What happens to all that debris?

cthia wrote:At least this demonstration launch wasn't a total waste of Manticoran resources.

Does anyone disagree that a lot of spacers died when the reserve died?

tlb wrote:If RFC does not tell us how many spacers died, then we simply do not know the death count. If any of us had positive evidence, then there would not have been a discussion about how many could have been on board.

If the demonstration was needed to get the Solarians to abandon the space stations that were to be destroyed, then it was not a waste to destroy useless ships. Otherwise it was.

cthia wrote:I was simply trying to conduct a survey to test the waters regarding posters' "core thoughts" on the matter, as to whether one believes there were any deaths at all. :Sir Shrugs Alot:

If Honor simply wanted to send a message, she could have used the same form of communication that she used against Tourville. Eight octets of octets.* The same sixty-four missiles that she launched at Tourville would have made things quite clear against the defenses of the SL.

If you wanted a survey, then it would be simpler to just say so and ask what ranges of death did people find reasonable. Put me down as undecided, since I can imagination different numbers based on how much hands on work is needed to maintain a mothball fleet that might be reactivated.

If you believe the destruction of the reserve fleet was not a demonstration to send a message, then what do you propose? Was it just due to Honor's need to destroy, like some people are with bubble wrap?

PS. Eight octets is 64, but isn't eight octets of octets equal to 512?

cthia wrote:At least this demonstration launch wasn't a total waste of Manticoran resources.

Does anyone disagree that a lot of spacers died when the reserve died?

tlb wrote:If RFC does not tell us how many spacers died, then we simply do not know the death count. If any of us had positive evidence, then there would not have been a discussion about how many could have been on board.

If the demonstration was needed to get the Solarians to abandon the space stations that were to be destroyed, then it was not a waste to destroy useless ships. Otherwise it was.

cthia wrote:I was simply trying to conduct a survey to test the waters regarding posters' "core thoughts" on the matter, as to whether one believes there were any deaths at all. :Sir Shrugs Alot:

If Honor simply wanted to send a message, she could have used the same form of communication that she used against Tourville. Eight octets of octets.* The same sixty-four missiles that she launched at Tourville would have made things quite clear against the defenses of the SL.

tlb wrote:If you wanted a survey, then it would be simpler to just say so and ask what ranges of death did people find reasonable. Put me down as undecided, since I can imagination different numbers based on how much hands on work is needed to maintain a mothball fleet that might be reactivated.

If you believe the destruction of the reserve fleet was not a demonstration to send a message, then what do you propose? Was it just due to Honor's need to destroy, like some people are with bubble wrap?

PS. Eight octets is 64, but isn't eight octets of octets equal to 512?

Yeah! I like your question.

There were plenty of ways at Honor's disposal to send a message. Simply asking none too politely to abandon the space stations should have sufficed. But yes, she was sending a message. That message included how outclassed they were, and, well...

"I am pissed! No more bull or you will get the horns!"

She was blowing off steam. Honor's internal Sphinxian reactor was running at critical! Come on, man! I am betting that somehow she found a way to roll pods from Manticore to Sol. LOL

Oops! I was trying to be cute there, but my spell checker didn't get the joke. It should have read eight octets of octits. (I know. I know. It's the price of humor.)

Thanks.

cthia wrote:Does anyone disagree that a lot of spacers died when the reserve died?

The whole point of mothballing ships is to drastically reduce expenditure. They're put into long term "cold storage" and as such shouldn't need any permanent onboard maintenance crews. Instead you'd have small "shoreside" crews that periodically inspect each ship in turn, or respond to any alarms from their monitoring system.

If you had to keep even a hundred crew aboard each of the thousands of reserve SDs the extra personnel costs would pretty quickly eat up the savings of putting the ship aside for a rainy day. (Remember the SLN reserve held ships for centuries).



Though it seems improbable that there would have be nobody aboard any of the thousands of Reserve ships when Honor's fleet appeared -- some ship would have been due inspection, or had a investigation/repair team responding to an alarm. However cold ships with no weapons wouldn't be the safest places to ride out an attack on the system; so I guess it's not 100% impossible that all such crews had evacuated before the demonstration strike went in.

