What happens to all that debris?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:And there are definitely no explosive warheads aboard ship. Not that the HV seems to use explosive compounds in the first place -- I mean, a single photon torpedo with its antimatter payload could wreck someone's day, but those don't exist in the HV.

So what can blow when a missile fires at it? The only thing we're told could actually explode is the ship's hull itself. The x-ray laserheads are designed so the thin beam will cause the material to transition from solid to plasma and cause catastrophic damage in the process of expansion and cooling down.

As for a boom nuke... how good is that in a vacuum against an unoccupied ship? So it'll be unsafe for occupation except if you want to glow in the dark and the sensitive equipment may be scrambled, but the ship itself should mostly survive, shouldn't it?

The energy torpedoes in OBS are the functional equivalent of photon torpedoes (if not the same thing). However it is unlikely that Honor's ships were equipped with them after so many years of fighting.

As for explosive warheads; every laser head missile has an explosive warhead and can be used as such. For that matter, if the mothballed fleet has no wedge or sidewall then the wedge of the missile (or using a CM instead) would most likely destroy a ship.

I am not sure that the mothball fleet would be as empty as you suggest. If the idea is that the ships must be available for use in some future emergency, then they ought to have some minimal particle shielding active; which in turn requires some minimal reactor activity - with attendant monitoring. That might not require an onboard crew, except as needed to troubleshoot communication links etc.

tlb wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:And there are definitely no explosive warheads aboard ship. Not that the HV seems to use explosive compounds in the first place -- I mean, a single photon torpedo with its antimatter payload could wreck someone's day, but those don't exist in the HV.

As for explosive warheads; every laser head missile has an explosive warhead and can be used as such. For that matter, if the mothballed fleet has no wedge or sidewall then the wedge of the missile (or using a CM instead) would most likely destroy a ship.

Two things.
First, the laserheads do contain a nuclear bomb, so in one sense they are explosive. But unlike today's nuclear bombs that use conventional chemical explosive to start things off the Honorverse nukes all appear to be grav implosion devices.

Most (all?) of today's thermonuclear warheads start with a shell of chemical explosives wrapped around a hollow plutonium sphere, and then having some wave guides pointing towards a hydrogen rich target. The conventional explosives go off and uniformly ultra compress the plutonium past it's critical point and it then fissions -- this produces a slew of high energy X-rays which are directed (to some extent) towards the hydrogen rich target which then undergoes fusion from the bombardment. (So they're at least 2 stage fission-fusion devices).

But the Honorverse instead takes a hydrogen fuel and simply compresses it under enormous gravitational force, from their grav generators, until fusion is initiated. No fission primary, no conventional explosives - just grav magic and hydrogen.


Second thing, just because their anti-ship missiles and nukes don't use chemical explosives doesn't mean that the HV as a whole doesn't. In IEH we're specifically told that the captured Peep assault shuttle carried carried some missile "intended primarily for short-range work against planetary targets, and they all carried chemical warheads". (It had also carried, but already expended by this point, a few impeller head missiles for anti-air/anti-armor use)
(Plus there's occasional mentions of grenades and boarding grenades, explosive variants of pulser darts, and the high-explosive cluster bombs that were used when capturing Camp Hades)

tlb wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:And there are definitely no explosive warheads aboard ship. Not that the HV seems to use explosive compounds in the first place -- I mean, a single photon torpedo with its antimatter payload could wreck someone's day, but those don't exist in the HV.

So what can blow when a missile fires at it? The only thing we're told could actually explode is the ship's hull itself. The x-ray laserheads are designed so the thin beam will cause the material to transition from solid to plasma and cause catastrophic damage in the process of expansion and cooling down.

As for a boom nuke... how good is that in a vacuum against an unoccupied ship? So it'll be unsafe for occupation except if you want to glow in the dark and the sensitive equipment may be scrambled, but the ship itself should mostly survive, shouldn't it?

The energy torpedoes in OBS are the functional equivalent of photon torpedoes (if not the same thing). However it is unlikely that Honor's ships were equipped with them after so many years of fighting.

As for explosive warheads; every laser head missile has an explosive warhead and can be used as such. For that matter, if the mothballed fleet has no wedge or sidewall then the wedge of the missile (or using a CM instead) would most likely destroy a ship.

