Shutting down the MWJ

So? I expected that response. The wormhole would still be shut for a time.

kzt wrote:

Daryl wrote:To mix up our universes, John Ringo's Troy would do it. A hollowed out iron asteroid with motive power.

Wbich would get turned into plasma within a minute.

Daryl wrote:So? I expected that response. The wormhole would still be shut for a time.
Wbich would get turned into plasma within a minute.

[/quote]
No. It never gets out of the approach lane.

So, at the moment, Thinksmarkedly has suggested the only reason that a navy might want to physically shut its terminus ...

"If it has been lost," or I suspect what he means, if it is certain it will be lost.

I suppose during the second BoM the RMN could have physically shut down the Beowulf terminus if in fact it was determined that the SLN had the ships, upgrades and tech to overwhelm it.

At any rate, the only case I could think of is during the Final Wars. Sol might have wanted to physically shut down the terminus to limit frightened citizens from panicking and leaving Sol space. Physically shutting down the terminus would help contain the problem until Beowulf could come up with a cure. Further consideration brought me to the conclusion that that would have been a double-edged sword.

So, still, I got nothing.


.

Actually, at the second BoM, physically shutting down the terminus would have been the better decision.

Then Beowulf simply had to say "They shut the door. We can't let you transit even if we wanted to."

That would have been a lot better, politically. Beowulf would not have placed themselves in a position to be accused of treason by the corrupt Mandarins and jaded League officers and citizens.

JUST CLOSE THE DAMN DOOR!



Hey, I guess I do have a case.

tlb wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:To me, ascending is an insufficient explanation. It requires everyone, without exception to do it. In a civilisation with a trillion individuals, you can expect dissenters.

If you please, what do you mean by "ascending" and its dissent?

A Sci-Fi trope that technologically advanced civilisations eventually "ascend to a higher plane of existence," leaving behind some of their technology for younger civilisations to use, but no instruction manuals. The problem I'm calling out in this is that it requires the entire civilisation, without exception, to do it (no dissenters). If you're already counting your individuals in the tens of trillions, the idea that everyone will want this is statistically improbable.

In the Culture series, Iain M. Banks calls this "sublimation," but sublimed species do leave behind a few million "remnant" individuals and they nominate a successor species as caretaker of their worlds, and some scavenger species to come and break down and recycle most of the rest. "The Hydrogen Sonata" (the last book) is entirely about this.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:To me, ascending is an insufficient explanation. It requires everyone, without exception to do it. In a civilisation with a trillion individuals, you can expect dissenters.

tlb wrote:If you please, what do you mean by "ascending" and its dissent?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:A Sci-Fi trope that technologically advanced civilisations eventually "ascend to a higher plane of existence," leaving behind some of their technology for younger civilisations to use, but no instruction manuals. The problem I'm calling out in this is that it requires the entire civilisation, without exception, to do it (no dissenters). If you're already counting your individuals in the tens of trillions, the idea that everyone will want this is statistically improbable.

In the Culture series, Iain M. Banks calls this "sublimation," but sublimed species do leave behind a few million "remnant" individuals and they nominate a successor species as caretaker of their worlds, and some scavenger species to come and break down and recycle most of the rest. "The Hydrogen Sonata" (the last book) is entirely about this.

Thanks; I have read stories like that, but was not familiar with the trope name.

The story I remember (although I have forgotten the title and author) involves explorers arriving at a world with simple people living amidst the remains of an advanced civilization. A guide from the people helps the explorers look around and it is noticed that the guide can look at artifacts working that the explorers have to turn away from. The guide eventually helps them solve a problem and as the explorers are about to leave a celestial being appears and says to the guide "Well done, faithful servant".

I just remembered that the story "A Grand Tour" by David Drake in More Than Honor also contains that trope and even mentions Alphanes (the only place in the various books where they are mentioned).

tlb wrote:The maximum possible mass for a single transit varies according to the size of the wormhole.

I do not know why there are differences between the two routes. I do not know the general formula given the maximum possible mass of a wormhole for a single transit destabilization.

IIRC the formula is a constant * the square of the mass = lockdown time.
I worked it out well enough; but I’m away from the computer with that spreadsheet on it - if I remember later I’ll dig it up.

