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“Dark Fall” by David Weber

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“Dark Fall” by David Weber
Post by DrakBibliophile   » Thu Sep 13, 2018 10:58 pm

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Is available on the Baen Books site. :D

https://www.baen.com/darkfall
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Paul Howard (Alias Drak Bibliophile)
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Sometimes The Dragon Wins! [Polite Dragon Smile]
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Re: “Dark Fall” by David Weber
Post by ksandgren   » Thu Sep 13, 2018 11:03 pm

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Thank You, Drak!
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Re: “Dark Fall” by David Weber
Post by JohnRoth   » Fri Sep 14, 2018 12:32 am

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Excellent!

Thank you for pointing it out, Drak.

I have only one nit to point out. The Calvin is in the L1 point, not the L5 point if it's where the story says. And if it's there, it isn't there, if you get my drift. The L1, 2 and 3 points are dynamically unstable; there is no way something could be located at one of them without some kind of station-keeping drive.

Darn it, I pointed this out on the first snippets. Was it too much to expect it to be fixed?

Edit: Oops - make that the L1 point, not the L2 point.
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Re: “Dark Fall” by David Weber
Post by JohnRoth   » Fri Sep 14, 2018 12:39 am

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The description, of course, brings up an intriguing idea. I note that the description of The Twins says it's about 60 ly from anything. Wouldn't it be rich if Refuge and The Twins were next door neighbors? Can you imagine the level of apoplexy on Darius when the location of Bolthole is finally revealed?
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Re: “Dark Fall” by David Weber
Post by Galactic Sapper   » Fri Sep 14, 2018 7:01 am

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A second quibble:

Section V compares Mountain Fort to "moderate-sized town on Nouveau Paris", but isn't Nouveau Paris the name of the city and Haven the name of the planet?

Also, I'm glad to see my assumption that Bolthole was literally a hole to bolt through was accurate.
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Re: “Dark Fall” by David Weber
Post by kzt   » Fri Sep 14, 2018 10:27 am

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Galactic Sapper wrote:A second quibble:

Section V compares Mountain Fort to "moderate-sized town on Nouveau Paris", but isn't Nouveau Paris the name of the city and Haven the name of the planet?

Also, I'm glad to see my assumption that Bolthole was literally a hole to bolt through was accurate.

There is also a mention that the largest city on the planet had a population of a quarter million. With 2 billion people? With 1.6 billion people earth had many cities larger than that in 1900. A somewhat random list: London was 6 million, nyc was 4.3 million, Berlin 1.9 million, Chicago 1.6, Tokyo was 1.5 million, Philadelphia was 1.2 million.
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Re: “Dark Fall” by David Weber
Post by TFLYTSNBN   » Fri Sep 14, 2018 10:39 am

TFLYTSNBN

Why were the early colony ships not outfitted with equipment to establish an off planet society? Habitable planets are nice, but they are complex ecosystems that can be extremely unpredictable. The plague on Manticore is but one example. Planetary ecosystems can also be damaged by industrial activities. Even if humans are good stewerds with their environment and control pollution, eventually just the waste heat from industrial processes becomes problematic. Humanity is now within about two orders of magnitude of generating enough waste heat to significantly affect the Earth. Barring a catastrophic societal collapse, we will be there within a century.

Some may recall the L-5 Society that argued that Space is the Place for humananity's heavy industry. The Earth should be reserved for a park, living space and food production. The Honorverse is the same way.

It would make enormous sense if the early colony ships established a foothold in space to build up their industry and population before venturing down to the planet and its unpredictable dangers.

Then again, if the original colonistshad been content to live in space, they never would have left Sol system.
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Re: “Dark Fall” by David Weber
Post by Joat42   » Fri Sep 14, 2018 10:59 am

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TFLYTSNBN wrote:Why were the early colony ships not outfitted with equipment to establish an off planet society? Habitable planets are nice, but they are complex ecosystems that can be extremely unpredictable. The plague on Manticore is but one example. Planetary ecosystems can also be damaged by industrial activities. Even if humans are good stewerds with their environment and control pollution, eventually just the waste heat from industrial processes becomes problematic. Humanity is now within about two orders of magnitude of generating enough waste heat to significantly affect the Earth. Barring a catastrophic societal collapse, we will be there within a century.

Some may recall the L-5 Society that argued that Space is the Place for humananity's heavy industry. The Earth should be reserved for a park, living space and food production. The Honorverse is the same way.

It would make enormous sense if the early colony ships established a foothold in space to build up their industry and population before venturing down to the planet and its unpredictable dangers.

Then again, if the original colonists ad been content to live in space, they never would have left Sol system.

In the novella they had to fight to even get the ship built in the first place and adding the cost (and space) for off world base building may not have been possible politically and economically.

That probably means they only had a limited "goodie bag" with them that was geared towards establishing a colony on a planet plus the colony ships only have a limited life span before they start to break down and we know that Calvin's Hope was nearing it's EOL.

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Re: “Dark Fall” by David Weber
Post by TFLYTSNBN   » Fri Sep 14, 2018 12:18 pm

TFLYTSNBN

Joat42 wrote:
TFLYTSNBN wrote:Why were the early colony ships not outfitted with equipment to establish an off planet society? Habitable planets are nice, but they are complex ecosystems that can be extremely unpredictable. The plague on Manticore is but one example. Planetary ecosystems can also be damaged by industrial activities. Even if humans are good stewerds with their environment and control pollution, eventually just the waste heat from industrial processes becomes problematic. Humanity is now within about two orders of magnitude of generating enough waste heat to significantly affect the Earth. Barring a catastrophic societal collapse, we will be there within a century.

Some may recall the L-5 Society that argued that Space is the Place for humananity's heavy industry. The Earth should be reserved for a park, living space and food production. The Honorverse is the same way.

It would make enormous sense if the early colony ships established a foothold in space to build up their industry and population before venturing down to the planet and its unpredictable dangers.

Then again, if the original colonists ad been content to live in space, they never would have left Sol system.

In the novella they had to fight to even get the ship built in the first place and adding the cost (and space) for off world base building may not have been possible politically and economically.

That probably means they only had a limited "goodie bag" with them that was geared towards establishing a colony on a planet plus the colony ships only have a limited life span before they start to break down and we know that Calvin's Hope was nearing it's EOL.


Point well taken.

The opperating life of a machine is generally dependant on the capacity factor that it operates at. An interstellar colony ship using a fusion rocket operates at something like PettaWatt (1eex15 watts) to Exawatt (1eex18 watts) power level. Throttle it back to a mere Terrawatt (1eex12 watts) and it should last a long time.
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Re: “Dark Fall” by David Weber
Post by TFLYTSNBN   » Fri Sep 14, 2018 1:09 pm

TFLYTSNBN

Did anyone else check Weber's math on the impact energy?
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