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

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Re: How much orbital traffic does Mesa have? (ToF TextEv)
Post by Vince   » Sun Oct 08, 2017 9:30 am

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kzt wrote:
Vince wrote:There is no reason for the dispatch boats under contract to news services to leave, unless the news service is willing to be scooped on the news stories. The dispatch boats might be in parking orbits farther out than normal for interstellar ships actively loading and unloading passengers and/or cargo, but they will still be there. Keep in mind that while the 'Ballroom' was accused of using nukes, not one was delivered by any kind of surface-to-orbit missile (a nuke in the trunk of an aircar in atmosphere does not count as a STO missile), which is what would be required to hit an undocked spaceship in planetary orbit.

The reporters can stay if they want. But the Manties normal thing has been to shut down all traffic for some time. Like many weeks at best. This assumes there isn't an actual battle. In any case, dispatch boats are very damn expensive and extremely fragile.

A comment regarding dispatch boats that are supporting newsies (which says that it is standard operating procedure for the dispatch boat to stay in orbit around where the newsie is):
Mission of Honor, Chapter 12 wrote:“Good luck with that,” Helen murmured.
As I was about to ask,” Abigail continued, giving her younger friend a ferocious glare, “how are things going dirtside, Helga?”
“As frantically as ever.” Helga grimaced, took a sip from her own beer stein, then sighed. “I guess it’s inevitable. Unfortunately, it’s only going to get worse. I don’t think anyone in the entire Quadrant’s ever seen this many dispatch boats in orbit around a single planet before!”
All three of her listeners grimaced back at her in understanding.
“I don’t suppose we can really blame them,” she went on, “even if I do want to shoot the next newsy I see on sight! But exactly how they expect Minister Krietzmann to get anything done when they keep hounding him for ‘statements’ and ‘background interviews’ is more than I can imagine.”
Italics are the author's, boldface is my emphasis.

As for Manties shutting down traffic, they can't shut down traffic until Mike and Tourville come over the hyper wall at Mesa. Assuming that they are able to effectively shut down traffic immediately (prevent any traffic in Mesa orbit from leaving the system--not traffic already under way outbound towards the hyper limit), no traffic will be allowed to leave until the GA forces have full control of the situation (surrender of Mesa--both corporate/political leadership and the armed/security forces).

And while dispatch boats are expensive, they are not nearly as expensive in the Honorverse as today's real life equivalents. Consider that multiple Honorverse news organizations can afford to either own & operate or charter dispatch boats. In today's terms, that would be like the AP, Reuters, UPI, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, NBC, etc, either owning or hiring large (20 passenger or larger) corporate jets or medium size yachts for their news reporters to get to where the story is and return their reporting back to the news headquarters--not just to move their corporation's upper echelons around for business or pleasure purposes.
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Re: How much orbital traffic does Mesa have? (ToF TextEv)
Post by Castenea   » Sun Oct 08, 2017 11:36 am

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Vince wrote:As for Manties shutting down traffic, they can't shut down traffic until Mike and Tourville come over the hyper wall at Mesa. Assuming that they are able to effectively shut down traffic immediately (prevent any traffic in Mesa orbit from leaving the system--not traffic already under way outbound towards the hyper limit), no traffic will be allowed to leave until the GA forces have full control of the situation (surrender of Mesa--both corporate/political leadership and the armed/security forces).

And while dispatch boats are expensive, they are not nearly as expensive in the Honorverse as today's real life equivalents. Consider that multiple Honorverse news organizations can afford to either own & operate or charter dispatch boats. In today's terms, that would be like the AP, Reuters, UPI, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, NBC, etc, either owning or hiring large (20 passenger or larger) corporate jets or medium size yachts for their news reporters to get to where the story is and return their reporting back to the news headquarters--not just to move their corporation's upper echelons around for business or pleasure purposes.

Vince I think you have part of what gives the aura of beliveability to the lack of useful info from multiple sources.

