Topic Actions

Topic Search

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 36 guests

How much orbital traffic does Mesa have? (ToF TextEv)

Join us in talking discussing all things Honor, including (but not limited to) tactics, favorite characters, and book discussions.
How much orbital traffic does Mesa have? (ToF TextEv)
Post by GregD   » Thu Oct 05, 2017 5:30 pm

GregD
Lieutenant Commander

Posts: 149
Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2013 12:29 pm

Torch of Freedom, Chapter 45, 3rd paragraph:
Just routine. By now, two weeks later, Trimm had only a vague memory of having done an additional check on the Hali Sowle. That was in the records, of course. But she was no more likely to check old records for no reason—the volume of traffic in and out of Mesa was truly enormous—than she would be to start going to work with a hop, skip and a jump rather than taking the perfectly functional tube.


This was for a ship in planetary obit, nowhere near the Terminus.

Torch of Freedom, Chapter 54:
Among the other cybernetic systems which were damaged were those of Mesan customs. The damage was . . . odd, and seemingly quirky.
E.D. Trimm stared at the main screen in her operations center, unable to believe what she was seeing. All the many ships were still shown. They could still track any of them, whether approaching or leaving or in orbit. Presumably, if they scrambled furiously, they could open up manual lines of communications if any of the ships was in danger of colliding with another.
But the rest of the information was lost. Gone. Vanished.
"Which ship is which?" she half-wailed.
"I can still figure out tonnages," said Gansükh Blomqvist. "I . . . think."
"Oh, wonderful. My day is complete."
...
"There goes another one, E.D. What do you want me to do?"
Helplessly, Trimm stared at the screen. Yet another ship was leaving orbit. That was hardly unusual, in and of itself, given the traffic that came in and out of the Mesan system. But there were now at least twice as many ships leaving as there normally would have been.
Whatever had happened down on the surface of the planet to have caused this chaos, it had obviously spooked a lot of ship captains.
She still had no idea which ship was which. But—for once—that jackass Blomqvist had proved to be useful. His jury-rigged system for gauging ship tonnages seemed to be working pretty well. So at least E.D. could separate the big boys from the flotsam and jetsam.
"What's their mass?"
He studied the screen for a few seconds. "I make it about a million tons. Give or take a quarter of a million, you understand."
Trimm waved her hand. "Doesn't matter. It's a small fry. No point in worrying about it with everything else on our plate. I'm not sending out what few pinnaces we have available to check anything smaller than four million tons."


So they have 3+ pinnaces, and they're saving them for questionable 4 million ton + freighters. Which means they have to have at least 3, and almost assuredly more, 4 million ton + freighters in the vicinity.

That makes me think they probably have a dozen+ 1 million ton or less freighters in orbit at the start of the fun.

Unless the GA deliberately kicks those ships out, they're not going to want to leave without cargo. Which is why I assume there's multiple non-GA ships sitting in orbit when the final MAlign bombs go off. None of whom will have seen any missiles fired.
Top
Re: How much orbital traffic does Mesa have? (ToF TextEv)
Post by Weird Harold   » Thu Oct 05, 2017 6:10 pm

Weird Harold
Fleet Admiral

Posts: 4478
Joined: Thu Apr 24, 2014 10:25 pm
Location: "Lost Wages", NV

GregD wrote:Torch of Freedom, Chapter 45, 3rd paragraph:
Just routine. By now, two weeks later, Trimm had only a vague memory of having done an additional check on the Hali Sowle. That was in the records, of course. But she was no more likely to check old records for no reason—the volume of traffic in and out of Mesa was truly enormous—than she would be to start going to work with a hop, skip and a jump rather than taking the perfectly functional tube.



How many of the ships in Mesa orbit are couriers, yachts, in-system taxis, and other "irrelevant" types? Traffic control would need to track all of them. With the loss of transponder info, all of the "irrelevants" become the same as the 4 MTon and bigger monsters.

Actually, no spaceship is irrelevant, but there's not really info on the nature of the traffic in and out of the system are. CoG lets us know that the arrival of a private Yacht is no big deal for Mesa Traffic Control, even if it just sits around for a few months.

Given the number of transstellars on Mesa's governing board, I'd expect a lot of small traffic like couriers and yachts. Not to mention the MAlign's traffic requirements to manage all of their nefarious plots.
.
.
.
Answers! I got lots of answers!

