Immensity of the universe... including the honorverse

Was just dinking around playing math guy relative to the Honorverse, reading old posts -- oops, activated a few too many old threads at a time, yada yada yada, and realized in some of my threads with skm, hutch, etc. that it's easy to forget the scope of the battlefield in these "space wars".

So I looked up the "AU's" (astronautical units) for the Sol system. Earth is at 1 AU, 93MM miles, about 150MM Km, Mars is at 1.5AU. Current Haven Sector tech in PD192X means that they can launch an MDM under full power the whole distance from somewhere around Mars. and hit something say, the size of an aircraft carrier in near earth proximity. Put in a ballistic component and you'd likely be able to nearly double that, and that's with ability to hit that the "carrier size" ship in motion.

Energy weapon wise, A ship's graser can blow through the sidewall of pretty much any ship at from 2-4 times the distance of the earth to the moon. If it hits a target inside the wedge or sidewall, it's pretty much "buh bye target".

Now then, the "MOA" minute of angle for the "bomb-pumped lasers" in that warhead -- stated at 30,000km, 2-1/2 times the radius of the earth, to hit that ship is about what, 1/10,000th of a degree? so a countermissile's wedge has to get out there quickly enough to deny that speedy sucker from getting to a point where it can get a clean aim on that needle in a haystack target. Ergo Sol, etc. are going to be copiously defended to make sure there's no clean haystack hits available.

That math hasn't changed in the entire Honor story arc for our current characters. I just forget that it's THAT big.

That's one of things I really love about RFC's work. He's one of the few writers who really grasps the sheer scale of the canvas he's working on.

Yeah, it's easy to forget the scale of things. I often have to remind folks "Space is big. Really big."

One trivial correction: maximum graser range against a sidewall is about 1.5 times the distance of the earth to the moon, and the range at which it will just blow through the sidewall is less. But your point stands. It is amazing to sit back and really think about the scale sometimes! Just think about how much bigger a superdreadnought is than an aircraft carrier. Then stand on an aircraft carrier.

SWM wrote:Yeah, it's easy to forget the scale of things. I often have to remind folks "Space is big. Really big."

One trivial correction: maximum graser range against a sidewall is about 1.5 times the distance of the earth to the moon, and the range at which it will just blow through the sidewall is less. But your point stands. It is amazing to sit back and really think about the scale sometimes! Just think about how much bigger a superdreadnought is than an aircraft carrier. Then stand on an aircraft carrier.

Never stood on an aircraft carrier. But a couple of old battleships served the same purpose.

SWM wrote:Yeah, it's easy to forget the scale of things. I often have to remind folks "Space is big. Really big."

One trivial correction: maximum graser range against a sidewall is about 1.5 times the distance of the earth to the moon, and the range at which it will just blow through the sidewall is less. But your point stands. It is amazing to sit back and really think about the scale sometimes! Just think about how much bigger a superdreadnought is than an aircraft carrier. Then stand on an aircraft carrier.

Yeah, an Honverse Destroyer is a good fraction of the size of a modern carrier (and I mean an older Destroyer design, not the new larger Wolfhounds or Rolands).

They aren't as wide, or quite as massive, but they're at least as long.

USS Ford (CVN-78)
Displacement: Approximately 100,000 tons
Length: 1,106 ft (337 m)
Beam: 256 ft (78 m)
Height: nearly 250 ft (76 m)

Chanson-class (Destroyer)
Introduced 1867 PD
Mass 78,000 tons
Length 367 m
Beam 43 m
Drought 25 m

SWM wrote:One trivial correction: maximum graser range against a sidewall is about 1.5 times the distance of the earth to the moon, and the range at which it will just blow through the sidewall is less. But your point stands. It is amazing to sit back and really think about the scale sometimes! Just think about how much bigger a superdreadnought is than an aircraft carrier. Then stand on an aircraft carrier.

You're right, here I'm thinking earth to moon at 240K * 2.5 yada yada. Oh yeah, those dang metric conversion factors (about miles to km = about 1.61X) will get us Yanks in trouble every time.

Almost as tough as trying to calculate Honor's height (around 6' 2-3") or Thandi Palane's weightlifting ability ("I once lifted well over twice my body weight—two hundred and fifty kilos"...) about 550 lbs in a clean and jerk.

At least the tonnages aren't too mad, metric ton to Yankee ton is only off by 10%. Mea culpa, guilty as charged.

Just thought of something tactically that seems to make sense but I don't read it being implemented much in the battle-verse as an attack tactic, using Earth for an example, zipping around Sol every 365-1/4 days, yada yada, at around 150MM KM. orbital diameter, a circumference of 468MM km., with an emplaced sensor net, hyper limit at 25LM, etc. Manticore's had generations to get a sensor net WAY WAY out there, and in a globe, yada yada yada. I also get that coming in "on the ecliptic" gives you a small chance of playing sneaky, but most attacking ships, task groups, and fleets then go to a military acceleration level or are sized such that "no, duh, those are warships". All of that said...

