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Dahak the massive

Fans of Colin Maclntyre and the great starship Dahak should take a minute to stop in here for discussions about one of David's best-loved series.
Re: Dahak the massive
Post by thinkstoomuch   » Thu Mar 03, 2011 10:17 pm

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IIRC, in the Lensman series, one planet (I think it was called Medon) was re-purposed AS a starship with the usage of specialised drives and it made an intergalactic voyage.

So, a planet starship. Not a planet-sized starship, but a planet that WAS a starship.

Nowhere near the Ringworld in size, but it fits the mobility critereon AND appears directly (IE not a mere background reference) in story.

Did the Puppeteer planets appear actually in-story, or were they just referenced?

Awaiting comments.[/quote]

Not only that but in one forget which (maybe Second Stage Lensman) Boskone had an invasion fleet that had 7 planets as a core of a fleet. Promptly destroyed by a sunbeam though.

T2M

Probably my favorite series.
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Re: Dahak the massive
Post by Grashtel   » Fri Mar 04, 2011 11:59 am

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Michael Everett wrote:Did the Puppeteer planets appear actually in-story, or were they just referenced?

Louis Wu and company visited the Puppeteer planets prior to heading off to the Ringworld.

The biggest ship I can think of is the ship (it is IIRC never given any actual name) from Marrow by Robert Reed. It is the size of a large gas giant planet, upwards of five billion years old (and possibly older than the current universe), and has a Mars sized planet hidden inside of it.
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Re: Dahak the massive
Post by featherwinglove   » Mon Mar 07, 2011 6:47 pm

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A world has been kicking around in my head where Dahak would be classified as an N-class "mercury", but of course, this world's physics are incompatible with Dahak's. The largest ship I have in this world so far is an intergalactic ark with masses 720kSM loaded / 600kSM operational empty. kSM stands for kilo-solarmass (i.e.: fully loaded, seven hundred twenty thousand times the mass of the sun.) It has a diameter of 1.5AU, a steady cruising speed (i.e. antimatter production balanced) of 4200c, and capable of running 6000c at flank speed. Its population (only about 10% of which is actually "crew" serving the vessel's operating functions and public services) is about 10^30 members. It is designed to take on fully industrialized galaxies. Originally, it was designed as a flying factory and functions mostly around fleet support, but the target enemy galaxy (some 600 million light years from its port) had shielding that was detected early during this vessel's construction.

A previous vessel of considerably different design was much further along when these galactic shields were discovered. It was 600/480kSM in mass, 2AU long and 1AU in diameter being mostly cylindrical (the larger one is a truncated cone about equal in length and diameter at 1.5AU.) The second vessel, originally similar to the first in design was modified when its "factory spine" was barely operational. Its design was completely changed to focus on quasar blasters (weapons comparable to jets from quasars like M87 Virgo, but laced with directional annihilation bombs massing about 150Tt each (teratonnes). The first vessel was nearly complete, and had quasar blasters designed for fighting other arks, not galactic shields (at the time it was conceived, the largest ark combatants massed 60-80kSM and the first could easily take on its own mass in them.) The first vessel was stuck with its quasar blasters as launched, and modified its magazines, turret traverse gear and logistics systems en route to its target so that the turrets could be locked to a near axial position and the quasar blasters fired continuously. The second vessel's quasar blasters came in two sets, one that was fixed and the other, smaller set was turreted. The large, fixed set sees more use since the huge fleet "jams" (i.e.: uses force beams to prevent an enemy from travelling FTL) an enemy ark far enough away that they can aim the whole ship and fire the fixed array. The enemy ark rarely gets away after that first hit. The big arks are always in a hurry to rush off to their next galaxy are enemy ark target trying to get to the galaxy they are protecting. They usually leave a fleet behind to mop up the wounded enemy after doing enough damage to the arks to immobilize them.

An immobilized ark can still be a major pain, since with its onboard industrial capability, it is able to rebuild its engines and re-engineer the remaining engines into a configuration that allows it to FTL, usually at some considerable speed. Such a ship must retain its industry and power systems (invariably buried deep in the core and distributed in several other major nodes), restore its defenses (which, in the best case scenario, are deliberately shut down to play possum), and then mobilize the hull (or what's left of it, not always in one piece.) The remaining fleet is there specifically to defeat such efforts. The result can be a regional war, often hundreds of thousands of light-years out in intergalactic space where the injured ark is the only piece of real estate anyone is interested in, that will last thousands of years.

