E. E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman data

[Andras]

That's 5.736e+22 tons. Not bad! Only two orders of magnitude greater. I bet those super-maulers could crack continents with those primaries.

No doubt about it. What is really scaring is that is really the minuim that we know the supermauler primaries are greater then. Prob by a very large margin.

This also prob puts the sunbeam at DS or greater than DS power. They destroyied the sheilds of those planets in a secound. The ones holding the supermaulers indefinatly off.

From Page 1

Sunbeams
Basically, a sunbeam converts a solar system into one giant vacuum tube. a Sol type star results in an energy beam of some 4 million tons per second (316 million million TW)

3.16e26W=7.5e16 tons TNT/second

So these supermauler calcs are 4-6 OoM higher then the given output of the sunbeam.

[white_rabbit]

Could I ask a question ?


Was there ever an occasion in any of the Lensmen novels in which a Teardrop shape ship is disguised as a spherical ship to make people think its slower by it being in a partially underground landing bay ?

[Currald]

That's 5.736e+22 tons. Not bad! Only two orders of magnitude greater. I bet those super-maulers could crack continents with those primaries.

No doubt about it. What is really scaring is that is really the minuim that we know the supermauler primaries are greater then. Prob by a very large margin.

This also prob puts the sunbeam at DS or greater than DS power. They destroyied the sheilds of those planets in a secound. The ones holding the supermaulers indefinatly off.

From Page 1

Sunbeams
Basically, a sunbeam converts a solar system into one giant vacuum tube. a Sol type star results in an energy beam of some 4 million tons per second (316 million million TW)

3.16e26W=7.5e16 tons TNT/second

So these supermauler calcs are 4-6 OoM higher then the given output of the sunbeam.

Damn. That means our high end is lower than our low end. Clearly the culprit in these calculations is the secondary media, in this case the illustration from Gray Lensman which I used to estimate the width of the Dauntless's primary beams. That pic is inaccurate in other ways, so I will unhesitatingly discard it in this regard. I will calculate the implications for primary beams of this important point in the next day or so. This will give us an upper limit, thankfully. Has anyone found any reference to the diameter of the parimary beams? It seems to be critical if we're going to use the "Sirius B - Q-type helix - primary beam" method of calculation. Thanks, Andras, for keeping us honest!

Was there ever an occasion in any of the Lensmen novels in which a Teardrop shape ship is disguised as a spherical ship to make people think its slower by it being in a partially underground landing bay ?

In First Lensman Samms (IIRC) saw some teardrop-shaped pirate ships which he thought were spherical because of their partial underground landing style, yes. I don't think that it was a deliberate ruse on the part of the pirates, who didn't plan to be seen at all, but simply a misapprehension on Samms's part.

[Currald]

6.4e14 tons high end yield for Dauntless primaries as of SSL. I took the sunbeam's yield, divided it by 7 ('cause there were 7 planets), and then divided the result by 16.666667 (the ratio of super-mauler to super-dreadnought primary power). This is pretty overtly generous, since some of the sunbeam undoubtedly sisn't hit the planets, and more than one super-mauler was probably attacking each planet, but that's the function of a high-end number. It certainly isn't any higher than 6.4e14 tons!

[Darth_Shinji]

That's 5.736e+22 tons. Not bad! Only two orders of magnitude greater. I bet those super-maulers could crack continents with those primaries.

No doubt about it. What is really scaring is that is really the minuim that we know the supermauler primaries are greater then. Prob by a very large margin.

This also prob puts the sunbeam at DS or greater than DS power. They destroyied the sheilds of those planets in a secound. The ones holding the supermaulers indefinatly off.

From Page 1

Sunbeams
Basically, a sunbeam converts a solar system into one giant vacuum tube. a Sol type star results in an energy beam of some 4 million tons per second (316 million million TW)

3.16e26W=7.5e16 tons TNT/second

So these supermauler calcs are 4-6 OoM higher then the given output of the sunbeam.

You do relise "onscreen evidence"> Dailogue? The reason I say that is becuase if Doc Smith has a stated something but shows something else then that stands as what is really going on. Happens in movies all the time. If primaries are cacled and primies<plantary sheilds<sunbeam. And primies are larger than stated becuase of what they have been calced doing, then they stay as calced.

