What happens to all that debris?

cthia wrote:1) What is the average separation between ships in a formation? I often wonder why they don't encounter debris from their cohort's destruction off their bow. Much like the mutual destruction caused when they initiate evasive maneuvers.

In answer to the question "Is the contact nuke going to make a return now that Apollo makes penetrating defenses trivial" in the forum FAQ section, RFC said in 2014 that the wedge is 300 km wide; so the minimum separation for ships has to be greater than that.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:1) What is the average separation between ships in a formation? I often wonder why they don't encounter debris from their cohort's destruction off their bow. Much like the mutual destruction caused when they initiate evasive maneuvers.

In answer to the question "Is the contact nuke going to make a return now that Apollo makes penetrating defenses trivial" in the forum FAQ section, RFC said in 2014 that the wedge is 300 km wide; so the minimum separation for ships has to be greater than that.

300 KM is for an SD sized vessel. MaxxQ dropped the wedge sizes for about 50 Manty classes on the Forum about 5 years ago - I have a nice spreadsheet on my google drive with the details. But ships in CLOSE battle formation usually have several times their wedge lengths between ships - casual formations are usually further for more safety.

cthia wrote:
Several concerns come to mind which I wonder if you're taking into account. Number one I've been meaning to ask for quite some time.

1) What is the average separation between ships in a formation? I often wonder why they don't encounter debris from their cohort's destruction off their bow. Much like the mutual destruction caused when they initiate evasive maneuvers.

mentioned elsewhere

2) The RMN doesn't just target the formation, they target individual ships with textev giving an account of missiles weaving betwixt ships in the formation. Certainly there are times fusion bottles let go in a missile's path.

S%%t happens - missiles in a formation commit fratricide all the time. It just happens, missiles get lost in flight for a number of reasons, it is not considered that big of a deal.

3) What is the time between RMN staggered launches? I know they're close enough to come in "nearly" as one with the intent to swamp enemy defenses. It is intuitive that the launch bringing up the rear oftentimes has to contend with debris, some of which is propelled forward ahead of the ship, as you stated above.

RMN light ship have an 8 second cycle time for shipborne launchers. Mk 16 have an 18 second cycle time for shipborn launchers, and podlayers have a 12 second cycle time. ToT (time on target) launches are staggered so the missiles all converge at the same time. the Geometry and math depend on the situation.

4) Surely a missile's helmet isn't going to help it against larger pieces of debris. Or Janacek should have been wearing one. Alright, alright, disregard that political statement. LOL

It's a particle shield, not a debris shield. hitting anything hard enough will break it. if you are running into a situation where there is enough stuff in the path to kill missiles, see #2 above.

I'm certain that at the BoM with the insane number of missiles flying about, many wasted themselves on large pieces of debris. I'm going to put it down as another of those little facts that simply must be, but the author has no need to tell the tale.

Tens of Thousands of missiles at BOMA killed each other or just wandered off into space. And remember what I said above, ship formations are CONSTANTLY accelerating out of the debris clouds, so every new salvo gets a fresh target solution and each salvo is attacking within a period second or two, the debris toward the end might block the lasers, but isn't flying far enough out to damage the missile before they fire.

Besides, at BoM there was so much mutual destruction that those details may never be known.

cthia wrote:1) What is the average separation between ships in a formation? I often wonder why they don't encounter debris from their cohort's destruction off their bow. Much like the mutual destruction caused when they initiate evasive maneuvers.

tlb wrote:In answer to the question "Is the contact nuke going to make a return now that Apollo makes penetrating defenses trivial" in the forum FAQ section, RFC said in 2014 that the wedge is 300 km wide; so the minimum separation for ships has to be greater than that.

Theemile wrote:300 KM is for an SD sized vessel. MaxxQ dropped the wedge sizes for about 50 Manty classes on the Forum about 5 years ago - I have a nice spreadsheet on my google drive with the details. But ships in CLOSE battle formation usually have several times their wedge lengths between ships - casual formations are usually further for more safety.

