What happens to all that debris?

tlb wrote:Yes, you did say within the armor; but that seems like an even worse situation than staying within the wedge. You are positing that after the abandon ship command has been given, the launching of pods ceases while the ship maneuvers violently. I do not know how that would be possible unless the abandon ship command had been unnecessary. If the ship is in such danger that it needs to be abandoned, then that danger will worsen with the approach of hostile missiles; making the need to abandon even greater.

PS. It is my recollection the the torpedo was destroyed by the wedge.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Yes, I am making the suggestion that if the ship is making wild evasive manoeuvres, it's safer inside the ship than launching. The missiles are too close to actually firing, so space around the ship is going to be a mess of hard radiation, lasers, gamma rays, and debris. If you didn't launch by then, you ride the attack inside and hope you survive.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:BTW, my assertion that objects thrown overboard stop accelerating with the ship as soon as they leave the compensator field is a very good way of getting separation from missiles so they can bring up their own wedges. On an SD, the distance from the ship's broadside to the edge of the wedge is about 40 km, so pure thrusters/rockets pushing at 10 gravities, it would take 28 seconds. Even if you add a mag-rail initial speed of 5 km/s, that's still 7.4 s. On the other hand, if the ship is still accelerating, even an old SD at 350 gravities can clear the length-wise wedge (85 km) in less than 5 seconds. In this case, the missile wouldn't need to carry propellant for this and could save the little it has for attitude adjustments before firing, plus separating from other missiles (in 3D space) so that each can bring up their own wedges. Saves on weight and volume too.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Yes, I am making the suggestion that if the ship is making wild evasive manoeuvres, it's safer inside the ship than launching. The missiles are too close to actually firing, so space around the ship is going to be a mess of hard radiation, lasers, gamma rays, and debris. If you didn't launch by then, you ride the attack inside and hope you survive.

ZVar wrote:I would say it's less safe. Battle damage compensator failure is a thing, as is fusion bottles not shutting down fast enough. Plus space is huge, and life pods are tiny compared to anything else around. I would say the survivability is increased by getting them away asap.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:BTW, my assertion that objects thrown overboard stop accelerating with the ship as soon as they leave the compensator field is a very good way of getting separation from missiles so they can bring up their own wedges. On an SD, the distance from the ship's broadside to the edge of the wedge is about 40 km, so pure thrusters/rockets pushing at 10 gravities, it would take 28 seconds. Even if you add a mag-rail initial speed of 5 km/s, that's still 7.4 s. On the other hand, if the ship is still accelerating, even an old SD at 350 gravities can clear the length-wise wedge (85 km) in less than 5 seconds. In this case, the missile wouldn't need to carry propellant for this and could save the little it has for attitude adjustments before firing, plus separating from other missiles (in 3D space) so that each can bring up their own wedges. Saves on weight and volume too.

ZVar wrote:Missiles are pushed out by mass driver launchers. At least as per text in The Short Victorious War.

