What happens to all that debris?

cthia wrote:
Something about the following passage confuses me. It implies the beacon uses more power than the running lights. I would think the opposite. Obviously I'm wrong. Nonetheless, I was thinking that a beacon and the running lights are activated immediately after launch. If a backup beacon could be activated by the SAR team, it would help tremendously. It seems a pod is broadcasting and wasting power for a long time before someone is actually looking for it.

“Yeah, but it looks bad,” she replied. Not only was there no beacon, but even the running lights designed to guide searchers visually to it were dead. Nor did their passives detect any EM signature from it at all.

Also, how do pods get launched empty?

I'd assume the beacon used more power. It's a radio transmitter trying to be easily detectable for thousands, if not a million+ km, possibly from within a field of debris where various discharging capacitors or damaged ships electronics are creating "loud" broad spectrum static (aka impromptu jamming).


Yes, a space probe in a quite star system can communicate with Earth using a transmitted with less than 25 watts of power. But only because Earth knows where it is and is using massive radio telescope arrays to listen to it; and it's not competing with any other nearyby radio sources. But even so, as I understand it, when the Deep Space Network needs to communicate back it has to use many kilowatts of tightly aimed power for the distant probe to receive and understand the signal. I'd expect an emergency beacon to be much closer to kilowatts than handfuls of watts in broadcast power.

OTOH the running light necessary to outline the pod to assist searchers in visually identifying it and safely docking, once they'd gotten close from following the beacon or investigating radar returns, don't need to use much power (and the Honorverse probably had even more energy efficient lighting that we do). A whole set of high efficiency running lights could probably run on less than 100 watts.


As for pods launching empty; I don't see offhand why a ship would deliberately do so. But battle damage might cause unintended activation of a pod's launching mechanism (or at least cause the locking mechanism to release so it drifts away). Or a nearby blast could literally rip the pod (possibly still docked to fragments of its launch mechanism) out of the ship.

Thanks.

I didn't consider the broadcast power requirement when activated, like a radio station. What threw me off is the fact that a beacon is intermittent. I read somewhere it was every fifty seconds, or is that the US Navy?

Textev says some of the pods were launched empty. A lot of them were found empty.

cthia wrote:Thanks.

I didn't consider the broadcast power requirement when activated, like a radio station. What threw me off is the fact that a beacon is intermittent. I read somewhere it was every fifty seconds, or is that the US Navy?

Textev says some of the pods were launched empty. A lot of them were found empty.

Huh. I didn't see why they would deliberately do so. I guess there's a chance that a pod has only occupants too injured to activate the launch sequence, and blindly launching all pods would ensure they got away. But the odds of that seem pretty low, and launching an actually empty pod means that any survivors who were delayed in getting to the pod area now have no pod to evacuate in.

But since the text says they were, then they must be a reason I hadn't thought of. Hmm, maybe they're linked to systems monitoring the fusion reactors. If the reactors are going fail explosively in 15 seconds, destroying the ship anyway, maybe you do eject all pods since that might get a few additional people away and letting them get vaporized is pointless.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Thanks.

I didn't consider the broadcast power requirement when activated, like a radio station. What threw me off is the fact that a beacon is intermittent. I read somewhere it was every fifty seconds, or is that the US Navy?

Textev says some of the pods were launched empty. A lot of them were found empty.

Huh. I didn't see why they would deliberately do so. I guess there's a chance that a pod has only occupants too injured to activate the launch sequence, and blindly launching all pods would ensure they got away. But the odds of that seem pretty low, and launching an actually empty pod means that any survivors who were delayed in getting to the pod area now have no pod to evacuate in.

But since the text says they were, then they must be a reason I hadn't thought of. Hmm, maybe they're linked to systems monitoring the fusion reactors. If the reactors are going fail explosively in 15 seconds, destroying the ship anyway, maybe you do eject all pods since that might get a few additional people away and letting them get vaporized is pointless.

Here's the text . . .

They’d also intercepted almost forty life pods with live transponders which had either launched empty or whose passengers, like the young woman aboard the dead pod she and Debnam had recovered, had died of wounds in the end, despite escaping their doomed ships.

Someone had to drag the Admiral kicking and screaming—well not kicking, he had no legs, but he was certainly bitching—to the escape pods. I wasn't sure they'd make it!; blame that on the author and his brilliantly evil nail biting scenes. But can you imagine getting there and the last remaining pod zips away to your dismay? Empty?

