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Junction forts and Ultima Thule

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Junction forts and Ultima Thule
Post by Kurremkarmerruk   » Sun Jan 06, 2019 4:04 pm

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Apologies if this subject has been covered previously.

Seeing the coverage of NASA's flyby of Ultima Thule finally clicked something for me. This Oort Cloud object is six hours communication time away, thus six light-hours from Sol.

The Manticore Wormhole Junction is seven light-hours from Manticore-A.

Here's my question(s) for the forum:

Why can't they (and why haven't they) moved an Oort Cloud moon/moonlet/planetoid/asteroid near the Junction and used it as a fort?

We know from textev that gas giants have hyper limits due to gravitational distortion, but what is the hyper limit of, say, a 100km diameter moonlet?

We also know from textev that asteroids are used for RMN target practice, and some targets are totally destroyed.

Battle Armor is built/grown by nanobots; couldn't you plate a moonlet in battle armor to any depth you wanted?

Yes, yes, virtual bar and drink and all that, I feel welcome.
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Re: Junction forts and Ultima Thule
Post by zuluwiz   » Sun Jan 06, 2019 8:30 pm

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The Manticore System is a binary, 2 stars. the Oort cloud will be shaped differently than Sol's, not sure in what way, but differently.
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Re: Junction forts and Ultima Thule
Post by tlb   » Sun Jan 06, 2019 9:47 pm

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We also know that forts move around, so that they need not be in a place expected by an enemy. That could be more difficult with a moonlet.
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Re: Junction forts and Ultima Thule
Post by Kurremkarmerruk   » Sun Jan 06, 2019 10:30 pm

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zuluwiz wrote:The Manticore System is a binary, 2 stars. the Oort cloud will be shaped differently than Sol's, not sure in what way, but differently.



Sure, this was my first thought. But it just means our theoretical moonlet might not be handy, not that it doesn't exist. And for a society with grav technology, it can be moved. Maybe not quicky, but surely it can be moved.

tlb wrote:We also know that forts move around, so that they need not be in a place expected by an enemy. That could be more difficult with a moonlet.


This was my second thought, but the forts move because they need to fill holes in their coverage when one of them gets destroyed.
Can a moonlet be destroyed by Honorverse weapons?

Textev says IIRC the MWJ is a sphere ~1 light second (300,000km) in diameter, containing seven wormholes. This is light-speed-weapon distance. Textev says the forts stay ~1,000,000km from the junction. Put the moonlet directly between the junction and the primary at that distance, inside the resonance zone.

Just theorizing.
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Re: Junction forts and Ultima Thule
Post by Daryl   » Sun Jan 06, 2019 10:55 pm

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In Troy, John Ringo used a large asteroid as a fort near a wormhole . However Honorverse weapons are stronger than those in that universe.
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Re: Junction forts and Ultima Thule
Post by Fireflair   » Mon Jan 07, 2019 1:18 am

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Are you wanting to create a better fort for the worm holes or are you wanting to create a gravity well big enough to prevent hypering into the area?

For forts they could certainly put a moon there, grow whatever armor they wanted, etc etc. I'm fairly certain that was dismissed with for some reason or another. Most likely having to do with the forces involved with trying to move such a large object around during an actual battle. Better to have a moving fortress which generates a sidewall than a stationary (effectively during battle) fortress. Also a moon/moonlet wouldn't have the internal support and structuring to resist heavy weapons impacts on it's surface, I'd suspect.

If it's to create a small zone where nothing can hyper into, that could be done by moving it there, surely. But how would this screw with the wormholes? Would they still function. If it does mess with the wormholes why do it? In an all out war scenario where you're concerned about someone coming through a wormhole to destroy you they've got the area seeded with so many mines that you can virtually walk across them. The forts can decimate anyone coming through before they get sidewalls up.
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Re: Junction forts and Ultima Thule
Post by Theemile   » Mon Jan 07, 2019 9:35 am

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Kurremkarmerruk wrote:
zuluwiz wrote:The Manticore System is a binary, 2 stars. the Oort cloud will be shaped differently than Sol's, not sure in what way, but differently.



Sure, this was my first thought. But it just means our theoretical moonlet might not be handy, not that it doesn't exist. And for a society with grav technology, it can be moved. Maybe not quicky, but surely it can be moved.

tlb wrote:We also know that forts move around, so that they need not be in a place expected by an enemy. That could be more difficult with a moonlet.


This was my second thought, but the forts move because they need to fill holes in their coverage when one of them gets destroyed.
Can a moonlet be destroyed by Honorverse weapons?

Textev says IIRC the MWJ is a sphere ~1 light second (300,000km) in diameter, containing seven wormholes. This is light-speed-weapon distance. Textev says the forts stay ~1,000,000km from the junction. Put the moonlet directly between the junction and the primary at that distance, inside the resonance zone.

