[Storm from the Shadows] Eridani??

On Fri, 02 Jan 2009 20:33:32 -0600, "Dwight E. Howell"
wrote:

>Brian McDonald wrote:
>> On Thu, 01 Jan 2009 19:25:19 -0500, Terry FitzSimons
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> So maybe the pods forward armor is heavily augmentated at the expense of
>>> the other aspects. All it takes is one or more pieces of sand moving in a
>>> different direction at a high enough speed to ram the pod in the side to
>>> wreck the electronics and smash the last ditch self-destruct.
>>>
>>> With the smashed electronics, the wake up signal is never sent to the
>>> on-pod missiles, so they stay in the cruise safe mode and never transfer
>>> into the war-shot mode, much less the self destruct cycle.
>>
>> the problem with this is the assumption there is only the one bit of
>> self destruct circuitry involved. the cost/weight of multiply
>> redundant self destruct systems should be utterly negligible.
>
>There should be more than one system that could set off the bomb but
>they will have only one bomb and it will most likely be nuclear.
>Anything else that would do more than scatter the parts would be bigger
>than the pod.

That's more weight to carry on the missile. I don't think Mesa will
do that. Rather, the missile warhead itself will be the destruct.

Remember that the implosion must be perfect to set off a nuke. All
you need to do is mess up the physical structure a bit and all you get
is the chemical explosion--and you've got plenty of bits left for
examination.

One grain of sand hitting the missile without being stopped (and can
Mesa maintain a shield on the pod for the fall??) and you've got
debris to examine.
 >> Stay informed about: [Storm from the Shadows] Eridani?? 

On Fri, 02 Jan 2009 22:52:20 -0500, Don Sample
wrote:

>In article ,
> "Dwight E. Howell" wrote:
>
>> Brian McDonald wrote:
>> > On Thu, 01 Jan 2009 19:25:19 -0500, Terry FitzSimons
>> > wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >> So maybe the pods forward armor is heavily augmentated at the expense of
>> >> the other aspects. All it takes is one or more pieces of sand moving in a
>> >> different direction at a high enough speed to ram the pod in the side to
>> >> wreck the electronics and smash the last ditch self-destruct.
>> >>
>> >> With the smashed electronics, the wake up signal is never sent to the
>> >> on-pod missiles, so they stay in the cruise safe mode and never transfer
>> >> into the war-shot mode, much less the self destruct cycle.
>> >
>> > the problem with this is the assumption there is only the one bit of
>> > self destruct circuitry involved. the cost/weight of multiply
>> > redundant self destruct systems should be utterly negligible.
>>
>> There should be more than one system that could set off the bomb but
>> they will have only one bomb and it will most likely be nuclear.
>> Anything else that would do more than scatter the parts would be bigger
>> than the pod.
>
>In the case of a missile pod, you've got half a dozen or more missiles,
>any one of which could act as the self destruct for the pod. Missiles
>have their warheads, and also their drive mechanisms. All but the
>latest generation of Manti missiles use what are essentially large
>capacitors, charged up with enough power to vaporize the missile, to
>power their wedges. Any significant damage to the missile is likely to
>cause the storage system to catastrophically fail.

The capacitor isn't going to be charged for weeks of fall. It's got
to be powered up just before launch.
 >> Stay informed about: [Storm from the Shadows] Eridani?? 

On Thu, 01 Jan 2009 12:06:23 -0800, Brian McDonald
wrote:

>On Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:27:05 -0800, Loren Pechtel
> wrote:
>
>
>>>> >The ones that miss should auto destruct.
>>>>
>>>> *SHOULD*. You really think they all will? Nothing will have been
>>>> knocked out of commission by it's long fall through space?
>>>
>>>Not that long, only 5 weeks, and the missiles will be protected inside
>>>their pods. Lots of ways to ensure that any malfunctioning missiles,
>>>and pods, have multiple, redundant, self destruct modes.
>>
>>I was think more of a pod being creamed by a grain of sand.
>>
>>Sure, they *COULD* have multiple redundant self-destructs. It's Mesa,
>>though--we've seen they aren't exactly good at backup plans. You
>>really think they have self-destructs?
>
>is there any canon speaking to salvaging missiles after battles? i
>vaguely remember people running about after the fighting picking stuff
>up but not mention of missiles in particular.

