The Loroi are Evil!

[discord]

and how did the nazis get through the maginot line? going through a neutral third party(also known as netherlands and belgium).....they never really broke the maginot line, they bypassed it and surrounded it, paris fell and france surrendered before the line did.

the analogy falters, due to the loroi using a more mobile defensive doctrine, but it is still quite similar, and me for one say that the loroi might have been SLOW on acting in the way they did in that matter.

[RedDwarfIV]

The only power source for starships that makes sense is some sort of matter annihilation reactor, using matter/antimatter or some other exotic form of matter than can be made to efficiently convert to energy (I have been referring to the Loroi version as "Type-A" fuel). However, this doesn't explain where the antimatter or Type-A fuel comes from. It will take a lot of energy to produce such fuels... some candidates might be nuclear fusion, solar collection, or deep geothermal. I like to imagine that there might be some ingenious process where by a relatively common material, such as hydrogen, could be excited through some sort of catalyst and a modest amount of energy into this exotic state that allows it to essentially self-annihilate on demand. However the fuel is created, the source of the energy behind it has to be functionally unlimited, but the rate at which such energy can be converted into fuel is limited by your infrastructure. So, you're not going to "run out" of energy for your fuel any time soon, but the amount of fuel you can produce in a given period is limited.

Assuming the Umiak also use this 'Type A' propellant, the solution is simple. You're worried about them rebuilding the bases? Don't just destroy the bases. Destroy the bases, space-industrial facilities, planetary spaceports, and the installations used to manufacture this fuel.

Evidently no one in the Outsider universe has conceived of magnetic Van Allen Belt antimatter scoops, which means their only source of Type-A fuel is those installations.

Doing this, you effectively neuter the Tithric's ability to build anything significant in space for years, and any attempts to rebuild those bases would probably be decades off because they'd need to rebuild the rest of their space infrastructure first. They've also lost their ability to produce more fuel, and even after they rebuild that, they'd need to build up stores again.


Meanwhile, Terran ships seem to be using hydrogen, which can be collected by cloudscoops or nuclear atmocruisers from gas giants comparatively easily. You won't get nearly the power output from it, but it's definitely more abundant and easier to get your hands on, without blowing them off to boot.



You may now commence picking my idea apart.

[Nemo]

Scalpel method on a narrow strike like that would be more easily repaired than you think, Umiak keep surprising on that front, but lets grant it. You surmised "years". You forget the war has raged for "decades". To hold the line properly you would need to not only damage the facilities, but ensure the systems themselves are left in a unusable state for the longest time possible. Half measures fail.



On the Van Allen thing, there is a trivial amount of anti-matter to be collected that way. I did a post years back on the amount of fuel they'd need to carry, the gist was they had to use something much denser than anti-protons.



edit: Oh wow, this is way back stuff: http://www.well-of-souls.com/forums/vie ... 0&start=75

If a 350kt cruiser has, say, enough fuel for 100 hours of full-thrust 30g burn, and if we guess the reactor/engine is 50% efficient, then that's:

Code: Select all

E = mc^2
KE = 1/2mv^2
v = at
fuel mass doubled for 50% efficiency

m(fuel) = 2 * E/c^2
        = 2 * m(ship)(at)^2/2c^2
        = 2 * (350,000,000kg)(294*100*3600)^2/(2*299,792,458^2)
        = 43,624,081.98 kg
	

43 kilotonnes of reactor fuel. Not sure if that's right -- feel free to check my math. Doesn't sound right. But that's 12% the mass of the ship, so maybe it is.

43 kilotonnes per cruiser, the PAMELA experiment found 28 anti-protons total over two and a half years.

Ill assume anti-protons, and that it behaves similarly to the common one proton hydrogen isotope. Next, I'll outsource my math to wolfram. Ill assume its under high pressure (400 atmosphere), chilled (25K), and split evenly between reactor pods. 21.5 kilotons of hydrogen under those assumptions fills a sphere with a 38 meter radius or a cube with a 62 meter edge. Thats... mighty large. Maybe their "exotic" matter is a bit more dense.

Yes, I had the same thought at the conclusion of the above math experiment: it would be convenient if the exotic fuel consisted of much heavier particles.

[Senanthes]

and how did the nazis get through the maginot line? going through a neutral third party(also known as netherlands and belgium).....they never really broke the maginot line, they bypassed it and surrounded it, paris fell and france surrendered before the line did.

the analogy falters, due to the loroi using a more mobile defensive doctrine, but it is still quite similar, and me for one say that the loroi might have been SLOW on acting in the way they did in that matter.

Just had to give you a high-five on this one. It's pretty much dead on, despite the difference in venues. Despite having a more mobile defensive force, the Loroi are, in fact, holding a line fixed in place by the location of star systems, and if they didn't deny neutral passages, that line could be bypassed.

"Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man." -George Patton

[Suederwind]

Sorry Senanthes, but I have to disagree with you. There is a difference between the situation of Belgium and the Netherlands in WW 2 and the Tithric.
The Germans were not just passing through to attack France, they were there to stay and I have my serious doubts that the Tithric would have been able to prevent the Umiak from doing so. The same goes for the refueling on Tithric bases: if there is a Umiak battlefleet in orbit, it would be suicide to not give them the fuel they wanted and hope that they will not return. Then add local "warlords" that like to ally with the Umiak and a goverment that wants to follow a policy of neutrality to the mix... To me that looks much more like Somalia or Afghanistan.

I wonder: were there Tithric local leaders that wanted to side with the Loroi are there survivors?

[RedDwarfIV]

A) I know the war has been going on for decades. But note that Arioch described it as 'a dark time' for the Loroi, when they were at their lowest. Suggesting that after that, they managed to get back on their feet, at least enough to force a stalemate. They needed to prevent the Umiak using the routes through Tithric space immediately, but that doesn't mean they couldn't prevent the Tithric rebuilding those facilities once stability had been brought back to that area.

B) Wikipedia (source of all knowledge that is most definitely true) says that a magnetic pion drive (direct matter-antimatter engine) would be 80% efficient. Other drives, using an antimatter/matter reaction to heat propellant, are supposedly more efficient than that.

Also:

“PAMELA’s orbit is limited to altitudes between 350–600 kilometres and the antiproton radiation belt is expected to extend up to thousands of kilometres,” says Alessandro Bruno, a co-author on a paper describing the results that will appear in Astrophysical Journal Letters. “Some of these particles are produced in the confinement region of the magnetosphere and become trapped, especially in the exosphere where the density is low enough to allow antiprotons to be gathered, since losses due to annihilation or ionisation are significantly reduced.”

Though I will admit the page notes Earth's antimatter belt only replenishes at a rate of two nanograms per year. It's just the most dense and easily accessible antiproton trap in the solar system.

Saturn meanwhile has less dense fields of antimatter, but replenishes at a rate of 250 micrograms per year.

[Nemo]

A) I know the war has been going on for decades. But note that Arioch described it as 'a dark time' for the Loroi, when they were at their lowest. Suggesting that after that, they managed to get back on their feet, at least enough to force a stalemate. They needed to prevent the Umiak using the routes through Tithric space immediately, but that doesn't mean they couldn't prevent the Tithric rebuilding those facilities once stability had been brought back to that area.

They forced a stalemate after the Tithric solution. The stalemate continues (continued?) to present with that solution. If the Tithric system comes back online at any time the stalemate ends in favor of the Umiak. A temporary delaying action, a half measure to stall for time, is a loss. The resources are not there to open another offensive front for the sole sake of maintaining the status quo.





And yes, the Van Allen belt is the "most dense and easily accessible" natural particle smasher capable of producing anti-matter. And it doesn't contain enough fuel to matter on any scale. Lets take just its replenishment rate of two nanograms a year. Assume perfect capture and conversion to Type-A exotic fuel of equivalent mass. Covert the given 43 kilotonnes of fuel for a single cruiser to nanograms: 4.3 x 10^19 nanograms. In perspective, that is 80% of the mass of the Titanic. Now divide by 2 and we get 2.15 x 10^19. 2.15 quintillion years. 2.15 billion billion years. 21,500,000,000,000,000,000 years to fuel a single cruiser. Also, you now owe me a new zero key.

Lets be thorough and check Saturn as well:
1.72 × 10^14 years
Roughly 12,000 times the age of the universe to fuel a single cruiser.


Truthfully, the Van Allen anti-matter is more a curiosity and science experiment fodder than a resource to be used.

[GeoModder]

Though I will admit the page notes Earth's antimatter belt only replenishes at a rate of two nanograms per year. It's just the most dense and easily accessible antiproton trap in the solar system.

Saturn meanwhile has less dense fields of antimatter, but replenishes at a rate of 250 micrograms per year.

I'd say the Sun has the most productive antimatter trap in the system.

[RedDwarfIV]

I suppose so. The only things NASA plans on using it for are gas/ice-giant explorers and deep-space probes.

On the other hand, this does mean that in a harder sci-fi environment than Outsider, antimatter is pretty much inaccessible.


Deploy the cloudscoops! There's hydrogen to be harvested!

[Siber]

Something that occurred to me about Alex's imprisonment is that those holding cells are probably intended to only ever house Loroi, and the training and procedures of the guards probably matches. From how sanzai is described to work, a Loroi put in that cell and never visited would be far less isolated than a human would be. Depending on the brig's location relative to the populated area of the ship, they may not be isolated from the day to day goings on at all, and could still hold private conversations with friends. It's still an obvious oversight if he was put in there by a diplomat, but someone who hasn't spent much time thinking about how other species live might not realize how harsh throwing him in there alone for a few days really is.