This isn't the first time an author or scifi writer has fudged the math.

[Andras]

You do relise "onscreen evidence"> Dailogue? The reason I say that is becuase if Doc Smith has a stated something but shows something else then that stands as what is really going on. Happens in movies all the time. If primaries are cacled and primies<plantary sheilds<sunbeam. And primies are larger than stated becuase of what they have been calced doing, then they stay as calced.

This isn't the first time an author or scifi writer has fudged the math.

I do not understand your point. Can you be clearer? There is no "on screen evidence" and there is no statement from the 'owners" of the franchise that artists impressions outweigh Docs writings. You are wrongly applying a SW/ST factoid.

Fact Sunbeam destroys 7 planets at once, no primary beam in any of the novels ever destroys even 1 planet. No fleet of ships armed with primarys has ever destroyed a planet.

When you can deploy /planets/ at supraluminal speeds and whack whole solar systems at once, the need for planet destroying primary beams is not there.

[Currald]

It's okay. We just have to reduce the diameter of the primary beam to fit it with the sunbeam datum. It comes to a little under 3 cm. This is way smaller than my earlier estimate, but isn't contradicted anywhere that I am aware of. This gives me an idea for how to calculate the low end number. The DeLameter and the 'copter-mounted needle beam are both described as emitting a "pencil" of destruction. It seems unlikely to me that a primary would have a narrower beam than a DeLameter or a needler. We just take the diameter if a literal pencil and plug it into the q-type helix formula, it should give us our lower limit, which should be pretty close to the upper limit!

Okay, my Dixon Ticonderoga 1388-2/HB has a hexagonal cross-section, so I'll measure from side to side, rather than from corner to corner, to be conservative. 6 mm. So the area is 2.827e-5 m. 4.0625e27 joules * 2.827e-5. Er, 2.745e13 tons TNT lower limit.

So 3.337e14 is the mean of our upper and lower limits, giving us our mid-range number (for what that's worth).

So that's the high teraton range, which should make a certain Skylarker cultist happy! I'm going to keep taking notes on SSL, but this is looking pretty good to me. A nice range of slightly over an order of magnitude is better than I ever expected to get with such number-poor descriptions, but this turned out pretty well.

Until someone pokes another hole in it.

[Darth_Shinji]

You do relise "onscreen evidence"> Dailogue? The reason I say that is becuase if Doc Smith has a stated something but shows something else then that stands as what is really going on. Happens in movies all the time. If primaries are cacled and primies<plantary sheilds<sunbeam. And primies are larger than stated becuase of what they have been calced doing, then they stay as calced.

This isn't the first time an author or scifi writer has fudged the math.

I do not understand your point. Can you be clearer? There is no "on screen evidence" and there is no statement from the 'owners" of the franchise that artists impressions outweigh Docs writings. You are wrongly applying a SW/ST factoid.

Fact Sunbeam destroys 7 planets at once, no primary beam in any of the novels ever destroys even 1 planet. No fleet of ships armed with primarys has ever destroyed a planet.

When you can deploy /planets/ at supraluminal speeds and whack whole solar systems at once, the need for planet destroying primary beams is not there.

You relise seven planets at once is a hell of alot more power than what you are stating? That much power at one time would be far beyound the calced power of a DS. BUt that isn't what happened anyway. My point was that when someone states something in a novel and it doesn't occur that way that how it occured takes precendants. However I conceed this point to Currads logic anyway. But it leads to another question is that the sunbeam is all the output of the sun ... is that 4 million tons of matter converted into energy? What if he messed up there?

[Currald]

You relise seven planets at once is a hell of alot more power than what you are stating? That much power at one time would be far beyound the calced power of a DS. BUt that isn't what happened anyway.

Right. Seven planets weren't exploded. They just got their surfaces melted a bit.

My point was that when someone states something in a novel and it doesn't occur that way that how it occured takes precendants.

