# Enterprise vs. Honor Harrington **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 10, 2011, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enterprise-vs-honor-harrington/585042 "2011-06-10T23:41:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2011, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enterprise-vs-honor-harrington/585042/101 "2011-09-03T00:39:56Z")
> [@](#): > > So, all their onboard grav-tracking software is written with the notion in mind that no trackable source is going to be moving faster than c. The Enterprise violates that assumption. Even if an Honorverse ship can detect precisely where the Enterprise is while it’s at warp, its software might not be able to handle the fact that it’s moving at FTL speeds. Ah, I get what you’re saying. My guess is that the computers would detect it, but between the speed and the fact that a warp bubble is presumably unlike anything they’ve seen before, the humans would probably think it was some sort of sensor glitch. That would give the Starfleet ship a useful edge, in the first encounter at least. Unless Foraker were aboard, of course. She’d probably figure it out in time, though I’m not sure anyone else in the Honorverse would. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2011, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enterprise-vs-honor-harrington/585042/102 "2011-09-03T01:26:33Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > _\_ > > “Ah, Captain. We’re out of torpedoes, and they appear to not be exploding.” The wedge would have that effect, certainly – but the sidewalls? They’re not going to stop _all_ the damage from a photon torpedo. We’re talking about an antimatter warhead. _Some_ of that’s going to get through a sidewall and do some serious damage to the hull underneath. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2011, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enterprise-vs-honor-harrington/585042/103 "2011-09-03T02:39:21Z")
> [@tracer](#): > > The wedge would have that effect, certainly – but the sidewalls? They’re not going to stop _all_ the damage from a photon torpedo. We’re talking about an antimatter warhead. _Some_ of that’s going to get through a sidewall and do some serious damage to the hull underneath. I doubt it. Without sidewall penetrators to disrupt the sidewalls, Honorverse’s much more powerful contact nukes and relativistic missiles don’t do a thing. And that is presuming photon torpedoes are immune to point defense and actually hit. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2011, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enterprise-vs-honor-harrington/585042/104 "2011-09-03T13:48:28Z")
At least in the later books, the sidewalls seem to be better at making it hurt a bit less than they are at stopping it. Then again, in the later books, they have gone from fleets firing a few hundred missiles at each other at a time to firing a few tens of thousands of missiles at each other at a time. Quantity has a quality all its own. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2011, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enterprise-vs-honor-harrington/585042/105 "2011-09-03T22:31:05Z")
Well, it’s in the early books that we mostly see things physically slammed into sidewalls. Lasers & grasers are bent or degraded; it’s material things like missiles that just go splat. Which is the problem with photon torpedoes; they’ll hit the sidewall and explode, but they won’t be anywhere near the ship they were trying to hit (sidewalls aren’t hull-hugging like Trek shields). ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2011, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enterprise-vs-honor-harrington/585042/106 "2011-09-04T05:29:14Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Well, it’s in the early books that we mostly see things physically slammed into sidewalls. Lasers & grasers are bent or degraded; it’s material things like missiles that just go splat. Which is the problem with photon torpedoes; they’ll hit the sidewall and explode, but they won’t be anywhere near the ship they were trying to hit (sidewalls aren’t hull-hugging like Trek shields). Phasers might have some more luck punching through, as I recall they are pretty consistently presented as being very powerful short ranged weapons. They still have to get close enough to use them. ---
**Author:** ![Lok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e8c25b/32.png) [@Lok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lok)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2011, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enterprise-vs-honor-harrington/585042/107 "2011-09-05T04:23:52Z")
> [@cckerberos](#): > > Actually, wouldn’t he end up with a 6 foot plus genetically engineered cyborg woman’s corpse in his quarters? As soon as Nimitz hits vacuum, Honor’s dead… No, Honor wouldn’t die if Nimitz is killed. Treecats don’t die if their bondmate is killed and the bondmate doesn’t die if their treecat is killed. Treecats usually kill themselves, mostly by starvation, when their bondmate dies. (The only two that Honor knows of in recent history that didn’t kill themselves are Samantha (Nimitz’s mate, so Nimitz and Honor helped get her through the loss.) and Monroe (Bonded to King Roger III, who was starving himself to death when he bonded to Justin, Elizabeth’s fiance as they fought an assassin.)) The bond between Honor and Nimitz is very unusual, since Honor is also an empath, unlike any other human we know of in the Honorverse. She would be much more affected by his death than most humans. The only evidence given that regular humans are deeply affected by the deaths of their treecats is in “In Enemy Hands” in the scene where Shannon and Fritz are doing the best they can to save Nimitz’s life. Prolonged separation and distance does cause pain for the treecat in a bonding, which is one reason the RMN allows them on ships. (The main reason is Queen Adrienne saying they had to.) While the humans would miss their 'cats, there is no indication that they are harmed by the separation. As for the OP, a well handled starship could probably take an Honorverse DN. But given the normal tactical sense displayed between Honor and Kirk, I would have to bet on Honor. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2011, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enterprise-vs-honor-harrington/585042/108 "2011-09-05T16:46:22Z")
> [@](#): > > The only evidence given that regular humans are deeply affected by the deaths of their treecats is in “In Enemy Hands” in the scene where Shannon and Fritz are doing the best they can to save Nimitz’s life. Specifically, Shannon says that Honor will die if Nimitz is killed, and Fritz corrects her, saying that while that’s certainly a known phenomenon, it only happens in about 1 in 3 cases. Though it’s implied that they’re both lying, to keep what’s-her-name from killing Nimitz. Most likely, I think Honor would probably be suicidal if Nimitz died, though that’d be slightly more long-term. Immediate short-term, she’d probably fly into a berserk homocidal rage first. Which, given how deadly she is when she’s _calm_, is not something I’d want to be anywhere on the same planet with. ---
**Author:** ![Lok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e8c25b/32.png) [@Lok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lok)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2011, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enterprise-vs-honor-harrington/585042/109 "2011-09-05T16:54:44Z")
Yes, I didn’t complete my thought on that part. More sleep needed. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2011, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enterprise-vs-honor-harrington/585042/110 "2011-09-05T22:00:19Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Though it’s implied that they’re both lying, to keep what’s-her-name from killing Nimitz. Cordelia Ransome. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2011, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enterprise-vs-honor-harrington/585042/111 "2011-09-05T23:41:31Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Cordelia Ransome. Crazy McPsychoBitch. That’s what I like to call her. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2011, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enterprise-vs-honor-harrington/585042/112 "2011-09-06T17:09:49Z")
[QUOTE=tracer] - **BUT** , they’re not used to tracking grav **sources** which themselves are moving at FTL speeds. They’re used to tracking ships in normal space. Can a ship in normal space track an enemy target that’s currently in one of the Hyper bands? I don’t think so – each hyper band is a different, parallel space, whose contents shouldn’t “leak out” into the normal universe. [/QUOTE] In Honorverse, there are “layers” of hyperspace, with the corresponding “higher” layers allowing faster travel (from the perspective of Einsteinian space). Each layer is seperated by a “wall” of some kind. I don’t think that the RMN sensors penetrate these walls. There was a battle related in one of the books where a small escort group of RMN ships engaged a superior force while in one of the hyperpsace bands. (The enemy force was in the same band.) The battle did not take place in a “grave wave”, so some (if not all) of the regular weapons functioned as designed. I have no idea if, when the Enterprise creates a (subspace) warp field, if it is within Einsteinian space, or if it’s somehow creating or interacting with Honorverse hyperspace and their layers. In Honorverse, a star interferes with those ships from transitioning into the hyperspace bands until they can get outside a certain range of that star, called it’s “hyper limit”. Generally speaking, I would assume that the Enterprise has no problems traveling at warp speed within the Honorverse hyper limits. Enterprise has the maneuver advantage, but until Kirk (or Spock) realises that they need to shoot down the throat (through the open areas of the wedge), I don’t think he can damage Honor. Even then, a BC or DN has it’s nose and ass armored for just such an emergency (although a photon is going to hammer that armor off, eventually). > [@](#): > > Of course, the Enterprise’s subspace sensors could see them firing missiles and beams before they hit. (Yes, they could see the beams too. Laser and Graser beams move at Warp 1. Their subspace sensors’ tracking signals move at, oh, warp 9-point-something. They have been able to see supernova explosions, with enough warning to outrun them, in previous episodes.) For the barrage to work, the missles need to be detonated at a very fine moment. The laserheads themselves only have a sustained fire of a second or two. The Enterprise might see the lasing rods seperate from the body of the missile a fraction of a second before it fires, but that’s still some mighty slim reaction time for Sulu manually controlling it. I suspect that the first barrage would surprise the Big-E, but once they know what to look for, maybe Sulu or Spock can rig the computer to do some evasive manuevers for when the missles get within 100thousand km’s. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2011, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enterprise-vs-honor-harrington/585042/113 "2011-09-06T18:44:42Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Without sidewall penetrators to disrupt the sidewalls, Honorverse’s much more powerful contact nukes and relativistic missiles don’t do a thing. And that is presuming photon torpedoes are immune to point defense and actually hit. In _The Honor of the Queen_, Grayson’s space navy is armed with missiles that have plain old nuclear warheads, not nuclear-pumped X-ray lasers. I seem to recall that if one of those nuclear warheads makes a direct hit on an enemy ship’s sidewall, the enemy _does_ feel it. If some of the damage from a nuclear warhead detonating point-blank against a sidewall can get through that sidewall, then certainly some of the damage from a detonating antimatter warhead (i.e. a photon torpedo) would also get through. And as far as point defense goes, it **may** be theoretically possible to shoot down an incoming photon torpedo – this was never done in any _Star Trek_ franchise, but that doesn’t rule out the possibility. **But** , don’t forget, that photon torpedo is incoming at _warp nine_. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2011, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enterprise-vs-honor-harrington/585042/114 "2011-09-06T18:52:03Z")
> [@Raguleader](#): > > Phasers might have some more luck punching through, as I recall they are pretty consistently presented as being very powerful short ranged weapons. They still have to get close enough to use them. Phasers present a real problem, because the details of what they are, what they do, and how they do it are not _at all_ consistent within the _Trek_ universe. The TOS episode “The Ultimate Computer” had Federation starships travelling at warp 5, firing phasers at one another. Roddenberry’s writer’s bible for TNG, however, states that phaser beams merely travel _at_ the speed of light and are not FTL, which would prevent a starship at warp from firing them. And, well, if the Enterprise can’t fire a weapon at the Honorverse dreadnought while closing with it (or backing away from it) at warp 1.1 … what good can such a weapon be? ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2011, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enterprise-vs-honor-harrington/585042/115 "2011-09-06T20:38:20Z")
> [@tracer](#): > > In _The Honor of the Queen_, Grayson’s space navy is armed with missiles that have plain old nuclear warheads, not nuclear-pumped X-ray lasers. > > I seem to recall that if one of those nuclear warheads makes a direct hit on an enemy ship’s sidewall, the enemy _does_ feel it. As I recall, they feel it, but it’s less “We’ve been hit” and more “Did we just run over something?” Sidewalls are the reasons nukes have lasing heads in the Honorverse. The fact that a contact nuke from the Grayson missile batteries managed to make hull contact and destroy a Masadan ship was almost as big a surprise to the Graysons as it was to the Masadans. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2011, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enterprise-vs-honor-harrington/585042/116 "2011-09-07T01:51:03Z")
> [@tracer](#): > > I seem to recall that if one of those nuclear warheads makes a direct hit on an enemy ship’s sidewall, the enemy _does_ feel it. > > If some of the damage from a nuclear warhead detonating point-blank against a sidewall can get through that sidewall, then certainly some of the damage from a detonating antimatter warhead (i.e. a photon torpedo) would also get through. Not the nuke; the impact of the missile itself at 25% of lightspeed. And it just shakes the ship a bit. And going by the (limited ) evidence Honorverse contact nukes are if anything more powerful than photon torpedoes. > [@Raguleader](#): > > Sidewalls are the reasons nukes have lasing heads in the Honorverse. The fact that a contact nuke from the Grayson missile batteries managed to make hull contact and destroy a Masadan ship was almost as big a surprise to the Graysons as it was to the Masadans. It’s not the sidewalls, it’s point defense; contact nukes have “sidewall penetrators” that help them punch through the sidewall. If they get close enough; and modern point defense makes that almost impossible. The Grayson nuke on the other hand managed to do a down-the-throat attack and had no sidewall in the wall. Two relevant quotes: > [@](#): > > The two counter-missiles targeted on it flashed past, clear misses without the better seeking heads of more modern navies, and its target’s sensors, half-blinded by the artificial grav wave of its own belly stress band, lost lock. There was no last-minute laser fire, and the missile bobbed up, programmed for a frontal attack, and threw every erg of drive power it still had into crushing deceleration. There wasn’t time to kill much velocity, even at 30,000 gees—but it was enough. > > The unprotected, wide open throat of the light cruiser _Abraham_’s impeller wedge engulfed the warhead like a vast scoop. Primary and backup proximity fuses flashed as one, and a fifty-megaton explosion erupted one hundred meters from the Masadan flagship. > > _\_ > > Two of them vanished in sun-bright fireballs that shook _Thunder_ to her keel as twin, 78-ton hammers struck her sidewall at .25 C. For all their fury, those two were harmless, but their sisters’ sidewall penetrators functioned as designed. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2011, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enterprise-vs-honor-harrington/585042/117 "2011-09-07T18:23:18Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Not the nuke; the impact of the missile itself at 25% of lightspeed. And it just shakes the ship a bit. And going by the (limited ) evidence Honorverse contact nukes are if anything more powerful than photon torpedoes. If the impact kinetic energy of the “contact nuke” is what delivers the majority of the punch, then a photon torpedo has it beat. How much kinetic-energy-per-kilogram would an object have, if it were travelling at warp 9 (i.e. 1000_c_)? ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2011, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enterprise-vs-honor-harrington/585042/118 "2011-09-07T21:04:44Z")
> [@tracer](#): > > If the impact kinetic energy of the “contact nuke” is what delivers the majority of the punch, then a photon torpedo has it beat. How much kinetic-energy-per-kilogram would an object have, if it were travelling at warp 9 (i.e. 1000_c_)? This was my initial thought as well, but I don’t think it holds up to further inspection. I don’t know if it’s Star Trek canon, but I’d have to imagine that “Warp drive” is achieved by, I guess, warping space, so that you’re moving the equivalent of 1000x light speed without the energy input. And when you come out of warp, you’re going at the same speed you were going when you came in. Otherwise, the Star Trek universe would make even less sense from a physics point of view than it does now. If the Enterprise had access to the kind of energies it would take to actually accelerate/decelerate a few hundred thousand tons of spaceship to 1000x light speed in a few seconds, then we wouldn’t even be having this debate because they’d be wiping out Superdreadnaughts with supernova level energy weapons. And you pretty much have to assume that there’s no physical interaction between an object traveling at warp speed and an object in normal space or a collision with a microscopic chunk of space crap would vaporize the Enterprise when it was traveling at full speed. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2011, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enterprise-vs-honor-harrington/585042/119 "2011-09-07T21:21:33Z")
[QUOTE=Finagle] This was my initial thought as well, but I don’t think it holds up to further inspection. I don’t know if it’s Star Trek canon, but I’d have to imagine that “Warp drive” is achieved by, I guess, warping space, so that you’re moving the equivalent of 1000x light speed without the energy input. And when you come out of warp, you’re going at the same speed you were going when you came in. Otherwise, the Star Trek universe would make even less sense from a physics point of view than it does now. If the Enterprise had access to the kind of energies it would take to actually accelerate/decelerate a few hundred thousand tons of spaceship to 1000x light speed in a few seconds, then we wouldn’t even be having this debate because they’d be wiping out Superdreadnaughts with supernova level energy weapons. And you pretty much have to assume that there’s no physical interaction between an object traveling at warp speed and an object in normal space or a collision with a microscopic chunk of space crap would vaporize the Enterprise when it was traveling at full speed. [/QUOTE] Warp drive: [Warp drive | Memory Alpha | Fandom](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Warp_drive) > [@Memory Alpha](#): > > This was accomplished by generating warp fields to form a subspace bubble that enveloped the starship, distorting the local spacetime continuum and moving the starship at velocities that exceeded the speed of light. There were several episodes in TOS/TNG/Voy where the hero’s starship was involuntarily dropped out of warp by some other force. Deflector dish: [Navigational deflector | Memory Alpha | Fandom](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Deflector_dish) allows travel at high speeds safe. Apparently, space crap in Einsteinian space can affect a ship at warp (encased in it’s own sub space bubble). Star Trek is full of contradictions and canon violations. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2011, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enterprise-vs-honor-harrington/585042/120 "2011-09-07T22:45:46Z")
I’d also like to add that “accelerating to 1000x light speed” doesn’t have any real meaning in Einsteinian space. You can’t accelerate across the light barrier – not only would it require an _infinite_ amount of energy to accelerate to 1x light speed, an object travelling _faster_ than light speed in Einsteinian space would be in the tachyon realm, with an imaginary mass (and a negative imaginary mass at that). Its kinetic energy would be some multiple of _i_. So, I take back what I said about a warp 9 photon torpedo having more kinetic energy than a 0.25_c_ contact nuke. “Kinetic energy” doesn’t really have meaning when discussing an object at warp. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enterprise-vs-honor-harrington/585042.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enterprise-vs-honor-harrington/585042.md?page=7)