1) Any Ship with hot nodes has been doing the bug out boogie since 10th fleet came over the Hyper wall.
2) Very few merchants (or dispatch boats) have sensors that are better than modern Manty missiles mount.
3) Many of the ships in orbit with cold nodes have their sensors off, or are unmanned.

For those ships which do have sensors that are online, The sensor recording would have to be gotten within a confined time, as due to data storage reasons, there will be a default setting from the manufacturer where they are considered too old, and then overwritten.
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Re: How much orbital traffic does Mesa have? (ToF TextEv)
Post by Vince   » Sun Oct 08, 2017 4:33 pm

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Castenea wrote:
Vince wrote:As for Manties shutting down traffic, they can't shut down traffic until Mike and Tourville come over the hyper wall at Mesa. Assuming that they are able to effectively shut down traffic immediately (prevent any traffic in Mesa orbit from leaving the system--not traffic already under way outbound towards the hyper limit), no traffic will be allowed to leave until the GA forces have full control of the situation (surrender of Mesa--both corporate/political leadership and the armed/security forces).

And while dispatch boats are expensive, they are not nearly as expensive in the Honorverse as today's real life equivalents. Consider that multiple Honorverse news organizations can afford to either own & operate or charter dispatch boats. In today's terms, that would be like the AP, Reuters, UPI, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, NBC, etc, either owning or hiring large (20 passenger or larger) corporate jets or medium size yachts for their news reporters to get to where the story is and return their reporting back to the news headquarters--not just to move their corporation's upper echelons around for business or pleasure purposes.

Vince I think you have part of what gives the aura of beliveability to the lack of useful info from multiple sources.

1) Any Ship with hot nodes has been doing the bug out boogie since 10th fleet came over the Hyper wall.
2) Very few merchants (or dispatch boats) have sensors that are better than modern Manty missiles mount.
3) Many of the ships in orbit with cold nodes have their sensors off, or are unmanned.

For those ships which do have sensors that are online, The sensor recording would have to be gotten within a confined time, as due to data storage reasons, there will be a default setting from the manufacturer where they are considered too old, and then overwritten.

1) The only ships we have seen in the Honorverse that are willing to sit in orbit with hot nodes have been either military, expecting trouble, preparing to get underway or needing to leave quickly with little notice (or a combination of some or all of the above):
On Basilisk Station, Chapter 26 wrote:"Commander Santos says we have a definite discrepancy here, Mr. McKeon," she said, and the exec nodded.
"Yes, Ma'am. I caught the last little bit of your conversation. And I've got something to add, too. Lieutenant Cardones and I have determined that Sirius's nodes are hot."
It was Honor's turn to feel her eyebrows rise. "Could it be a systems test?"
"I don't think so, Ma'am. We're reading a full standby load on all the alpha and beta nodes on this side of her hull, fore and aft both. A systems test would probably run up just the alphas or the betas, not both. And why should they test both the forward and after nodes simultaneously? Besides, the power level's held steady for over ten minutes now."
Honor leaned back to regard him pensively and saw her own thoughts flicker behind his gray eyes. There was no regulation against a ship's holding her impeller drive at standby in parking orbit, but it was almost unheard of. Power was relatively cheap aboard a starship, but even the best fusion plant needed reactor mass, and impeller energy demands were high, even at standby. Maintaining that sort of load when you didn't need to was a good way to run up your overhead. Nor was it good for the equipment. Your engineers couldn't carry out routine maintenance while the drive was hot, and the components themselves had limited design lives. Holding them at standby when you didn't need to would certainly reduce their life spans, and that, again, ran up overhead.
All of which meant no freighter captain would hold his drive at standby without a very compelling reason. But a warship's captain might. It took almost forty minutes to bring your impeller wedge up from a cold start; by starting with hot nodes, you could reduce that to little more than fifteen minutes.
Italics are the author's, boldface and underlined text is my emphasis.
Storm From the Shadows, Chapter 12 wrote:There never had been enough tugs, of course, and the situation was even worse now. Traditionally, three ready-duty tugs had been assigned to each of Manticore's space stations. Actually, there'd been seven—enough to keep three continually on call, three more at standby as backups, and one down for mantenance or overhaul. Despite the wear and tear on their impeller nodes, the trio of ready-duty tugs' nodes were always hot, ready for instant use. And, despite their relatively diminutive size, they had hugely powerful wedges, as well as gargantuan tractors. One of them could easily handle the unpowered mass of two, or even three, superdreadnoughts if it had to. And the reason their nodes were always hot was that one of their responsibilities was to maintain a safety watch over the space stations. Even without some sort of esoteric mind control to create a deliberate collision, there was always the possibility of an accidental collision as ships maneuvered under thrusters to dock with the station. So whenever a ship approached or departed from Hephaestus, Vulcan, or Weyland, one of the duty tugs was ready to intervene. And they were always ready to pounce on any random bits of space debris, as well.
Italics are the author's, boldface is my emphasis.
Storm From the Shadows, Chapter 43 wrote:Aldona Anisimovna reclined in a comfortable chair, eyes closed, while haunting strains of music filled the small, luxuriously appointed compartment. She didn't simply listen to the music; she absorbed it, as if all the skin on her body were one enormous receptor.