I am not sure that the mothball fleet would be as empty as you suggest. If the idea is that the ships must be available for use in some future emergency, then they ought to have some minimal particle shielding active; which in turn requires some minimal reactor activity - with attendant monitoring. That might not require an onboard crew, except as needed to troubleshoot communication links etc.

I have always wondered about the term "mothball." At first impressions, it reminds me of the Aircraft boneyard in Tucson, Arizona. The Arizona desert is perfect for storing retired airplanes because it is so dry, thus, the dry environment resists corrosion.

Likewise, I wonder what "mothballing" means for a fleet in the HV. An environment lacking in oxygen resists corrosion. So I always assumed the mothballed ships were depressurized, for the most part. Initially I thought specialized materials would be "plated" over all of the metals that would readily rust, or simply other metals would be used. But neither of those options might always be possible.

And we know that something caused maintenance issues aboard SLN ships that prevented the bulkhead doors from easily opening. Historically, we know from British warships that bulkheads bend which prevents doors from opening. But I don't imagine that should happen in the HV aboard SL warships that have seen no action.

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Late edit for awfuller than awful grammar.

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cthia wrote:I have always wondered about the term "mothball." At first impressions, it reminds me of the Aircraft boneyard in Tucson, Arizona. The Arizona desert is perfect for storing retired airplanes because it is so dry, thus, the dry resists environment resists corrosion.

Likewise, I wonder what "mothballing" means for a fleet in the HV. An environment lacking in oxygen resists corrosion. So I always assumed the mothballed ships were depressurized, for the most part. Initially I thought materials would be plated over metals that would readily rust, or simply other metals used. But neither of those options might always be possible.

And we know that something caused maintenance issues aboard SLN ships that prevented the bulkhead doors from easily opening. Historically, we know from British warships that bulkheads bend which prevents doors from opening. But I don't imagine that should happen in the HV aboard SL warships that have seen no action.

You'd probably be better off replacing the atmosphere with a pure nitrogen one than by keeping them in vacuum. You're right that you wouldn't want normal air in there, the humidity and oxygen would attack too many things.

But there's lots of things even in a spaceship that probably don't care for long term exposure to vacuum, starting with many lubricants on doors, hatches, etc. But even if all of those are rated for indefinite vacuum exposure you start getting weirdness like surfaces vacuum welding themselves together (rather a problem for anything designed to move)


When wet navy ships are mothballed, such as the US did to vast numbers of ships after WWII, they tend to be moved to a freshwater location (above the tidal zone of a major river) to cut down on marine growth on their hulls, not to mention hull corrosion, then sensitive electronics are often pulled and kept in climate controlled storage, guns and sensors wrapped under plastic and dehumidifying measures taken to keep the inside humidity as low as practical. Joints, hinges, and other movable object, are often pre-packed with very thick grease to further protect them from corrosion as they sit there without moving). And of course they'll get sensors installed to monitor for leaks or other issues, and get periodic inspection and (hopefully) maintenance. (Oh, and fuel, ammo, small arms, etc. are usually unloaded prior to mothballing)

Parts of that work, or analogs to it, will presumably apply to mothballed / reserve spaceships - though other things like fresh water berths don't have an obvious analog.

Jonathan_S wrote:First, the laserheads do contain a nuclear bomb, so in one sense they are explosive. But unlike today's nuclear bombs that use conventional chemical explosive to start things off the Honorverse nukes all appear to be grav implosion devices.

Most (all?) of today's thermonuclear warheads start with a shell of chemical explosives wrapped around a hollow plutonium sphere, and then having some wave guides pointing towards a hydrogen rich target. The conventional explosives go off and uniformly ultra compress the plutonium past it's critical point and it then fissions -- this produces a slew of high energy X-rays which are directed (to some extent) towards the hydrogen rich target which then undergoes fusion from the bombardment. (So they're at least 2 stage fission-fusion devices).

But the Honorverse instead takes a hydrogen fuel and simply compresses it under enormous gravitational force, from their grav generators, until fusion is initiated. No fission primary, no conventional explosives - just grav magic and hydrogen.