Just theorizing.



In 1900, forts were inside 1 million KM so their energy weapons could engage emerging ships. New generation forts sit back further and control FTL missile pods, but can move in further and engage directly if required.

Moonlets are routinely destroyed by Honorverse weapons - see the BC exercises in "The short victorious war", Honor's squadron just wandered over and targeted a few near Hancock for Energy weapon testing. Honorverse energy weapons could shred planets - not as easily as the Deathstar, but quite easily.
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RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: Junction forts and Ultima Thule
Post by TFLYTSNBN   » Mon Jan 07, 2019 2:07 pm

TFLYTSNBN

Theemile wrote:
Kurremkarmerruk wrote:



Sure, this was my first thought. But it just means our theoretical moonlet might not be handy, not that it doesn't exist. And for a society with grav technology, it can be moved. Maybe not quicky, but surely it can be moved.



This was my second thought, but the forts move because they need to fill holes in their coverage when one of them gets destroyed.
Can a moonlet be destroyed by Honorverse weapons?

Textev says IIRC the MWJ is a sphere ~1 light second (300,000km) in diameter, containing seven wormholes. This is light-speed-weapon distance. Textev says the forts stay ~1,000,000km from the junction. Put the moonlet directly between the junction and the primary at that distance, inside the resonance zone.

Just theorizing.



In 1900, forts were inside 1 million KM so their energy weapons could engage emerging ships. New generation forts sit back further and control FTL missile pods, but can move in further and engage directly if required.

Moonlets are routinely destroyed by Honorverse weapons - see the BC exercises in "The short victorious war", Honor's squadron just wandered over and targeted a few near Hancock for Energy weapon testing. Honorverse energy weapons could shred planets - not as easily as the Deathstar, but quite easily.



Weber obviously has not done the math on the energy requirements needed to pulverize even small asteroids much less planets. If 200 laserheads delivering some percentage of a 30 Megaton nuke can destroy as SD, then even SD sized grasers must have a pulse energy on the order of 3,000 megatons.
Probable crater depth and crater radius in hard asteroid rock is about 2 miles.
To pulverize even a moderately large asteroid that is say 20 km in diameter you need the energy equivalent of about 3,000,000 Megatons. I have not done the math but I doubt if even an SD carries enough fusion fuel to generate that much energy.
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Re: Junction forts and Ultima Thule
Post by Brigade XO   » Mon Jan 07, 2019 7:32 pm

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I think the answer lies in the masses involved where you are starting from with several considerations.

If you take an astroid- any asteroid- and even if you hollow it out like Mr. Ringo does in that other series- you still have to move around all the asteroid material you didn't remove. Lets' also not confuse the two universes in two seperate sets of fiction.

You can do something like Blackbird Base and Yard where you use an astroid/moon/moonlet as a place to build all sorts of structures and have it with some appreciable amount of gravity in it's own right and in an orbit. I'ts relatve to something elce and provides you with a base of operations. But moving it.....we are not talking that other Webber series with a ship hiding as the Moon.

A junction fort is a mobile, non-hypercapable space ship with massive armor. It doesn't have anywhere near the speed of a starship but that is at least partialy because it is so massive vs what can be done will impeller tech. Even so, it is moving multiple fusion power plants, the environmental systems, all that equipment, sensors, people, small craft complement, weapons systems, defensive systems and all sorts of armor. Armor by the surface, at various interior layers and blast walls, core protection etc.
Why do you want to go through the work, time, cost etc to have to excavate into a really massive bunch of rock to have to then build in all the armor and then have to move all that remaining mass of rock as well as what you added. Besides, since you essential grow the armor and other things using construction nanites- and one presumes from some manufactured feedstock material which you produce in seperate operations- when you can build the forts (multiple) to specification in a yard situation you create and then move all that mass- the compleated fort- to it's operational area under it's own power.

Somehow I don't see the the composition material of an astroid or moonlet being anywhere near the strength or protection of the ship type battle armor. You would also have to allow or compensate for the relative difference and lack of protection of the asteroid material. Your in Space. You have artificial gravity. You are designing layerd systems for defence and offense along with all the power, communciations, personal, storage needed for the support of those systems and the people to operate them....just build the forts from the stuff you get by mining (breaking up and smelting down) the astroids and leave out the unusable parts.
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Re: Junction forts and Ultima Thule
Post by Imaginos1892   » Tue Jan 08, 2019 12:29 am

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Brigade XO wrote:It doesn't have anywhere near the speed of a starship but that is at least partialy because it is so massive vs what can be done will impeller tech.

Acceleration is limited by the compensator, not the impeller. You can move something as big as you want, as fast as you want, but the crew would be a thin red paste on the aft bulkheads.
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