***Snip 10 Fleet's arrival, Byng's & New Tuscany's political leaders 'Oh Crap' moments, and Gold Peak's communications with Byng and New Tuscany***

"Oh, dear," Aldona Anisimovna murmured as she finished replaying the two messages her taps into the New Tuscan communications system had relayed to her yacht. "This is looking unpleasant, isn't it?"
The excitement of playing the Great Game was upon her once more, and her eyes gleamed with malicious satisfaction as she contemplated the Manticoran demands. This wasn't working out exactly according to her playbook, but then, things seldom did. And even if it wasn't perfect, she was confident it was close enough to get the job done.
Her own analysis of the players suggested there was a better than even chance the New Tuscans would choose to comply with the demands levied against them. That was unfortunate, but the speed of the Manticoran response made it much more probable than she really cared to admit. On the other hand, it didn't come as a total surprise, either. She'd hoped to have more time in hand, more time to work at binding New Tuscany firmly enough into the Alignment's web to make it impossible for Vézien to bolt. But the space station's destruction had put the New Tuscans' backs up more than the mission planners had hoped, and she'd always estimated that the Manties were going to respond more quickly than either the New Tuscans or Byng anticipated. Unlike either of them, she'd assumed from the beginning that the Manties would be intelligent enough to leave a watchdog out near the hyper limit, and the fact that no one in New Tuscany had detected any such watchdog hadn't shaken that assumption.
That was one reason she'd moved out to her yacht this early. Keeping herself safely out of the New Tuscan authorities' reach in the event of a premature Manticoran arrival (and any messy little details associated therewith) had seemed only prudent. And she'd always intended to be safely aboard when the Manties really did arrive, since it was no part of her plan to be stuck in New Tuscany when Manticore finished kicking Byng's ass and took possession of the system.
The only real question in her mind at this point was whether or not Byng was going to have his posterior kicked as soundly as the Alignment hoped before he surrendered to Gold Peak's demands. The idiot clearly still had no idea of what he was up against. Given his disposition and his attitude towards Manties in general, that meant he was unlikely to give in until he'd been properly . . . convinced. Which she felt quite confident Gold Peak would be simply delighted to do.
"I think it's time to go, Kyrillos," she told her bodyguard.
"Yes, Ma'am," Taliadoros replied. "I'll tell the captain immediately."
"Thank you," Anisimovna said, and leaned back, contemplating the possibilities once again.
Her yacht was scarcely the only vessel departing New Tuscany orbit. The word had already gone out over the public information channels, and no civilian vessel wanted to be anywhere in the vicinity if it was possible warships were going to be firing missiles at each other. In fact, New Tuscan traffic control had actually ordered all civilians to clear the volume of space around the planet as a precautionary measure. That was another reason Anisimovna had made certain she was already aboard ship. And it was why the "yacht's" impeller nodes had been kept permanently hot. It meant they could get underway immediately yet be safely hidden in the underbrush of the other evacuees, which was precisely what she intended to do.
I wonder if we'll still be in our sensor range of the planet when the first missile flies? she thought. In a way, I'll be sorry to miss it if we're not. But I don't suppose anyone can have everything.
Italics are the author's, boldface and underlined text is my emphasis.

