What happens to all that debris?

cthia wrote:Well, irradiated pieces hitting planets has to pose a problem as well. Grayson certainly don't need any more dangerous metals impacting the planet.

You know, we haven't heard of escape pods communicating with each other. I would imagine lifeboats can. An escape pod should at least be able to pick up the signal from another pod since it's so close. If it has even a very rudimentary antenna. That could help alert S&R of the possibility and locus of any other survivors.

Those pieces have to be big enough to survive atmospheric entry, otherwise it'll just burn up in the atmosphere. Though of course the radioactive materials in that case will just disperse in the upper atmosphere and rain down over a larger area, but fortunately that also means smaller concentration.

If it's a big piece, then it's also going to have a big mass-to-radiation ratio.

Escape pods that can communicate can be located by SAR. You don't need the comm to be relayed via another escape pod.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Well, irradiated pieces hitting planets has to pose a problem as well. Grayson certainly don't need any more dangerous metals impacting the planet.

You know, we haven't heard of escape pods communicating with each other. I would imagine lifeboats can. An escape pod should at least be able to pick up the signal from another pod since it's so close. If it has even a very rudimentary antenna. That could help alert S&R of the possibility and locus of any other survivors.

Those pieces have to be big enough to survive atmospheric entry, otherwise it'll just burn up in the atmosphere. Though of course the radioactive materials in that case will just disperse in the upper atmosphere and rain down over a larger area, but fortunately that also means smaller concentration.

If it's a big piece, then it's also going to have a big mass-to-radiation ratio.

Escape pods that can communicate can be located by SAR. You don't need the comm to be relayed via another escape pod.

Pieces don't have to be large to survive reentry, they could also have special properties, like heat resistance. A property I would imagine is used in all reactors. Iradiation could also change the physical property in unknown ways.

I was thinking about damaged pods communicating for a while with nearby pods long enough for them to get a range and bearing before they go dead.

cthia wrote:Pieces don't have to be large to survive reentry, they could also have special properties, like heat resistance. A property I would imagine is used in all reactors. Iradiation could also change the physical property in unknown ways.

I was thinking about damaged pods communicating for a while with nearby pods long enough for them to get a range and bearing before they go dead.

Reactor plasma is likely to be confined magnetically or gravitically, not with material. There's no known material that can survive 5000 K, much less retain its properties, and the plasma is likely to be much hotter than that.

Anyway, irradiation will fall off quickly with depth. Similarly, friction with the atmosphere will ablate the outer layers first. So anything that got irradiated during the explosion is likely to not bring more radiation problems to the planet. Only pieces that sustained continuous, long-term irradiation (like core reactor parts) would be a problem, assuming such things exist. We don't know how exactly the fusion reactors work in the Honorverse; there are some fusion reactions that are cleaner than others.

As for pods having a bearing and vector on other pods, that's actually a good idea. Every pod would log all other pods that it was in contact with. Once that was retrieved, the log is analysed. If there's a vector, great, it helps finding. Even if there's no vector, this tells SAR a pod with a given ID was out there, which informs the effort some pods were launched but not yet recovered.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Well, irradiated pieces hitting planets has to pose a problem as well. Grayson certainly don't need any more dangerous metals impacting the planet.

You know, we haven't heard of escape pods communicating with each other. I would imagine lifeboats can. An escape pod should at least be able to pick up the signal from another pod since it's so close. If it has even a very rudimentary antenna. That could help alert S&R of the possibility and locus of any other survivors.

Those pieces have to be big enough to survive atmospheric entry, otherwise it'll just burn up in the atmosphere. Though of course the radioactive materials in that case will just disperse in the upper atmosphere and rain down over a larger area, but fortunately that also means smaller concentration.

If it's a big piece, then it's also going to have a big mass-to-radiation ratio.

Escape pods that can communicate can be located by SAR. You don't need the comm to be relayed via another escape pod.

Came across this by accident. We have always worried about this. I imagine the chances are high that some irradiated fallout occured during Oyster Bay.

There goes the neighborhood.

cthia wrote:Came across this by accident. We have always worried about this. I imagine the chances are high that some irradiated fallout occured during Oyster Bay.

There goes the neighborhood.

We've been launching RTGs into space for decades. I specifically remember when Cassini-Huygens was launched towards Saturn in 1997 and lots of people were up in arms and worried that, if the rocket exploded on take-off, the radioisotopes would rain back down on the planet.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Came across this by accident. We have always worried about this. I imagine the chances are high that some irradiated fallout occured during Oyster Bay.

