What happens to all that debris?

Jonathan_S wrote:That's a good question.

MY first though was to wonder if all the ships could crowd in close so a single central ship maxes out its hyper generator to jump the formation as an single event (kind of like how Thunder and Principality were able to pop LACs into hyperspace with her). However I realized 2 problems with that. One, those ships were only able to cover 6 km out from their hull so you'd need to be very tightly packed. And two, which compounds the first, each ship presumably still needs its sails rigged to survive that close to the transit point; meaning there's no possible way to cram them that close.

Jonathan_S wrote:While searching for an RFC post on an entirely different topic I ran across something interesting that would also definitely strike down this idea.

runsforcelery: 12-Jun-2012 SPOILER – finding the torch wormhole’s destination wrote:When a hyper generator's translation field establishes itself, it attempts to translate all the matter within its area of effect into hyper. The translation field must extend a certain distance from the generator which is proportionate to the translation field's designed mass — that is, for a ship of a given mass, the spherical translation field has to be "x" meters across. The dimensions of the field scale with the translation mass, but what matters for our purposes right now is that the minimum dimension for a sustainable translation field is going to be about 600 meters. That is, everything within 600 meters of the hyper generator is inside the translation field's area of effect and its mass affects the translation. The chief engineer can fiddle with the settings on the hyper generator to some extent, and there's usually some safety margin built into it, but it can't handle much more than a maximum of about 6% tonnage "overload" before the hyper generator "departs from its mounts in multiple directions," as the engine room manual puts it. In other words, it blows the hell up, usually inflicting fairly spectacular damage on the ship in which it was mounted.

Jumping even one additional ship is going to be way over that 6% "overload" and would result in a very unpleasant failure even if the sail crowding issue could be resolved.

Just sharing this as something interesting that I'd completely forgotten about.

cthia wrote:It still seems doable, at least something has the hair on the back of my neck standing.

Admittedly when I proposed the possibility of a disaster I was thinking about how densely packed Stephanie Gram was stacking 'em at BoM. It seems to me if a mass transit is taking place on one end, there's nothing (other than ASC) which would prevent another ship on the other side of the junction to be part of the sardine can. And since there is no wedge in front of it, it has the right of way.

That raises another question about the maneuver in Storm from the Shadows, chapter 51, where the Sharks made two group transitions of 10 ships each.

At the moment, Kolstad was concentrating all of her own attention on the readouts which showed the exact position of every unit of Topolev's task force, literally down to the last centimeter. All twenty of his ships were tractored together into two big, ungainly formations, nine hundred kilometers apart, as they floated with the closest thing possible to a zero velocity relative to one another and to the normal-space universe they'd left three months earlier.

So they cannot be jumping under just one hyper generator (according to RFC's text); therefore they have to have coordinated all of the generators to operate simultaneously. Also they must have turned off their sails before moving together.

tlb wrote:That raises another question about the maneuver in Storm from the Shadows, chapter 51, where the Sharks made two group transitions of 10 ships each.

At the moment, Kolstad was concentrating all of her own attention on the readouts which showed the exact position of every unit of Topolev's task force, literally down to the last centimeter. All twenty of his ships were tractored together into two big, ungainly formations, nine hundred kilometers apart, as they floated with the closest thing possible to a zero velocity relative to one another and to the normal-space universe they'd left three months earlier.

So they cannot be jumping under just one hyper generator (according to RFC's text); therefore they have to have coordinated all of the generators to operate simultaneously. Also they must have turned off their sails before moving together.

Well I don't think Manticore sits in a grav wave; so the Sharks wouldn't have had sails up anyway.

But yes, there are some big open questions about simultaneous transits and that linked hyper emergence.

The two biggest questions I see is, can the MAlign somehow exploit the possibility of a disaster. And, how long to complete the cleanup on Aisle 1.