Sorry. I'm still a bit confused. You mean when a character states something that the omniscient narrator disagrees with, the narrator wins the argument? I don't know about that. I think you really have to take it on a case by case basis. In the case of the Lensman novels, all except CotL, the narrator seems to be a historian, who has the advantages and disadvantages of hindsight. In CotL the narrator is Kit Kinnison. I some books it's abvious that the "impartial nameless narrator" is in fact lying constantly, while one of the characters is the only one telling the truth. Literature is too varied to apply any broad-brushed rules of evidence to, in my opinion.

However I conceed this point to Currads logic anyway.

I'm glad that my thinking on this matter appears to be clear. Oh, and it's "Currald." I think Curad is a Band-Aid knockoff.

But it leads to another question is that the sunbeam is all the output of the sun ... is that 4 million tons of matter converted into energy? What if he messed up there?

What if Doc Smith messed up with his figures on the sun's energy output? Hmmmm... Well, maybe we could stick with his numbers when using them to extrapolate to less-powerful weapons (such as the super-mauler's weapon), since to do otherwise could conceivably throw his carefully contructed technological system into chaos, leaving us with nothing to go on. I'm almost afraid to check his figures now! (gulp!)

Of course, we could always just use the "alternate universe where the sun is more/less powerful than our own" explanation.

[Andras]

You relise seven planets at once is a hell of alot more power than what you are stating? That much power at one time would be far beyound the calced power of a DS. BUt that isn't what happened anyway. My point was that when someone states something in a novel and it doesn't occur that way that how it occured takes precendants. However I conceed this point to Currads logic anyway. But it leads to another question is that the sunbeam is all the output of the sun ... is that 4 million tons of matter converted into energy? What if he messed up there?

you do know that the DS was overpowered by 6 OoM right? So the amount of power to destroy 7 planets to the state the sunbeam left them doesnt require half the power of the DS. This is not counting the energy wasted in space between the planets. And I didn't say "shattered" or "vaporized". If the armed planet is melted and dysfunctional, it = destroyed; as would a starship that is incapacitated with out being vaporized. And you should know, as I do, that it wasn't instantaeneous, "simultaneously" may have been a better word then "at once" but all seven planets were destroyed within a very short period of time.

As Currald points out, it wasn't a character that stated the output of the sunbeam, but the narrator/historian.

[Andras]

edit- On review of SSL

Haynes makes a hyperbolic statement that "what do Rex and I care about technical details we can't understand anyway? the net result is what counts and that was to concentrate upon those planets practically the whole energy output of the sun. Wasnt it?" Kennison then says that the output of the beam was "the energy equivelent, roughly, of 4,150,000 tons per second of disintegrating matter."

In fact, the sun beam performed a classic BDZ on 7 planets protected by heavy shields. The planet began to glow, ice caps melted, then boiled, oceans boiled, then exploded into steam, and mountains melted into the valleys

The planetary domes completely resisted the beams of the super maulers"every man in the patrol, including Kennison, expected them to go down... but the domes held", and the planetary based weapons were making short work of the supermaulers screens.

Currald, my copy of SSL has no artwork depicting a supermauler in action. Kim and Clarissa are on a planet, he's holding a beam rifle, and a couple starships are in the background. the artwork is c/r Mattingly, 82 and was printed in 84

[Currald]

Well, according to our careful scientific evaluation of the text, the beam would have to be narrower than any illustration could properly convey anyway.

[Currald]

QX, Lensmen. Here're the Second Stage Lensmen notes. I apologize of the length, but there are so many things in common between books 3-5 that I figured they should all be together. Further books will be treated seperately. This represents the "classic" Lensman period, when Kimball Kinnison was young and unmarried. Look at all these yummy ship classes, waiting to be fleshed out. How does Enola Gay-class sound for the Cruising Bomber?


GP

The old-style ships:

small scouts

large scouts

cruisers - big teardrops. Used (unsuccessfully) for convoy escort.

battleships - big teardrops

superdreadnaughts - globular

Brittania - Cruiser (possibly vernacular), vastly larger than superdreadnaught. Tear-drop. Fastest ship in space. Inert accelleration of 10 Gs. Free speed of 90 parsecs per hour. No long-range beams. Batteries of short range beams (probably arranged near Q-gun). Needle-rays. Tractor beams. Repellor beams. Q-gun. Plenty of defensive screens. Code call "QBT." Sensors have <10 ly range. Q-gun: Port opens, projector-ringed muzzle, projector bands. Q-gun projectile takes 4-5seconds to traverse 10 km, magazine contains 8 torpedos. Repellor zones project 10 km from skin of ship (this is typical for Boskonian ships too). Accumulators and atomic motors for power. At least four semi-portables, powered by power-beams. 100 Valerian marines. 40 (crew specialists + Valerian non-coms). Well over 21 life-boats. (4 caught, 9 escaped) Helmuth describes her as a speedster and a bomb, also a speed-boat and a firecracker.