2) Enough data points, even from less capable sensor suites, from different points of view, or from the same point of view over time, can be combined to produce a much more detailed picture. This is done today by both telescopes looking at planets and stars, as well as smartphone camera software. Also, sensor resolution is a combination of sensor sensitivity and distance both today (the Hubble Space Telescope, although equipped with a larger aperture light gathering mirror and much more sensitive sensors, cannot match the smaller aperture lenses and less sensitive sensors mounted on the Voyager space probes, when the Hubble is in Earth orbit and the Voyagers are doing a planetary flyby) and in the Honorverse:
Storm From the Shadows, Chapter 48 wrote:"I might not have expressed myself quite that, um . . . frankly," al-Fanudahi said with a grin. "Not that I don't think the sentiment was entirely appropriate, of course. But I believe we can both take Byng's less than stellar intellect as a given. I'm more interested in your impressions of the data itself."
"The data itself?" Teague's eyebrows furrowed in genuine surprise. He only nodded, and she considered the question for several seconds, then shrugged.
"It seems fairly straightforward to me, actually," she said finally. "Something—or someone, rather—blew up the New Tuscans' space station, Admiral Byng clearly pani—"
She paused, deciding there were some verbs a Frontier Fleet Captain shouldn't be using about an admiral even if he was a Battle Fleet officer.
"Admiral Byng clearly concluded that the Manties had been responsible for it," she said instead, "and responded to the perceived threat. I wasn't there, of course, but my initial impression is that he responded too quickly and . . . too forcefully, but that's not really my call."
Al-Fanudahi cocked his head, his expression skeptical, and Teague felt the tips of her ears heat. While she was undoubtedly correct that it wasn't her place to make any final judgments on Byng's actions, providing the analysis on which those judgments would be based was supposed to be one of Operational Analysis' primary functions. The fact that its analysis was more likely to be used to whitewash someone than to nail actual cases of obvious incompetence was one of those little secrets polite people didn't talk about in public. On the other hand, failing in its responsibility to report unpalatable truths was hardly OpAn's only fault. They were also supposed to be the office which identified and analyzed potential foreign threats or new developments which might require modifications of the SLN's operational doctrine, and they didn't do very much of that, either. In fact, OpAn did a lot less of either of those things than al-Fanudahi—and Teague—thought it ought to be doing, although Teague (unlike al-Fanudahi) wasn't prepared to make her views in that regard officially explicit.
Not unless I want to spend the next twenty or thirty years as a captain, too, at any rate.
"That's not what I was talking about, either," the Battle Fleet officer said after a moment. "Or, not directly, anyway."
"Then just what are you talking about, Daud?" she demanded.
"They provided us with really good sensor resolution, don't you think?" he responded—rather obliquely, she thought.
"So?"
"I mean, it was really good resolution," he pointed out.