Normally nobody will care. They're going to the stars and the chance
of hitting anything is extremely remote.
 >> Stay informed about: [Storm from the Shadows] Eridani?? 

On Thu, 01 Jan 2009 15:25:20 -0600, "Dwight E. Howell"
wrote:

>Loren Pechtel wrote:
>> On Wed, 31 Dec 2008 23:06:39 -0600, "Dwight E. Howell"
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Loren Pechtel wrote:
>>>> On Tue, 30 Dec 2008 16:15:30 -0600, J'hn1 wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:08:28 -0800, Loren Pechtel
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>> spoiler space
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>>>>>> snip --what happens when they send out a bunch of ships to look for
>>>>>> the missiles that missed? A careful radar search should turn some up.
>>>>> That is current use tech. Note that when the Peeps killed Home fleet
>>>>> with litterally millions of missiles, nobody was concerned with misses
>>>>> overshooting Home Fleet hitting something that would trigger the Edict
>>>>>
>>>>> Mesa certainly doesn't care about that, but certainly *does* care
>>>>> about keeping the technology secret as long as they can.
>>>> Note that Haven was *NOT* shooting near a planet. They deliberately
>>>> didn't use the planteary pods for this very reason.
>>>>
>>>> Mesa, however, is shooting for the orbital infrastructure--a shot that
>>>> people normally don't take for the risk of hitting the planet.
>>>
>>> It does depend on a planet being behind the target and no these people
>>> don't place much if any value on human life.
>>>
>>> At least in the short term I don't think they expect to be identified
>>> either.
>>>
>>> They could be wrong and I rather doubt that they are prepared for the
>>> full results of that. In that regard I think they are overconfident.
>>> They aren't planning for worst cases. I think that is mostly D's fault.
>>
>> You're understating it--they aren't planning for failure, period, not
>> just worst cases.
>
>They had monica with a fall back in the SLN officer with the with
>Frontier fleet ships, and his fall back is a 100 ship fleet.

No. There's only one bolt--that 100 ship fleet.

The first incident went down as planned.

The second didn't because Manticore only blew up one ship rather than
the whole fleet. Mesa *KNEW* the sollies would lose this battle. It's
good enough, though--the intent was to get Manticore to attack the
Sollies.

What's supposed to happen is that the 100 of the wall smash what
Manticore has in Talbott--not that I think it's going to go down that
way.
 >> Stay informed about: [Storm from the Shadows] Eridani?? 

On Thu, 01 Jan 2009 15:45:25 -0600, "Dwight E. Howell"
wrote:

>Loren Pechtel wrote:
>> On Wed, 31 Dec 2008 22:38:38 -0600, "Dwight E. Howell"
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Loren Pechtel wrote:
>>>> On Tue, 30 Dec 2008 00:44:24 -0600, "Dwight E. Howell"
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Robert A. Woodward wrote:
>>>>>> In article ,
>>>>>> "Dwight E. Howell" wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Loren Pechtel wrote:
>>>>>>>> On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:39:28 -0600, "Dwight E. Howell"
>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Loren Pechtel wrote:
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>>>>>> <SNIP of a lot concerning Oyster Bay>
>>>>>>>> I also think Mesa won't have done the strike too well. Consider:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> 1) They have no experience with space combat. They'll be even worse
>>>>>>>> than the Sollies were.
>>>>>>> If I understood DW correctly these people have fewer illusions, have
>>>>>>> been watching what is going on, and have been practicing trying to do it
>>>>>>> right. That is a lot more than you can say for the SLN proper.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> I did look at the earlier version and in that, there was at least
>>>>>> one Mesa scout (with spider drive and a very good stealth field)
>>>>>> deployed into the Manticore system. I expect that those missile
>>>>>> pods will get a target download right before they launch.
>>>>> I'm 99.99% certain not a word of that is in the book I read.
>>>>>
>>>>>> <snip>
>>>>>>>> 2) We have already seen that they are rationalizing that things are
>>>>>>>> going to go as planned. They had no fallback plans when their ship
>>>>>>>> was caught.
>>>>>>> You just lost me. When which ship was caught? In the book I read no ship
>>>>>>> belonging to Mesa was listed as captured. A fleet of SS ships working
>>>>>>> for them was trashed. A sollie ship was blown up and several frontier
>>>>>>> fleet ships were forced to surrender but Mesa could have cared less if
>>>>>>> all of those ships had been blown up. It would have worked great for them.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> Perhaps the ship that was captured in _Shadow of Saganami_?
>>>>>>
>>>>> I think they lost a ship/ships but those people certainly weren't in on
>>>>> any inner circle plans.
>>>> They weren't. The point is that Mesa isn't being careful enough about
>>>> operational security. Their carelessness got the ship captured and
>>>> the Monica plot exposed. Even in hindsight they are dismissing it as
>>>> a couldn't-be-predicted incident rather than learning from their
>>>> mistakes.
>>>>
>>>> Now, we have Mesa doing more rationalizing about how much information
>>>> their agents need--and they have one in the field who *IS* part of the
>>>> inner circle. What happens when she's nabbed??
>>> Based on what we have read about her I'd think she'd tell everything she
>>> knew and then make up lies if she thought it would keep her alive.
>>>
>>> I suspect her bodyguard has been programed to kill her should it look
>>> like she is about to be captured. Better safe than sorry.
>>
>> I don't think their assassination programming can be that general.
>
>Actually with the kind of neural mapping we can do now we could identify
>which brain cells are activated in the person when dealing with that
>situation. You just program him to kill when that happens.
>
>Besides you don't actually have to use the nano machines. You can give
>him orders, threaten to kill his family, and give him deep hypnoses.
>They've had his entire life to work on this guy.

My problem with the assassination programming is that I don't think it
can be programmed to react to "likely to be captured".
 >> Stay informed about: [Storm from the Shadows] Eridani?? 

On Thu, 01 Jan 2009 15:46:42 -0600, "Dwight E. Howell"
wrote:

