Relativity

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:On that note, bracketing for a moment whether the impellers, rings and nodes can withstand it, what would happen to the flight profile if all three stages burned simultaneously?

I do not think you can ignore wedge fratricide, the same as happens when the wedges of a missile and a CM come together.

Jonathan_S wrote:^this.
You'd get instantaneous destruction from catastrophic wedge inference.


(Well I guess if one set came up first you'd "just" get significant localized destruction around the other two rings when they tried to activate within the area of influence of the fully active one -- exactly what Honor did to the Havenite courier boat's nodes in OBS. OTOH the 3 rings on an MDM are so close that even blowing the other two could likely cause collateral failure of the fully powered ring. But that might only mangle the back-end of the missile instead of vaporizing the whole thing)

The missive I gave is . . .

1) Bracket for a moment whether the impellers, rings and nodes can withstand it.

2) What would happen to the flight profile if all three stages (could be made) to burn simultaneously?

This was meant to be more of a thought experiment. I'm trying to eke out that enormous acceleration. I know the missile's present configuration does not make it possible. But the MAlign thinks outside the box. If the result of lighting off all three drives will increase accel in kind, then a redesign is in order. What form that redesign will take won't be known until the research is undertaken. Oftentimes the answer is in asking the right questions.

cthia wrote:The missive I gave is . . .

1) Bracket for a moment whether the impellers, rings and nodes can withstand it,

2) What would happen to the flight profile if all three stages (could be made) to burn simultaneously?

I rejected that bracket, because it seem as though you are asking us to beak out our slide-rules; while ignoring the other rules that RFC has chosen to set up.

Naively you would need to have three times the power supplied to have a chance at at some percentage of three times the acceleration, however we do not know how to estimate what sort of increase there could be if your bracketing were to work,

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:The missive I gave is . . .

1) Bracket for a moment whether the impellers, rings and nodes can withstand it,

2) What would happen to the flight profile if all three stages (could be made) to burn simultaneously?

I rejected that bracket, because it seem as though you are asking us to beak out our slide-rules; while ignoring the other rules that RFC has chosen to set up.

Naively you would need to have three times the power supplied to have a chance at at some percentage of three times the acceleration, however we do not know how to estimate what sort of increase there could be if your bracketing were to work,

I'm not asking for quantification either, just viability of concept.

cthia wrote:The missive I gave is . . .

1) Bracket for a moment whether the impellers, rings and nodes can withstand it,

2) What would happen to the flight profile if all three stages (could be made) to burn simultaneously?

tlb wrote:I rejected that bracket, because it seem as though you are asking us to beak out our slide-rules; while ignoring the other rules that RFC has chosen to set up.

Naively you would need to have three times the power supplied to have a chance at at some percentage of three times the acceleration, however we do not know how to estimate what sort of increase there could be if your bracketing were to work,

cthia wrote:I'm not asking for quantification either, just viability of concept.

That is sort of silly; because if you insist we are to ignore the reason that it will not work; then we must accept that it is viable.

cthia wrote:I'm not asking for quantification either, just viability of concept.

RFC could certain write such a thing. But there's be no hint anywhere in the books pointing to any viability of that mechanism working. And so it would seem a complete violation of all the ground rules he's laid out - because everything we've seen is that a single ring of missile impellers creates it own wedge and that that no wedge can function, at all, in the presence of another wedge.

It has always and consistently been said that wedge contact obliterates the ship/missile/drone/whatever mounting the weaker wedge - or causes mutual obliteration it the wedge powers are anywhere close to equal. (The only partial exception is when a wedge attempts to form in the presence of an established wedge - in which case there isn't enough power yet in the nodes of the initiating wedge for their failure to obliterate themselves and everything around them)


I know you want hyper-acceleration.
And some breakthrough may provide that - but almost certainly not the one you proposed.
Nothing has ever hinted that running missile drive rings simultaneously (which by everything we know would be trying to form 3 wedges in the same spot) would have any viability (unless you were looking for a missile self-destruct capability that could only function while the penultimate drive could still operate).



It would be less jarring, IMO, for RFC to simply have the MAlign invent yet another new drive type than it would be to have multiple missile rings work survivably together.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:I'm not asking for quantification either, just viability of concept.

RFC could certain write such a thing. But there's be no hint anywhere in the books pointing to any viability of that mechanism working. And so it would seem a complete violation of all the ground rules he's laid out - because everything we've seen is that a single ring of missile impellers creates it own wedge and that that no wedge can function, at all, in the presence of another wedge.

It has always and consistently been said that wedge contact obliterates the ship/missile/drone/whatever mounting the weaker wedge - or causes mutual obliteration it the wedge powers are anywhere close to equal. (The only partial exception is when a wedge attempts to form in the presence of an established wedge - in which case there isn't enough power yet in the nodes of the initiating wedge for their failure to obliterate themselves and everything around them)


I know you want hyper-acceleration.
And some breakthrough may provide that - but almost certainly not the one you proposed.
Nothing has ever hinted that running missile drive rings simultaneously (which by everything we know would be trying to form 3 wedges in the same spot) would have any viability (unless you were looking for a missile self-destruct capability that could only function while the penultimate drive could still operate).