Found it Wedge Sizes

ThinksMarkedly wrote:We know that short hyperspace jumps are inaccurate. But how short? The 6 or 7 light-hours from the Junction is too close, which is why most ships take the route in n-space. The 11 to 14 light-hours between A and B was also too close for Adm. White Haven in 1543 PD (Karina Alexander, Third Countess White Haven), but technology has advanced since then so this doesn't mean much.

I think now that's more because of the resonance zone. You'd have to hyper off at a pretty broad angle to be sure of reemerging well clear of the RZ. (Plus even entering hyper from within the RZ is rough on the ship and crew)

Being inaccurate on a short jump just means you need to leave lots of safety margin on your aim-point so if you jump long you'll still land outside the hyper limit (or in the very worst case only hit the 'soft' outer 20% where you can survive the failed exit)

But certainly now warships seem to routinely move though hyper between Manticore A and B. (IIRC when the Home Fleet was stationed out at the Junction it was mentioned that thanks to the RZ they could actually get to Gryphon faster than Sphynx; which is only possible if they use hyper). And in FoD we've got this quote

Field of Dishonor wrote: He and Commander Venizelos of HMS Apollo were due to participate in a defensive exercise in Manticore-B, and, with a little crowding, their ships could lift Nike's full Marine detachment plus its pinnaces to Gryphon with just a short hop through hyper.

Jonathan_S wrote:I think now that's more because of the resonance zone. You'd have to hyper off at a pretty broad angle to be sure of reemerging well clear of the RZ. (Plus even entering hyper from within the RZ is rough on the ship and crew)

Ah, good point. Third Fleet performed two short jumps from the Junction to Manticore-A's hyperlimit because that was easier and/or safer to calculate, with the RZ's effects taken into account. That means an average of 3.5 light-hours in each jump.

Eighth Fleet performed a single, no-dog-leg jump and arrived 75 million km from Havenite Second Fleet, which was also outside the hyperlimit, off to a side of the RZ.

But Honor, aboard the same ship and probably with the same navigation crew, performed a 19-20-hour n-space trip from the Junction to Manticore's orbit when she had Pritchart and Theisman aboard. True, that gave Elizabeth a full work day to prepare, but I doubt she got anything done that day! Her staff may have been able to make changes for the next day a lot more easily than changes for the same day. And maybe meeting in the middle of the night in Landing was intentional; if Honor had performed a jump and then taken 3.5 hours from the limit to orbit, she'd take Elizabeth away for the day.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:1) What is the average separation between ships in a formation? I often wonder why they don't encounter debris from their cohort's destruction off their bow. Much like the mutual destruction caused when they initiate evasive maneuvers.

In answer to the question "Is the contact nuke going to make a return now that Apollo makes penetrating defenses trivial" in the forum FAQ section, RFC said in 2014 that the wedge is 300 km wide; so the minimum separation for ships has to be greater than that.

Thanks for the wedge sizes!

The average separation cannot be the minimum separation, or there'd be no way to respond to Honor's commands to "Get those ships in closer!" Which is always humorous cuz I can imagine them thinking 'We can't thread the needle like you Honor!'

It's just that, I'm seeing the fact that ships are operating close enough to each other at their velocities that collision is unavoidable when they make asinine evasive maneuvers - either because they shouldn't have passed Driver's Ed, battle damage has made them lose control of the vehicle, or they simply don't want to run into any more missiles! And their cohorts don't want to run into their wedge. I'm imagining at least some ship damage from that same difficulty in avoiding debris, and the resulting maneuver having the same domino effect. Pile up on Aisle 1, Fleet 1.

So I suppose that answers the question. It IS likely that unavoidable debris can kill. Even if it hasn't quite been turned into debris... yet. LOL

Theemile wrote:It's a particle shield, not a debris shield. hitting anything hard enough will break it.

Yep, that's what I was getting at.

Theemile wrote: if you are running into a situation where there is enough stuff in the path to kill missiles, see #2 above.