What on earth do you mean by saying of H-bombs: "so in one sense they are explosive"!?!? You do not measure the horsepower of an engine by how strong its starter is; you do not measure the yield of an H-bomb by how it is initiated. A digression on how Honor's H-bombs work is interesting of itself, but irrelevant to anything that I said. A gravity initiated and focused H-bomb is very "explosive", in the most important sense of the word.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
As for a boom nuke... how good is that in a vacuum against an unoccupied ship? So it'll be unsafe for occupation except if you want to glow in the dark and the sensitive equipment may be scrambled, but the ship itself should mostly survive, shouldn't it?

PS: "sublimation" is the transition from solid to gas, without going through the liquid phase. What do we call the transition from solid directly to plasma, without going through liquid and gas phases?

A contact nuke, against the ship's skin will cause MASSIVE damage, as about 20% of the blast energy will be directed at the hull. (remember, this was the long distance ship killer prior to the laserhead)

but move that blast 1 km away.... not so much damage....

interestingly, the Burn setting has an effective range over 10,000 KM against sidewalls - but at that distance it would probably only melt the outer layers of armor of an SD, not destroy the ships. Much, much closer, the focused plasma stream would probably do a number on an SD, focusing the entire plasma of a nuke into a jet a hundred kms or so wide.

Now if you were using a specialized munition, like the Casaba Howitizer munition with said honorverse boom setting, you would have "some" good standoff range, but I doubt that the modern Honorverse laserhead has the missile casing built for such use.

Personally, I've always been a fan of flying the missile clouds THROUGH the SD reserves and allowing the wedges to chew up the SDs without using the warheads. It would probably be more thorough.

tlb wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:First, the laserheads do contain a nuclear bomb, so in one sense they are explosive. But unlike today's nuclear bombs that use conventional chemical explosive to start things off the Honorverse nukes all appear to be grav implosion devices.

What on earth do you mean by saying of H-bombs: "so in one sense they are explosive"!?!? You do not measure the horsepower of an engine by how strong its starter is; you do not measure the yield of an H-bomb by how it is initiated. A digression on how Honor's H-bombs work is interesting of itself, but irrelevant to anything that I said. A gravity initiated and focused H-bomb is very "explosive", in the most important sense of the word.

I'm a victim of my own poor copyediting

At one point that first paragraph was just a lead in sentance that was trying to make the distinction between the (chemical) "explosive compounds" that ThinksMarkedly referred to in his quoted post and nuclear explosions. At that point it read something like "First, the laserheads do contain a nuclear bomb, so in one sense they are explosive, but they don't contain explosives"

But then I started editing and rewriting and forgot to clean up the preamble

(Though in retrospect even that distinction probably would have better been phrased "laserheads do contain a nuclear bomb, which is explosive, but don't contain chemical explosive compounds as they're a pure grav pinch design")

Hmm.. there's a point about keeping a minimal nitrogen pressure to avoid hard vacuum for things intended for habitation. But I'm not entirely convinced. The process of mothballing might involve sealing the door joints in the open position and equipment with a coating layer.

But even if they're kept nitrogen atmosphere, I imagine it's much less than 1 atm of pressure. There's no need to have that much air. And the more pressure you have, the more it'll leak.

As for particle shielding, I'm far less convinced. In a parking orbit near Jupiter, there will be very little moving in high velocity. A passive method to protect the ship might be better than spending energy. And if there's one thing warships have plenty of is armour. Those are designed to withstand weapon attacks; a stray pebble at maybe twice orbital velocity is not going to considerably damage the ship.

The reactivation process is probably months-long and will involve checking the hull over, repairing damage, replacing plates, etc. and testing all doors. Compared to replacing missile tubes and shotguns, that's probably the easy part. In fact, checking the hull can be done by robots, with no human intervention.

TBH, I'm not sure parking around Jupiter is a good idea. It makes for nice narrative, but that's not the best place. Jupiter is the biggest sink hole in the Solar System, after the Sun. But the Sun's heat output and solar wind will ablate incoming debris, while Jupiter won't. Jupiter has five dozen moons of various sizes and a thin ring system, meaning it does have an outsized debris field. What it has going for it is that it also has a large hyperlimit, so one can't simply walk in and steal some warships or supplies.

tlb wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:First, the laserheads do contain a nuclear bomb, so in one sense they are explosive. But unlike today's nuclear bombs that use conventional chemical explosive to start things off the Honorverse nukes all appear to be grav implosion devices.