Every mention I have seen for a Junction as far as ship transits talk about inbound lanes and outbound lanes for EACH terminus.
They also talk about the approch vector for a given wormhole and that is one of the things that the survey ships have to work out- at both ends.
That implies to me that the vector you enter a wormhole from terminus A is not the recrpical of the entry vector from terminus B. That then implies to me that the that ships entering a given wormhole. It is sort of a two lane tunnel....sort of because there is no apparent actual "hole" but there is a right way and a lot of wrong ways to go throuigh a wormhole.
This is plot driven but it's sort of like gliding though a magic mirror (or Gate from Stargate or one of Ringo's series). With the Honorverse version you pass through the event horizon with the proper equipment and your just "there" on the other end.
If you read the descriptions of what is happening on the bridge of ships like Hexamuma (and so many others) passing from or too the Junction, there is a flow of traffic. There are ships going both ways. NONE have so far been described as simultaneously done but by Shadow of Saganami they are in really quick sequences. Astro Control is continualy monitoring the wormhole or ,in the case of the Junction,the various wormholes connecting different locations, and calculating out the proper entry vector for where you want to go plus setting up the transit queue. They are doing this by ship so it is proable that the actual spacing is dictated by the mass of each ship (and that is a rough calculation based on all sorts of things from the type & model plus disclosed cargo weight and consumables and crew/passengers.
In no place does it say that they are strictly coordinating the passage of ships at each end except a such that it will stress and start making meaningful timing differences on loading the "capasity" of the wormhole and shut ability to make transits for some length of time.

You research a new wormhole and figure out the best vector (now) to go through it and then you have to turn around when you get to the other end and figure out what the best vector is to go through it the other way. So it seems to alow "2 lane traffic" if you don't start to approch the maximum "normal" mass capasity of the wormhole. And your local Astro Control sets out lane markers in heavily used locations to make sure you don't turn the wrong way once you transit and have a wedge fratracide with traffic in the other or any nearby direction.

If, in fact, there really really really needs to be an Astro Control on both sides which are not only continualy updating the relevent information on the wormhole AND sending a message though with EACH ship so the two sides can keep two ships from being in the wormhole from opposite directions.........nobody has yet mentioned it that I can recall.

Brigade XO wrote:If, in fact, there really really really needs to be an Astro Control on both sides which are not only continualy updating the relevent information on the wormhole AND sending a message though with EACH ship so the two sides can keep two ships from being in the wormhole from opposite directions.........nobody has yet mentioned it that I can recall.

If there is a wormhole that cannot have more than one ship in it at a time from either direction, then you cannot count on always having enough traffic for that system to work. Instead you need a dedicated ship to serve as a semaphore flag as is done in concurrent programming to insure exclusive access to a resource. This works by having one ship assigned as control to that wormhole, whichever side it is on can send ships through at the best schedule. Then after a fixed period of time or when the transit queue is exhausted, that control ship makes its transition and then the other side can begin sending ships through. And so on.

Brigade XO wrote:Every mention I have seen for a Junction as far as ship transits talk about inbound lanes and outbound lanes for EACH terminus.
They also talk about the approch vector for a given wormhole and that is one of the things that the survey ships have to work out- at both ends.
That implies to me that the vector you enter a wormhole from terminus A is not the recrpical of the entry vector from terminus B. That then implies to me that the that ships entering a given wormhole. It is sort of a two lane tunnel....sort of because there is no apparent actual "hole" but there is a right way and a lot of wrong ways to go throuigh a wormhole.
This is plot driven but it's sort of like gliding though a magic mirror (or Gate from Stargate or one of Ringo's series). With the Honorverse version you pass through the event horizon with the proper equipment and your just "there" on the other end.
If you read the descriptions of what is happening on the bridge of ships like Hexamuma (and so many others) passing from or too the Junction, there is a flow of traffic. There are ships going both ways. NONE have so far been described as simultaneously done but by Shadow of Saganami they are in really quick sequences.

That's not quite accurate - during the Battle of Manticore Kuzak's 3rd fleet did indeed make a minimal interval sequenced transit. But about half of Honor's 8th fleet, once it got back to the Trevor's Star terminus, made the only simultaneous transit we've seen in the series.