Re antimatter: Not sure antimatter is completely out of reach as fuel for hard sci-fi, it's just good for energy storage, not production.

[Karst45]

I tough the "cell" he was in was actually a storage compartment.

[Siber]

Well, Alex does call it a cell, and considering he's been in there at least a week I'd hope he has access to the kind of facilities you might find in a call but are unlikely to find in a random storage compartment.

[bunnyboy]

Since Arioch pointed out some clues how there is things happening on background, I started to think that they might have lied/mislead the number of survivors.

When people are not present, they might be busy of extracting information & doing experiments with other 'bodies'.

And I looked it again. She said: "You are the only member of your crew that we were able to revive. We have thus far recovered fifty-seven others who were beyond the help of our medicine."

I wonder if that means, that some are still alive, but just don't wake up or react mentally their probing.
And perhaps one reason that hurry Alex out of ship, is that someone is waking up, so he need to be out of range of possible telepathy, which human wants to keep secret.

[GeoModder]

I wonder if that means, that some are still alive, but just don't wake up or react mentally their probing.
And perhaps one reason that hurry Alex out of ship, is that someone is waking up, so he need to be out of range of possible telepathy, which human wants to keep secret.

That would be a type of telepathy the Loroi are unfamiliar with though. IIRC, sleeping Loroi are still 'expressing' sanzai, noticable to their fellows.

[bunnyboy]

Considering that our presense is "invisible" to Loroi, it is not far of to think, that we can also express ourself at undetected.

[Mr.Tucker]

Considering that our presense is "invisible" to Loroi, it is not far of to think, that we can also express ourself at undetected.

I'm afraid I don't understand. Are you suggesting humans have some exotic form of telepathy that the Loroi don't? Or are you suggesting the Loroi may think we do ?Either way I'm skeptical. There are no other telepathic races known to us. The humans don't seem very special, apart from the fact that we're invisible to the only known psychic species (which I suspect may have something to do with the human template theory rather then any powers of our own). And I doubt the Loroi would immediately suspect us of being telepathic. It would be pretty unthinkable to them and they don't seem overly imaginative. Not to mention the potential diplomatic repercussions (lying to the official human ambassador before any formal contact is even made). Also they seem to value honesty at least.

[Zakharra]

Since Arioch pointed out some clues how there is things happening on background, I started to think that they might have lied/mislead the number of survivors.

When people are not present, they might be busy of extracting information & doing experiments with other 'bodies'.

And I looked it again. She said: "You are the only member of your crew that we were able to revive. We have thus far recovered fifty-seven others who were beyond the help of our medicine."

I wonder if that means, that some are still alive, but just don't wake up or react mentally their probing.
And perhaps one reason that hurry Alex out of ship, is that someone is waking up, so he need to be out of range of possible telepathy, which human wants to keep secret.

I'd say that they were only able to recover 57 individuals (or enough parts to identify as being from one person) because the rest are either blown so far out they are unrecovered as of yet, trapped in portions of the ship the Loroi haven't gotten to yet (recovery/salvage operations were still going on when the bugs showed up. In the first chapter, it had likely only been maybe a day or two since the attack in the prolog), or blown to plasma/smeared all over the decks. The Bridge crew was probably vaporized, that was about what? 10 people or so? Others in engineering were probable vaporized when that place was blown to hell and others also killed. Given the nature and totality of the destruction of the ship, having even 1 survivor is doing very well.

Alex being moved is likely for security reasons. He's on a warship that is expecting to be engaged in battle sometime soon, so if they want to further diplomatic relations, necessity dictates he be removed from the ship and sent to a less militarily dangerous area. Not to mention they have much better facilities to examine him elsewhere, and if they do make diplomatic contact, treating the ambassador well is only smart politics.

[bunnyboy]

What the loroi will never tell us. http://fav.me/d8fgsnu

[Zakharra]

What the loroi will never tell us. http://fav.me/d8fgsnu

Hahhahaa.

[fredgiblet]

Something that occurred to me about Alex's imprisonment is that those holding cells are probably intended to only ever house Loroi, and the training and procedures of the guards probably matches. From how sanzai is described to work, a Loroi put in that cell and never visited would be far less isolated than a human would be. Depending on the brig's location relative to the populated area of the ship, they may not be isolated from the day to day goings on at all, and could still hold private conversations with friends. It's still an obvious oversight if he was put in there by a diplomat, but someone who hasn't spent much time thinking about how other species live might not realize how harsh throwing him in there alone for a few days really is.

That's a good point Siber, though I doubt it's an oversight. Logic, and Arioch's previous post, makes it fairly clear that the problem is Stillstorm. I have little doubt that if Tempo was in control Alex would have ended up taking over the most junior single person cabin in the ship. He would have likely been guarded heavily, but given a much better place to stay.