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What happens to all that debris?

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Re: What happens to all that debris?
Post by cthia   » Mon May 03, 2021 2:09 pm

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I was thinking about all of the ships the SL lost in the Sol system. And what we learned in this thread is that wedges easily vacuum up the debris. But wedges turn the debris into atoms. Which means a lot of resources - man hours and machine hours - are lost, instead of making it to the breakers.

The SL completely lost the equivalent of an entire asteroid field. A very close, pre-mined, asteroid field!

LOL

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   » Mon May 03, 2021 6:15 pm

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cthia wrote:I was thinking about all of the ships the SL lost in the Sol system. And what we learned in this thread is that wedges easily vacuum up the debris. But wedges turn the debris into atoms. Which means a lot of resources - man hours and machine hours - are lost, instead of making it to the breakers.

The SL completely lost the equivalent of an entire asteroid field. A very close, pre-mined, asteroid field!

LOL


Well, the main asteroid belt has a lot of mass. We haven't heard anything close to enough industrialisation anywhere in the HV for the belt to be completely consumed.

But you're right about ease of access: all the easiest asteroids have been mined already and if the refined metals and carbon weren't recycled, then the SL needs to mine all over again, at higher cost.
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Re: What happens to all that debris?
Post by Brigade XO   » Thu May 06, 2021 9:15 pm

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Given that Technodyne was a major supplier of ships to the SLN and we can only speculate what they (and other companies) bought from suppliers in other systems, a lot of that destroyed shipping and equipment may not have come from the Sol system.

On the other hand, astroid mining has been going on there for quite a while and right along with that depletion or resources, all the mining and related basic processing and fabrication facilities are not also gone. Sol is going to have to replace everything they are going to need to restart any orbital or in-system extraction and fabrication.

The surviving politicians are going to have a field day with corruption and graft. :)
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Re: What happens to all that debris?
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Thu May 06, 2021 11:43 pm

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Brigade XO wrote:Given that Technodyne was a major supplier of ships to the SLN and we can only speculate what they (and other companies) bought from suppliers in other systems, a lot of that destroyed shipping and equipment may not have come from the Sol system.


Your statements sound true in isolation, but I'm having trouble understanding how they're relate to each other and to the thread.

A lot of the equipment that was in the Sol system may have been imported from elsewhere. That's completely irrelevant, though: it wasn't a mobile asset belonging to another government.

A lot of ships may have been in Sol when Honor came to visit, but I doubt most of they fled as soon as 400 ships showed up between Mars and Jupiter. Honor also took her sweet time coming from Jupiter to the hyperlimit, so anyone who could have left did so before.

What all of that has to do with Technodyne, I have no clue.

Can you clarify what you meant?

On the other hand, astroid mining has been going on there for quite a while and right along with that depletion or resources, all the mining and related basic processing and fabrication facilities are not also gone. Sol is going to have to replace everything they are going to need to restart any orbital or in-system extraction and fabrication.

The surviving politicians are going to have a field day with corruption and graft. :)


Asteroids are not depleted. The easy mining might long since been done, maybe more than 1500 years ago, but that doesn't mean there aren't resources to still be mined. It'll be expensive, sure, which you're right opens a lot of opportunity for corruption and graft. Losing a war is not going to put an end to that.

David didn't address this but there's no way that destroying ALL the space-borne infrastructure in a system as heavily populated as Sol wouldn't cause a humanitarian disaster. The GF did spare habitats so I assume they also spared food-production infrastructure. But there's more to living than food. Even the bottom of Maslow's Pyramid requires some other commodities and goods. And as we all learnt in 2020, everyone needs toilet paper.

Since the GF doesn't want to be seen as doing the same as the Parthian Shot was doing, I expect that a lot of the space infrastructure in Sol did in fact survive Honor's visit.
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Re: What happens to all that debris?
Post by cthia   » Fri May 07, 2021 1:20 pm

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Brigade XO wrote:Given that Technodyne was a major supplier of ships to the SLN and we can only speculate what they (and other companies) bought from suppliers in other systems, a lot of that destroyed shipping and equipment may not have come from the Sol system.


Your statements sound true in isolation, but I'm having trouble understanding how they're relate to each other and to the thread.

A lot of the equipment that was in the Sol system may have been imported from elsewhere. That's completely irrelevant, though: it wasn't a mobile asset belonging to another government.

A lot of ships may have been in Sol when Honor came to visit, but I doubt most of they fled as soon as 400 ships showed up between Mars and Jupiter. Honor also took her sweet time coming from Jupiter to the hyperlimit, so anyone who could have left did so before.

What all of that has to do with Technodyne, I have no clue.

Can you clarify what you meant?

On the other hand, astroid mining has been going on there for quite a while and right along with that depletion or resources, all the mining and related basic processing and fabrication facilities are not also gone. Sol is going to have to replace everything they are going to need to restart any orbital or in-system extraction and fabrication.

The surviving politicians are going to have a field day with corruption and graft. :)


Asteroids are not depleted. The easy mining might long since been done, maybe more than 1500 years ago, but that doesn't mean there aren't resources to still be mined. It'll be expensive, sure, which you're right opens a lot of opportunity for corruption and graft. Losing a war is not going to put an end to that.