Shadow of Victory Chapter 36 wrote:“What the fuck?”
Jansen Mandrapilias, third officer of the liquid gas tanker Bernike, looked up sharply from the shipping manifest he’d been updating for their arrival at the Draco Seven orbital refinery. At the moment, Bernike was accelerating steadily away from Hephaestus, fourteen minutes and 691,000,000 kilometers out from the station on her regular bi-monthly round-trip to Draco, the central of the Manticore-A’s system’s three gas giants. Trundling back and forth between the refinery and Hephaestus’ enormous tank farm wasn’t the most exciting occupation in the world, but there was a certain solid satisfaction to the job.
Besides, Jansen had earned his watch-standing ticket just last December, barely two T-months ago, so it was all still brand, shiny new for him. Especially when the Skipper had seen fit to hand over to “Mister Mandrapilias” after clearing the Hephaestus departure perimeter. Zinaida Merkulov, who had the sensor watch, on the other hand, was at least two and a half times Mandrapilias’ age and made it a point of pride never to be surprised by anything. In fact, Jansen rather suspected the Skipper had left her unofficial instructions to keep an eye on the newbie, given that she was something of a legend in the Hauptman Cartel’s service who probably should have retired at least a T-decade or so ago. Unfortunately for those who felt she’d earned a vine-covered cottage somewhere, she routinely maxed the cartel-wide proficiency tests every year. In fact, she’d been seriously pissed this year when she came in third, instead of first.
She’d also been known to refer to one Jansen Mandrapilias as “Sonny” on certain off-duty occasions.
Under some circumstances, that could have led to a discipline problem, but not aboard Bernike, and not with Zinaida Merkulov, who was always professional on duty. Which made the totally unexpected outburst even more shocking than it might have been out of someone else.
“What?” Jansen demanded now, but she ignored him. She was punching numbers into her console at lightning speed, and then she whipped around to Cathal Viñas, the helmsman of the watch.
“Hard skew one-two-five, niner-seven-zero!” she barked. “Now!”
Jansen’s mouth dropped open, but Cathal had known Zinaida longer than Jansen Mandrapilias had been alive, and he recognized the hammered-battle steel urgency of her tone.
He snapped his joystick hard over, sending six million tons of tanker into a steeply climbing starboard turn. Warning hooters sounded as she departed radically from her filed course profile, and Jansen could already hear the reaming Management would give all of them when ATC levied the fines. If they docked his pay to cover it, he’d still be working it off when he was twice Zinaida’s age!
“Zinaida, what the hell do you think—?!”
Then another alarm sounded, and Jansen’s eyes jerked back to his own panel. He’d never heard that strident, two-toned, ear-piercing wail outside a training simulation, and he couldn’t really believe he was hearing it now.
But he was.
Something slammed into the interposed belly of Bernike’s impeller wedge and vanished with the instantaneous ferocity of a several hundred thousand-kilometers per second gravity gradient. But something else missed the wedge. It came sizzling through the tanker’s wide-open throat on a reciprocal course with a closing velocity of over 60,000 KPS, crossed the wedge’s interior at a sharp angle in approximately five-thousandths of a second, missed her enormous hull by no more than sixty or seventy kilometers, and went racing out the wedge’s kilt.
Then it was gone. The collision alert continued to sound, and Mandrapilias felt echoes of terror that hadn’t had nearly long enough to register at the time whiplash up and down his nervous system. His head jerked around to Zinaida.
“What the fuck was that?” he demanded.
He didn’t know—then—that he would never, ever forgive himself for not reporting the incident instantly to ACT. Not that three and a half minutes of warning would have done any good.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

tlb wrote:Yes, you did say within the armor; but that seems like an even worse situation than staying within the wedge. You are positing that after the abandon ship command has been given, the launching of pods ceases while the ship maneuvers violently. I do not know how that would be possible unless the abandon ship command had been unnecessary. If the ship is in such danger that it needs to be abandoned, then that danger will worsen with the approach of hostile missiles; making the need to abandon even greater.

PS. It is my recollection the the torpedo was destroyed by the wedge.

Yes, I am making the suggestion that if the ship is making wild evasive manoeuvres, it's safer inside the ship than launching. The missiles are too close to actually firing, so space around the ship is going to be a mess of hard radiation, lasers, gamma rays, and debris. If you didn't launch by then, you ride the attack inside and hope you survive.

Torpedoes impacting the wedge are obliterated. I don't remember if this one did, either from inside or from outside. I thought it had gone clear through and thus had completely survived. I'm sure none flew through and broke down because of that flight. There would be large pieces left for the RMN to investigate if so.

BTW, my assertion that objects thrown overboard stop accelerating with the ship as soon as they leave the compensator field is a very good way of getting separation from missiles so they can bring up their own wedges. On an SD, the distance from the ship's broadside to the edge of the wedge is about 40 km, so pure thrusters/rockets pushing at 10 gravities, it would take 28 seconds. Even if you add a mag-rail initial speed of 5 km/s, that's still 7.4 s. On the other hand, if the ship is still accelerating, even an old SD at 350 gravities can clear the length-wise wedge (85 km) in less than 5 seconds. In this case, the missile wouldn't need to carry propellant for this and could save the little it has for attitude adjustments before firing, plus separating from other missiles (in 3D space) so that each can bring up their own wedges. Saves on weight and volume too.

ZVar wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Yes, I am making the suggestion that if the ship is making wild evasive manoeuvres, it's safer inside the ship than launching. The missiles are too close to actually firing, so space around the ship is going to be a mess of hard radiation, lasers, gamma rays, and debris. If you didn't launch by then, you ride the attack inside and hope you survive.

I would say it's less safe. Battle damage compensator failure is a thing, as is fusion bottles not shutting down fast enough. Plus space is huge, and life pods are tiny compared to anything else around. I would say the survivability is increased by getting them away asap.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:BTW, my assertion that objects thrown overboard stop accelerating with the ship as soon as they leave the compensator field is a very good way of getting separation from missiles so they can bring up their own wedges. On an SD, the distance from the ship's broadside to the edge of the wedge is about 40 km, so pure thrusters/rockets pushing at 10 gravities, it would take 28 seconds. Even if you add a mag-rail initial speed of 5 km/s, that's still 7.4 s. On the other hand, if the ship is still accelerating, even an old SD at 350 gravities can clear the length-wise wedge (85 km) in less than 5 seconds. In this case, the missile wouldn't need to carry propellant for this and could save the little it has for attitude adjustments before firing, plus separating from other missiles (in 3D space) so that each can bring up their own wedges. Saves on weight and volume too.