Brittania life-boat: Tiny control room, detector plate, Bergenholm, driving projectors, less range than a ship, tiny airlock, miniature versions of practically every mechanism for The Pit,

F47U596: Boskonian first-class war-vessel, super-ship (superdreadnaught?). The single emergency inlet port, with Galactic Standard Controls, is just foreward of main driving projectors (which is the conventional arrangement). Atomic motors are first stage exciters for cosmic energy screens. Starboard cargo lock big enough for Brittania's lifeboat. Two weeks from somewhere around Alsakan (located near the rim on the side of the galaxy opposite Sol) to Sol (around 69 parsecs per hour, but this is a bit of a stretch, calculating from hazy data). Numbering recorders on all ports (unlike with GP ships). Starboard main lock. 11 ly in a shade over 2 minutes (2:00 = 101.2 parsecs per hour. If we assume 2:15, we end up with 89.83 pph. 2:25 = 83.73 pph). Accumulators for stablization of power flow. Faster than GP ships except Brittania. One of Boskone's new battleships. First-class battleship.

Pit Ships: (probably the same class as F47U596) Superdreadnaught. Accumulators for stablization of power flow. Another immense cruiser of the void joined her sister ship. And another and another. Two more ships. Kinnison's ship: one of the most powerful battleships afloat. 1800c with flare baffles on. Boskone's best. Standard fourteen rating Bergenholm. Six Boskonian battleships.

Merchantman: Emergency inlet port. Nose. After-jets.

Helmuth's speedster: Fully automatic.


New-style ships:

Special scouting cruisers: aka Cruisers. Speed and defense. The fastest things in space. Upgraded from previous builds. Interference. Tear-drop-shaped. Very strong tractor beams (uncuttable by 1st generation shears). Useless for reducing bases. Probably 2 or 3 intake screen exciters.

Maulers: Huge, ungainly, slow. Storehouses of vast powers of offense. Largest & most powerful projectors ever mounted on mobile platform. Not dependent on cosmic energy. Bank after bank of accumulators. Can stop nearby vessels from receiving cosmic energy. Squat and monstrous. Tractor beams. Macros can penetrate wall shields previously proof against all but 20 metric tons of duodec. Maulers use storage cells to power projectors. I guess that firepower/defense chart result vs. Boskonian battleship's wall-shield would be a "+3" result. AKA El Ponderoso. Very strong tractor beams (uncuttable by 1st generation shears). Example: B 42 TC 838 (no italics). Probably slower than 36.79 parsecs per hour in open space, based on notes below ("SLOW ship"). Armored side. Vastly more comfortable than a speedster (but what isn't?). Super-powerful battleships. (Based on calcs from data in Gray Lensman (have same macros as Dauntless), GURPS Lensman and Lensman wargame, have about 34 Dauntless equivilent macro beams. Obviously this is tentative, and subject to revision due to secondary sources used.) Probably 2 or 3 intake screen exciters.

Heavy battle cruiser Brittania: Probably same shape as previous Brittania (both were "streamlined to the ultimate degree"). Special wall-shields and dissipators to radiate into space the heat of friction. Almost certainly faster than the original Brittania. "a battle cruiser just wasn't enough ship." Enought screens to fight a Boskonian superdreadnaught indefinately. Beams powerful, but not as powerful as a mauler's. Probably 2 or 3 intake screen exciters.

