Do forgive my emblazoning of your prose for emphasis.SWM wrote:Each ship you are trying to take apart requires a full shipyard. And it will take nearly as long to take it apart as to build a new one. All of the equipment you are taking off the ship has different specs from the ones Manticore uses.
You could do it, but it would require fewer people, use less yardspace, and have better equipment to just build new ones.
Perhaps so, if the imperative is to reclaim parts. Which
would be the imperative if recycling your own ships.
But these are useless Solly ships and useless Solly parts. With the exception of their grasers which may or may not be of interest to the RMN, or other SIGs on Manticore.
Therefore, I would surmise that total metals recycling would be the imperative. And the Breakers would be a specialized operation deploying huge behemoths of machinery at hand, employing grasers even, in a controlled manner, to cut through ships like butter. I wouldn't imagine that to take very long at all, once a hulk is "conditioned" for reclamation - eliminating such hazards as explosions.
Steel reclamation operations here on Earth may shock you.
And these metals may be viable for other enterprises even if not for ship building.
My question is whether reclamation yards, the Breakers, were destroyed as well?