But, with an exponential function like that I’d bet the minor difference of a bit more than, or less than, 17 hours comes down entirely to minor differences in the fleet tonnages in those two quotes. (I doubt either one of the had the ship to exactly fill every last ton of the wormhole limit, and even relatively small differences in how close they came could move the time over or under the 17 hour mark)

But I don’t have any reason to suspect that different legs of the MWJ have different mass limits (even though the lockdowns are specific to the terminus pair transited through. That’s why Manticore was worried about Haven getting control of Basilisk in the first book - a second terminus would double the tonnage they could quickly throw through the Junction


Also IIRC we’re told the MWJ has the highest mass threshold of any surveyed wormhole - so most routes could be locked down for less, possibly far less, than 17 hours.

tlb wrote:I do not know the general formula given the maximum possible mass of a wormhole for a single transit destabilization.

Jonathan_S wrote:IIRC the formula is a constant * the square of the mass = lockdown time.

-- snip --

Also IIRC we’re told the MWJ has the highest mass threshold of any surveyed wormhole - so most routes could be locked down for less, possibly far less, than 17 hours.

I have copied the relevant portion of the quote that I posted before. Two points: first there is a minimum of ten seconds that occurs independent of the mass and second both that minimum and what you called "constant" in the equation are probably dependent on some attribute of the wormhole, such as the maximum allowable mass transit weight (which is why I said that I did not know the general formula).

Echoes of Honor, chapter 37:

Unfortunately, any wormhole transit destabilized the termini involved for a minimum of ten seconds, and vessels which massed more than about two and a half million tons destabilized it for a total interval proportional to the square of the transiting mass . . . which meant a maximum-mass transit would lock the route from Manticore to Basilisk solid for over seventeen hours.

Also how is that threshold of 2.5 million tons derived?

So there are possibly four variables (?) for any wormhole: the multiplication "constant", the minimum destabilization time, the threshold weight and the maximum weight.

tlb wrote:

tlb wrote:I do not know the general formula given the maximum possible mass of a wormhole for a single transit destabilization.

Jonathan_S wrote:IIRC the formula is a constant * the square of the mass = lockdown time.

-- snip --

Also IIRC we’re told the MWJ has the highest mass threshold of any surveyed wormhole - so most routes could be locked down for less, possibly far less, than 17 hours.

I have copied the relevant portion of the quote that I posted before. Two points: first there is a minimum of ten seconds that occurs independent of the mass and second both that minimum and what you called "constant" in the equation are probably dependent on some attribute of the wormhole, such as the maximum allowable mass transit weight (which is why I said that I did not know the general formula).

Echoes of Honor, chapter 37:

Unfortunately, any wormhole transit destabilized the termini involved for a minimum of ten seconds, and vessels which massed more than about two and a half million tons destabilized it for a total interval proportional to the square of the transiting mass . . . which meant a maximum-mass transit would lock the route from Manticore to Basilisk solid for over seventeen hours.

Also how is that threshold of 2.5 million tons derived?

So there are possibly four variables (?) for any wormhole: the multiplication "constant", the minimum destabilization time, the threshold weight and the maximum weight.

IRC if you fit for the other mentioned tonnage vs delay time examples, 2.5 MT on the tonnage axis is where the slope is 10 seconds on the lockdown interval axis.

So I assume it was picked by authorial fiat that you couldn’t have less than 10 seconds and so couldn’t apply the formula to lower tonnages.

Jonathan_S wrote:Also IIRC we’re told the MWJ has the highest mass threshold of any surveyed wormhole - so most routes could be locked down for less, possibly far less, than 17 hours.

tlb wrote:So there are possibly four variables (?) for any wormhole: the multiplication "constant", the minimum destabilization time, the threshold weight and the maximum weight.

Jonathan_S wrote:IRC if you fit for the other mentioned tonnage vs delay time examples, 2.5 MT on the tonnage axis is where the slope is 10 seconds on the lockdown interval axis.

So I assume it was picked by authorial fiat that you couldn’t have less than 10 seconds and so couldn’t apply the formula to lower tonnages.

Okay, that sounds reasonable; so maybe the maximum allowable tonnage is the only parameter that we can be certain is different for each wormhole. The other three parameters might depend on some attribute of a wormhole, but it is unlikely we would ever know.