Still, odds are that some folks died; but I'd be quite surprised to find that it was even as many as a thousand killed. (Heck, I'd be surprised if there were even 1,000 combined across all the ships at the time, and the laserhead hits described in the book wouldn't be vaporizing the SDs, so there would be quite a few survivors even on "destroyed" SDs. It seems the only times you lose the entire crew is when a fusion plant goes catastrophically, or the compensator fails/is destroyed while under acceleration; and neither of those would be in play in the mothball fleet. Otherwise even destroyed ships normally have significant percentages of their crew surviving)

If your going to make an effective demonstration, you need to make it both memorable and crystal clear of just how bad a position your opponent is in.
So which is better, particularly from Harrington's perspective even if she is in a really bad place after the "death" of Whitehaven.

She already had just been "reminded" that the SLN cruiser squadron she had popped out in front of on the way into the Sol system had already surrendered and just going ahead and essentially vaporizing the was a really bad move.

The GA fleet is positioned in front of Ganymede and along with all the active duty SLN ships around it plus the Ganymede defenses, this is a major installation of the SLN with yards, R&D labs etc. Massive target full of military and probably a lot of civilian employees.
On the other hand, there is the Reserve Fleet which is apparently sort of in the defense shadow of Ganymede but is primarily (probably) out of commission ships with -at best- small caretaker contingents on board. Thousands of massive if inactive warships.

Do you obliterate Ganymede?
Or do you launch what is for the GA a relatively small bunch of missiles that fly THOUGH the heart of the entire Ganymede defense envelope (and that of all those active duty and now at battle stations SLN warships that are near the Naval Station) and destroy or render essentially not worth attempting repair THOUSANDS of SD--with a launch of ONLY 2,400 missiles and the apparently largest and probably best defended of the SLN bases in the system plus a few hundred below the wall warships near it only stopped less than 900?

The SLN had been ignoring (sometimes willfully, sometimes manipulated into not seeing the info) any reports of what the RMN could do and seems they were just as unbelieving of the RHN's ability. So Harrington blew the crap out of the entire reserve fleet THOUGH Ganymede's defenses (and left Ganymede alone) with what clearly was a minuscule number of missiles---for the entire system to see. No spinning this one, no sifting though layers of PR damage control. Harrington plainly just gave a demonstration and the SLN is incapable of even scratching her paint but she can devastate every naval and civilian ship and structure in the system--and she then tells them exactly what has to be done or she will inflict Buccaneer on the Sol system and then move on to the next couple of major SL systems and repeat till the demands are met.

She destroyed a couple of thousand NAVAL targets. Would you have preferred her to take out that many fully crewed ships and or SLN installations as a DEMONSTRATION?

Brigade XO wrote:If your going to make an effective demonstration, you need to make it both memorable and crystal clear of just how bad a position your opponent is in.
So which is better, particularly from Harrington's perspective even if she is in a really bad place after the "death" of Whitehaven.

She already had just been "reminded" that the SLN cruiser squadron she had popped out in front of on the way into the Sol system had already surrendered and just going ahead and essentially vaporizing the was a really bad move.

The GA fleet is positioned in front of Ganymede and along with all the active duty SLN ships around it plus the Ganymede defenses, this is a major installation of the SLN with yards, R&D labs etc. Massive target full of military and probably a lot of civilian employees.
On the other hand, there is the Reserve Fleet which is apparently sort of in the defense shadow of Ganymede but is primarily (probably) out of commission ships with -at best- small caretaker contingents on board. Thousands of massive if inactive warships.

Do you obliterate Ganymede?
Or do you launch what is for the GA a relatively small bunch of missiles that fly THOUGH the heart of the entire Ganymede defense envelope (and that of all those active duty and now at battle stations SLN warships that are near the Naval Station) and destroy or render essentially not worth attempting repair THOUSANDS of SD--with a launch of ONLY 2,400 missiles and the apparently largest and probably best defended of the SLN bases in the system plus a few hundred below the wall warships near it only stopped less than 900?