David didn't address this but there's no way that destroying ALL the space-borne infrastructure in a system as heavily populated as Sol wouldn't cause a humanitarian disaster. The GF did spare habitats so I assume they also spared food-production infrastructure. But there's more to living than food. Even the bottom of Maslow's Pyramid requires some other commodities and goods. And as we all learnt in 2020, everyone needs toilet paper.

Since the GF doesn't want to be seen as doing the same as the Parthian Shot was doing, I expect that a lot of the space infrastructure in Sol did in fact survive Honor's visit.

Honor spared all essential industry. A privilege the Alliance afforded the SL since the beginning of hostilities. For Honor to have done any different would have spat on the Harrington Plan. Such an act of cruelty surely would have been considered an injustice to humanity.

At any rate, aren't ALL wars a humanitarian disaster?

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   » Fri May 07, 2021 1:34 pm

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:
cthia wrote:I was thinking about all of the ships the SL lost in the Sol system. And what we learned in this thread is that wedges easily vacuum up the debris. But wedges turn the debris into atoms. Which means a lot of resources - man hours and machine hours - are lost, instead of making it to the breakers.

The SL completely lost the equivalent of an entire asteroid field. A very close, pre-mined, asteroid field!

LOL


Well, the main asteroid belt has a lot of mass. We haven't heard anything close to enough industrialisation anywhere in the HV for the belt to be completely consumed.

But you're right about ease of access: all the easiest asteroids have been mined already and if the refined metals and carbon weren't recycled, then the SL needs to mine all over again, at higher cost.

I will never again underestimate man's ability to over-mine his resources, but yes, the asteroid belt should be far from extinction (yes, it's alive!)... but, an asteroid "field" is to an "asteroid belt" what a pond is to an ocean. But even a field should last a very long time.

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   » Tue Nov 02, 2021 5:52 am

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I posed a question somewhere in this thread that has had me wondering ever since. Well, the response to said post has me wondering anyway, which I think came from Jonathan_S and backed up by an old related post of RFC's supplied by Duckk. Thanks, btw, Duckk. I originally missed that post for a few pages.

At any rate, when debris—specifically in the form of unspent missiles—head out of the system, can they be retrieved and reused? I think it is obvious that they can. I am asking because I can see the MA firing lots of g-torps that may not find a target. Which changes the statement the author made about there not being a lot of orphaned missiles, with the development of g-torps.*

According to that same informative post of the author's provided by Duckk (amongst the first few posts of the thread) in the case of impeller-driven missiles, they are provided with a self-destruct mechanism. Which I always thought is a waste, although I do understand the related security concerns as well as the other concerns laid out in DW's post. You certainly wouldn't want someone to happen upon an intact missile.

But g-torps are stealthy and have a much longer endurance. So shouldn't the MA be able to retrieve unspent g-torps that never find a target? They would know the bearing they fired them on. (Albeit perhaps less any course changes performed by the missile.) A stealthed ship can intercept/rendezvous with them later.

Or would it be a security risk that is just not worth it. I imagine they can go into booby trap mode. I feel sorry for any vessel that happens upon a swarm of live g-torps and sets off their 3-seconds of hellfire because they don't have the code to disarm them.

* Of course, the author's statement would still hold true if those g-torps also self-destructed. But would it be advisable to detonate huge salvos of g-torps that missed their targets, possibly alerting the enemy that they were even launched? In the case of impeller-driven missiles the enemy already knows when they are launched.

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 Loren Pechtel   » Tue Nov 02, 2021 8:06 pm

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cthia wrote:* Of course, the author's statement would still hold true if those g-torps also self-destructed. But would it be advisable to detonate huge salvos of g-torps that missed their targets, possibly alerting the enemy that they were even launched? In the case of impeller-driven missiles the enemy already knows when they are launched.


By the time they missed the enemy would have known about them because they would have engaged the ones that were aimed more accurately. The only way they could be undetected is if the fleet moved out of their line of fire while they were in flight.

I would assume they have destructs like other missiles. That's something they really don't want somebody to find drifting in space with it's power spent.
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Re: What happens to all that debris?
Post by kzt   » Tue Nov 02, 2021 8:22 pm

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Spider torps have a loiter time of months.

They can just fly themselves into the sun or a convenient gas giant when they need to go away.
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Re: What happens to all that debris?
Post by cthia   » Tue Nov 02, 2021 9:01 pm

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kzt wrote:Spider torps have a loiter time of months.

They can just fly themselves into the sun or a convenient gas giant when they need to go away.

That loiter time is why they have plenty of time not to be in a rush to destroy themselves. Even RFC says the chances of them running into another warship are slim.

Although, RFC's post mentioned something about orphaned missiles caused by incidental EMPs from nuclear detonations or lucky beams hitting critical components w/o destroying the missile. I thought missiles were hardened against EMP, but now that I think of it, an EMP is the tactic Shannon's Tripple Ripple used. But since then missiles are probably hardened against the tactic. I just don't know how hardened they are against a determined foe that happens upon a swarm of unspent missiles. So maybe the risk isn't worth it after all. But that brings us right back to the possibility of the MA having to flush lots of missiles down the drain.

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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