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Warshawski sail

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Warshawski sail
Post by C. O. Thompson   » Tue May 21, 2024 9:30 pm

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Sometimes I feel that I remember every detail other time... What were we talking about...

My recall is that the Warshawski sail was used on worm hole transit but not when crossing the Alpha wall

I am thinking there is not a Hyper Footprint when a ship exits a worm hole but that Harvest Joy was defenseless until they reconfigured the sails when they exited the worm hole from Torch/Congo into one the Mesa Alliance/Renaissance systems was guarding.
I have to reread the stories where the Torch System was attacked. Is that the side side story thread with Eric Flint.
I have most of the Honor Harrington Universe on my Kindle but I also have nine hard bound and I may have borrowed the exact book where the text evidence is from public library.
Just my 2 ₡ worth
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Re: Warshawski sail
Post by tlb   » Tue May 21, 2024 9:52 pm

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C. O. Thompson wrote:Sometimes I feel that I remember every detail other time... What were we talking about...

My recall is that the Warshawski sail was used on worm hole transit but not when crossing the Alpha wall

I am thinking there is not a Hyper Footprint when a ship exits a worm hole but that Harvest Joy was defenseless until they reconfigured the sails when they exited the worm hole from Torch/Congo into one the Mesa Alliance/Renaissance systems was guarding.
I have to reread the stories where the Torch System was attacked. Is that the side side story thread with Eric Flint.
I have most of the Honor Harrington Universe on my Kindle but I also have nine hard bound and I may have borrowed the exact book where the text evidence is from public library.

A sail is needed for a wormhole or when the transition involves a gravity wave. I don't remember the battle (I think one example was the first fight with a LAC Carrier), but the surrounding hyperspace was the location of a gravity wave; which meant that any enemy ship which had the nodes for the sails damaged could not then escape.

The thing about a ship being defenseless when exiting a wormhole is the basis for the author stating that it was unlikely that there could be a successful assault solely by going through a wormhole (I have been told that a early study of Haven using battleships from Trevor's Star is no longer considered valid).

I do not know whether there is a transition signal generated by exiting a wormhole; but my expectation is that there would be, the same as transitioning from the Alpha band. Certainly any ships or forts guarding the wormhole would know immediately (signal or not).
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Re: Warshawski sail
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Wed May 22, 2024 7:56 am

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tlb wrote:I do not know whether there is a transition signal generated by exiting a wormhole; but my expectation is that there would be, the same as transitioning from the Alpha band. Certainly any ships or forts guarding the wormhole would know immediately (signal or not).


When transiting a wormhole, the sails would be highly visible. First, because they are sails and we're told that they are emiting light in a grav wave, so it should be analogous in a wormhole transit. I think we've been told they do, so I don't think I'm just remembering wrong and extrapolating.

Second and most importantly, because the wormhole terminus is a very small region where the defender has enough sensors in to detect dust. The sails are still a gravitic phenomenon and will be seen by everything there. A hyperspace translation can happen anywhere outside the hyperlimit, so the attacker has a choice of where to do so and where it would be unlikely the defender has enough assets to see the transition happening or, if they do, react quickly enough before the ship disappears into stealth. In a wormhole transit, the attacker has no choice but to appear at exactly the wormhole's terminus emergence lane.
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Re: Warshawski sail
Post by penny   » Wed May 22, 2024 2:32 pm

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:
tlb wrote:I do not know whether there is a transition signal generated by exiting a wormhole; but my expectation is that there would be, the same as transitioning from the Alpha band. Certainly any ships or forts guarding the wormhole would know immediately (signal or not).


When transiting a wormhole, the sails would be highly visible. First, because they are sails and we're told that they are emiting light in a grav wave, so it should be analogous in a wormhole transit. I think we've been told they do, so I don't think I'm just remembering wrong and extrapolating.

Second and most importantly, because the wormhole terminus is a very small region where the defender has enough sensors in to detect dust. The sails are still a gravitic phenomenon and will be seen by everything there. A hyperspace translation can happen anywhere outside the hyperlimit, so the attacker has a choice of where to do so and where it would be unlikely the defender has enough assets to see the transition happening or, if they do, react quickly enough before the ship disappears into stealth. In a wormhole transit, the attacker has no choice but to appear at exactly the wormhole's terminus emergence lane.


