it would probably depend on the nuts and bolts of the design. Which we don't know well enough.

Why would the reactors be shut down? Idling at nominal power levels perhaps.

@KZT. Holy calculations Batman!

cthia wrote:
@KZT. Holy calculations Batman!

Surface area of a sphere and heat of vaporization of iron. And it’s very big sphere. It turns out to be a LOT of energy.

cthia wrote:Why would the reactors be shut down? Idling at nominal power levels perhaps.!

If they were being serviced and the ship was being powered by an umbilical, they could be shut down cold.

Docked ships would probably be down to a single reactor (if they have multiple) at minimum levels, even if powered by an umbilical. Ships that were on yard hands for non-trivial repairs probably shut them down completely.

A fusion reactor can be powered down completely. We don't know how difficult it is to restart, though, but if it is in a yard, there's no problem since it is doable however difficult it is. A fission reactor, on the other hand, never completely stops: even if you remove the rods, they will still generate fission and you need to store them somewhere. You might as well keep them inside the reactor producing energy, which you can then dissipate as heat.

Unless the Honorverse has stimulated fission of almost non-radioactive material.