What on earth do you mean by saying of H-bombs: "so in one sense they are explosive"!?!? You do not measure the horsepower of an engine by how strong its starter is; you do not measure the yield of an H-bomb by how it is initiated. A digression on how Honor's H-bombs work is interesting of itself, but irrelevant to anything that I said. A gravity initiated and focused H-bomb is very "explosive", in the most important sense of the word.

Jonathan_S wrote:I'm a victim of my own poor copyediting

At one point that first paragraph was just a lead in sentance that was trying to make the distinction between the (chemical) "explosive compounds" that ThinksMarkedly referred to in his quoted post and nuclear explosions. At that point it read something like "First, the laserheads do contain a nuclear bomb, so in one sense they are explosive, but they don't contain explosives"

But then I started editing and rewriting and forgot to clean up the preamble

(Though in retrospect even that distinction probably would have better been phrased "laserheads do contain a nuclear bomb, which is explosive, but don't contain chemical explosive compounds as they're a pure grav pinch design")

You have my sympathies. It happens to me ALL of the time. Most of my posts are waaaaay too long. Upon editing the very rough drafts, things are left out. Verbs. Adverbs. Adjectives. Lions and tigers and bears. Oh my. On top of intentional incomplete sentences because of the onrush of time. And then my spell checker wants to insert "it's" where "its" should go. I'm not as totally incompetent with the English language as my spell checker makes me out to be. I'm actually worse.

Now, for the important part of this post ...

Isn't spoiler season over? The rules say one month after publishing. Right? The official release date was Oct. 5. I am waiting for a signal from the game warden. Duckk.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Hmm.. there's a point about keeping a minimal nitrogen pressure to avoid hard vacuum for things intended for habitation. But I'm not entirely convinced. The process of mothballing might involve sealing the door joints in the open position and equipment with a coating layer.

But even if they're kept nitrogen atmosphere, I imagine it's much less than 1 atm of pressure. There's no need to have that much air. And the more pressure you have, the more it'll leak.

As for particle shielding, I'm far less convinced. In a parking orbit near Jupiter, there will be very little moving in high velocity. A passive method to protect the ship might be better than spending energy. And if there's one thing warships have plenty of is armour. Those are designed to withstand weapon attacks; a stray pebble at maybe twice orbital velocity is not going to considerably damage the ship.

The reactivation process is probably months-long and will involve checking the hull over, repairing damage, replacing plates, etc. and testing all doors. Compared to replacing missile tubes and shotguns, that's probably the easy part. In fact, checking the hull can be done by robots, with no human intervention.

TBH, I'm not sure parking around Jupiter is a good idea. It makes for nice narrative, but that's not the best place. Jupiter is the biggest sink hole in the Solar System, after the Sun. But the Sun's heat output and solar wind will ablate incoming debris, while Jupiter won't. Jupiter has five dozen moons of various sizes and a thin ring system, meaning it does have an outsized debris field. What it has going for it is that it also has a large hyperlimit, so one can't simply walk in and steal some warships or supplies.

A layer of specialized coating is what I posited upstream with "plating." Akin to gold-plating. I can conceive of a simple spray coating that protects the metal and other susceptible parts, but which is easily removed if need be. As on present day Terra, no doubt there is a certain amount of time required to "demothball."

Presently, the amount of time required to reactivate a ship is directly dependent upon the amount of time it spent in mothballs.

I'm not readily willing to board the bus in favor of some sort of pressurization. Or even a nominal reactor presence.* All of these measures would require a warm body to keep an eye on things, and that would seem to defeat the notion of "mothballs." Mothballing should mostly include some sort of set-it-and-forget-it recipe. I suppose automated drones can keep the ships in orbit. Although, I originally assumed the mothballed ships were allowed to float freely within the confines of a certain vastness of space, kept in check by drones.

* Reactors really aren't nice beings, and you simply cannot count on them to stay put as you left them. They are worse than newborn treecats running and jumping all over the place.