Sails are needed in a wormhole transit???
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Re: Warshawski sail
Post by Jonathan_S   » Wed May 22, 2024 2:45 pm

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penny wrote:
ThinksMarkedly wrote:When transiting a wormhole, the sails would be highly visible. First, because they are sails and we're told that they are emiting light in a grav wave, so it should be analogous in a wormhole transit. I think we've been told they do, so I don't think I'm just remembering wrong and extrapolating.

Second and most importantly, because the wormhole terminus is a very small region where the defender has enough sensors in to detect dust. The sails are still a gravitic phenomenon and will be seen by everything there. A hyperspace translation can happen anywhere outside the hyperlimit, so the attacker has a choice of where to do so and where it would be unlikely the defender has enough assets to see the transition happening or, if they do, react quickly enough before the ship disappears into stealth. In a wormhole transit, the attacker has no choice but to appear at exactly the wormhole's terminus emergence lane.


Sails are needed in a wormhole transit???
Um, yes. (Well, excect, maybe, for however RFC tum-tee-tumed Spider ships into seemingly able to use them)

Remember this bit (among many possible examples) from the first book?
On Basilisk Station wrote:Fearless drifted forward at a mere twenty gravities' acceleration, aligning herself perfectly on the invisible rails of the Junction, and Honor watched her display intently. Thank God for computers. If she'd had to work out the math for this sort of thing, she'd probably have cut her own throat years ago, but computers didn't mind if the person using them was a mathematical idiot. All they needed was the right input, and, unlike certain Academy instructors she could name, they didn't wait with exaggerated patience until they got it, either.
Fearless's light code flashed bright green as the cruiser settled into exact position, and Honor nodded to Santos.
"Rig foresail for transit."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am. Rigging foresail—now."
No observer would have noted any visible change in the cruiser, but Honor's instrumentation told the tale as Fearless's impeller wedge dropped abruptly to half-strength. Her forward nodes no longer generated their portion of the normal-space stress bands; instead, they had reconfigured to produce a circular disk of focused gravitation that extended for over three hundred kilometers in every direction from the cruiser's hull.
[...]
"Stand by to rig aftersail on my mark," Honor murmured as Fearless continued to creep forward under the power of her aft-impellers alone. A new readout flickered to life, and she watched its numerals dance steadily upward as the foresail moved deeper and deeper into the Junction. There was a safety margin of almost fifteen seconds either way, but no captain wanted to look sloppy in a maneuver like this, and—
The twinkling numbers crossed the threshold. The foresail was now drawing sufficient power from the tortured grav waves twisting eternally through the Junction to provide movement, and she nodded sharply to Santos.
"Rig aftersail now," she said crisply.
"Rigging aftersail," the engineer replied, and Fearless twitched as her impeller wedge disappeared entirely and a second Warshawski sail sprang to life at the far end of her hull from the first.
[...]
The maneuvering display blinked again, and then, for an instant no chronometer or human sense could measure, HMS Fearless ceased to exist. One moment she was here, in Manticore space; the next she was there, six hundred light-minutes from the star named Basilisk, just over two hundred and ten light-years distant in Einsteinian space, and Honor swallowed in relief as her nausea vanished, disappearing with the transit energy radiating from Fearless's sails.
"Transit complete," Chief Killian reported.
"Thank you, Helm. That was well executed," Honor replied, but most of her attention was back on the sail interface readout, watching the numbers spiral downward even more rapidly than they had risen. "Engineering, reconfigure to impeller."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am. Reconfiguring to impeller now."
Fearless folded her sails back into her impeller wedge and moved forward more rapidly, accelerating steadily down the Basilisk outbound traffic lane

(Probably should have edited that down some more)

You need sails to survive in the grav effects of entry and emergence lanes, kilometers of basically "frozen" grav wave within normal space.