It would really stink to live one's entire life in an ark siege out in the intergalactic boonies, with far more significant action elsewhere in the universe, and unable to participate, or even to learn much about those. Wouldn't it suck to live your whole life where the closest thing to a fresh air outdoor environment (such as the environmental deck of an ark) is a memory, or a generations-old video album (or the unpressurized skeleton of an environmental deck on a disabled ark?) Wouldn't it be an interesting novel to raise a family in a gluon steel box, hoping that _maybe_ they'll get the warp drive working again during the lifetime of your children? The sort of injustice-triggered indignant hatred I get thinking about this sort of situation is what often makes me read the next chapter in a novel, as it did with Empire From the Ashes.

Terry
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Re: Dahak the massive
Post by Bhrymm   » Sat Mar 12, 2011 6:39 pm

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Howard T. Map-addict wrote:The Ringworld is not a ship,
it is a fixed-position artifact,


Keep reading...
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Re: Dahak the massive
Post by Alyeska   » Thu Mar 24, 2011 11:55 pm

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Err, lets see, I remember at lest one giant battleship mentioned in the humanx universe, Flinx in flux, or something like that, where part of the story has him onboard a battleship the size of a planet.

The uplift series most of the major groups where running around with battleships the size of moons.
There are a few others but I do not remember the details all that well right at the momant, ohh yes, theres one, a short story in the ringworld universe. A ship that was built around a, I beleave, nutron star, that was used as a weapon.
Oh goodness, that reminds me, I don't even remember the name of the book, I read it like 30 years ago, where thay had a ship the size of a planet. At the end, thay offered to build a couple extra decks to the planet thay stoped off at.

Alyeska
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Re: Dahak the massive
Post by robert132   » Thu Apr 07, 2011 9:03 pm

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zuluwiz wrote:Some of the Berserker machines were quite large. Not sure if they'd qualify as planetoids though.


I'm something of a fan of the Berserker series. As I recall while most were "ship sized" ranging from small probes to superdreadnought many were several kilometers (or miles depending which side of the pond you're on) long, in essence asteroids themselves, sometimes constructed from or built into asteroids. I could picture a "mother ship" or berserker automated construction and repair base approaching Dahak's size.
****

Just my opinion of course and probably not worth the paper it's not written on.
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Re: Dahak the massive
Post by zuluwiz   » Thu Apr 07, 2011 10:48 pm

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I don't remember which of the books it was in, but I do recall reading about a construction center for the large machines being planet-based.

{Edit: talking about the Berserkers, of course}
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Re: Dahak the massive
Post by Rook13   » Thu May 05, 2011 3:12 am

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Alyeska wrote:Err, lets see, I remember at lest one giant battleship mentioned in the humanx universe, Flinx in flux, or something like that, where part of the story has him onboard a battleship the size of a planet.

Snipped

Alyeska


Yes, a Tar-Aiym gunship disguised as a gas giant. Not Flinx in Flux but Reunion (had to look it up myself). Somewhat reminiscent of Dahak-an AI warship.

I also recall mention of the Dyson Sphere, which enveloped an entire star system (though it's not a ship). Other possibilities occur, but many have rather less exterior volume than interior volume (the Tardis & the Galaxy from MIB come to mind), leading to rather unimpressive appearances.
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Re: Dahak the massive
Post by Brom O'Berin   » Mon May 09, 2011 7:48 pm

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In another AD Foster short "With Friends Like These", the once-trapped-but-now-freed humans had turned their planet into a starship ...

JH Schmitz enabled Karres the planet to travel the stars ...


Rook13 wrote:
Alyeska wrote:Err, lets see, I remember at lest one giant battleship mentioned in the humanx universe, Flinx in flux, or something like that, where part of the story has him onboard a battleship the size of a planet.

Snipped

Alyeska


Yes, a Tar-Aiym gunship disguised as a gas giant. Not Flinx in Flux but Reunion (had to look it up myself). Somewhat reminiscent of Dahak-an AI warship.

I also recall mention of the Dyson Sphere, which enveloped an entire star system (though it's not a ship). Other possibilities occur, but many have rather less exterior volume than interior volume (the Tardis & the Galaxy from MIB come to mind), leading to rather unimpressive appearances.
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Re: Dahak the massive
Post by Michael Everett   » Tue May 10, 2011 3:28 am

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Hah! I can top that!

In the Star Trek universe (expanded), there's a short story where a holographic crew (except for Data, who's real, but still an android) made up of duplicates of the most capable crews in Federation history pilot a shapechanging Enterprise on a multi-million year mission between galaxies. How does this top everything else?
Because they finally make contact with the Milky Way again, finding that the entire galaxy and all beings in it have become a type of gestalt entity. And when they leave (with Data now transformed into a human), the ENTIRE GALAXY follows them! Yes, a travelling galaxy which is a (sort-of) life-form in its own right.

Mobile galaxy.

Beat that.
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