It would be less jarring, IMO, for RFC to simply have the MAlign invent yet another new drive type than it would be to have multiple missile rings work survivably together.

Exactly! Like one larger impeller with different supporting material and electronics.

And before someone says it isn't possible, perhaps it isn't. But asking and researching it could point the way. Poor Sonja. I feel all of her decades of pain.

Thanks Jonathan.

cthia wrote:Well, I'm proposing the MAlign may be proposing. Relativity is already ignored. That's a huge allocation of handwavium that I ignored very early on, and I even bansihed my slipstick to make it, well. . .stick. The wedge seems to be a veritable sump of endless power.

Actually, I'm not sure relativity is ignored. I'm thinking it might be sidestepped, instead. Consider: We have seen a ship that can produce an acceleration far beyond what is survivable--an ordinary vessel, not a one-off. Why in the world would anyone build an engine that powerful? We think of the ship accelerating--but is it really the ship? Could it instead be the interaction of the wedge with the universe? The universe that is not moving? Now missile burns make sense. The overpowered drives exist because they're built to still produce the same acceleration even when Einstein is messing with things.

On that note, bracketing for a moment whether the impellers, rings and nodes can withstand it, what would happen to the flight profile if all three stages burned simultaneously?

Wedge fratricide.

If that weren't an issue warships would be built with two wedges at right angles to each other and be invulnerable from the sides.

Jonathan_S wrote:It has always and consistently been said that wedge contact obliterates the ship/missile/drone/whatever mounting the weaker wedge - or causes mutual obliteration it the wedge powers are anywhere close to equal. (The only partial exception is when a wedge attempts to form in the presence of an established wedge - in which case there isn't enough power yet in the nodes of the initiating wedge for their failure to obliterate themselves and everything around them)

I wouldn't even call this an exception--the stronger wedge (doesn't matter the size of the units, an operating wedge is vastly more powerful than one that isn't operating) blows the weaker before there's enough power in the weaker one to do much damage.

Loren Pechtel wrote:Actually, I'm not sure relativity is ignored. I'm thinking it might be sidestepped, instead. Consider: We have seen a ship that can produce an acceleration far beyond what is survivable--an ordinary vessel, not a one-off. Why in the world would anyone build an engine that powerful? We think of the ship accelerating--but is it really the ship? Could it instead be the interaction of the wedge with the universe? The universe that is not moving? Now missile burns make sense. The overpowered drives exist because they're built to still produce the same acceleration even when Einstein is messing with things.

Only RFC can answer with certainty, but I think the ship is indeed accelerating. SciFi Lore says that ships that move by making space-time accelerate are also ships that, if the drive cuts out for some reason, drop back to whatever velocity they had before the drive was activated. That is, these ships' momentum and kinetic energy do not actually increase with their pseudo-velocity. In contrast, Honorverse ships do continue at their exact velocity vector when the drive cuts out, so they did acquire momentum and increased energy.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:Actually, I'm not sure relativity is ignored. I'm thinking it might be sidestepped, instead. Consider: We have seen a ship that can produce an acceleration far beyond what is survivable--an ordinary vessel, not a one-off. Why in the world would anyone build an engine that powerful? We think of the ship accelerating--but is it really the ship? Could it instead be the interaction of the wedge with the universe? The universe that is not moving? Now missile burns make sense. The overpowered drives exist because they're built to still produce the same acceleration even when Einstein is messing with things.

Only RFC can answer with certainty, but I think the ship is indeed accelerating. SciFi Lore says that ships that move by making space-time accelerate are also ships that, if the drive cuts out for some reason, drop back to whatever velocity they had before the drive was activated. That is, these ships' momentum and kinetic energy do not actually increase with their pseudo-velocity. In contrast, Honorverse ships do continue at their exact velocity vector when the drive cuts out, so they did acquire momentum and increased energy.

No matter which hand you use to wave him off, at some point Newton needs to pass the baton to Einstein.* If you can find a way to legitimately sidestep that, I still won't be able to get my sister to like sci-fi. Namely because as you approach c, mass approaches infinity and the power needed to move that mass also approaches infinity.

*Star Trek claims to sidestep the limitation as well to achieve their sister-insulting thousand times c.

Star Trek has a Compendium too, sort of like HoS. Originally it had max speed capped at over 3,000 c. They sensed they needed to make more sense, so they revised it and placed a governor in the mix which limited top speed to 1000c. Sure, that makes more sense.

Know how much the author hates his Voldemort? Those facts are my sister's Voldemort, but she doesn't mind naming them.