(Of course sails along aren't enough to make transit, you also need a hyper generator once you reach the terminus itself)


The need for sails is what keeps arriving warships from protecting themselves with wedge or sidewalls. That plus the grav effects that destroy anything not under sail, preventing the use of missiles or CM, combine to make for the oft discussed utter vulnerability of hostile warships against any kind of terminus defense. It can take minutes to accelerate far enough to dispense with the sails -- minutes when you're basically defenseless.
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Re: Warshawski sail
Post by tlb   » Wed May 22, 2024 2:55 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:Um, yes. (Well, except, maybe, for however RFC tum-tee-tumed Spider ships into seemingly able to use them)

We have never actually seen a spider drive in either a wormhole or a gravity wave in the stories. The transition we saw was not from a gravity wave into normal space. We expect that they did, if only to leave Darius by that wormhole; which is why some of us speculated that those ships also mounted the nodes to produce sails. Maybe the next book will have text, one way or another.
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Re: Warshawski sail
Post by Theemile   » Wed May 22, 2024 4:12 pm

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tlb wrote:
Jonathan_S wrote:Um, yes. (Well, except, maybe, for however RFC tum-tee-tumed Spider ships into seemingly able to use them)

We have never actually seen a spider drive in either a wormhole or a gravity wave in the stories. The transition we saw was not from a gravity wave into normal space. We expect that they did, if only to leave Darius by that wormhole; which is why some of us speculated that those ships also mounted the nodes to produce sails. Maybe the next book will have text, one way or another.


When we asked DW about Spider Ships using wormholes and grav waves , he replied "Why wouldn't they?"

Given that answer, your mileage may vary.

Grayson is in the middle of a Grav Wave, but it is a narrow wave, less than a light month wide at Yeltsin's star. We know Spider ships attacked Blackbird like they did Manticore, but since the edge of the Grav wave is less than 2 weeks travel from Yeltsin's star in some direction, the multi-month entrance of the spider ships could have started outside of the Grav wave, and was never affected by it - indicating nothing about their ability to use Grav waves.
******
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Re: Warshawski sail
Post by Jonathan_S   » Wed May 22, 2024 4:44 pm

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Theemile wrote:
When we asked DW about Spider Ships using wormholes and grav waves , he replied "Why wouldn't they?"

Given that answer, your mileage may vary.

That's what I was alluding to. Probably should have just spelled it out rather than trying to be cute with the the semi-oblique reference
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Re: Warshawski sail
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Wed May 22, 2024 6:15 pm

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:Second and most importantly, because the wormhole terminus is a very small region where the defender has enough sensors in to detect dust. The sails are still a gravitic phenomenon and will be seen by everything there. A hyperspace translation can happen anywhere outside the hyperlimit, so the attacker has a choice of where to do so and where it would be unlikely the defender has enough assets to see the transition happening or, if they do, react quickly enough before the ship disappears into stealth. In a wormhole transit, the attacker has no choice but to appear at exactly the wormhole's terminus emergence lane.


I've just wondered this: could you use the Long Manoeuvre to rapidly deploy ships against an unexpected arrival outside the hyperlimit?

The Long Manoeuvre deserves a thread of its own to understand just what happened, but the gist of it is that Sixth Fleet ships achieved an effective speed of 18.6c for a very brief time. So, could you pre-position warships outside your hyperlimit and get them orbiting, so they can perform the manoeuvre and close in with the bogey?

My initial thinking is that it might be worth for arrivals on or very close to the hyperlimit, but it would provide a very limited engagement window and wouldn't work for arrivals too far from the hyperlimit. That's because you'd ned the ships to be orbiting at the hyperlimit. Let's say they are keeping a constant 5 km/s² centripetal acceleration at 22 light-minutes: that gives them a tangential velocity of 0.148c. If they did the same 6-second skip, they'd cover 0.9 light-minutes, so you could have a 1-minute response time anywhere on the hyperlimit/ecliptic intersection with about 140 ships.

Off the hyperlimit, it gets more difficult, because of the high velocity they will have. At 0.148c, they have a turn rate of about 0.5 degree per minute @ 6.5 km/s². And even if it managed to close, it would be travelling at 0.14c relative, so a very brief time to conduct scans on.
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Re: Warshawski sail
Post by penny   » Thu May 23, 2024 1:59 am

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penny wrote:
ThinksMarkedly wrote:When transiting a wormhole, the sails would be highly visible. First, because they are sails and we're told that they are emiting light in a grav wave, so it should be analogous in a wormhole transit. I think we've been told they do, so I don't think I'm just remembering wrong and extrapolating.

