What happens to all that debris?

It would seem to me that all that debris from the destruction of the Solarian Reserve Fleet in Sol System would start to collect in clumps and the various clumps would start to move together. Over time the superclumps would become smaller and denser as their gravity pulled them into a rounded shape. The collisions of pieces would generate heat which would eventually cause the clumps to melt, forming a new satellite. Which planet would draw the new body into its orbit is not yet clear, but Jupiter would seem a likely choice. After a few thousand years, the new system body would likely cool enough for metals mining to commence.

cthia wrote:

tlb wrote:I think you are quite correct: they will want to reuse any system defense graser torpedo that did not engage a target and just as Honor discovered at the planet Sidemore, that means the torpedoes should have a way for the proper authority to locate and recovery them.

Just like escape pods have homing beacons.

More like the "on demand" homing beacon Ginger suggested be put on Wayfairer's pods -- silent until he correct command is received (which would be post-battle after you've secured the area) telling them to turn on.

Escape pod homing beacons come on immediately and are designed to be detected by everyone nearby, both during and after a battle.


Though if you're using your Gtorps in a system defense role you shouldn't need to go chasing down beacons since, unlike those pods, they're mobile. After the battle they can fly themselves to a predetermined rendezvous point. (And even post-battle you might not want a beacon at all, because the system is likely still under observation, if not actively under siege, and a beacon the attackers could see seems like it would, at the very least, attract a recon drone flyby to get a close look at this mystery weapon. (Or potentially they fly some mistletoes into the rendezvous point and blow up all the Gtorps you were attempting to recover. Oops)

zuluwiz wrote:It would seem to me that all that debris from the destruction of the Solarian Reserve Fleet in Sol System would start to collect in clumps and the various clumps would start to move together. Over time the superclumps would become smaller and denser as their gravity pulled them into a rounded shape. The collisions of pieces would generate heat which would eventually cause the clumps to melt, forming a new satellite. Which planet would draw the new body into its orbit is not yet clear, but Jupiter would seem a likely choice. After a few thousand years, the new system body would likely cool enough for metals mining to commence.

That seems unlikely to me: first because the explosions that created the debris would impart diverging velocities that should prevent them from clumping, second because the gravitational pull between the pieces is minuscule compared to other gravitation objects in the system and any substantial sized piece will be manually treated as a hazard to navigation.

Jonathan_S wrote:Though if you're using your Gtorps in a system defense role you shouldn't need to go chasing down beacons since, unlike those pods, they're mobile. After the battle they can fly themselves to a predetermined rendezvous point. (And even post-battle you might not want a beacon at all, because the system is likely still under observation, if not actively under siege, and a beacon the attackers could see seems like it would, at the very least, attract a recon drone flyby to get a close look at this mystery weapon. (Or potentially they fly some mistletoes into the rendezvous point and blow up all the Gtorps you were attempting to recover. Oops)

Whether the G torpedoes can return to a rendezvous point after a recall signal is given depends both on fuel and damage; so any that can manage it would not turn on a beacon and others would need assistance.

A reconnaissance drone might trigger an attack at this point and any torpedo would self-destruct when its power goes below some minimum to prevent an unpowered torpedo from being captured.

tlb wrote:That seems unlikely to me: first because the explosions that created the debris would impart diverging velocities that should prevent them from clumping, second because the gravitational pull between the pieces is minuscule compared to other gravitation objects in the system and any substantial sized piece will be manually treated as a hazard to navigation.

Right, there's just not enough mass there. If there had been 8000 7-million tonne SDs together (there weren't, 8000 was the total size of the reserve) and no mass had been lost by being dispersed or by falling into Jupiter or onto any of the moons, we're talking about at most 5.6 x 10¹³ kg. That's about the mass of the 4179 Toutatis asteroid. As you can see from the image... it's not round.

Also, the process wouldn't take only a couple thousand years. I'd expect a couple million years instead.

Jupiter does seem to have quite a few moons in that mass range and even less than a tenth of that (see list). But those are usually captured asteroids, they didn't form near Jupiter. Instead, the debris would more likely form a new ring around Jupiter. They would certainly have more mass than the current rings of Jupiter, more massive than Saturn's D ring (but less than 1/1000th of the mass of the bigger rings).

Anyway if you're going to mine it, it's easier to mine while it's not in one big rock that requires drilling, but already dispersed into bite-sized chunks. You can't reuse the dust- and pebble-sized portions, though. But those are navigational hazards, so they will likely be destroyed by wedge.

cthia wrote:

tlb wrote:I think you are quite correct: they will want to reuse any system defense graser torpedo that did not engage a target and just as Honor discovered at the planet Sidemore, that means the torpedoes should have a way for the proper authority to locate and recovery them.