Teague sat back in her chair, wondering where he thought he was going with this, and it was his turn to sigh.
"Didn't it occur to you to wonder how they happened to be able to provide us with that kind of data?" he asked.
"No, it didn't." She shrugged. "After all, what diff—"
She broke off abruptly, her eyes widening, and al-Fanudahi nodded. There were very few traces of his earlier humor in his expression now, she noticed.
"I've put their data through the computers half a dozen times," he said, "and it keeps coming out the same way. [b]That's shipboard-quality data. Actually, it's pretty damned good even for first-line shipboard sensors. Better than anything smaller than a battlecruiser—or maybe a heavy cruiser—should have been pulling in. So where did they get it?"[/b]
Teague said nothing for several seconds, then shook herself and swallowed a couple of more spoonfuls of her rapidly cooling bisque. She was only buying time, and she knew he knew it, but he waited patiently, anyway.
"I don't know," she admitted finally. "Are you thinking that maybe it's too good? That the quality of the data is evidence it's actually a fake?"
"No, it's not a fake," he said flatly. "No way. They'd have to know we're going to get our own ships' data in the end. If they'd faked it, we'd find out eventually, and I don't think we'd be particularly amused by their little hoax."
"Then . . ." she said slowly.
"Then I only see four real possibilities, Irene." He held up his left hand, counting his points off on its fingers as he made them. "First, the Manties have somehow developed a shipboard sensor that can get this kind of resolution from outside missile range of our ships. Second, the Manties have some sort of recon platform whose stealth is so good that none of our sensor crews noticed it was there even at what must have been point-blank range. Third, they've managed to come up with some kind of stealth so good that they got an entire starship that close without anyone noticing. Or, fourth, Admiral Byng opted to blow three Manticoran destroyers out of space without warning while allowing a fourth ship that must also have been well inside his missile range to sail merrily on its way. Now, which of those do you think is most likely?"
She felt a distinct sinking sensation as she gazed at him.
"It had to be a recon platform," she said.
"My own conclusion, exactly." He nodded. "But that leads us to another interesting little question. I'm not familiar with any recon platform in our inventory that would have pulled in data this good even if it had been inside energy range, must less missile range. Are you?"

"No," she said unhappily.
"I'm trying to remind myself that we still don't have anything from Byng," al-Fanudahi said. "Maybe he did pick up something and then went ahead and fired anyway, but I find that difficult to believe even of him. And here's another interesting little point to consider. Even if it was a remote platform, there had to be someone out there monitoring its take. I'm inclined to wonder if even Josef Byng—and, by the way, I think you were doing cockroaches a disservice there a minute ago—would be stupid enough to kill three destroyers and their entire crews while he knew he was on camera!"
Italics are the author's, boldface and underlined text is my emphasis.

While merchant sensor suites in the Honorverse are much less sensitive than military ones, a merchantman in Mesa orbit will have a much closer look at the planet than most distances ships in the Honorverse deal with. For example, energy range in the Honorverse is about 400,000 km. For comparison, the distance from the Earth to the moon is only 384,400 km. And geosynchronous Earth orbit is only 35,786 km above the equator.

3) No manned ship in planetary orbit in the Honorverse is going to have its sensors offline, if only for local traffic collision avoidance (via communications with approaching craft under power to warn them off) and docking control. And a ship in orbit that is unmanned is considered abandoned, and is legally salvage:
The Shadow of Saganami, Chapter 50 wrote:"You do realize, Skipper, that you're shooting craps with your career?"
"Nonsense, Ansten." Terekhov shook his head with a half-smile, but FitzGerald wasn't buying it.
"You told me, once, that you might need me to warn you that what you had in mind was a little risky," the XO reminded him. "Well, the Sollies're going to go ape-shit . . . and that may be the good news!"
The captain and his exec sat in Hexapuma's number two pinnace, and FitzGerald pointed out the viewport at the mountainous bulk of the Kalokainos Shipping-owned freighter Copenhagen.
"I think the admiralty courts call this 'piracy,'" he said.
"Nonsense," Terekhov replied airily. "This is a simple and obvious case of salvage of an abandoned vessel."
"Which you arranged to have 'abandoned' in the first place!"
Terekhov was gazing out the viewport, watching Copenhagen draw steadily closer. Privately, he was prepared to admit FitzGerald had a point. Several of them, in fact. But what he was prepared to admit to himself was quite different from what he was prepared to admit to anyone else.
Italics are the author's, boldface is my emphasis.