Missiles are pushed out by mass driver launchers. At least as per text in The Short Victorious War.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
BTW, my assertion that objects thrown overboard stop accelerating with the ship as soon as they leave the compensator field is a very good way of getting separation from missiles so they can bring up their own wedges. On an SD, the distance from the ship's broadside to the edge of the wedge is about 40 km, so pure thrusters/rockets pushing at 10 gravities, it would take 28 seconds. Even if you add a mag-rail initial speed of 5 km/s, that's still 7.4 s. On the other hand, if the ship is still accelerating, even an old SD at 350 gravities can clear the length-wise wedge (85 km) in less than 5 seconds. In this case, the missile wouldn't need to carry propellant for this and could save the little it has for attitude adjustments before firing, plus separating from other missiles (in 3D space) so that each can bring up their own wedges. Saves on weight and volume too.

Pearls of Weber: Wedge Geometry wrote:Consider: an SD's impeller wedge is 300 km across, but the ship herself has a maximum beam of less than a kilometer. She therefore represents a very small (relatively speaking) aiming point at the middle of a very wide roof and floor of impenetrable "armor." The sidewall is normally generated at a range of less than 10,000 meters from the actual ship, which means that, in the case of our SD from the example above, the sidewall will be 143 kilometers inside the outer "edges" of the wedge.

cthia wrote:
Also, if mass launchers are used for missiles, do missiles use the same rotary system life pods do? That would limit the number of mass launchers needed. Simply one per "steel chamber" or chute. Suddenly, the bottleneck regarding the cycle times of launches may be beginning to show itself.

Shouldn't powerful presser beams do a better job?

cthia wrote:Interesting. If missiles are shot out with mass driver launchers, what are the chances life pods are as well? What is the comparison in size of life pods and missiles? Life pods are much larger? Can mass launchers impart the kind of velocity life pods need?

cthia wrote:Also, if mass launchers are used for missiles, do missiles use the same rotary system life pods do? That would limit the number of mass launchers needed. Simply one per "steel chamber" or chute. Suddenly, the bottleneck regarding the cycle times of launches may be beginning to show itself.

Shouldn't powerful presser beams do a better job?

ZVar wrote:

cthia wrote:Interesting. If missiles are shot out with mass driver launchers, what are the chances life pods are as well? What is the comparison in size of life pods and missiles? Life pods are much larger? Can mass launchers impart the kind of velocity life pods need?

I would say low. Remember pods are built to survive the destruction of the warship. On smaller ships there is a good possibility the single power plant is down when the signal to abandon is sent. Or at least overtaxed firing energy batteries while maintaining sidewalls and wedge.
They could use capacitors to store the energy needed of course, but even that's is a bit complex for a craft designed to keep someone alive while the ship is literately being blown apart.
Life pods have to conform to the KISS principle to draconian measures. That means that while they may have a mass driver as "a" means to eject the pod, it will have propellant, even if it's just bottled gas to push the pod clear.

cthia wrote:Also, if mass launchers are used for missiles, do missiles use the same rotary system life pods do? That would limit the number of mass launchers needed. Simply one per "steel chamber" or chute. Suddenly, the bottleneck regarding the cycle times of launches may be beginning to show itself.

Shouldn't powerful presser beams do a better job?

Wait, are we positive life pods use a rotary system, or is that just conjuncture? There are ways after all to launch several bullets, missiles, etc. from one barrel and it not be rotary.

ZVar wrote:Wait, are we positive life pods use a rotary system, or is that just conjuncture? There are ways after all to launch several bullets, missiles, etc. from one barrel and it not be rotary.

cthia wrote:Actually, I'm not sure. It is conjecture on my part from a post MaxxQ included in the "How To Abandon Ship" thread that I included upstream. But since you brought it up I read it again, it could be that pods are stacked vertically or horizontally, just as well. MaxxQ's post.

Either way it seems like a slow process to wait until a pod comes along, load up. And wait again. Wait!??? I figure there must be some reason for such a slow process. Either a limited number of chutes, and, or, limited mass drivers or pressor beams behind the magic of the chutes. But, how the pods are configured is conjecture on my part, from MaxxQ's post.