@rykbrown Thank you again. And I assume that the energy being released into the jump fields doesn't necessarily have to come from the jumping ship itself? We've seen two example where external sources of energy have added to the distance jumped by a ship: the initial antimatter detonation that propelled the Aurora to the Pentaurus Cluster and the nuclear detonations of the missiles that Roselle launched at the Aurora from the Jar-Benakh that propelled her to two light-years outside the Tau Ceti system.
Your second assumption is incorrect. The nuclear detonations had nothing to do with the Aurora's jump. They were simply to mask her jump flash from Jung ground based sensors on Kohara.
Your first assumption, although correct, would be a leap as far as the technology is concerned. Recreating such an event would be incredibly risky.
@rykbrown My apologies. I obviously misunderstood Nathan's comments to Jessica following the snap-jump above Kohara about the Aurora being lucky that Roselle hadn't used antimatter warheads instead and the distance they could have traveled.
What if the recreation were unintentional in the scenario I mentioned? The junior officer that was sent to initiate the jump executing it unknowingly at the same moment the antimatter reactor aboard the Jung cruiser being destroyed by the second junior officer using the quad plasma cannon loses containment and detonates? I admit the odd of those two events happening simultaneously are probably incalculable, but I would think they were possible.
If they are at close enough range to use the plasma cannon to destroy a ship (and not just damage it) then they are probably so close that the antimatter event would annihilate them as well. During the Aurora's AM event, she was fleeing at full speed and was already several thousand kilometers away from the event, and already in motion. They were on the edge of the event when it occurred, otherwise, they probably would not have survived.
Of course, it's Sci Fi, so anything can happen, as long as you make it sound plausible.
@rykbrown That was something that hadn't occurred to me. A more plausible course would be to say that the intent of the second officer was to use the plasma cannon to either disable or severely damage the Jung cruiser instead of destroying it, removing it as a threat to the jump ship's planned escape attempt, and that it was an unexpected subsequent secondary explosion caused the AM event, but it occurred after the crew of the jump ship had begun to maneuver themselves away from the cruiser in an escape attempt (someone having restored their ability to maneuver, of course).
How much energy does an AM event contain? Does the amount of energy it could add to the jump fields diminish with the amount of distance between the event and the jumping ship? The Aurora jumped a thousand light-years, but I believe it was stated that she could have jumped further had her jump path not intersected the Campaglia's outer shields. Does a single AM event equate to enough energy for only a thousand light-years then or could it propel the jumping ship to two or three thousand light-years?
The idea that the AM event dumped additional energy into the jump fields was a theory, but not proven. So was the idea that they might have jumped forever...just a theory. For all they knew, it could have something to do with the radiation released that caused the jump fields to enter a state where either they would not decay, or their decay rate would be greatly slowed.
If they had been able to establish exactly what about the AM event caused the super jump, they'd likely have upgraded and would be jumping all over the place by now.
@rykbrown I have to say that it's an absolutely wonderful thing to receive this amount of information about your universe straight from the author. Thank you for sharing it.
So, conceivably something in an AM event could cause a jumping ship two thirds the size of the Aurora and Celestia (with Jung combat landers attached to its portside boarding hatches by their equivalent of breach boxes and a 402 Super Falcon sitting on its ventral hull possibly piloted by Josh and Loki) to super jump two to three thousand light-years before the jump fields decayed and deposited the ship back into 4D space?
On a separate note, were the evacuation expeditions launched during the collapse of the Core all launched with specific destinations in mind or were some launched with merely a general direction of travel with the hopes of finding a hospitable inhabitable world once they had arrived?
@rykbrown How durable are the doors of the transfer airlocks into Aurora's hangar deck? Could a Super Falcon's plasma torpedo cannons breach them?
Outer doors are armored, inner doors are not. However, neither would withstand a direct shot from anything mark two or higher, so yes, a Super Falcon's plasma torpedo cannons would do the trick, probably in a single shot. Her plasma nose turret, doubtful, even with repeated hits.
@rykbrown Are there emergency protocols to automatically seal the hangar deck from the rest of the ship in the event that something like that would happen in order to prevent widespread depressurization of the crew areas? And how badly damaged would the hangar bay be as a result of the plasma torpedoes? Would it be something the crew could repair on their own or would the ship need time in port for an extensive reconstruction?
A breach anywhere in the ship causes primary bulkhead pressure doors to automatically close and seal, main hangar bay included.
As to the second question, impossible to answer. But so far, about the only thing they couldn't repair underway was the exterior hull. Remember that the Aurora has a few pairs of fabricators on board, so she can make her own new parts.
@rykbrown In the books, the Aurora has employed KKVs accelerated to a high percentage of the speed of light to destroy Jung battleships and battle platforms, but could a system of smaller KKVs in a launcher sized to fit the bay that once held the Aurora's missile battery strike planetary targets with precision from orbit at lower velocities?
I would expect that it would take quite a few mini-KKVs to destroy a planet. But why would you want to? And I can't imagine that you would want to do it so often that you would build a system for launching them quickly and easily.
Also, having to get the delivery platform up to relativistic speeds before launching the KKVs uses considerable propellant. The requirement of carrying the extra propellant goes against the change in concept for the Explorer class ships, which is now based more on short missions at lower speeds, using the jump drive to get around, instead of burning massive amounts of propellant to move around.
The fact that they are using JKKVs that must be accelerated to attack speeds is a matter of making do with what is available, and not be design. Building a launcher for such devices just doesn't make sense. In the long run, it is better to make the KKVs or JKKVs 'self-propelled', or launched by a ship that is designed solely for that mission.
I think he meant to fire the mini kkv's at jung facilities on the ground as apposed to destroying planets. It strikes me as overkill when the Quads on the Aurora do the job with much smaller/slower projectiles
@rykbrown The mini-KKVs wouldn't be used to destroy the planet. Instead there use would be to destroy Jung facilities and possibly troop concentrations from orbit. In the past, the Aurora has used her quads for such purposes, but at the cost of massive collateral damage to the surrounding area (making them essentially an area denial weapon). I was thinking the mini-KKVs could at least reduce the amount of collateral damage to the surrounding area or eliminate it entirely were it a remote, hardened target. Their launcher would use mass accelerator similar to the launch tunnels used for fighter to impart their initial momentum at launch and the planet's gravity to accelerate them further until impact. The amount of energy released at the moment of impact would be more equivalent to a tactical nuclear weapon than the planet shattering full-scale KKV strike. And I believe that will the impact would be equivalent to a tactical nuke, there wouldn't be the corresponding fallout afterwards.
How many strikes would a Super Falcon need with its nose turret to destroy a Jung combat lander?