>Loren Pechtel wrote:
>> On Wed, 31 Dec 2008 22:01:53 -0600, "Dwight E. Howell"
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Loren Pechtel wrote:
>>>> On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 22:10:26 -0600, "Dwight E. Howell"
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Loren Pechtel wrote:
>>>>>> On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:39:28 -0600, "Dwight E. Howell"
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Loren Pechtel wrote:
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>>>>>>>> They seem to be engaging in a c-frac strike against orbital
>>>>>>>> infrastructure. Isn't that just asking for an Eridani violation? What
>>>>>>>> will the Sollies do if a round hits the planet?
>>>>>>> Celebrate?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> They look to be in a shooting war with Manticore and the people actually
>>>>>>> running the SLN don't seem to care about their laws as long as they are
>>>>>>> the ones that break them. They will also know they didn't do it but
>>>>>>> won't know who did.
>>>>>> They very well might end up in a shooting war with Manticore but that
>>>>>> doesn't mean they won't react to the Eridani violation and if they
>>>>>> realize they've been duped into it by Mesa they might turn their
>>>>>> entire wrath on Mesa.
>>>>> Yes that is clearly one of the major risks being run by
>>>>> Mesa/manpower/whatever. It is extremely likely the people running the
>>>>> League will figure this out and they most likely will hold a grudge.
>>>>>
>>>>> It is not clear how high a priority an Eridani violation on a party with
>>>>> whom they are more or less at war with would be with the League leaders
>>>>> but given time they just might get around to acting if they figure out
>>>>> who did it. I do suspect that this is going to be less important to them
>>>>> than dealing with Manticore.
>>>>>
>>>>>>> I think these things will still have their drives running. I think they
>>>>>>> will have some ability to redirect. However if Manticore is prepared to
>>>>>> I'm sure they will--they can't have targets that far out. None are
>>>>>> going to malfunction on the way in, though? Most battles have some
>>>>>> missiles go wandering off, are these somehow immune to that?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> stop a C-frac strike it ought not to work even though the drives won't
>>>>>>> be what gives them away.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I have no clue how DW is going to play this.
>>>>>> The hard part is finding them. They'll be easy enough to kill if
>>>>>> they're found. Remember, no impellers--that means no wedges to
>>>>>> protect them. Laser clusters will eat them up.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Furthermore, unless they are only picked up at the last little bit the
>>>>>> interceptors will be able to actually match course with them--the
>>>>>> lasers won't just get one shot, they'll get many. I wouldn't be
>>>>>> surprised if a destroyer could stop the entire strike given some hours
>>>>>> warning.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I also think Mesa won't have done the strike too well. Consider:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 1) They have no experience with space combat. They'll be even worse
>>>>>> than the Sollies were.
>>>>> If I understood DW correctly these people have fewer illusions, have
>>>>> been watching what is going on, and have been practicing trying to do it
>>>>> right. That is a lot more than you can say for the SLN proper.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'd have to go back and check to be sure but I think nobody in the SLN
>>>>> proper is reported as having fired a missile at anyone in a century or
>>>>> more other than the idiot that got himself killed. It must also be noted
>>>>> that when they practice for war the admirals have the games rigged so
>>>>> that they win.
>>>> Oh, I agree, the Sollies combat performance is going to be atrocious.
>>>> Manticore might very well be able to avoid a large-scale conflict by
>>>> using the kill-the-commander tactic.
>>>>
>>>> That doesn't mean that Mesa's combat performance is going to be very
>>>> good, though. While they have been observing they have never fought
>>>> and are still in training--and they're jumping their timescale way
>>>> ahead. They're going to screw up royally.
>>>>
>>>>>> 2) We have already seen that they are rationalizing that things are
>>>>>> going to go as planned. They had no fallback plans when their ship
>>>>>> was caught.
>>>>> You just lost me. When which ship was caught? In the book I read no ship
>>>>> belonging to Mesa was listed as captured. A fleet of SS ships working
>>>>> for them was trashed. A sollie ship was blown up and several frontier
>>>>> fleet ships were forced to surrender but Mesa could have cared less if
>>>>> all of those ships had been blown up. It would have worked great for them.
>>>> It was in the previous book. That's how they uncovered the plot at
>>>> Monica.
>>>>
>>>>>> 3) Their whole thing smells of the super-elaborate plan that never
>>>>>> survives contact with the enemy.
>>>>> Yes, much to complex.
>>>>>> 4) They are elitists. They consider themselves superior--they're
>>>>>> going to consider their plans superior, also.
>>>>> Ya noticed. I think their top woman agent could smell things going south.
>>>> I wouldn't say she smelled it going south. She just had an escape
>>>> route pre-planned and when Manticore showed up she fled. Her mission
>>>> was done at that point anyway.
>>> Not the girl in the field. Her boss, this was D's top female agent who
>>> never got reported in the field in this book. She was supposed to be
>>> running down some Manticore/Haven spies headed their way and will no
>>> doubt star in another book.
>>>
>>> She warned the top guy about the law of unintended consequences which is
>>> a polite way of saying, Playing things by the seat of our pants is not
>>> our strong point. We are acting without thinking things through or
>>> considering all the possible results of a given course of action or even
>>> proper preparation to carry out the plans we have in place. I think you
>>> are about to make the wheels come off this thing.
>>>
>>> Happy new year!
>>
>> She sees the problem but her bosses don't.
>
>Boss.

