Grav Lance Questions

Here is the text from OBS:

Her forward impeller nodes had failed completely within seconds of Sirius's destruction, and this time there had been no way to repair them. Worse, her after impeller ring had gone for over forty-five minutes, as well—three-quarters of an hour in which she had coasted another ninety-four million kilometers outward while damage reports flooded in to her airless bridge.

Note the text--"this time there had been no way to repair them." Also note the timing. The grav lance fired, the energy torpedoes tore through the Sirius, the Sirius blew up, and then--seconds later--the impeller rings failed. And this was after significant damage which had already taken out the forward impeller for a while. The impellers were running on patchwork battlefield repairs, and Honor had been surprised that the forward impellers had been repaired for as long as they were. The ship was barely alive.

It was battlefield damage that took out the Fearless impellers, not the grav lance.

SWM wrote:Here is the text from OBS:

Her forward impeller nodes had failed completely within seconds of Sirius's destruction, and this time there had been no way to repair them. Worse, her after impeller ring had gone for over forty-five minutes, as well—three-quarters of an hour in which she had coasted another ninety-four million kilometers outward while damage reports flooded in to her airless bridge.

Note the text--"this time there had been no way to repair them." Also note the timing. The grav lance fired, the energy torpedoes tore through the Sirius, the Sirius blew up, and then--seconds later--the impeller rings failed. And this was after significant damage which had already taken out the forward impeller for a while. The impellers were running on patchwork battlefield repairs, and Honor had been surprised that the forward impellers had been repaired for as long as they were. The ship was barely alive.

It was battlefield damage that took out the Fearless impellers, not the grav lance.

Absolutely. There is no other way to read this. The fact that the wedge came down immediately after the GL fired is a coincidence, nothing more (unless RFC pipes up and says otherwise).

SWM wrote:Here is the text from OBS:

Her forward impeller nodes had failed completely within seconds of Sirius's destruction, and this time there had been no way to repair them. Worse, her after impeller ring had gone for over forty-five minutes, as well—three-quarters of an hour in which she had coasted another ninety-four million kilometers outward while damage reports flooded in to her airless bridge.

Note the text--"this time there had been no way to repair them." Also note the timing. The grav lance fired, the energy torpedoes tore through the Sirius, the Sirius blew up, and then--seconds later--the impeller rings failed. And this was after significant damage which had already taken out the forward impeller for a while. The impellers were running on patchwork battlefield repairs, and Honor had been surprised that the forward impellers had been repaired for as long as they were. The ship was barely alive.

It was battlefield damage that took out the Fearless impellers, not the grav lance.

fallsfromtrees wrote:Absolutely. There is no other way to read this. The fact that the wedge came down immediately after the GL fired is a coincidence, nothing more (unless RFC pipes up and says otherwise).

I wouldn't say it was a complete coincidence. I suspect that it was the battle damage to Fealess's impeller nodes in combination with the firing of the grav lance under combat conditions* that caused the Fearless's wedge to fail.

* Under combat conditions is used here to mean a fully powered grav lance firing (or as near to fully powered as possible given Fearless's damage). Remember that in the Fleet exercises, the grav lance was NOT used anywhere near full strength (this is the equivalent of throwing practice grenades that just pop instead of explode).

On Basilisk Station, Chapter 3 wrote:Captain Lewis's frantic warning was far too late, and the range was far too short to do anything about it. Admiral D'Orville had barely begun to turn towards him when a crimson light glared on King Roger's main status board, and damage alarms screamed as the vastly understrength grav lance smashed into the superdreadnought's port sidewall. It was far too weak to inflict actual generator damage, but the computers noted it and obediently flashed their failure warning—just as an incredible salvo of equally understrength energy torpedoes exploded against the theoretically nonexistent sidewall.

Italics are the author's, boldface is my emphasis.

SharkHunter wrote: That's what irritated Honor so much and made her feel like she'd fallen into the "clutches of Horrible Hemphill", whose thought process at the time seemed to be "I'll trade a light cruiser crew & lives for an enemy capital ship any day of the week". Sonja also pushed LAC developments under the thought that it's less "Navy expensive" to lose LAC crews in the "Sonja swarm" concept. Fortunately, the good Admiral smartened up as her career at BuWeaps continued.

And it is less expensive in lives to lose the LAC's instead of, say, destroyers, and HAH has acknowledged that. Ideally, no one is spent at all. Early on, Hemphill was certainly a bit too cold-bloodedly tolerant of losing a lot of people in one way or another doing the Navy's business, and perhaps the traditional school was too unwilling to consider what you could buy if you did consider plans you knew would charge that currency.

Over time, the LAC development considered keeping the attrition units around longer, with the bow wall and decoys particularly, and tactics for getting the job done and coming back. So you end up with a platform that puts ten people at a little more risk - but only a little more, and that's worst-case - than you would otherwise put 60-200 for about the same job. Some of it is Hemphill maturing (or already being mature that way and just managing better communication with Alexander-Harringtons than otherwise - Hamish is not the Prince of Open-Mindedness); some of it is ideas maturing into entire systems and doctrine; and some of it is the establishment working away from a knee-jerk reaction against "attrition units" and accepting that warships will get killed despite all you can do and that one acceptable response to that is to minimize the number of people in the line of fire in each case.

--snipping, not for content but to give you a well deserved round of appplause and a deep bow: --

JeffEngel wrote:

SharkHunter wrote: That's what irritated Honor so much and made her feel like she'd fallen into the "clutches of Horrible Hemphill", whose thought process at the time seemed to be "I'll trade a light cruiser crew & lives for an enemy capital ship any day of the week". Sonja also pushed LAC developments under the thought that it's less "Navy expensive" to lose LAC crews in the "Sonja swarm" concept. Fortunately, the good Admiral smartened up as her career at BuWeaps continued.

Some of it is Hemphill maturing (or already being mature that way and just managing better communication with Alexander-Harringtons than otherwise - Hamish is not the Prince of Open-Mindedness);

...
Yup. That'd be him all right. Pretty much in a tiny but elite group in terms of tactical command ability, but just a couple steps beyond knuckle dragging Neanderthal in terms of Prince-dom.

Maybe that's why Samantha adopted him, treecat conversation wise...

<Dances on Clouds has headache again. Giving me brain fog. Headache yon two leg named Hamish. Can't get through iron-head...>

<Yes dear, I can help you with that...>