Foraker figures out the tactic and uses it ruthlessly in her raiding setup(s), but why isn't attacking above or below the ecliptic SOP? Yes, I get that it puts more wear and tear on the nodes, etc. requiring more servicing, etc. but not nearly as much as a laser head strike. And let's assume that yes, I can do the math, it adds SOME to the intercept time for useful targets. It also adds difficulty for interception as well.

Thoughts?

SharkHunter wrote:Just thought of something tactically that seems to make sense but I don't read it being implemented much in the battle-verse as an attack tactic, using Earth for an example, zipping around Sol every 365-1/4 days, yada yada, at around 150MM KM. orbital diameter, a circumference of 468MM km., with an emplaced sensor net, hyper limit at 25LM, etc. Manticore's had generations to get a sensor net WAY WAY out there, and in a globe, yada yada yada. I also get that coming in "on the ecliptic" gives you a small chance of playing sneaky, but most attacking ships, task groups, and fleets then go to a military acceleration level or are sized such that "no, duh, those are warships". All of that said...

Foraker figures out the tactic and uses it ruthlessly in her raiding setup(s), but why isn't attacking above or below the ecliptic SOP? Yes, I get that it puts more wear and tear on the nodes, etc. requiring more servicing, etc. but not nearly as much as a laser head strike. And let's assume that yes, I can do the math, it adds SOME to the intercept time for useful targets. It also adds difficulty for interception as well.

Thoughts?

I assume that it usually isn't done because there isn't much point. It adds significantly to the time necessary for the attacker to reach the target. It does not really make it harder for the defender to block the attacker.

The only advantage it gives is that there might be less detector coverage off the ecliptic, which may mean it is harder for the defender to figure out exactly what is coming. But they will still be able to tell that something is coming. And in any major system, there are plenty of detectors covering the entire sphere of the hyper limit, so coming off the ecliptic doesn't help much.

Khumalo came in above the ecliptic when he
relieved Terekov at Monica.
It is an Obvious Plan,
and yet he has been almost the only CO to use it!

Honor was captured, once, because she came in from an
*expected* direction, and ran into an ambush.
Had she come in from an unexpected direction, no ambush!
And yet she had discussed with her staff and captains
that Peep TFs were in the area, and they considered Plans
to avoid them - but overlooked the Obvious.

Point to Khumalo, won from Honor Harington!

HTM

SWM wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:Just thought of something tactically that seems to
make sense but I don't read it being implemented much
in the battle-verse as an attack tactic,
[snip - htm]
coming in "on the ecliptic" gives you a small chance of playing sneaky, but most attacking ships, task groups, and fleets then go to a military acceleration level
or are sized such that "no, duh, those are warships".
All of that said...

Foraker figures out the tactic and uses it ruthlessly in her raiding setup(s), but why isn't attacking above or below the ecliptic SOP?
[snip- htm]
it adds SOME to the intercept time for useful targets. It also adds difficulty for interception as well.

Thoughts?

I assume that it usually isn't done because there isn't much point. It adds significantly to the time necessary for the attacker to reach the target. It does not really make it harder for the defender to block the attacker.

The only advantage it gives is that there might be less detector coverage off the ecliptic, which may mean it is harder for the defender to figure out exactly what is coming. But they will still be able to tell that something is coming. And in any major system, there are plenty of detectors covering the entire sphere of the hyper limit, so coming off the ecliptic doesn't help much.

Howard T. Map-addict wrote:Khumalo came in above the ecliptic when he
relieved Terekov at Monica.
It is an Obvious Plan,
and yet he has been almost the only CO to use it!

Honor was captured, once, because she came in from an
*expected* direction, and ran into an ambush.
Had she come in from an unexpected direction, no ambush!
And yet she had discussed with her staff and captains
that Peep TFs were in the area, and they considered Plans
to avoid them - but overlooked the Obvious.

Point to Khumalo, won from Honor Harington!

HTM

It depends on how much value you can get out of entering the system in an area of less likely detection and examination, versus bother in astrogation and wear on parts. Honor was running point for a convoy - bringing them in all together in an exotic spot may have involved too much risk of scatter. And when the Manticoran offensive was stalled precisely because of maintenance woes, putting more strain on the systems of fleet train units in a presumably secure system just to keep from being quite so likely to be detected quite so easily by an enemy that was not expected to be there... would seem to be a strained suggestion from the armchair.

Khumalo, by contrast, had a confusing and sticky situation to figure out in Monica. A scattered task force would not have been all that much of a problem - heck, the spread may have been better for flinging out recon drones! Time to see what was up and communicate with Terekhov was important to him there, much more than maintenance implications.