Beating up Frontier Fleet, mercilessly

n7axw wrote:There may not be a need for power cords from the ship at all. And if the pod can provide the pwer to launch the missiles, why not also the tractors?

Mostly because David says the reactors can only run for a week before needing to be serviced in some fashion.

kzt wrote:

n7axw wrote:There may not be a need for power cords from the ship at all. And if the pod can provide the pwer to launch the missiles, why not also the tractors?

Mostly because David says the reactors can only run for a week before needing to be serviced in some fashion.

Yup, pods should have effectively infinite service life in terms of combat of course. This is like saying the backup generator in case of power outage in your garage cannot sit for more than a week without needing maintenance.

As someone else stated, as if the hull of a ship could not have hooks on its surface for the pods to grab and therefore require no power at all outside of a couple milliwatts for trickle charging its battery and keeping a communication line open for reactor start-up and disengagement purposes. Assuming the electronics in 2000 years do not have to be kept warm as they do today.

wastedfly wrote:Yup, pods should have effectively infinite service life in terms of combat of course. This is like saying the backup generator in case of power outage in your garage cannot sit for more than a week without needing maintenance.

Well, duh!

Flat-pack pods do have an effectively infinite service life as long as they aren't powered up to tractor themselves to something. It is the use of the internal tractors that limits pod endurance due to limited fuel supply.

You're suggesting that the backup generator should be able to provide power indefinitely on whatever fuel happens to be in it's tank.

Just wondering why Relax wants a power cord as it appears that wireless technology is the norm for the Honorverse?

Planetary power is beamed from orbital collectors. The Beginnings book makes it clear that this is old tech, very stable and reliable. OBS has the modified collector being used to run the drug lab.

Tesla walked through a field "planting" fluorescent tubes and getting then to light up, it's a shame its taken the world so long to develop this tech.

Nonetheless, we can consider that wires are unnecessary.

Weird Harold wrote:

wastedfly wrote:Yup, pods should have effectively infinite service life in terms of combat of course. This is like saying the backup generator in case of power outage in your garage cannot sit for more than a week without needing maintenance.

Well, duh!

Flat-pack pods do have an effectively infinite service life as long as they aren't powered up to tractor themselves to something. It is the use of the internal tractors that limits pod endurance due to limited fuel supply.

You're suggesting that the backup generator should be able to provide power indefinitely on whatever fuel happens to be in it's tank.

Zero power is required with a thing called a physical HOOK. Structure already has to exist for the tractor to "pull" itself to or 'push' off from. It is bloody stupid limitation when there are a multitude of smart engineering decisions which should exist.

WLBjork wrote:Just wondering why Relax wants a power cord as it appears that wireless technology is the norm for the Honorverse?

Planetary power is beamed from orbital collectors. The Beginnings book makes it clear that this is old tech, very stable and reliable. OBS has the modified collector being used to run the drug lab.

Tesla walked through a field "planting" fluorescent tubes and getting then to light up, it's a shame its taken the world so long to develop this tech.

Nonetheless, we can consider that wires are unnecessary.

To start with years ago he was bitching about beamed power via microwave frequency as extremely easy. Since people then bitched back, that this was somehow too advanced tech for the Honorverse as it is stuck in the 1950's for its tech structure(sarcasm, but true), then a power cord is easily implemented as surely 100+ year old technology today will still be implemented 2000 years from now. Especially in light that EVA is routine if it had to be hooked up manually.

As for why the world did not develop beamed power. Open a physics book, or a phone book under 'C' for clue before opening your trap. Efficiency.

wastedfly wrote:

WLBjork wrote:Just wondering why Relax wants a power cord as it appears that wireless technology is the norm for the Honorverse?

Planetary power is beamed from orbital collectors. The Beginnings book makes it clear that this is old tech, very stable and reliable. OBS has the modified collector being used to run the drug lab.

Tesla walked through a field "planting" fluorescent tubes and getting then to light up, it's a shame its taken the world so long to develop this tech.

Nonetheless, we can consider that wires are unnecessary.

To start with years ago he was bitching about beamed power via microwave frequency as extremely easy. Since people then bitched back, that this was somehow too advanced tech for the Honorverse as it is stuck in the 1950's for its tech structure(sarcasm, but true), then a power cord is easily implemented as surely 100+ year old technology today will still be implemented 2000 years from now. Especially in light that EVA is routine if it had to be hooked up manually.

As for why the world did not develop beamed power. Open a physics book, or a phone book under 'C' for clue before opening your trap. Efficiency.

In my Company's previous headquarters, a glass/steel tower built ~1970, the CEO' office was on the top floor. Unfortunately, this office was ~100' from an ATT microwave transceiver beam shooting from their nearby office to a repeater tower ~10 miles away. Of course, no one knew this because the beam is 300' in the air, so no one could accidentially run into it in the "clear" airspace.

We had all sorts of weird effects in that office. People had headaches, electronics burned out, PC networks and telephones wouldn't work, security systems went off randomly. It took forever to figure out the problem, eventually the office was electromagnetically hardened in every way imaginable.

All this because there was enough microwave backscatter and coronal effects from the "telephone" microwave beam to slowly fry an egg.

So, not only do you have conversion loss on both sides, there is considerable scatter loss, even in tight beam applications. That and you don't want us biologicals to get in the beam's way....

wastedfly wrote:Zero power is required with a thing called a physical HOOK.

Then there's no need for a power cord either.

Pod endurance is ONLY a problem when using the pod's tractor to limpet the pod to the hull.

Weird Harold wrote:

wastedfly wrote:Zero power is required with a thing called a physical HOOK.

Then there's no need for a power cord either.

Pod endurance is ONLY a problem when using the pod's tractor to limpet the pod to the hull.

Actually it's always an issue. The Fusion pods have 3 modes
1) off - they require power to initiate the reactor
Perhaps this could be started from an internal capacitor, but it appears they get their initial power from the launching craft.

2) Standby - the Fusion reactor is on and working at standby levels - used when pods are in sysdef mode, the reactor has enough fuel for ~1 month, then needs refueled and refurbished.

3) Tractor - The Pod's reactor burns through it's fuel in a "tactical duration" of more than a day, but less than a week." (I'm figuring it's somewhere beetween 40 and 100 hours)

Ideally, any external system would work like the internal system in the pod bay and spin up the pod reactor just prior to use.

Theemile wrote:Actually it's always an issue. The Fusion pods have 3 modes
1) off - they require power to initiate the reactor
Perhaps this could be started from an internal capacitor, but it appears they get their initial power from the launching craft.

2) Standby - the Fusion reactor is on and working at standby levels - used when pods are in sysdef mode, the reactor has enough fuel for ~1 month, then needs refueled and refurbished.

3) Tractor - The Pod's reactor burns through it's fuel in a "tactical duration" of more than a day, but less than a week." (I'm figuring it's somewhere beetween 40 and 100 hours)

Ideally, any external system would work like the internal system in the pod bay and spin up the pod reactor just prior to use.

And IIRC the microfusion power plants in pods and missiles also are designed around maintenance intervals that aren't much longer than their onboard fuel reserves. So even if you ran a hydrogen line to them to keep the reactor's fuel tank topped up you don't get a noticeable increase in sustained operation. You still have to power down, then strip it for refurbishment, or risk it going "boom".

(Don't know what the operational interval on the tractor emitters are - if you ran them off external power they might last significantly longer than the onboard fusion plant could; or they might not)