Jonathan_S wrote:Fastest I recall seeing Ghost Rider drones moving was 10,000 gravities -- but there was no mention that they were being stealthy.
Shadow of Victory wrote:TG 10.2.9’s velocity was up to only 1,500 KPS while the Ghost Rider drones sped ahead of them at 10,000 gravities. He wanted those birds up forward to give him as close a look as possible at what CIC was calling eight battlecruisers and eight destroyers, 104,808,572 kilometers ahead of them
(OTOH the text is silent on whether or not Admiral Tamaguchi's SLN force actually saw them)
The stealthy accel we saw was half that
Storm from the Shadows wrote:Ghost Rider platforms, loping along at the low (for them) acceleration of only five thousand gravities in order to stay stealthy
And note that that was remaining stealthy at about 4 light-minutes from the target. I'd suspect that accel would need to be further reduced as you got closer to avoid having the wedge's growing signal burn through the drone's stealth.
We... well you, calculated faster than that in a prior discussion I recall. When Terekhov came smashing over the wall, and "talked" the local SLN destroyers into surrendering in Mobius.
Shadow of Freedom Ch 30 wrote:“CIC makes it thirteen sources, Sir,” the lieutenant reported after a moment, and Hammond felt his muscles tighten. “They’re half a light-minute outside the hyper limit,” Garrett continued. “That puts them at a range of two-one-five-point-nine million klicks. Current closing velocity niner-one-three KPS. Acceleration five-point-seven KPS squared.”
-minor Solly question about IDs-
“We won’t have anything lightspeed for another twelve minutes or so, Sir,” Garrett replied in a curiously flat voice. “But from the footprints, CIC is calling it twelve cruisers…and a superdreadnought.”
-snip-
“Anything from them?” Commander Tremont Watson demanded as he strode explosively onto Oceanus’ bridge.
“No, Sir.” Lieutenant Branston Shang, the light cruiser’s communications officer, had managed to beat the CO to the command deck. Now he looked over his shoulder at Watson and shook his head. “Given the range, there won’t be for at least another three minutes, even assuming they know we’re here to be transmitting to, Sir,” he added respectfully.
-snip-
“Not really, Skipper.” Hammond shrugged unhappily. “They only made their alpha translation nine minutes ago, so we still don’t have any lightspeed confirmation, but CIC’s confident about their mass estimates and wedge strengths.”
-snip and jump to Manty POV-
“How much longer for the platforms to give us a good look at the planetary orbitals, Stilt?” he asked.
“Not long, Sir,” his operations officer replied. “They’re only about ninety-six light-seconds from Mobius Beta, now. In fact, if there’s anything in orbit with active impellers, it’s got to be on the far side of the planet from us at the moment, or we’d already have picked it up.”
-snip-
Terekhov tipped back in his command chair, gazing at the master plot. Quentin Saint-James had reentered normal-space twenty-six minutes earlier. During that time, she’d increased her n-space velocity to just over ninety-four hundred kilometers per second and traveled just under 7.8 million kilometers towards the planet officially designated Mobius Beta. During that same interval, the Ghost Rider recon platforms they’d deployed as soon as they’d made their alpha translation had traveled ten and a half light-minutes—almost 200 million kilometers—at their vastly higher acceleration. In fact, they were already decelerating towards a zero/zero rendezvous with the planet.
-minor snip of 2 paragraphs-
“The platforms are still ninety-two light-seconds out, but we should be getting good visual in another minute or so,” the ops officer continued. “CIC is calling them destroyers for now, but—”
In ~26 minutes, the Ghost Rider drones travelled around 200 million km give or take, from a starting distance of 215.9km away from the Sollies; with the Manticoran ships having done their Alpha translation velocity with 913 kps and then accelerating at an additional 5.7kps on top of that as they were dropping the Ghost Riders.
And the Sollies never even had a clue they were less than 92 light-seconds away and still decelerating hard. In addition thanks to Terekhov 'quizzing' Ensign Zilwicki, they additionally deployed a Hermes Buoy that ALSO made the trip from the approaching Manticoran ships to the Sollies at high acceleration and wasn't noticed either.
Edit: 92 light-seconds is just a hair over 27.6 million km, so correction the Ghost Rider drones travelled almost exactly 200 million km in 26 minutes because they were decelerating to bleed off the speed Terekhov brought over the wall with him to match orbits with Mobius itself. But they made the full 200km plus without anybody having a sniff of them, as did the Hermes Buoy.
Edit 2: according to an acceleration calculator, 200milllion km travelled, initial speed of 913 kps and 26 minutes works out to an acceleration profile of nearly 17000 gs, although the drones were decelerating at the time, which should actually increase their speed because they had to get upto speed then turn around and slow way down; so Ghost Riders are (I think anyways) capable of between 20,000 and 30,000 gravs of acceleration with several hours of active time... or you can "pull a Henke" and leave the drones in a stationary & powered-down mode and Ghost Riders are capable of staying on station for at least 2 weeks (per her actions at New Tuscany)
Well, not me personally... 
Will not be posting much for a while... Do not have the time, but said I would reply to folks and did not.