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What happens to all that debris?

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Re: What happens to all that debris?
Post by Loren Pechtel   » Sat Sep 05, 2020 6:40 pm

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tlb wrote:When the command to abandon ship is given, it might not be possible for everyone to react at once. But I would be very surprised if it were ever followed by someone saying to wait a bit. The determination has been made that the ship will not survive for long and no matter what is going on out there, it is still safer than what is about to happen here. Similar to fleeing a burning house in the midst of a hurricane.


It could happen if the threat turned out not to be real in some fashion. For example, the fleet surrenders in response to an overwhelming missile threat and the attackers destruct the missiles.
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Re: What happens to all that debris?
Post by tlb   » Sat Sep 05, 2020 7:15 pm

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tlb wrote:When the command to abandon ship is given, it might not be possible for everyone to react at once. But I would be very surprised if it were ever followed by someone saying to wait a bit. The determination has been made that the ship will not survive for long and no matter what is going on out there, it is still safer than what is about to happen here. Similar to fleeing a burning house in the midst of a hurricane.

Loren Pechtel wrote:It could happen if the threat turned out not to be real in some fashion. For example, the fleet surrenders in response to an overwhelming missile threat and the attackers destruct the missiles.

Then we have the other case in the system with the quarantined merchantmen, where the ship surrendered; but the missiles were too far along to abort in time. However the suggestion that I was trying to answer was that people should pause in abandoning until the missile swarm is over. To be on the safe side, you do not physically stop the pods from launching; because there is not enough time. Presumably the pods can be retrieved by the ship if the missiles did abort.
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Re: What happens to all that debris?
Post by cthia   » Sun Sep 06, 2020 5:09 am

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At first glance, one might think . . .

Ok, there are missile bays. Check. There are boat bays. Check. Why aren't there life pod bays? Considering the process MaxxQ laid out undoubtedly incorporates a lot of waiting, It seems to me there should be pod bays. The pods must be loaded from a central location(s) like the missiles are loaded. Barring a lack of space because they are stored like sardines, it seems it would be faster if the escaping crew could hightail it on down to the pod bays, load up, then bolt.

But then you'd have to solve the problem of identifying occupied pods ready for launch to prevent injured crew from wasting energy running up to an occupied pod. Then how does that pod in a sea of pods gain access to a chute? Which is a highway filled with traffic? More wait time? And you wouldn't want to get stuck behind a pod or several pods whose occupants are too wounded to complete the launch sequence. It'd be like being stuck behind someone who is distracted at a traffic light. "Go already!" I can see the author's design problem.

Considering the ships before automation which had much larger crews, there must have been a very low percentage of pods per total crew. The crew aboard an SLN ship should be hard pressed for escape pods.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: What happens to all that debris?
Post by cthia   » Sun Sep 06, 2020 5:28 am

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BTW, finding yourself launched into a maelstrom of bomb-pumped lasers must be a b-e-i-itch.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: What happens to all that debris?
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Sun Sep 06, 2020 1:43 pm

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cthia wrote:At first glance, one might think . . .

Ok, there are missile bays. Check. There are boat bays. Check. Why aren't there life pod bays? Considering the process MaxxQ laid out undoubtedly incorporates a lot of waiting, It seems to me there should be pod bays. The pods must be loaded from a central location(s) like the missiles are loaded. Barring a lack of space because they are stored like sardines, it seems it would be faster if the escaping crew could hightail it on down to the pod bays, load up, then bolt.


What missile bays? There are ammo storage places inside the ship, but that's not where missiles are launched from.

Boat bays exist because they are a rather large volume and where multiple boats can be serviced and launched together. You don't need individual umbilical and repair facilities for each boat, they can be shared.

But for pods, you don't want to centralise. You want pods to be available throughout the ship, so that evacuation can proceed as quickly as possible. There must be lifepods within N seconds of any battlestation in the ship. You also don't want bottlenecks when a thousand people converge on a single or a few locations. Fluid mechanics, whence the "bottleneck" analogy comes.

How the pods are loaded into the ship is irrelevant, since that doesn't happen under battle conditions.

Considering the ships before automation which had much larger crews, there must have been a very low percentage of pods per total crew. The crew aboard an SLN ship should be hard pressed for escape pods.


That's probably why HMS Phantom had pods for the flag bridge, but SLN SDs did not have enough of them (and the fact that the SLN never thought they'd lose an SD in the first place).
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Re: What happens to all that debris?
Post by tlb   » Sun Sep 06, 2020 2:07 pm

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Considering the ships before automation which had much larger crews, there must have been a very low percentage of pods per total crew. The crew aboard an SLN ship should be hard pressed for escape pods.