"WAIT!!!"

cthia wrote:Someone had to drag the Admiral kicking and screaming—well not kicking, he had no legs, but he was certainly bitching—to the escape pods. I wasn't sure they'd make it!; blame that on the author and his brilliantly evil nail biting scenes. But can you imagine getting there and the last remaining pod zips away to your dismay? Empty?

"WAIT!!!"

It could be worse - a bear from the 3 ring circus could have slipped into it first.

Theemile wrote:

cthia wrote:Someone had to drag the Admiral kicking and screaming—well not kicking, he had no legs, but he was certainly bitching—to the escape pods. I wasn't sure they'd make it!; blame that on the author and his brilliantly evil nail biting scenes. But can you imagine getting there and the last remaining pod zips away to your dismay? Empty?

"WAIT!!!"

It could be worse - a bear from the 3 ring circus could have slipped into it first.

Though, if the bear is smart enough to know to evacuate, AND find an escape pod, then simply ask Yogi to move over, he surely must understand the impending lack of gravity of the situation. Or simply ask him if he has driver's license. Failing all of that, electric KA-RAZOR his ass like Honor did the Puma.

If the pod does manage to launch with him alone, the bear will sooner or later hit the med panel and hibernate the entire way.

Poor Paulette. "WTF! John, it's time to turn back. I'm seeing things!"

"I'm seeing things too! What are you seeing?"

"I rather not say, let's just turn back."

Jonathan_S wrote:Huh. I didn't see why they would deliberately do so. I guess there's a chance that a pod has only occupants too injured to activate the launch sequence, and blindly launching all pods would ensure they got away. But the odds of that seem pretty low, and launching an actually empty pod means that any survivors who were delayed in getting to the pod area now have no pod to evacuate in.

But since the text says they were, then they must be a reason I hadn't thought of. Hmm, maybe they're linked to systems monitoring the fusion reactors. If the reactors are going fail explosively in 15 seconds, destroying the ship anyway, maybe you do eject all pods since that might get a few additional people away and letting them get vaporized is pointless.

That was what I was thinking, also. If you know the ship is dying you blow the pods with enough time to clear the blast. That would also apply if you gave an abandon ship order due to an incoming missile storm--the pods would be set to blow in time to clear the expected destruction of the ship.

The people evacuating won't know exactly how much time is left and have far more important things to do than watch a clock. There's also the problem that they're looking at the friend who is going to be 1 second too late--human nature means they would probably wouldn't launch in time and thus everyone dies (And if they did that's hell for the person who did it.) Better to not make them face that choice in the first place.

Loren Pechtel wrote:The people evacuating won't know exactly how much time is left and have far more important things to do than watch a clock. There's also the problem that they're looking at the friend who is going to be 1 second too late--human nature means they would probably wouldn't launch in time and thus everyone dies (And if they did that's hell for the person who did it.) Better to not make them face that choice in the first place.

So this way they do not watch a clock and arrive after all the pods are gone? At least their problems will soon be over.

The only rationale that I can envision is that the pods are stacked in a chute; so as people get in randomly, there may be a mix of occupied and unoccupied pods. Then all the occupied pods are sent out (resulting in some unoccupied ones also being sent), but there are still some more pods until the supply is exhausted. We saw in some other thread that there are not enough pods for everyone, so it seems rather cruel to ever send out empty ones.

tlb wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:The people evacuating won't know exactly how much time is left and have far more important things to do than watch a clock. There's also the problem that they're looking at the friend who is going to be 1 second too late--human nature means they would probably wouldn't launch in time and thus everyone dies (And if they did that's hell for the person who did it.) Better to not make them face that choice in the first place.

So this way they do not watch a clock and arrive after all the pods are gone? At least their problems will soon be over.

The only rationale that I can envision is that the pods are stacked in a chute; so as people get in randomly, there may be a mix of occupied and unoccupied pods. Then all the occupied pods are sent out (resulting in some unoccupied ones also being sent), but there are still some more pods until the supply is exhausted. We saw in some other thread that there are not enough pods for everyone, so it seems rather cruel to ever send out empty ones.

My problem with that entire notion is this. If the damn system can't tell if a pod is occupied or not, then it can't tell if it is partially occupied. As in, someone half in and half out, or clothing caught in it, resulting in someone being dragged. Hopefully it won't launch unless closed. But in light of launching empty, I ain't banking on nothin'!

"Oh no! Let me go! I rather die here than be shot out of a cannon pretty much naked!"

A human missile!