Just like escape pods have homing beacons.

Jonathan_S wrote:More like the "on demand" homing beacon Ginger suggested be put on Wayfairer's pods -- silent until he correct command is received (which would be post-battle after you've secured the area) telling them to turn on.

Escape pod homing beacons come on immediately and are designed to be detected by everyone nearby, both during and after a battle.


Though if you're using your Gtorps in a system defense role you shouldn't need to go chasing down beacons since, unlike those pods, they're mobile. After the battle they can fly themselves to a predetermined rendezvous point. (And even post-battle you might not want a beacon at all, because the system is likely still under observation, if not actively under siege, and a beacon the attackers could see seems like it would, at the very least, attract a recon drone flyby to get a close look at this mystery weapon. (Or potentially they fly some mistletoes into the rendezvous point and blow up all the Gtorps you were attempting to recover. Oops)

The on-demand beacon is what I was thinking. I suggested the possibility of that very early on in this thread because it is obvious it isn't in use yet. I wasn't aware that one of my first loves, Ginger[*], beat me to the proverbial punch. Brilliant.

[*] Redheads are just so darn SEXY!

tlb wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Though if you're using your Gtorps in a system defense role you shouldn't need to go chasing down beacons since, unlike those pods, they're mobile. After the battle they can fly themselves to a predetermined rendezvous point. (And even post-battle you might not want a beacon at all, because the system is likely still under observation, if not actively under siege, and a beacon the attackers could see seems like it would, at the very least, attract a recon drone flyby to get a close look at this mystery weapon. (Or potentially they fly some mistletoes into the rendezvous point and blow up all the Gtorps you were attempting to recover. Oops)

Whether the G torpedoes can return to a rendezvous point after a recall signal is given depends both on fuel and damage; so any that can manage it would not turn on a beacon and others would need assistance.

A reconnaissance drone might trigger an attack at this point and any torpedo would self-destruct when its power goes below some minimum to prevent an unpowered torpedo from being captured.

I still think torps that missed their target can simply alter their course to follow a parabola - without having to bleed off all of their velocity -- on a bearing back in-system desperately seeking Susans, er, targets. (Doh! Why oh why are Madonna movies stuck in my head)

cthia wrote:I still think torps that missed their target can simply alter their course to follow a parabola - without having to bleed off all of their velocity -- on a bearing back in-system desperately seeking Susans, er, targets. (Doh! Why oh why are Madonna movies stuck in my head)

That might save them some energy, just because the spider drive's tractor beam effect might let them pivot and redirect their vector.
But with a normal rocket, or even an impeller wedge, unless you manage to score a gravity assist off some planet (which wouldn't help much at the speeds these things can go) making a parabola uses more fuel/energy than simply bleeding off all their velocity.

Without a medium (air, water, ground) to act against only your engine's power can change your vector, and if you add up the "backwards" components of all the vectored thrust you did while following the curve of your parabola they'll add up to the same value as if you'd just spun 180 and thrust straight backwards. (Except that you'll have added, and then canceled out, all this unnecessary lateral thrust as well; hence making that course reversal less efficient than the simple 180 and kill all velocity)

However, the spider's ability to "grab" the hyper wall seems like it could let it use that as a medium to act against, and thus make momentum conserving turns.

cthia wrote:I still think torps that missed their target can simply alter their course to follow a parabola - without having to bleed off all of their velocity -- on a bearing back in-system desperately seeking Susans, er, targets. (Doh! Why oh why are Madonna movies stuck in my head)

They'd have to be very, very slow, on the order of comet slow to create a trajectory like that. Oumuamua, for example, was/is on a hyperbola and it has a base velocity of only ~26 km/s relative to the sun. At that speed, it takes some 34 years for a 100AU-to-100AU insertion and recovery. 17 years in to perihelion(~.25 AU), 17 years out.

To get a parabola, torpedoes would have to be even slower... or pass the star more closely.

cthia wrote:I still think torps that missed their target can simply alter their course to follow a parabola - without having to bleed off all of their velocity -- on a bearing back in-system desperately seeking Susans, er, targets. (Doh! Why oh why are Madonna movies stuck in my head)

They could do that. I don't think they should do that.

The reason is that they have a very slow turn rate. Any subsequent attack is going to take time and it's going to go at a very prepared system. The chance of interception goes sky high and that presents an unacceptable risk to the security of the spider technology.

They should all detonate ASAP, before the target system can get ships to investigate all the sensor ghosts and possibly recover pieces of the torpedo.

You also don't want the target system's defenders to even know they have very low acceleration. That's a datum that right now the GA doesn't have and -- as we've seen in the other threads -- makes their tactical decisions much worse.