New automatic speedsters: Lots of legs, range, and screen. Only one beam. Unlike the larger GP warships, very narrow in proportion to length. Jets on all six sides. Belley jets. Everything is clamped down. Gravity plates are perpendicular to the orientation used in the "big tear-drops." Speed and maneuverability are only priority. Under jets places specifically and only for inert flight. If other jets are used, is extremely cranky and tricky. I THINK the thrust for the jets are as follows: under jets 2(200)Gs, aft jets 5+(500+)Gs. Braking jets more powerful than under jets, but less than aft jets. Room for six people during Kinnison's landing to hospital. Flare baffles. One of the fastest things in the galaxy. Streamlined nose. never used by civilians.

Ultra-fast vessels of the pirates: Same shape and design as the GP speedster. We'll see what this refers to.

Prometheus: Merchantman spaceship heading to Alsakan for cigarettes. Ports. Could hold speedster, if not for cargo and men on board. Spy-ray screens. Its screens take an hour to to be burned down by a Boskonian raider (of unknown class, though. Pity.).

Boskonian raider (unknown class). Would take an hour to burn through Prometheus's screens. Wouldn't even warm up a mauler's screen. Wouldn't last a second against a mauler's beams. Braking jets on nose make no flare. Emergency inlet Lock. Under jets placed specifically for inert maneuvering (can this be one of the "Ultra-fast vessels of the pirates?" I think so.) "Battleship."

Hospital ship: Escorted by a mauler. Slow enough to be caught by a
Boskonian ship (Same one that Kinnison infiltrated on the way to
Aldebaran I, the "ultra fast vessel of the pirates.). Stateroom. "Picked up" Kinnison;s speedster (probably in a cargo lock, but possibly attached with magnets). Hasn't "got a beam hot enough to light a cigarette (that leaves out tertiaries), nor a screen strong enough to stop a firecracker." Has legs, but not as many as the Boskonian ships searching for her. Calculating machine & tank. Control room (usually called such, rather than bridge). Has supplies to burn. Probably 2 or 3 intake screen exciters.

Boskonian mauler: Cannot destroy patrol heavy cruisers.

Boskonian Super-maulers: AKA outposts. Eighteen small centers of radiation. Huge, floating fortresses, practically stationary in space relative to the sun. Guardian fortresses. Maulers. Hulking monsters. The slowest mauler in the Patrol fleet could catch them in five minutes. Improvised primaries dropped all screens (3 plus wall-shield) on inertialess Patrol heavy cruisers and did "GURPS Great" damage. At LEAST nine projectors, almost certainly more. Cosmic energy powered. Gigantic accumulators.

Heavy Cruisers: GP. Little offensive strength. Tractors and pressors of prodigious power. screen which, theoretically, no projector-driven beam of force can penetrate. (Possibly the same as the special scouting cruisers? Maybe not. See Heavy Cruisers, below.) Nine of the mightiest of Civilization's ships of war. Probably 2 or 3 intake screen exciters.

Flagship: GP. Unknown class. Airlock. Control room.

GP Fleet: 50,000 ships. Almost everything mobile that could throw a beam. Cruisers, battleships and maulers. A hundred thousand projectors (200,000 total?).