It's just that I imagine a whole diaper full of it.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:We know that short hyperspace jumps are inaccurate. But how short? The 6 or 7 light-hours from the Junction is too close, which is why most ships take the route in n-space. The 11 to 14 light-hours between A and B was also too close for Adm. White Haven in 1543 PD (Karina Alexander, Third Countess White Haven), but technology has advanced since then so this doesn't mean much.

A pretty good paragraph or two on the subject is included somewhere in or around the battle at Ajay in UH. Still can't put my hands on the book, but I recall thinking there was no mention of the limitations of computers.

tlb wrote:It is entirely possible that missiles have little defense against particles, since they only have a limited active lifetime and the mass requirements for strong protection might be too much. As mentioned earlier the missile pods released by the Sharks traveled behind a separate platform that provided particle protection. So it could be that navies just assume that the probability of a hit is so low that they will accept the additional loss factor due to a particle collision.

It doesn't even need to be all that low--it comes down to whether the degrading of your firepower by increasing the size of the missiles to shield them is more than the degrading of your firepower because the occasional missile runs into something. Even a 1% chance per missile (and I can't imagine it being that high) probably wouldn't be worth shielding against.

Adding a bit of broth to the stew . . .

Uncompromising Honor wrote:She didn’t take her eyes off of her own panel, though. The debris field traveling through the Hypatia System seemed tiny and forlorn as the last memorial to the two thousand or so men and women who’d given their lives so that six million might live, but its components were moving across the system at better than 15,000 KPS and spreading laterally at over ninety KPS. That meant it was actually over a million kilometers in diameter—a hemisphere with a volume of almost eleven cubic lightseconds. Despite its spread, the debris was dense enough to present a genuine hazard to navigation, and Asteria’s particle screens weren’t as powerful as those of larger vessels. The good news, if it wasn’t obscene to call anything “good” in the wake of such carnage, was that her shuttle was traveling with the debris. It had been for several hours, now—many of the other rescue craft had exhausted their endurance and been forced to break off after conducting SAR over such a vast space on top of their grueling efforts to evacuate the orbital habitats—but at least that meant the relative velocities weren’t as high as they might have been.

I'm wondering what kind of difficulty Debnam and Paulette might experience after successful recovery of the life pods, then needing to safely get OUT of the debris field.

cthia wrote:Adding a bit of broth to the stew . . .

Uncompromising Honor wrote:She didn’t take her eyes off of her own panel, though. The debris field traveling through the Hypatia System seemed tiny and forlorn as the last memorial to the two thousand or so men and women who’d given their lives so that six million might live, but its components were moving across the system at better than 15,000 KPS and spreading laterally at over ninety KPS. That meant it was actually over a million kilometers in diameter—a hemisphere with a volume of almost eleven cubic lightseconds. Despite its spread, the debris was dense enough to present a genuine hazard to navigation, and Asteria’s particle screens weren’t as powerful as those of larger vessels. The good news, if it wasn’t obscene to call anything “good” in the wake of such carnage, was that her shuttle was traveling with the debris. It had been for several hours, now—many of the other rescue craft had exhausted their endurance and been forced to break off after conducting SAR over such a vast space on top of their grueling efforts to evacuate the orbital habitats—but at least that meant the relative velocities weren’t as high as they might have been.

I'm wondering what kind of difficulty Debnam and Paulette might experience after successful recovery of the life pods, then needing to safely get OUT of the debris field.

The debris field is roughly stationary compared to the rescue craft moving inside it. That's what the "good news" portion of the paragraph you pasted means. The biggest difficulty is actually negating that 0.05c and getting back to a safe harbour.

I imagine it's a navigational hazard for multiple reasons. For everyone not moving in lockstep with it, it's a large field that contains all sorts of pieces, many of which sufficiently big and/or in sufficient quantity to overload the particle screens, and moving at high speed compared to the primary. For anyone who matches velocities, the small pieces wouldn't be an issue, but the big ones still would.