I mean the committee back on Mesa that's running things.
 >> Stay informed about: [Storm from the Shadows] Eridani?? 

On Thu, 01 Jan 2009 11:58:16 -0800, Brian McDonald
wrote:

>
>>Space is *big*. You can't sweep it all with powerful radar beams.
>>
>>And even if you did, and followed up on every suspicious return, you'd
>>spend a whole lot of time chasing after things that turned out to be
>>just random hunks of rock passing through your system.
>
>most of the junk isn't going to pass particularly close to anything
>you care about and will be loafing along at a few tens of km/sec.
>sorting "interesting" returns out from that hash shouldn't be all that
>hard. once they have mapped the trajectories they can sort by say
>size or speed to pick out ones worth further examination.
>
>whether you could sweep a large enough volume round your planets to
>buy yourself time to do something about an inbound attack is the
>question. these people do have some pretty highly nifty tech to work
>with so maybe they could pull it off.

Set the threshold to something far above local interstellar velocity
and all you will have to deal with are man-made contacts. Simply
filter the returning radar beam, discard anything too close to the
initial frequency. You won't have to do any sorting, all the junk
will never make it past the filter.
 >> Stay informed about: [Storm from the Shadows] Eridani?? 

Don Sample wrote:
> In article ,
> "Dwight E. Howell" wrote:
>
>> Don Sample wrote:
>>> In article ,
>>> "Dwight E. Howell" wrote:
>>>
>>>> Brian McDonald wrote:
>>>>> On Thu, 01 Jan 2009 19:25:19 -0500, Terry FitzSimons
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> So maybe the pods forward armor is heavily augmentated at the expense of
>>>>>> the other aspects. All it takes is one or more pieces of sand moving in
>>>>>> a
>>>>>> different direction at a high enough speed to ram the pod in the side to
>>>>>> wreck the electronics and smash the last ditch self-destruct.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> With the smashed electronics, the wake up signal is never sent to the
>>>>>> on-pod missiles, so they stay in the cruise safe mode and never transfer
>>>>>> into the war-shot mode, much less the self destruct cycle.
>>>>> the problem with this is the assumption there is only the one bit of
>>>>> self destruct circuitry involved. the cost/weight of multiply
>>>>> redundant self destruct systems should be utterly negligible.
>>>> There should be more than one system that could set off the bomb but
>>>> they will have only one bomb and it will most likely be nuclear.
>>>> Anything else that would do more than scatter the parts would be bigger
>>>> than the pod.
>>> In the case of a missile pod, you've got half a dozen or more missiles,
>>> any one of which could act as the self destruct for the pod. Missiles
>>> have their warheads, and also their drive mechanisms. All but the
>>> latest generation of Manti missiles use what are essentially large
>>> capacitors, charged up with enough power to vaporize the missile, to
>>> power their wedges. Any significant damage to the missile is likely to
>>> cause the storage system to catastrophically fail.
>>>
>> True but after they fire you still need to be able to remove the pods to
>> prevent them learning how good your tech is or isn't.
>>
>> I'm fairly confident that Mesa didn't want anyone finding anything about
>> the pods that would connect back to them at least at this point.
>
> So you have the pod launch all but one of its missiles. It takes a
> second or two for those missiles to travel far enough that they can
> bring up their wedges without destroying each other. Then all the
> missiles bring up their wedges together, the one left behind in the pod
> doing the job of destroying it.
>

Why not use that high priced missile to shot at the people you don't
like and use a much cheaper mini nuke rather than a missile the size and
cost of an ICBM to blow up your own scrap? I'm sure they can make
something smaller like David Crockett? Nukes that can be fired from
artillery have been made.
 >> Stay informed about: [Storm from the Shadows] Eridani?? 