Second and most importantly, because the wormhole terminus is a very small region where the defender has enough sensors in to detect dust. The sails are still a gravitic phenomenon and will be seen by everything there. A hyperspace translation can happen anywhere outside the hyperlimit, so the attacker has a choice of where to do so and where it would be unlikely the defender has enough assets to see the transition happening or, if they do, react quickly enough before the ship disappears into stealth. In a wormhole transit, the attacker has no choice but to appear at exactly the wormhole's terminus emergence lane.


Sails are needed in a wormhole transit???
Jonathan_S wrote:Um, yes. (Well, excect, maybe, for however RFC tum-tee-tumed Spider ships into seemingly able to use them)

Remember this bit (among many possible examples) from the first book?
On Basilisk Station wrote:Fearless drifted forward at a mere twenty gravities' acceleration, aligning herself perfectly on the invisible rails of the Junction, and Honor watched her display intently. Thank God for computers. If she'd had to work out the math for this sort of thing, she'd probably have cut her own throat years ago, but computers didn't mind if the person using them was a mathematical idiot. All they needed was the right input, and, unlike certain Academy instructors she could name, they didn't wait with exaggerated patience until they got it, either.
Fearless's light code flashed bright green as the cruiser settled into exact position, and Honor nodded to Santos.
"Rig foresail for transit."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am. Rigging foresail—now."
No observer would have noted any visible change in the cruiser, but Honor's instrumentation told the tale as Fearless's impeller wedge dropped abruptly to half-strength. Her forward nodes no longer generated their portion of the normal-space stress bands; instead, they had reconfigured to produce a circular disk of focused gravitation that extended for over three hundred kilometers in every direction from the cruiser's hull.
[...]
"Stand by to rig aftersail on my mark," Honor murmured as Fearless continued to creep forward under the power of her aft-impellers alone. A new readout flickered to life, and she watched its numerals dance steadily upward as the foresail moved deeper and deeper into the Junction. There was a safety margin of almost fifteen seconds either way, but no captain wanted to look sloppy in a maneuver like this, and—
The twinkling numbers crossed the threshold. The foresail was now drawing sufficient power from the tortured grav waves twisting eternally through the Junction to provide movement, and she nodded sharply to Santos.
"Rig aftersail now," she said crisply.
"Rigging aftersail," the engineer replied, and Fearless twitched as her impeller wedge disappeared entirely and a second Warshawski sail sprang to life at the far end of her hull from the first.
[...]
The maneuvering display blinked again, and then, for an instant no chronometer or human sense could measure, HMS Fearless ceased to exist. One moment she was here, in Manticore space; the next she was there, six hundred light-minutes from the star named Basilisk, just over two hundred and ten light-years distant in Einsteinian space, and Honor swallowed in relief as her nausea vanished, disappearing with the transit energy radiating from Fearless's sails.
"Transit complete," Chief Killian reported.
"Thank you, Helm. That was well executed," Honor replied, but most of her attention was back on the sail interface readout, watching the numbers spiral downward even more rapidly than they had risen. "Engineering, reconfigure to impeller."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am. Reconfiguring to impeller now."
Fearless folded her sails back into her impeller wedge and moved forward more rapidly, accelerating steadily down the Basilisk outbound traffic lane

Jonathan_S wrote:(Probably should have edited that down some more)

You need sails to survive in the grav effects of entry and emergence lanes, kilometers of basically "frozen" grav wave within normal space.

(Of course sails along aren't enough to make transit, you also need a hyper generator once you reach the terminus itself)


The need for sails is what keeps arriving warships from protecting themselves with wedge or sidewalls. That plus the grav effects that destroy anything not under sail, preventing the use of missiles or CM, combine to make for the oft discussed utter vulnerability of hostile warships against any kind of terminus defense. It can take minutes to accelerate far enough to dispense with the sails -- minutes when you're basically defenseless.

I just didn't think sails were needed for wormhole transits. Someone just reiterated a few days ago how the emergence and exit lanes are so small. Yet -- and I'm not sure about this -- sails have to have some separation from each other as well, right? I don't know if anything happens if sails collide, but if I am correct, how exactly is a mass transit possible? Or am I simply wrong that sails do not extend beyond the ship?

BTW, what are sails composed of again? A band of gravity?

I am surprised that sails are needed for a wormhole anyway. The total 'trip' is instantaneous. I suppose slamming into a wall for only an instant can be fatal as well. But I never thought that a wormhole had anything to do with hyperspace. Oh well.
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