As for how long merchantmen sensor recordings are kept, I would expect several hours (if not days) at the very least just for insurance purposes.
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History does not repeat itself so much as it echoes.
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Re: How much orbital traffic does Mesa have? (ToF TextEv)
Post by Castenea   » Sun Oct 08, 2017 6:27 pm

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Vince wrote:3) No manned ship in planetary orbit in the Honorverse is going to have its sensors offline, if only for local traffic collision avoidance (via communications with approaching craft under power to warn them off) and docking control. And a ship in orbit that is unmanned is considered abandoned, and is legally salvage:
The Shadow of Saganami, Chapter 50 wrote:"You do realize, Skipper, that you're shooting craps with your career?"
"Nonsense, Ansten." Terekhov shook his head with a half-smile, but FitzGerald wasn't buying it.
"You told me, once, that you might need me to warn you that what you had in mind was a little risky," the XO reminded him. "Well, the Sollies're going to go ape-shit . . . and that may be the good news!"
The captain and his exec sat in Hexapuma's number two pinnace, and FitzGerald pointed out the viewport at the mountainous bulk of the Kalokainos Shipping-owned freighter Copenhagen.
"I think the admiralty courts call this 'piracy,'" he said.
"Nonsense," Terekhov replied airily. "This is a simple and obvious case of salvage of an abandoned vessel."
"Which you arranged to have 'abandoned' in the first place!"
Terekhov was gazing out the viewport, watching Copenhagen draw steadily closer. Privately, he was prepared to admit FitzGerald had a point. Several of them, in fact. But what he was prepared to admit to himself was quite different from what he was prepared to admit to anyone else.
Italics are the author's, boldface is my emphasis.

As for how long merchantmen sensor recordings are kept, I would expect several hours (if not days) at the very least just for insurance purposes.

I forget the exact circumstances of Terekov's stunt, but under most circumstances there is a big difference between unmanned in an assigned parking orbit, and drifting well away from planet or other manned facilities. As your excerpt makes clear, if they had not gotten valuable info from the use of the ship Terekov effectively stole, his carer would have ended in a spectacular fashion shortly after Admiralty House heard what he had done (winning the battle of Monica also helped).

There is the other part of this, will the anchor watch have skill in reading sensors, or are they there to communicate which alarms are going off when calling for help, especially when the alarms do not pertain to their ship board specialty.
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Re: How much orbital traffic does Mesa have? (ToF TextEv)
Post by pappilon   » Mon Oct 09, 2017 3:24 am

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Castenea wrote:There is the other part of this, will the anchor watch have skill in reading sensors, or are they there to communicate which alarms are going off when calling for help, especially when the alarms do not pertain to their ship board specialty.

And from another book as a freighter blew up: none of their sensors were pointing in the right direction at the time. So you have less-than-military-grade sensors that may or may not have been offline, or monitored or recording anything at all. Most of whom have no reason whatsoever of monitoring or recording anything while floating in orbit with cold nodes: more urgently concerned with getting nodes on line and running for the hyper limit before missiles start flying. These MM guys routinely have their transponders offline, are not particularly monitoring the comms, have to be contacted several times coming into a system to turn on transponders.