Loren Pechtel wrote:
> On Thu, 01 Jan 2009 15:05:25 -0600, "Dwight E. Howell"
> wrote:
>
>> Loren Pechtel wrote:
>>> On Thu, 01 Jan 2009 05:14:41 -0500, Don Sample
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> In article ,
>>>> Loren Pechtel wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, 30 Dec 2008 04:21:33 -0500, Don Sample
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> In article ,
>>>>>> Loren Pechtel wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:50:23 -0600, "Dwight E. Howell"
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Loren Pechtel wrote:
>>>>>>>>> On Sun, 28 Dec 2008 12:47:07 -0600, J'hn1 wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> On Sun, 28 Dec 2008 10:32:00 -0800, Loren Pechtel
>>>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> You have to prove who did it first.
>>>>>>>>>> Which would have, as a precondition, that you would have to have some
>>>>>>>>>> idea of who did it.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> spoiler space
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>>>>>>>>>> Since Mesa never declared war, and has never been seen to posess
>>>>>>>>>> assets that could do this, they would likely not be approved for
>>>>>>>>>> Eridani violation reprisals by the Solly entities.
>>>>>>>>> Disagree. I think Manticore will able to figure out a lot. In the
>>>>>>>>> aftermath of the attack they'll get the attack vector and
>>>>>>>>> velocity--what happens when they send out a bunch of ships to look for
>>>>>>>>> the missiles that missed? A careful radar search should turn some up.
>>>>>>>> The ones that miss should auto destruct.
>>>>>>> *SHOULD*. You really think they all will? Nothing will have been
>>>>>>> knocked out of commission by it's long fall through space?
>>>>>> Not that long, only 5 weeks, and the missiles will be protected inside
>>>>>> their pods. Lots of ways to ensure that any malfunctioning missiles,
>>>>>> and pods, have multiple, redundant, self destruct modes.
>>>>> I was think more of a pod being creamed by a grain of sand.
>>>>>
>>>>> Sure, they *COULD* have multiple redundant self-destructs. It's Mesa,
>>>>> though--we've seen they aren't exactly good at backup plans. You
>>>>> really think they have self-destructs?
>>>> The planners of the Honorverse have had 1,000 years in which to see, and
>>>> think, of every which way such a plan could go wrong. Things like a
>>>> grain of sand hitting one of their pods will have been taken into
>>>> account. That's just part of the way the universe *is*. Designing pods
>>>> to deal with hazards like grains of sand would be like designing a car
>>>> with windshield wipers, 'cause even if it's clear an sunny today, you
>>>> know that tomorrow it might be raining, or snowing.
>>>>
>>>> The Mesan's blind spot seems to be that they don't realize that other
>>>> people can be smart too. Sure, their genetic engineering has made them
>>>> smarter than 99.999% of the rest of the universe. The trouble is that
>>>> the rest of the universe has got over 1,000,000,000,000 people in it,
>>>> which means that it's got 10,000,000 people who are smarter than the
>>>> average Mesan. (This is a bit of a paradox. If the Mesans really were
>>>> as smart as they think they are, they would realize that there are a lot
>>>> of smarter people out there -- heck, if they were even 1/10 as smart as
>>>> they think they are, they would realize that -- but they don't, which
>>>> means that they're really pretty stupid.)
>>> I agree with your assessment of where their fault lies--I said it
>>> before but you're describing it better.
>>>
>>> I still think the Mesa equipment won't have that sort of redundancy.
>>
>> I think it will have an auto destruct but they are new at designing
>> military hardware and they do appear to be doing this in house rather
>> than bringing in outsiders with experience.
>>
>> The result of that can be things like the Japanese world war II
>> fighters. Very high performance but no self sealing fuel tanks or armor.
>
> Exactly.
>
> I'm expecting destructs but not backups.
>
> I also don't think they have Manticore's tiny fusion reactors--no
> power for mantaining shielding for the pod's long fall in. Is
> everything going to work properly when called upon? I serously doubt
> it!