At All Costs Ch.66 wrote:Honor didn't reply. She was already turning to the sidebars of her own tactical display. Sixteen of her thirty-two superdreadnoughts were still in Trevor's Star, as were all of Samuel Miklós' carriers and thirty of her battlecruisers. She looked at the numbers for perhaps one heartbeat, then turned back to her staff.
"Mercedes, send a dispatch boat back to Trevor's Star. Inform Admiral Miller that he's in command and that he's to hold all of our battlecruisers there. Tell him he's responsible for covering Trevor's Star until we get back to him. Then instruct Judah to bring Admiral Miklós' carriers and all the rest of the wallers through in a single transit."

Also note that while wormholes do seem to have separate entrance and exit lanes, so ships arriving and departing don't use the exact same spot and vector, the "lock down" effect applies to the whole wormhole. In AAC both Truman and Honor muse that a real disadvantage of making a mass transit to Manticore (aside from the fact that not all of 3rd fleet could fit into one) is that they'd be cutting Trevor's Star off and be unable to return for many hours.
Now, in the end, after Chin shows up and starts wrecking 3rd fleet Honor decides that risk is worth it and does do a mass simultaneous transit of all the SD(P)s and CLACs still queued up to transit the Junction.

So Astro control really should be tracking how long the wormhole will be shut down after each transit (which-ever direction it takes). Even if they're maintaining sufficient intervals between ships that even the largest single ship won't shut down the wormhole that long they'd still want to track it in case a military emergency came up and they wanted to reduce the interval to the minimum possible.

Now that may be too much of a minutia to have ever appeared in the text. But we know from White Haven's minimum possible interval emergency double-transit to Basilisk that they have to be tracking the intervals exceedingly closely once they got to the wallers so the next one doesn't attempt to go before the wormhole is unlocked. Each class of CLAC, DN, SD, or SD(P) will have somewhat different lockdown times. I think there's about a 45 second variance between a small DN and the Harrington-class SD(P)s the GSN brought along to that party.

(Though at least back then you didn't have any warships in the RMN smaller than a DN/CLAC that would trigger a longer interval; even now I think on the Nike-class BC(L) edges over the 2.5 mton point at which the lockdown period begins exceeding 10 seconds. Though if you counted a FSV as a warship then it'd lock down a bit longer than a Nike)

tlb wrote:If there is a wormhole that cannot have more than one ship in it at a time from either direction, then you cannot count on always having enough traffic for that system to work. Instead you need a dedicated ship to serve as a semaphore flag as is done in concurrent programming to insure exclusive access to a resource. This works by having one ship assigned as control to that wormhole, whichever side it is on can send ships through at the best schedule. Then after a fixed period of time or when the transit queue is exhausted, that control ship makes its transition and then the other side can begin sending ships through. And so on.

A dedicated semaphore ship seems unnecessary. The normal traffic passing through can relay signed messages between the ACS stations on each end to keep them in sync.

And if there are no ships in the queue to pass messages you can use a synchronized time based system to deconflict the first ship through after that pause in traffic.

tlb wrote:If there is a wormhole that cannot have more than one ship in it at a time from either direction, then you cannot count on always having enough traffic for that system to work. Instead you need a dedicated ship to serve as a semaphore flag as is done in concurrent programming to insure exclusive access to a resource. This works by having one ship assigned as control to that wormhole, whichever side it is on can send ships through at the best schedule. Then after a fixed period of time or when the transit queue is exhausted, that control ship makes its transition and then the other side can begin sending ships through. And so on.

Jonathan_S wrote:A dedicated semaphore ship seems unnecessary. The normal traffic passing through can relay signed messages between the ACS stations on each end to keep them in sync.

And if there are no ships in the queue to pass messages you can use a synchronized time based system to deconflict the first ship through after that pause in traffic.

I was worried about the case where traffic was intermittent or subject to periods where many more ships are passing in one direction rather than the other.