And these people are going to have detailed sensor readings. Admiral Gold peak is going to have the prescience toknow she will need these recordings and prevent any ships from departing the system? Somehow I doubt it.
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The imagination has to be trained into foresight and empathy.
Ursula K. LeGuinn

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Re: How much orbital traffic does Mesa have? (ToF TextEv)
Post by Relax   » Mon Oct 09, 2017 8:18 am

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The real question,

1) Mesa is not a backwater planet
SO
2) News services should have no need to bring their own DB
Because
3) Logically speaking, I would expect there to be a DB service between planets on scheduled routes to distribute the electronic mail.
WHICH leads to WHY
4) There were HUGE NUMBERS of DB@Spindle, because they are a planet NOT on the standard DB service routes and the News services are not going to, on the fly, talk to each other and send out DB's to carry all of their news.
_________
Tally Ho!
Relax
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Re: How much orbital traffic does Mesa have? (ToF TextEv)
Post by pappilon   » Mon Oct 09, 2017 6:25 pm

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Relax wrote:The real question,

1) Mesa is not a backwater planet
SO
2) News services should have no need to bring their own DB
Because
3) Logically speaking, I would expect there to be a DB service between planets on scheduled routes to distribute the electronic mail.
WHICH leads to WHY
4) There were HUGE NUMBERS of DB@Spindle, because they are a planet NOT on the standard DB service routes and the News services are not going to, on the fly, talk to each other and send out DB's to carry all of their news.


IIRC It was the bargain QEIII struck with the newsies. Monica just happened and for operational security, they gave the newsies the story but asked them to not report for some specific time. Since the government has good credit with giving news and not wanting it immediately disseminated, it was agreed on condition that they have access to all appropriate parties in Spindle.
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The imagination has to be trained into foresight and empathy.
Ursula K. LeGuinn

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Re: How much orbital traffic does Mesa have? (ToF TextEv)
Post by Loren Pechtel   » Mon Oct 09, 2017 11:27 pm

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GregD wrote: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."


You have a bunch of ships that can say that no anti-ship missile hit the planet. The fact that it was nukes already says it wasn't a kinetic weapon. That does not rule out a bomb dropped by something stealthy, though.

However, if a bomb was inside anything on the ground the GA is exonerated, though. While nukes tend to vaporize what's nearby there still will be evidence. The thermal pulse is stopped by even quite thin material. Thus even if the material around the bomb is vaporized you can tell if there was something there by looking at the damage the thermal pulse did. (Look at the shadows baked into Hiroshima by the bomb.) If the bomb goes off indoors the pulse is attenuated. The buildings are substantial, while a KEW would go right through them an object moving slowly enough so it didn't leave a trail in the sky isn't going to.
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Re: How much orbital traffic does Mesa have? (ToF TextEv)
Post by Loren Pechtel   » Mon Oct 09, 2017 11:34 pm

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JohnRoth wrote: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.


I disagree. The GA knows the MAlign is out there and that they jumped down the rabbit hole. Whether anyone else knows this or not isn't going to change whether the GA continues to hunt them.

The nature of wormholes means that while the GA knows the MAlign is out there it may be quite some time before they can find them. They can't probe a well-defended wormhole and they don't know where in space it goes. If they don't get maps from somewhere it's going to be quite a search. I don't think it's the impossibility some on here think but it could take many years.

Thus your hook--a scout finally found them.

On the other hand, I don't think that's where the series is going. We have a Chekov's gun--those two Houdini evacuees we were following. While I have no idea what role they'll play they're going to do something and that says to me that the MAlign will be exposed from within rather than discovered from without.
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Re: How much orbital traffic does Mesa have? (ToF TextEv)
Post by Loren Pechtel   » Mon Oct 09, 2017 11:40 pm

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kzt wrote:
Vince wrote:Dispatch boats that are supporting news organizations are still going to be in Mesa orbit. Remember that a lot of newsies were covering the 'Ballroom' attacks and the Mesan attacks on the seccies, not just O'Hanrahan.

I suspect they will not.

They will leave. Dispatch boat are EXPENSIVE. A reporter might charter a jet to send them to an island to cover the soon to arrive force 5 hurricane, but the jet isn't going to be calmly parked at the airport when the 170 MPH winds arrive.


Manticore doesn't shoot at the press. There's nothing else there for them to shoot at. I would expect the dispatch boats to take up a high orbit (don't want to be nearby in case something gets blown to space debris) but there's no big reason to run away.
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