As I understand it these things are going to be barely drawing power
until they are activated. Under the circumstances the stuff we use now
for outer system exploration should work much less one of their
capacitors providing a dribble of power.
 >> Stay informed about: [Storm from the Shadows] Eridani?? 

Loren Pechtel wrote:
> On Thu, 01 Jan 2009 21:11:33 -0500, Don Sample
> wrote:
>
>> In article ,
>> Terry FitzSimons wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 01 Jan 2009 05:14:41 -0500, Don Sample wrote:
>>>
>>>> In article ,
>>>> Loren Pechtel wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, 30 Dec 2008 04:21:33 -0500, Don Sample
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>> spoiler space
>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Not that long, only 5 weeks, and the missiles will be protected inside
>>>>>> their pods. Lots of ways to ensure that any malfunctioning missiles,
>>>>>> and pods, have multiple, redundant, self destruct modes.
>>>>> I was think more of a pod being creamed by a grain of sand.
>>>>>
>>>>> Sure, they *COULD* have multiple redundant self-destructs. It's Mesa,
>>>>> though--we've seen they aren't exactly good at backup plans. You
>>>>> really think they have self-destructs?
>>>> The planners of the Honorverse have had 1,000 years in which to see, and
>>>> think, of every which way such a plan could go wrong. Things like a
>>>> grain of sand hitting one of their pods will have been taken into
>>>> account. That's just part of the way the universe *is*. Designing pods
>>>> to deal with hazards like grains of sand would be like designing a car
>>>> with windshield wipers, 'cause even if it's clear an sunny today, you
>>>> know that tomorrow it might be raining, or snowing.
>>>>
>>> In most military craft designing, you have to give trade-off's. This has
>>> already been mentioned once, in that the top and bottom armor of starships
>>> are less due to the expectation that the wedge is the primary defense to
>>> things.
>>>
>>> So maybe the pods forward armor is heavily augmentated at the expense of
>>> the other aspects. All it takes is one or more pieces of sand moving in a
>>> different direction at a high enough speed to ram the pod in the side to
>>> wreck the electronics and smash the last ditch self-destruct.
>>>
>>> With the smashed electronics, the wake up signal is never sent to the
>>> on-pod missiles, so they stay in the cruise safe mode and never transfer
>>> into the war-shot mode, much less the self destruct cycle.
>> They know that from pod release, to missile firing is 5 weeks. If the
>> missile hasn't been launched 36 days after the pod was released, it
>> isn't going to be, and its self destruct activates.
>
> That's assuming Mesa plans for this. I don't think they will have.

Feel free but I don't think anyone else including DW will think they are
that incompetent or stupid. The issue may never be addressed.
 >> Stay informed about: [Storm from the Shadows] Eridani?? 

Loren Pechtel wrote:
> On Fri, 02 Jan 2009 20:33:32 -0600, "Dwight E. Howell"
> wrote:
>
>> Brian McDonald wrote:
>>> On Thu, 01 Jan 2009 19:25:19 -0500, Terry FitzSimons
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> So maybe the pods forward armor is heavily augmentated at the expense of
>>>> the other aspects. All it takes is one or more pieces of sand moving in a
>>>> different direction at a high enough speed to ram the pod in the side to
>>>> wreck the electronics and smash the last ditch self-destruct.
>>>>
>>>> With the smashed electronics, the wake up signal is never sent to the
>>>> on-pod missiles, so they stay in the cruise safe mode and never transfer
>>>> into the war-shot mode, much less the self destruct cycle.
>>> the problem with this is the assumption there is only the one bit of
>>> self destruct circuitry involved. the cost/weight of multiply
>>> redundant self destruct systems should be utterly negligible.
>> There should be more than one system that could set off the bomb but
>> they will have only one bomb and it will most likely be nuclear.
>> Anything else that would do more than scatter the parts would be bigger
>> than the pod.
>
> That's more weight to carry on the missile. I don't think Mesa will
> do that. Rather, the missile warhead itself will be the destruct.
>
> Remember that the implosion must be perfect to set off a nuke. All
> you need to do is mess up the physical structure a bit and all you get
> is the chemical explosion--and you've got plenty of bits left for
> examination.
>
> One grain of sand hitting the missile without being stopped (and can
> Mesa maintain a shield on the pod for the fall??) and you've got
> debris to examine.