A synchronized time based system might work as you say, but it seems to me that using a dedicated communication ship makes it easier to adjust to uneven traffic conditions; including the possibility of an extra massive transit that would lock the wormhole for longer than normal. However it does add some overhead to the wormhole administration.

tlb wrote:

tlb wrote:If there is a wormhole that cannot have more than one ship in it at a time from either direction, then you cannot count on always having enough traffic for that system to work. Instead you need a dedicated ship to serve as a semaphore flag as is done in concurrent programming to insure exclusive access to a resource. This works by having one ship assigned as control to that wormhole, whichever side it is on can send ships through at the best schedule. Then after a fixed period of time or when the transit queue is exhausted, that control ship makes its transition and then the other side can begin sending ships through. And so on.

Jonathan_S wrote:A dedicated semaphore ship seems unnecessary. The normal traffic passing through can relay signed messages between the ACS stations on each end to keep them in sync.

And if there are no ships in the queue to pass messages you can use a synchronized time based system to deconflict the first ship through after that pause in traffic.

I was worried about the case where traffic was intermittent or subject to periods where many more ships are passing in one direction rather than the other.

A synchronized time based system might work as you say, but it seems to me that using a dedicated communication ship makes it easier to adjust to uneven traffic conditions; including the possibility of an extra massive transit that would lock the wormhole for longer than normal. However it does add some overhead to the wormhole administration.

I'm going to have to go with tlb's idea of a semaphore flag, Jonathan. Because it seems the most secure. Using an arbitrary ship to mark the end of a communication has inherent security flaws and therein lies the weakest link most exploitable by the MAlign. It reminds me of the days of the telegram and using STOP to signal the end of a sentence. It is also akin to the flag man on a road construction site. A compromised flag man and there's going to be a fender bender.

cthia wrote:

tlb wrote:I was worried about the case where traffic was intermittent or subject to periods where many more ships are passing in one direction rather than the other.

A synchronized time based system might work as you say, but it seems to me that using a dedicated communication ship makes it easier to adjust to uneven traffic conditions; including the possibility of an extra massive transit that would lock the wormhole for longer than normal. However it does add some overhead to the wormhole administration.

I'm going to have to go with tlb's idea of a semaphore flag, Jonathan. Because it seems the most secure. Using an arbitrary ship to mark the end of a communication has inherent security flaws and therein lies the weakest link most exploitable by the MAlign. It reminds me of the days of the telegram and using STOP to signal the end of a sentence. It is also akin to the flag man on a road construction site. A compromised flag man and there's going to be a fender bender.

There is some risk to using untrusted ships to carry your messages. And we have seen that Honorverse crypto keys can be stolen; which could allow a malicious ship transiting to hand off a forged message, rather than simply "losing" or garbling the message so the digital signature couldn't be verified..

It'd be a easier to design a system that was resistant to a dropped or unverifiable message than to a forged one. A message you don't get or can't trust could be dealt with by a protocol that limited the length of time the wormhole could be controlled by a given side, combined with a maximum number of outbound transits before you must pause to allow the other side to send you inbound traffic; which can only be overridden by getting an specific affirmative response to a message requesting a deviation.

Under such a protocol a lack of received messages should simply lead to one side missing some possible transit windows until the side that had been sending maxed out and protocol forced them to pause and revert to time slice based control due to lack of agreement to do anything else. (So a limited DoS attack). And if you send digitally signed recent message history with each ship then the malicious force needs a lot of ships to "lose" or corrupt the messages to force this DoS for long.


However a maliciously forged message could claim the other side was instantly yielding control of the wormhole when they weren't. That could lead to a minimum transit window violation.


How bad such a transit window violation would be really seems to depends on what happens if a ship tries to use a locked wormhole. (Say because they were already partway through cycling their hyper generator when the ship pops out the arrival lane and don't react in time to abort the transition).
It seems there's no risk of the ships colliding - since the arrival lane isn't in the same spot as the departure lane. But if attempting to use a locked wormhole causes damage (or worse destruction) to the ship then you'd want a much more robust safety system than if it just causes a harmless generator discharge followed by a go-around.