That's probably why HMS Phantom had pods for the flag bridge, but SLN SDs did not have enough of them (and the fact that the SLN never thought they'd lose an SD in the first place).

Yet we know that between the life pods and the ships boats, all the crew of Crandall's ships were evacuated to the prisoner receiving area.
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Re: What happens to all that debris?
Post by Brigade XO   » Sun Sep 06, 2020 3:40 pm

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[quote="Vince"]Regarding the torpedoes that Bernike encountered: One flew through the inside of Bernike's wedge, another impacted the belly of the wedge.[quote="Shadow of Victory Chapter 36"]“What the fuck?”

I doubt those were Graser Torpedoes. To have been effective as described for torpedoes, they would have had to decelerate to some very low velocity to engage the station. The GT's were nearby the station and slewing around to chop up or though sections.

These probably were two of the ballistic packages comming in.
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Re: What happens to all that debris?
Post by Jonathan_S   » Sun Sep 06, 2020 5:35 pm

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tlb wrote:
ThinksMarkedly wrote:That's probably why HMS Phantom had pods for the flag bridge, but SLN SDs did not have enough of them (and the fact that the SLN never thought they'd lose an SD in the first place).

Yet we know that between the life pods and the ships boats, all the crew of Crandall's ships were evacuated to the prisoner receiving area.

Was that evacuation done in a single wave; or were the ships boats making multiple trips?
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Re: What happens to all that debris?
Post by tlb   » Sun Sep 06, 2020 6:35 pm

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:That's probably why HMS Phantom had pods for the flag bridge, but SLN SDs did not have enough of them (and the fact that the SLN never thought they'd lose an SD in the first place).

tlb wrote:Yet we know that between the life pods and the ships boats, all the crew of Crandall's ships were evacuated to the prisoner receiving area.

Jonathan_S wrote:Was that evacuation done in a single wave; or were the ships boats making multiple trips?

From Mission of Honor, chapter 23:
By my staff's calculations, the combined small craft and escape pod capacity of your superdreadnoughts should suffice to remove approximately five thousand of your personnel from each ship.
..snip..
The planet Flax is less than one million kilometers from your present position. That's well within the powered range of your life pods, even allowing a two hundred percent reserve for an unassisted landing. In short, removing your personnel from your vessels in the manner I've indicated poses no threat to life or limb, assuming you've properly maintained the equipment in question.
..snip..
Once your small craft and life pods have separated from your starships, they'll proceed to Flax. There, they will enter orbit as Admiral Khumalo directs and comply with any additional instructions he may issue. They will not land except as he or I specifically order. We'll make every effort to get them planet-side as promptly as possible, consonant with Governor Medusa's ability to arrange accommodations. I'll guarantee that, under any circumstances, your life pods will be allowed to make planetfall well within their life-support endurance. If, however, any of your small craft or life pods fail to comply with instructions from myself, Admiral Khumalo, or our designated subordinates, they will be destroyed.
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Re: What happens to all that debris?
Post by ZVar   » Sun Sep 06, 2020 11:06 pm

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cthia wrote:Ok, there are missile bays. Check. There are boat bays. Check. Why aren't there life pod bays? Considering the process MaxxQ laid out undoubtedly incorporates a lot of waiting, It seems to me there should be pod bays. The pods must be loaded from a central location(s) like the missiles are loaded. Barring a lack of space because they are stored like sardines, it seems it would be faster if the escaping crew could hightail it on down to the pod bays, load up, then bolt.


Here's an explanation that fixes both the empty pods being launched and waiting for a pod to show...

Ok, pods are stored in a rifle magazine type manor. Either one on top of the other so one tube takes launches from multiple decks. Deck 1, deck 2, deck 3, etc. When say decks 1,2, and 4 are full, but deck 3's pod is empty because battle damage makes it impracticable to get to it, or simply no one alive to get there, the system will go ahead and launch deck 1's pod, and deck 2's drops and gets launched, then deck 3's drops and is launched so it clears the queue so the pod from deck 4 is launched.

If they use a vertical configuration the same applies, but pod 1, 2 ,3, 4 are all near one department, the pods 5, 6, 7, 8 are near the next compartment, etc going from say fore to aft in the ship. Same concept. Pods 1,2,3 are launched, pod 4 is empty because no one alive to fill it, then the mass drivers, or thrusters, or whatever launches them simply so it's clearing the queue for the next one.
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