The SLN had been ignoring (sometimes willfully, sometimes manipulated into not seeing the info) any reports of what the RMN could do and seems they were just as unbelieving of the RHN's ability. So Harrington blew the crap out of the entire reserve fleet THOUGH Ganymede's defenses (and left Ganymede alone) with what clearly was a minuscule number of missiles---for the entire system to see. No spinning this one, no sifting though layers of PR damage control. Harrington plainly just gave a demonstration and the SLN is incapable of even scratching her paint but she can devastate every naval and civilian ship and structure in the system--and she then tells them exactly what has to be done or she will inflict Buccaneer on the Sol system and then move on to the next couple of major SL systems and repeat till the demands are met.

She destroyed a couple of thousand NAVAL targets. Would you have preferred her to take out that many fully crewed ships and or SLN installations as a DEMONSTRATION?

Umm... no?

I know in the future not to get you riled up, XO. You have pressed your point home. And I don't take it lightly. The SL and its navy had been hardheaded up til then, and there was no way Honor could have been sure they would take any warning seriously. They hadn't taken any warnings seriously up til then. So, her demonstration had to carry some bite. So she bit down hard on the worthless Solly junk in the reserves as a demonstration. The object lesson was actually Ganymede's defenses. Which were proven to be absolutely worthless too.

Brilliant, XO.

.

Brigade XO wrote:The SLN had been ignoring (sometimes willfully, sometimes manipulated into not seeing the info) any reports of what the RMN could do and seems they were just as unbelieving of the RHN's ability. So Harrington blew the crap out of the entire reserve fleet THOUGH Ganymede's defenses (and left Ganymede alone) with what clearly was a minuscule number of missiles---for the entire system to see. No spinning this one, no sifting though layers of PR damage control. Harrington plainly just gave a demonstration and the SLN is incapable of even scratching her paint but she can devastate every naval and civilian ship and structure in the system--and she then tells them exactly what has to be done or she will inflict Buccaneer on the Sol system and then move on to the next couple of major SL systems and repeat till the demands are met.

Thank you for putting it in such a light. I quite honestly don't think there could have been a better message delivery, not without knowing what else there may have been around to blow up.

This also shows how little the Grand Fleet thought of the SLN's ability to stop them or inflict any damage that they decided to spend their first launch on what everyone knows was scrap metal. Through Ganymede's defences.

BTW, I had been thinking that Reserve One would be in parking orbits around Jupiter, but the text doesn't say that. It says parking 24 orbits, evenly spaced... but doesn't say what it's around. It makes far more sense that it's in orbit of Ganymede.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:The SLN had been ignoring (sometimes willfully, sometimes manipulated into not seeing the info) any reports of what the RMN could do and seems they were just as unbelieving of the RHN's ability. So Harrington blew the crap out of the entire reserve fleet THOUGH Ganymede's defenses (and left Ganymede alone) with what clearly was a minuscule number of missiles---for the entire system to see. No spinning this one, no sifting though layers of PR damage control. Harrington plainly just gave a demonstration and the SLN is incapable of even scratching her paint but she can devastate every naval and civilian ship and structure in the system--and she then tells them exactly what has to be done or she will inflict Buccaneer on the Sol system and then move on to the next couple of major SL systems and repeat till the demands are met.

Thank you for putting it in such a light. I quite honestly don't think there could have been a better message delivery, not without knowing what else there may have been around to blow up.

This also shows how little the Grand Fleet thought of the SLN's ability to stop them or inflict any damage that they decided to spend their first launch on what everyone knows was scrap metal. Through Ganymede's defences.

BTW, I had been thinking that Reserve One would be in parking orbits around Jupiter, but the text doesn't say that. It says parking 24 orbits, evenly spaced... but doesn't say what it's around. It makes far more sense that it's in orbit of Ganymede.