(Now if I could just find the right questions.)
Top
Re: How much orbital traffic does Mesa have? (ToF TextEv)
Post by Vince   » Fri Oct 06, 2017 4:43 am

Vince
Vice Admiral

Posts: 1574
Joined: Fri Apr 09, 2010 11:43 pm

GregD wrote:Torch of Freedom, Chapter 45, 3rd paragraph:
Just routine. By now, two weeks later, Trimm had only a vague memory of having done an additional check on the Hali Sowle. That was in the records, of course. But she was no more likely to check old records for no reason—the volume of traffic in and out of Mesa was truly enormous—than she would be to start going to work with a hop, skip and a jump rather than taking the perfectly functional tube.
Weird Harold wrote:How many of the ships in Mesa orbit are couriers, yachts, in-system taxis, and other "irrelevant" types? Traffic control would need to track all of them. With the loss of transponder info, all of the "irrelevants" become the same as the 4 MTon and bigger monsters.

Actually, no spaceship is irrelevant, but there's not really info on the nature of the traffic in and out of the system are. CoG lets us know that the arrival of a private Yacht is no big deal for Mesa Traffic Control, even if it just sits around for a few months.

Given the number of transstellars on Mesa's governing board, I'd expect a lot of small traffic like couriers and yachts. Not to mention the MAlign's traffic requirements to manage all of their nefarious plots.

Plus all the Solarian League news dispatch boats that were there to cover the 'Ballroom attacks on Mesa' and Mesa's response to it (the massive attacks on the seccie's).

Edited for spelling.
.
Last edited by Vince on Fri Oct 06, 2017 7:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
-------------------------------------------------------------
History does not repeat itself so much as it echoes.
Top
Re: How much orbital traffic does Mesa have? (ToF TextEv)
Post by ldwechsler   » Fri Oct 06, 2017 6:24 am

ldwechsler
Rear Admiral

Posts: 1235
Joined: Sun May 28, 2017 12:15 pm

Vince wrote:Torch of Freedom, Chapter 45, 3rd paragraph:
Just routine. By now, two weeks later, Trimm had only a vague memory of having done an additional check on the Hali Sowle. That was in the records, of course. But she was no more likely to check old records for no reason—the volume of traffic in and out of Mesa was truly enormous—than she would be to start going to work with a hop, skip and a jump rather than taking the perfectly functional tube.
Weird Harold wrote:How many of the ships in Mesa orbit are couriers, yachts, in-system taxis, and other "irrelevant" types? Traffic control would need to track all of them. With the loss of transponder info, all of the "irrelevants" become the same as the 4 MTon and bigger monsters.

GregD wrote:Actually, no spaceship is irrelevant, but there's not really info on the nature of the traffic in and out of the system are. CoG lets us know that the arrival of a private Yacht is no big deal for Mesa Traffic Control, even if it just sits around for a few months.

Given the number of transstellars on Mesa's governing board, I'd expect a lot of small traffic like couriers and yachts. Not to mention the MAlign's traffic requirements to manage all of their nefarious plots.

Pus all the Solarian League news dispatch boats that were there to cover the 'Ballroom attacks on Mesa' and Mesa's response to it (the massive attacks on the seccie's).


Chances are that a lot of the traffic will be well-known and not require much checking. After all, if the same ships regularly arrive and you know who the owners and masters are, why be all that careful in terms of checking?

Some of the ships may get pretty much a free pass.

Also, not that there are three pinnaces. If they do four or five
checks a day each, that's more that a dozen ships every day. And I would bet it takes time to unload all the cargoes, etc., and then load up cargoes to leave.

It is far more likely most of the ships coming in are private yachts. Most of the people on the planet, after all, are slaves.
Their needs are probably taken care of by products made on planet.
Top
Re: How much orbital traffic does Mesa have? (ToF TextEv)
Post by Weird Harold   » Fri Oct 06, 2017 6:48 am

Weird Harold
Fleet Admiral

Posts: 4478
Joined: Thu Apr 24, 2014 10:25 pm
Location: "Lost Wages", NV

ldwechsler wrote:...

Would you please learn to parse quotes without screwing up the attributions?
.
.
.
Answers! I got lots of answers!

