Archives
| Title | Posted |
|---|---|
| Order of Battle: The Siege of Earth | Nov 2004 |
| Order of Battle: First Clash - The Vanguard | Nov 2004 |
| Order of Battle: The Battle of Zeta Trianguli Australis | Nov 2004 |
| Order of Battle: Second Clash - The Main Body | Nov 2004 |
| "Paintball"-style projectile weapons training | Nov 2004 |
| The origin of the Manticoran technical edge | Nov 2004 |
| Is the destroyer obsolete as a ship type? | Nov 2004 |
| Arsenal ships based upon ammunition colliers | Nov 2004 |
| Off-bore missile targeting | Nov 2004 |
| Single-drive fusion-powered missiles | Nov 2004 |
Filters
Pearls of Weber
A collection of posts by David Weber containing background information for his stories, collected and generously made available Joe Buckley.
Compensator failure
- Series: Honorverse
- Date: October 31, 2004
On the compensator issue. No, it isn't possible to kill power to the wedge quickly enough to save the crew's lives in the event of compensator failure. And, no, compensator failures aren't "elastic" enough to permit any sort of controlled shut down or additional inertia dumping to save the crew, either.
The sump is a little elastic, which is how you can at least try to take a compensator beyond its rated top limit and maybe survive, as Honor did on her middy cruise. The odds of doing so are… poor.
I think I've said before that compensator failures are all or nothing. If I haven't also said specifically that they're effectively instantaneous events, I should have. The sump's limits can be strained and even theoretically exceeded -- briefly! -- without the compensator necessarily failing, but the instant it decides to shut down, it dies completely and catastrophically, and with absolutely no detectable warning signs. Either it's working perfectly, even if temporarily in excess of its designed maximum load, or the crew is anchovy paste. On or off. A binary solution.