That would be Ganymede the Space Station's defenses? The Space Station employed some 140,000 workers. I wasn't complaining about a demonstration launch, per se, but that it seemed like Honor killed a lot of spacers without giving any warning. Many of them would have been civilians. That many ships destroyed should have ejected wreckage towards the space station as well, possibly killing any shuttles in the wake. There were thousands of ships. There must have been maintenance crew inside some of them. Perhaps some of the crew were deep inside the hull. They would need time to evacuate. Would they even have been warned, since the SLN didn't think the reserve was in danger of being targeted? If they were inside the mothballs, they may have felt safer than those on Ganymede. Since Ganymede was a military target? Ganymede might not have been a military target, because its defenses may have been all point defense.

The text Brigade XO supplied states that Honor's launch didn't have to enter or go thru Ganymede's defenses. That implies that they must have been orbiting the moon. But then, what was Ganymede orbiting?

cthia wrote:The text Brigade XO supplied states that Honor's launch didn't have to enter or go thru Ganymede's defenses. That implies that they must have been orbiting the moon. But then, what was Ganymede orbiting?

You say that as though you do not realize that Ganymede is an large moon of Jupiter and the space station is built on its surface.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:The text Brigade XO supplied states that Honor's launch didn't have to enter or go thru Ganymede's defenses. That implies that they must have been orbiting the moon. But then, what was Ganymede orbiting?

You say that as though you do not realize that Ganymede is an large moon of Jupiter and the space station is built on its surface.

Well hallelujah! Clarification!

No, tlb, I didn't realize it. Does it clearly state that in the text? Of course I know that Jupiter has a moon of the same name. And the space station is Ganymede I. Located, I thought, in orbit around it. This is what I found in the drunken Wiki ...

Ganymede I was a space station owned and operated by Technodyne Industries of Yildun.

Situated near Ganymede and Naval Station Ganymede of the Solarian League Navy in the Sol System, the station employed one hundred and forty thousand roboticists, cyberneticists, nanocists, and construction workers without counting the large research and development component that transstellar maintained on-site.

At any rate, doesn't space station imply... in space? On the moon isn't a space station. That is a moon station / base. And isn't that an Eridani Edict if wreckage plunders into the moon where civilians live?

At leash I understand what happened a bit better now. Thank you tlb. I'm firing my secretary. Wait, that's me. Darnit.

cthia wrote:The text Brigade XO supplied states that Honor's launch didn't have to enter or go thru Ganymede's defenses. That implies that they must have been orbiting the moon. But then, what was Ganymede orbiting?

tlb wrote:You say that as though you do not realize that Ganymede is an large moon of Jupiter and the space station is built on its surface.

cthia wrote:Well hallelujah! Clarification!

No, tlb, I didn't realize it. Does it clearly state that in the text? Of course I know that Jupiter has a moon of the same name. And the space station is Ganymede I. Located, I thought, in orbit around it. This is what I found in the drunken Wiki ...

Ganymede I was a space station owned and operated by Technodyne Industries of Yildun.

Situated near Ganymede and Naval Station Ganymede of the Solarian League Navy in the Sol System, the station employed one hundred and forty thousand roboticists, cyberneticists, nanocists, and construction workers without counting the large research and development component that transstellar maintained on-site.

At any rate, doesn't space station imply... in space? On the moon isn't a space station. That is a moon station / base. And isn't that an Eridani Edict if wreckage plunders into the moon where civilians live?

At leash I understand what happened a bit better now. Thank you tlb. I'm firing my secretary. Wait, that's me. Darnit.

Don't fire your secretary yet, because I cannot prove my statement (since I do not have UH in a searchable format). If I am wrong, then it is in orbit around Ganymede.

But no, it is not an Eridani Edict if wreckage plunges onto a moon (or a planet) as RFC made clear when describing the efforts the Malign made to not directly hit any planet with their weapons in Oyster Bay; while not caring at all, if wreckage did so.

I did just find this in the thread:"Uncompromising Honor, snippet #3".

While Yildun’s HQ and the traditional core of its manufacturing capacity lie in Yildun, it has enormous satellite locations in a great many other star systems. In fact, what is arguably its most important R&D facility is in the Sol System, co-located with Naval Station Ganymede, the biggest Solarian League Navy base in existence.