New user + what is up with all the mentions of fractals?

[Drashner1]

If I understand this correctly, the tidal forces are trying to pull things in/near the WH apart from each other. This causes super long ships to experience all that tidal force along the axis of too-long-ness summed up, and something breaks. However, once every (broken-off) segment is shorter than the max length, they can handle the stress. So in your example of the ship with a 2km cable on it, the parts that break wouldn't necessarily be the parts at the ends--it could happen anywhere, though it would be more likely to break wherever doing so would require the least energy (i.e. at weak points).

Because the little piled-up ships in my example aren't tied together or anything, the tidal forces would just make them all fall away from each other, and nothing would need to break because no single object is longer than the max length. What's your reasoning for multiple ships going through together acting like the same ship?

Also, thanks for clarifying that "radius vs. diameter" mix up. (By the way, what does "IIRC" mean?)

To do the easy part first - IIRC = If I Recall Correctly

Re the tidal forces - No, I'm afraid that's not correct. You seem to be thinking of the tidal forces as running uniformly through the wormhole and that's not what's happening. While there is a certain amount of extra tidal force running through the wormhole, the effect I'm describing is one of extremely strong forces concentrated in a specific region (a spherical shell) that increases in strength and appears to move inward toward a ship from all directions as it transits the wormhole. At the Throat of the wormhole, this spherical region achieves its maximal force and smallest size. If the ship is larger in any dimension than the smallest size of the Throat, the part extending beyond the Throat will experience massive tidal forces and be ripped part.

However, if the ship is smaller than that smallest size in all dimensions it will only experience the lower level of tidal forces and not be harmed during its transit of the wormhole.

If the wormhole Throat is only 2 km across and the ship is only 1.5 km long, then no part of it will fall within the zone of extreme tidal stress and it will simply transit through without issue. However, if the ship is 3km long, then the front and rear 500m of its structure will both be subject to massive tidal forces and be ripped apart (which seems likely to void the warranty for the rest of the ship as well.

Think of it (to use a not wholly accurate, but hopefully easy to visualize) like the eye of a hurricane. If you're in the eye, it's a beautiful sunny day - if you're outside the eye, things are much less pleasant. Now imagine you have a really long train of railway cars that is long enough that part of it extends beyond the eye into the body of the hurricane. The part in the storm is not going to find things as nice as the part inside the eye.

Getting back to your ship - it doesn't matter so much that the ship is long and thin or that the fragments are smaller - the tidal forces around the Throat are so intense they will shred matter regardless of the ship's size. The part of the ship extending beyond the Throat's minimum size will definitely break into many small pieces - whether other parts do may depend on its design. A clump of ships that is larger than the Throat min size will size the outermost ships experiencing massive tidal forces and being shredded, although if in the process they are thrown far enough away, I suppose they might experience the 'no one runs into each other effect'. Maybe.

Todd

EDIT - Just to clarify - if a spherical ship (or a cube or a pyramid or whatever) that is larger than the minimum Throat size tries to enter the WH it will get torn to pieces by the tidal forces just as readily. Being long and thin has nothing to do with it. Being larger than the minimum Throat diameter will result in the larger part experiencing the massive tidal forces even as the rest of the ship doesn't.