(Now if I could just find the right questions.)
Top
Re: How much orbital traffic does Mesa have? (ToF TextEv)
Post by Vince   » Fri Oct 06, 2017 7:29 am

Vince
Vice Admiral

Posts: 1574
Joined: Fri Apr 09, 2010 11:43 pm

Weird Harold wrote:
ldwechsler wrote:...

Would you please learn to parse quotes without screwing up the attributions?

Seconded!
-------------------------------------------------------------
History does not repeat itself so much as it echoes.
Top
Re: How much orbital traffic does Mesa have? (ToF TextEv)
Post by GregD   » Fri Oct 06, 2017 1:17 pm

GregD
Lieutenant Commander

Posts: 149
Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2013 12:29 pm

Thank you, all of you, for making my point.

Because private yachts are going to have good scanners, and are likely to have people who actually pay attention to them.

When Manticore and Haven went back to war with each other, I hated that plot line, and searched hard for holes in it.

In this case, I neither love nor hate the plot line. It's just that it makes no sense to me, at all.

By everything I've read in the "Crown of Slaves" series, there were > 10 ships above Mesa that would have seen any missiles fired at the surface. Mesa is a planet that has recently suffered a large number of "indigenous" explosions.

I simply can not wrap my head around how any even remotely rational human being could go from "there were multiple non-GA ships that would have seen anything fired down at the planet. No one saw anything" to "Guess it must be the GA's fault."

So I'm wondering if the issue is that ToF & CoG gave Mesa much more orbital traffic than RFC wanted it to have.

"Tramp freighters" might be sloppy about communications & sensor checks. The crews on expensive private yachts are not going to be nearly so lackadaisical.
Top
Re: How much orbital traffic does Mesa have? (ToF TextEv)
Post by JohnRoth   » Fri Oct 06, 2017 1:34 pm

JohnRoth
Admiral

Posts: 2438
Joined: Sat Jun 25, 2011 6:54 am
Location: Centreville, VA, USA

GregD wrote:Thank you, all of you, for making my point.

Because private yachts are going to have good scanners, and are likely to have people who actually pay attention to them.

When Manticore and Haven went back to war with each other, I hated that plot line, and searched hard for holes in it.

In this case, I neither love nor hate the plot line. It's just that it makes no sense to me, at all.

By everything I've read in the "Crown of Slaves" series, there were > 10 ships above Mesa that would have seen any missiles fired at the surface. Mesa is a planet that has recently suffered a large number of "indigenous" explosions.

I simply can not wrap my head around how any even remotely rational human being could go from "there were multiple non-GA ships that would have seen anything fired down at the planet. No one saw anything" to "Guess it must be the GA's fault."

So I'm wondering if the issue is that ToF & CoG gave Mesa much more orbital traffic than RFC wanted it to have.

"Tramp freighters" might be sloppy about communications & sensor checks. The crews on expensive private yachts are not going to be nearly so lackadaisical.


I thoroughly agree - RFC needs the MAlign be successful in ducking down the rabbit hole and pulling it in after them as far as the rest of the galaxy is concerned - otherwise there is no plot hook for Honorverse - The Next Generation!

This, however, makes no more sense than any other Deus Ex Machina - except that the God Machine made total sense in its proper environment. Those were religious plays, and the playwright would have been lynched if the god hadn't shown up at the end.
Top
Re: How much orbital traffic does Mesa have? (ToF TextEv)
Post by pappilon   » Fri Oct 06, 2017 4:27 pm

pappilon
Rear Admiral

Posts: 1074
Joined: Tue Sep 05, 2017 11:29 pm

JohnRoth wrote:
GregD wrote:Thank you, all of you, for making my point.

Because private yachts are going to have good scanners, and are likely to have people who actually pay attention to them.

When Manticore and Haven went back to war with each other, I hated that plot line, and searched hard for holes in it.

In this case, I neither love nor hate the plot line. It's just that it makes no sense to me, at all.

By everything I've read in the "Crown of Slaves" series, there were > 10 ships above Mesa that would have seen any missiles fired at the surface. Mesa is a planet that has recently suffered a large number of "indigenous" explosions.

I simply can not wrap my head around how any even remotely rational human being could go from "there were multiple non-GA ships that would have seen anything fired down at the planet. No one saw anything" to "Guess it must be the GA's fault."

So I'm wondering if the issue is that ToF & CoG gave Mesa much more orbital traffic than RFC wanted it to have.

