Spoiler...Technology

phillies wrote:A fine novel.

Amazing. Someone creates a planet obliteration bomb, more or less, and then does not immediately weaponize it. What is wrong with these people?

As a minor aside, if you are two light seconds from a named large moon obliteration bomb when it goes ker-blammo, and do not have energy screens, you are not there afterwards.

Who to say Earth hasn't weaponised it, maybe that what they were going to tell Vlad.... "um, don't worry we wiped out the whole system were just waiting for the data to get to you"

So from the New book we have hints of:

Fasset Drives

Core Taps

Potential Gravitic weapons

Looks like a whole lot of combat capable tech. Which means the civilian options will be pretty nice also.

Mithandril

phillies wrote:A fine novel.

Amazing. Someone creates a planet obliteration bomb, more or less, and then does not immediately weaponize it. What is wrong with these people?

As a minor aside, if you are two light seconds from a named large moon obliteration bomb when it goes ker-blammo, and do not have energy screens, you are not there afterwards.

I think the facility that blew up is too complex to be useful as a weapon.

And I don't think it means you're not there anymore--remember, inverse square law, the control facility probably got hit by no more than a millionth of the energy density and that very well might have only boiled off a bit of armor. Besides, who says they weren't behind Ganymede when it blew?

What I want to know is what idiot conducted a test like that near a moon rather than in deep space? The Jovian system now has a boatload of debris flying all over the place, now you need your particle screens up all the time even when sitting still. Besides, who knows if Ganymede might have been useful for something?

You also left a blast mark the Hegemony is almost certain to see the next time they visit the system--it would have been better to not be so obvious about the energies humans can wield. If a true battle fleet shows up it wouldn't make a difference but at present there's no reason for the Hegemony to send such a fleet--and the lower the profile humanity presents the more likely they can ambush any stray ships that show up and thus the longer before the Hegemony figures out something has gone very, very wrong. (Yes, they will eventually figure it out when Earth turns into the Bermuda Triangle, but given the speed of interstellar flight that will take a long time, and given the speed of interstellar flight gathering a big fleet would take even more time, they'll investigate with a small force first.)

The loss of Ganymede isn't a problem as far as a GH ship visiting the Solar System.

The GH ship is more likely to notice the activity around Earth.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

phillies wrote:A fine novel.

Amazing. Someone creates a planet obliteration bomb, more or less, and then does not immediately weaponize it. What is wrong with these people?

As a minor aside, if you are two light seconds from a named large moon obliteration bomb when it goes ker-blammo, and do not have energy screens, you are not there afterwards.

I think the facility that blew up is too complex to be useful as a weapon.

And I don't think it means you're not there anymore--remember, inverse square law, the control facility probably got hit by no more than a millionth of the energy density and that very well might have only boiled off a bit of armor. Besides, who says they weren't behind Ganymede when it blew?

What I want to know is what idiot conducted a test like that near a moon rather than in deep space? The Jovian system now has a boatload of debris flying all over the place, now you need your particle screens up all the time even when sitting still. Besides, who knows if Ganymede might have been useful for something?

You also left a blast mark the Hegemony is almost certain to see the next time they visit the system--it would have been better to not be so obvious about the energies humans can wield. If a true battle fleet shows up it wouldn't make a difference but at present there's no reason for the Hegemony to send such a fleet--and the lower the profile humanity presents the more likely they can ambush any stray ships that show up and thus the longer before the Hegemony figures out something has gone very, very wrong. (Yes, they will eventually figure it out when Earth turns into the Bermuda Triangle, but given the speed of interstellar flight that will take a long time, and given the speed of interstellar flight gathering a big fleet would take even more time, they'll investigate with a small force first.)

DrakBibliophile wrote:The loss of Ganymede isn't a problem as far as a GH ship visiting the Solar System.

The GH ship is more likely to notice the activity around Earth.

They expect activity around Earth--the puppies. It's not an immediate tipoff that something's wrong. The longer they are in the dark about the true situation the greater the chance that they can be kept from getting a message out.

Loren Pechtel wrote:They expect activity around Earth--the puppies. It's not an immediate tipoff that something's wrong. The longer they are in the dark about the true situation the greater the chance that they can be kept from getting a message out.

Even if the Shongairi had managed to conquer Earth, I doubt they'd have developed the system to the extent it will have got to, even if any GH ship chances upon the system soon. The level of industry and traffic should astonish them anyway.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:They expect activity around Earth--the puppies. It's not an immediate tipoff that something's wrong. The longer they are in the dark about the true situation the greater the chance that they can be kept from getting a message out.

Even if the Shongairi had managed to conquer Earth, I doubt they'd have developed the system to the extent it will have got to, even if any GH ship chances upon the system soon. The level of industry and traffic should astonish them anyway.

But that's a matter of degree, not of kind. It's not an immediate indication that things have gone very, very wrong like a blown-up moon is.

Is blowing up (away?) Ganymede going to do anything to the orbital mechanics of the rest of the moons of Jupiter?

Randomiser wrote:Is blowing up (away?) Ganymede going to do anything to the orbital mechanics of the rest of the moons of Jupiter?

Yes. It was the 8th largest body in the Solar system (aside from the Sun, so 9th). It influence will be felt all through the Jovian system, especially the debris. The resonance with Io and Europa won't be disturbed so soon (the two should remain in 2:1) but that resonance should actually cause the debris to collect back where Ganymede was.

The question is whether the GH explorer would be curious enough to examine and, if in doing so, it would occur to them that the debris is not a natural occurrence. Astronomic collisions happen all the time and Jupiter, being the largest body outside of the Sun, acts as a vacuum cleaner and pulls everything into it. A collision that big is probably extremely rare in a mature system, but not impossible. And if you don't look for it, you may miss the fact that it's recent at all. The ship might just chalk it up to faulty recording of the earlier expedition (though I doubt it).

bert953 wrote:Blowing up Ganymede was an oopsie? Id hate to see an oowie.

Ganymede would never be suitable as a habitat. And its outer layers are mostly ice, so any mining operations would have to drill down many miles to reach rocky material. Asteroids are better targets for resource extraction. Losing Ganymede, while you wouldn't do it on purpose, isn't exactly a disaster.