Jonathan_S wrote:ThinksMarkedly wrote:Indeed. That was the shot that broke the Volsung's back during the first Battle of Manticore, more or less simultaneously with the gambit that destroyed one of the destroyers. The two heroes were Ensign Fenton Locatelli and Senior Chief Lorelei Osterman. It was also this action that caused the creation of the Osterman Cross, given to enlisted personnel only, and one that later Alfred Harrington would get shortly before he mustanged to officer (and a story we're still waiting to hear).
I don't think the ECM drones codenamed Lorelei are named for her.
What I don't remember is what the nature of the damage was. "Damaged piping" can mean a lot of things, not necessarily a physical crack. If the containment mechanism is damaged, when the plasma flows throw it could leak and cause the problems that cthia is referring to. It might also be that they connected systems that were never meant to be directly connected, so those pipes were getting plasma directly from the reactor or something. I'd need to reread ACTV to get the details.
(Actually it's ACTA - but reminding me it was Osterman and Locatelli was enough to fairly quickly find it)
It's pretty non-specific as to the damage. Even when HMS
Phoenix took the missile all we get is Gensome ordering a missile launch on "the lead ship—that destroyer—and the portside heavy cruiser"; with HMS
Phoenix being that lead destroyer - and then the scene jumps to Osterman in Forward Weapons getting knocked out and waking up to "All around her the compartment was all twisted metal and half-melted plastic, the whole thing encased in a smoky darkness that was relieved only by red indicators and the sporadic glow of occasional emergency lights."
As she goes back through the ship she finds bodies "burned instantly by burst plasma conduits"
And then (scattered across multiple scenes) this is all we get about working around / repairing the damage and the final fatal firing of the laser.
A Call to Arms wrote:Osterman said. “Looks like the capacitors have grounded, so we’re going to have to kluge some cascade relays directly into the plasma stream. Can you go get them? My left arm’s not good for much.”[snip]
By the time Ensign Locatelli returned with the cascade relays, Osterman had most of the wiring fixed, rerouted, or half-assed kluged.
Which had sounded a lot easier up front than it had turned out to be. Several of the plasma conduits had been ruptured in the attack, and though the plasma itself had long since dissipated it had left behind jagged tangles of superheated metal and plastic. Osterman sported a half dozen new burns of varying degrees, plus a couple of new cuts along her cheek and side.[snip]
“Pretty sure, Sir, yes,” Osterman said, peering at the uni-link she’d wired into the firing system.
Though in truth she wasn’t nearly as certain as she would like to be. While Phoenix’s laser firing equipment was still functional, the software had been seriously corrupted in the destroyer’s death throes.
Fortunately, she’d found an intact memory module in one of CIC’s systems that had enough space for what they needed. Invincible had downloaded replacement software, and then Osterman had removed the module, brought it back to the fire-control system, and wired it in. The system display had been cooked along with the software, but she’d managed to solve that problem by wiring in a uni-link to act as a repeater and let her keep track of what she was doing.[snip]
“Well, if they’re going to take the bait, I wish they’d get to it,” Locatelli muttered. “These things are getting hot.”
Osterman frowned. “What things?”
“These relays,” Locatelli said. “Yeah, I know they’re supposed to be wired to the heat sinks. But the couplings were shot, and most of the brackets were too warped to work. It’s okay—I’ve got them.”
“Except—” Osterman clamped down hard on the protest. Except that the whole system was about to surge with an incredible burst of energy, and if there were any gaps in the containment sheath there was a good chance Locatelli would be vaporized.
A fact that was, at this point, completely irrelevant. The instant that laser fired, something was going to fail in this jury-rigged system she and the ensign had thrown together. Whether it was the current couplings, the plasma conduits or the damn reactor itself, they were both dead.
But that was okay. That was the risk she and Locatelli had both agreed to when they signed up.
Most of the rest of their shipmates had already paid that price. Time for them to do likewise.[snip]
The uni-link signaled target acquisition. Bracing herself, Osterman pressed the firing key.
She had just enough time to see the distant battlecruiser begin to disintegrate when Phoenix’s last remaining plasma line ruptured.
About all we can glean from that is that her plasma conduits bursting must actually be, somehow, a
low damage event. The bodies that were burned by them were still there (not vaporized) and were in the compartments described as being part of the "bubble of mercy" of compartments that were still airtight after the missile hit. So the plasma conduits bursting didn't vaporize the ship, didn't even blow out the hull, and seems to have left even the compartments the blow-out happened in sufficiently intact as to be able to pass through them and recognize bodies burned by the plasma.
That seems to imply that the plasma routed around the RMN destroyers of the 1540 wasn't very hot, wasn't under that much pressure, or else was present in such miniscule amounts in the conduits that venting into compartments allowed it to rapidly cool and expand without inflicting massive or catastrophic damage. (And that the emergency systems shut off the flow of additional plasma almost instantly, preventing the compartments from being steadily sprayed with fresh hot plasma)
Actually we can have a lot of fun with this, and we can glean and speculate quite a bit as well.
Why doesn't the plasma immediately incinerate everything in the immediate vicinity, especially bodies that appear to have no more than third degree burns?
First,
what do we know about plasma? We know that it is one of the fundamental states of matter. Solid. Liquid. Gas. Plasma.
Plasma can be artificially generated by heating a neutral gas or subjecting it to a strong electromagnetic field.
We have had devices on Earth that use plasma. In the same article we are reminded of neon lights and our old friend the plasma globe.
Speculation time. I think the plasma stream is just a neutral gas that is heated using a strong electromagnetic field. The
cascade relays might function similarly to
step up transformers whose duty is to increase the temperature of the plasma as it passes across a series of these relays. These relays are probably located near the nodes where the plasma needs to be at its maximum temperature. Like when it is being used to start the reactor. Or in this case, fire energy weapons.
The text says that the capacitors have already grounded. Meaning that they have discharged. The two heroes need to get them charged.
They insert the relays directly into the plasma stream to get it to the required temperature to charge the capacitors which will fire the weapon.
So, it appears that the plasma is NOT always at its highest temperatures coursing thru the ship. It will only reach those very high temperatures when it passes across the cascade relays which will each raise the temperature higher than the previous relay in a cascade event.
Reasonable?