"Tramp freighters" might be sloppy about communications & sensor checks. The crews on expensive private yachts are not going to be nearly so lackadaisical.




I thoroughly agree - RFC needs the MAlign be successful in ducking down the rabbit hole and pulling it in after them as far as the rest of the galaxy is concerned - otherwise there is no plot hook for Honorverse - The Next Generation!

This, however, makes no more sense than any other Deus Ex Machina - except that the God Machine made total sense in its proper environment. Those were religious plays, and the playwright would have been lynched if the god hadn't shown up at the end.


two possibilities occur to me (only because I don't have the devious mind some of you possess). (1) Mike sent pinaces, sting ships LACs whatever, with boarding crews to take over all the hulls orbiting Mesa, had the tac teams "modify" all the relevant sensor logs to show what the dastardly Manties wanted them to show and threatened anyone who spilled the beans with instant retribution. or (2) It was the Nasty Audubon Ballroom setting off the last of their bombs. The ones they managed to smuggle through customs and hid in inconspicuous places like .. IDK, maybe remote uninhabited wildlife refuge islands and equally remote polar weather stations. The rest were in freighters or platforms awaiting transshipment to the planet.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The imagination has to be trained into foresight and empathy.
Ursula K. LeGuinn

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Top
Re: How much orbital traffic does Mesa have? (ToF TextEv)
Post by jdtinIA   » Fri Oct 06, 2017 4:33 pm

jdtinIA
Lieutenant (Junior Grade)

Posts: 49
Joined: Sun Mar 13, 2016 10:21 pm

GregD wrote:Torch of Freedom, Chapter 45, 3rd paragraph:
Just routine. By now, two weeks later, Trimm had only a vague memory of having done an additional check on the Hali Sowle. That was in the records, of course. But she was no more likely to check old records for no reason—the volume of traffic in and out of Mesa was truly enormous—than she would be to start going to work with a hop, skip and a jump rather than taking the perfectly functional tube.


This was for a ship in planetary obit, nowhere near the Terminus.

Torch of Freedom, Chapter 54:
Among the other cybernetic systems which were damaged were those of Mesan customs. The damage was . . . odd, and seemingly quirky.
E.D. Trimm stared at the main screen in her operations center, unable to believe what she was seeing. All the many ships were still shown. They could still track any of them, whether approaching or leaving or in orbit. Presumably, if they scrambled furiously, they could open up manual lines of communications if any of the ships was in danger of colliding with another.
But the rest of the information was lost. Gone. Vanished.
"Which ship is which?" she half-wailed.
"I can still figure out tonnages," said Gansükh Blomqvist. "I . . . think."
"Oh, wonderful. My day is complete."
...
"There goes another one, E.D. What do you want me to do?"
Helplessly, Trimm stared at the screen. Yet another ship was leaving orbit. That was hardly unusual, in and of itself, given the traffic that came in and out of the Mesan system. But there were now at least twice as many ships leaving as there normally would have been.
Whatever had happened down on the surface of the planet to have caused this chaos, it had obviously spooked a lot of ship captains.
She still had no idea which ship was which. But—for once—that jackass Blomqvist had proved to be useful. His jury-rigged system for gauging ship tonnages seemed to be working pretty well. So at least E.D. could separate the big boys from the flotsam and jetsam.
"What's their mass?"
He studied the screen for a few seconds. "I make it about a million tons. Give or take a quarter of a million, you understand."
Trimm waved her hand. "Doesn't matter. It's a small fry. No point in worrying about it with everything else on our plate. I'm not sending out what few pinnaces we have available to check anything smaller than four million tons."


So they have 3+ pinnaces, and they're saving them for questionable 4 million ton + freighters. Which means they have to have at least 3, and almost assuredly more, 4 million ton + freighters in the vicinity.

That makes me think they probably have a dozen+ 1 million ton or less freighters in orbit at the start of the fun.

Unless the GA deliberately kicks those ships out, they're not going to want to leave without cargo. Which is why I assume there's multiple non-GA ships sitting in orbit when the final MAlign bombs go off. None of whom will have seen any missiles fired.





What missiles? The "seccies" didn't use any missiles before, why should they start now? All the explosions were caused by the seccies smuggling the bombs ( provided of course by the GA ) into their target areas.
Top

Return to Honorverse