There goes the neighborhood.

We've been launching RTGs into space for decades. I specifically remember when Cassini-Huygens was launched towards Saturn in 1997 and lots of people were up in arms and worried that, if the rocket exploded on take-off, the radioisotopes would rain back down on the planet.

Though it probably helps that only the RMN LACs carry fissionable materials. Even with Honorverse rad shielding a fusion reactor containment vessel probably ends up irradiated but it should be less nasty, and less persistent than uranium that's been sitting is a spray of netrons and radiation inside a reactor core.

And missile warheads aren't an issue either. It's mentioned somewhere that they're pure grav implosion fusion designs - no fission initiator or booster. They wouldn't even have a nuetron source since that's not helpful for fusion. So if they don't do a proper detonation their warhead isn't radioactive at all

Then reactor fuel itself, being hydrogen and (and making helium) can't really remain radioactive for long plus it's light enough it's not going to be raining down onto the planetary surface. (the longest lasting radioisotope of Helium having a half life of about 800 miliseconds so it's radioactivity had dropped by over 100 fold in 6.5 seconds. Admittedly the radioactive output during those 6.5 seconds must be impressive if outside the rad shields of the reactor; except in that case anybody close enough to care is already dead from the massive plasma explosion of the reactor failure) So radioactive debris seem much less of a problem from dozens of destroyed ships (plus the station's power sources) than if that same number of RTGs were blown up at that orbital altitude.

Offhand I'd be much more worried about the kinetic impact of large debris that I would be about whether any of it was radioactive enough for even a long term health risk.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:We've been launching RTGs into space for decades. I specifically remember when Cassini-Huygens was launched towards Saturn in 1997 and lots of people were up in arms and worried that, if the rocket exploded on take-off, the radioisotopes would rain back down on the planet.

The Apollo's 12 - 17 all carried RTG, a SNAP-27 carrying about 3.9kg of Plutonium, in the LEM for powering experiments on the lunar surface (to be left running after their departure).

Might be an issue if a Saturn-V had failed catastrophically on take off - though it should actually survive that. And of course, famously, Apollo 13 didn't leave their LEM on the moon; they had to use it as a lifeboat to keep the crew alive on a abort back to earth (until they were close enough they could transfer back to the command module and its reentry vehicle).

So Apollo 13's RTG slammed back into Earth's atmosphere, still within the LEM (which burned up), and the RTG currently lies in 20,000 feet (6,100 m) of water at the bottom of the Tonga Trench in the Pacific Ocean.
Good thing they designed it to survive reentry (and oceanic impact) in an emergency. No release of its plutonium as been detected.

How exactly is debris collected for reverse engineering? Is there a huge vacuum cleaner that can operate in a debris field? Also, you'd have to win the battle to collect debris. If the RMN is involved they normally won the battles against the Peeps. I'm sure there are battles won by the Peeps which left debris fields containing some good trash, but they would need to know what to look for, where to look, and they'd need lots of time to do so. If someone overran your system, you would want to retake it quickly, when possible. You don't want to give someone endless amounts of time to sift thru debris.

OTOH, the RMN should have had an endless access to Peep debris.

cthia wrote:How exactly is debris collected for reverse engineering? Is there a huge vacuum cleaner that can operate in a debris field? Also, you'd have to win the battle to collect debris. If the RMN is involved they normally won the battles against the Peeps. I'm sure there are battles won by the Peeps which left debris fields containing some good trash, but they would need to know what to look for, where to look, and they'd need lots of time to do so. If someone overran your system, you would want to retake it quickly, when possible. You don't want to give someone endless amounts of time to sift thru debris.

OTOH, the RMN should have had an endless access to Peep debris.

Mostly the victors could look at captured ships or ones that had a compensator failure. I do not recall an instance of the RMN vacuuming debris in order to evaluate hardware.

cthia wrote:How exactly is debris collected for reverse engineering? Is there a huge vacuum cleaner that can operate in a debris field? Also, you'd have to win the battle to collect debris. If the RMN is involved they normally won the battles against the Peeps. I'm sure there are battles won by the Peeps which left debris fields containing some good trash, but they would need to know what to look for, where to look, and they'd need lots of time to do so. If someone overran your system, you would want to retake it quickly, when possible. You don't want to give someone endless amounts of time to sift thru debris.

OTOH, the RMN should have had an endless access to Peep debris.

The side who controls the system in the end is the side that gets the debris. In case of a raid that might not be the victor.