Archives
| Title | Posted |
|---|---|
| Shipyard types | Jun 2004 |
| Artificial intelligence and nanotechnology | Apr 2004 |
| Erewhon and the inertial compensator | Apr 2004 |
| Battleship and SD(P) comparisons | Apr 2004 |
| System control ships | Apr 2004 |
| Grav pulse comm post <em>Ashes of Victory</em> | Apr 2004 |
| <em>Gauntlet</em>'s weapons fit | Mar 2004 |
| Artificial divisions within the SLN | Mar 2004 |
| The Battle of Farley's Crossing | Mar 2004 |
| Gun control in the Star Kingdom of Manticore | Feb 2003 |
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Pearls of Weber
A collection of posts by David Weber containing background information for his stories, collected and generously made available Joe Buckley.
Compensator failure
- Series: Honorverse
- Date: October 31, 2004
On the compensator issue. No, it isn't possible to kill power to the wedge quickly enough to save the crew's lives in the event of compensator failure. And, no, compensator failures aren't "elastic" enough to permit any sort of controlled shut down or additional inertia dumping to save the crew, either.
The sump is a little elastic, which is how you can at least try to take a compensator beyond its rated top limit and maybe survive, as Honor did on her middy cruise. The odds of doing so are… poor.
I think I've said before that compensator failures are all or nothing. If I haven't also said specifically that they're effectively instantaneous events, I should have. The sump's limits can be strained and even theoretically exceeded -- briefly! -- without the compensator necessarily failing, but the instant it decides to shut down, it dies completely and catastrophically, and with absolutely no detectable warning signs. Either it's working perfectly, even if temporarily in excess of its designed maximum load, or the crew is anchovy paste. On or off. A binary solution.