A self destruct bomb on the pod is not on the missile.

The weight of what it would take to tell the warhead on the missile to
go off should amount to ounces and most of it would have to be present
anyway.

The pods before being fired have some protective packaging around them
as part of the effort to make them hard to detect or they would be very
easy to detect.

The missile will have some armor.

DW has already talked about that as a missile feature but I suppose
there is some sort of chance something might not work due to an impact.
 >> Stay informed about: [Storm from the Shadows] Eridani?? 

Loren Pechtel wrote:
> On Fri, 02 Jan 2009 22:52:20 -0500, Don Sample
> wrote:
>
>> In article ,
>> "Dwight E. Howell" wrote:
>>
>>> Brian McDonald wrote:
>>>> On Thu, 01 Jan 2009 19:25:19 -0500, Terry FitzSimons
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> So maybe the pods forward armor is heavily augmentated at the expense of
>>>>> the other aspects. All it takes is one or more pieces of sand moving in a
>>>>> different direction at a high enough speed to ram the pod in the side to
>>>>> wreck the electronics and smash the last ditch self-destruct.
>>>>>
>>>>> With the smashed electronics, the wake up signal is never sent to the
>>>>> on-pod missiles, so they stay in the cruise safe mode and never transfer
>>>>> into the war-shot mode, much less the self destruct cycle.
>>>> the problem with this is the assumption there is only the one bit of
>>>> self destruct circuitry involved. the cost/weight of multiply
>>>> redundant self destruct systems should be utterly negligible.
>>> There should be more than one system that could set off the bomb but
>>> they will have only one bomb and it will most likely be nuclear.
>>> Anything else that would do more than scatter the parts would be bigger
>>> than the pod.
>> In the case of a missile pod, you've got half a dozen or more missiles,
>> any one of which could act as the self destruct for the pod. Missiles
>> have their warheads, and also their drive mechanisms. All but the
>> latest generation of Manti missiles use what are essentially large
>> capacitors, charged up with enough power to vaporize the missile, to
>> power their wedges. Any significant damage to the missile is likely to
>> cause the storage system to catastrophically fail.
>
> The capacitor isn't going to be charged for weeks of fall. It's got
> to be powered up just before launch.

You want to try that one again?

I don't care when it's charged. They all have to be charged for weeks of
fall just like the space mines in a minefield would be.

Your suggestion computes about as much for these people as saying a new
car battery will go dead if you don't start your car in a week would for us.
 >> Stay informed about: [Storm from the Shadows] Eridani?? 

Loren Pechtel wrote:
> On Thu, 01 Jan 2009 12:06:23 -0800, Brian McDonald
> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:27:05 -0800, Loren Pechtel
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>>> The ones that miss should auto destruct.
>>>>> *SHOULD*. You really think they all will? Nothing will have been
>>>>> knocked out of commission by it's long fall through space?
>>>> Not that long, only 5 weeks, and the missiles will be protected inside
>>>> their pods. Lots of ways to ensure that any malfunctioning missiles,
>>>> and pods, have multiple, redundant, self destruct modes.
>>> I was think more of a pod being creamed by a grain of sand.
>>>
>>> Sure, they *COULD* have multiple redundant self-destructs. It's Mesa,
>>> though--we've seen they aren't exactly good at backup plans. You
>>> really think they have self-destructs?
>> is there any canon speaking to salvaging missiles after battles? i
>> vaguely remember people running about after the fighting picking stuff
>> up but not mention of missiles in particular.
>
> Normally nobody will care. They're going to the stars and the chance
> of hitting anything is extremely remote.


They are valuable but I wouldn't care to give the odds on locating one.
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