Stand at Carpo

[Ace009]

Ahem....? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpo_(moon)

Carpo is a real moon alright.....

Nifty But how many of your readers are going to know this? You might reasonably expect most SF readers to be aware of the major Galilean moons of Jupiter - maybe one or two beyond that. But it is not reasonable to think they will know about all of them, let alone one as minor and as recently discovered as this. Unless your intended audience is limited to astronomy buffs, I would suggested adding a minor line or two along the lines of Carpo being 'one of the myriad of minor moons and captured asteroids pulled into orbit around the giant planet and discovered back in the early 21st century' or some such.

This points your reader to the idea that this moon might actually exist, which potentially drives them to doing a bit of online research, which leads to them finding the actual moon - which builds your credibility with the reader as a serious hard SF storyteller (which I assume is the type of story you are going for here).

And yes, I am aware. No sound in space.....BUT they are felt across the craft and then there is the sound emitted by the computers (correct me if I am mistaken). And good point.....time for some HUGE repairs.

You specifically describe the rockets 'roaring' - why would anything like that kind of sound be carried into the ship via the presumed vibration imparted by the rockets firing? Why wouldn't the ship just vibrate a bit? Beyond that, there is the question of why you would want to fire the rockets while they are still attached to the ship. Doing so risks damage to the ship from the exhaust, will force the ship to engage maneuvering thusters to compensate for the added thrust the rocket will impart to it, and will 'light up' the location of the ship to all kinds of detectors before the rocket moves away.

It makes much more sense for the ship to fling the rockets away from it laterally (with two or more rockets pushed out from opposite sides of the ship to cancel out the action-reaction effects) before they ignite their rockets and do their thing.

I'm not seeing what the sound of the computers has to do with sound in space or with anything in general. Perhaps I missed it, but I don't recall you mentioning the computers making any sound. For that matter, real life computers barely make any noise at all (and what they do make is almost always their cooling systems or optical disk drives or the like), and it seems likely that computers built centuries in the future will be even quieter.

And issue #10......I have my own surprises in mind. Besides, I am going to disagree with the concept that stealth in space is impossible. I can admit, it is in the conventional sense but then you can find ways to delay the time it takes to be detected. Why do you think it they identified them after the conference? That was two days later, and Carpo IS a captured asteroid. The only reason it is a "moon" is....well, look at Deimos and Phobos on Mars.

Also, it is not the slugs themselves. It is their guidance stages. I can post a link and trust me: I ran the some of the relevant numbers (correct me if I am incorrect). Oh well. One link, incoming!

http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q...ealistical

Warning: Some information presented here is outdated (especially the range at which the computers can have a firing solution) and was done while trying to crank the science before the story began its writing process and....well, have fun!

I read through this a fair bit and didn't see anything to seriously support the idea that stealth in space ins workable. In fact several people pointed out that it isn't and for the same reason we've mentioned - that spaceships (in particular spaceships with people on board - doubly in particular when they are using nuclear rockets to get around) shine very brightly in space, due to all the waste heat they put out.

The closest thing to a counter-argument I saw was that we don't find it easy to detect asteroids - which is totally a non-related issue when speaking of powered spacecraft radiating lots of heat. Asteroids are only warmed by the sunlight hitting them. Spacecraft (crewed and nuclear powered in particular) are warmed by themselves to much much higher temperatures.

If you have some specific argument/demonstration in support of your position on this that we've somehow missed to this point, please copy/paste it here so we can all readily access and consider it.

On a more general note - since you don't explain or mention any kind of stealth technology in your story, it really isn't viable to claim here that something or other happened in the story that is based on stealth in space. Readers cannot read your mind and, unless your story is based on a very widely known franchise, such as Star Wars or Star Trek, it isn't really reasonable to expect them to just know the details of whatever particular tech element you haven't explained in this story, but which might exist in your wider fictional universe (if there is one - I've seen you mention something about this, but hadn't heard of if before and don't know anything about it).

I'm not sure which of my points your mention of guidance stages is responding to, but I'm not seeing how guidance stages would have any more trouble with ECM then inert slugs would. For that matter, the use of guidance stages would probably eliminate the need for anything like a 'firing solution'.

Put telescopic and IR sensors on your guidance stage and have it lock onto the target using those. No amount of radio chaff or the like is going to make any particular difference to it and it can just follow its own sensors to the target instead of using a 'firing solution', which really sounds like something out of a WWII submarine warefare story where the torpedos basically just went in the direction they were pointed or something.

If, by ECM, you mean something more sophisticated than radio chaff or the like, then that should be indicated in the story and details provided.

Speaking of firing solution computers..........three words: Moore's Law fail.....or not...... :/.

This is an irrelevant and meaningless statement in this context and I don't see what it has to do with the issue under discussion.

If you're trying to be funny, then I'm afraid I'm not getting the joke.

If you're trying to argue that a premise of your story is that Moore's Law has ceased to be a factor, then you should explicitly state this in the story. However, you would then need to explain why modern targeting computers/computer technology couldn't generate 'firing solutions' perfectly suited to the combat you describe (so Moore's Law wouldn't apply), why optical/IR sensors as I've mentioned above wouldn't be perfectly able to direct missiles w/o the need for 'firing solutions', and why the end of Moore's Law (which deals with the density of elements on silicon chips) would also result in the end of advances in computer science given that techs such as optical computing, DNA computing, quantum computing, 3D chips, and various other items currently being researched in labs in the real world would presumably have continued to advance and would likely see a major boost in funding and interest if Moore's Law finally hit its limits.

My 2c worth,

Todd

*sighs* Where do I start the repairs.........?