Dauntless: Superbly powered for flight, defense and offense, a complete space laboratory and observatory. Immense. Iron walls. 100,000 pph cruising in intergalactic space (this doesn't jibe with the "Ether Density" and Dauntless-class stats from GURPS). Atomic motors used for exciters maximum power of 400 pounds per hour. Cosmic energy screens operate at a 100,000:1 ratio in the galaxy (= 4,000,000 pounds per hour), and a 1,000,000:1 ration in intergalactic space (= 40,000,000 pounds per hour). Can sense ships "light years distant." Series of four screens. Master Pilot Henderson's control panel is compared to an organ, with each key controlling a jet... how many jets is that? Landing jets at least 5 Gs. Secondaries of same power as mauler's. Enormous. Bigger even than a mauler in bulk and mass. Needle-beaked prow, jet studded stern. 200 intake screen exciters. Equipped to energize simultaneously 8 primaries. Primary beam duration of .60 and a switching interval of .09 (1.98 seconds to destroy 21 vessels.). Useful life of little over half a second (0.60 seconds, to be exact). Switches control well over 100,000,000,000 KVA for primaries (whatever THAT means!). Not even a Q-type helix can withstand the primary. Secondaries can make full-aperture cones. Is designed to land on her belly. Carries Kinnison's automatic speedster. After being rebuilt with Medonian tech, she was faster than before. Can engulf Will Bill's tug. Main airlock can hold at least 20 men. "Plenty" of secondaries could be brought to bear on a target. Super-dreadnought. Medonian generators and transmitters seem to equal more powerful screens. Biggest, most powerfully-armed, and fastest thing in space (at least after her Medonian rebuild). Under-jets for first 4-5 miles upon take-off, with sirens and flaring lights clearing the way. Super-powerful battleship. ANOTHER REBUILD FOR ASSAULT ON 2ND GALAXY - SEE ALSO FIRST-LINE SUPER-DREADNOUGHTS, BELOW. Needle nose. Fastest thing in space. Unlike any smaller vessel, carries every space-chart (SSL 47 for details). Cruiser. Superbattlewagon. Tail has most thrust (over 4 [400?] Gs). Belly landing. Carries at least one 'copter. The center is the safest place aboard. Ultra-fast shape. Narrow nose. Tractor zone added before Lyrane incident. Carries at least two 'copters. 101 Valerian marines including VanBuskirk. 80 pph is easy touring blast. Valerian quarters are set to 2700 gravity and 40 psi, and 90 degree F, instead of the normal 980 gravity and, uh (14?) psi. Baffled jets. Can launch at least 3 dirigible duodec torpedoes. "Number six lock," so at least six locks, yo. Needle-rays. File-hard, inflexible armor. Lands on mid-zone. Detector-nullifiers. Has the generators and equipment necessary for hyperspatial travel. Lifeboats, enough for everyone on board. Gangplank.

Boskonians attacking Medon (1st primary victims): Slower than Dauntless. Their macros are weaker than the Dauntless's. 21 ships. A squadron.

Battle-cruiser: flare-baffled, softly hissing under-jets. (This COULD be
the same class as the Brittania (II), but I suspect that it's a new
design. (Are under-jets unique to the ultra-fast shape?)

Indetectable speedster: Berylumin structural parts, force field
(instead of silicon-steel) cores for electrical equipment, what
iron-containing parts are absolutely necessary are saturated in a dense
field of detector frequencies. No ports or windows. 99.99%
non-reflective coating. Dead-black sliver of semi-precious metal. Tiny. Can hold at least Kinnison and Worsel. Main drive does 11 (1100?) G's. Doesn't have a beam hot enough to light a match.

Eich battleship: All equipment and weapons can be operated by two Eich.
Black, airless, lightless. Can fire missiles aka torpedoes. Communicator
panel. Vast torpedoes designed to disrupt, almost to volitize a world.
The Eich seem to have pretty advanced computers...

Tellurian freighters: Took a couple hours to get from Medon (at Alpha
Centauri) to Sol's asteroid belt, but they weren't hurrying. Huge. Freighters have large under-jets.

Wild Bill's ship: Stubby, powerful space-tug. Oversized airlock. Ten
years old. After Patrol rebuild, as staunch as a battleship.
Space-armor, Spalding drills, DeLameters, tractors and pressors and
"spee-gee" (torsion specific-gravity aparatus). Chunky space-boat.
Stocked for a six-week run. Small ship. Spalding drill cuts and polishes
a sample one inch long and one inch in diameter. Sample is placed by
hand in jaws of "spee-gee." Bergenholm is deactivated, and "spee-gee"
measures metal's specific-gravity. Raving under-jets. (Huh, this is an
old ship, so clearly under-jets are not exclusive to the state of the art
ultra-fast ships.) Can be engulfed by the Dauntless.

Heavy caterpillars: Twenty. Huge, flat treads. Mount projectors
quite comparable in size and power with the warships' (maulers') own.
(5000 firepower = 1000 tons, 1000 cy. according to GURPS) Projectors
are called heavy defense-guns. Controlled remotely.

Q-type mobile screen: Fifty units. Heavier than heavy caterpillars.
Huge, flat treads. Panels of mobile screen. Instantly flashed to
violet
under one of Prellin's beams (first-line space artillery (5000
firepower?)). Controlled remotely.

Maulers: Are these the same type as the originals? Huge ungainly
flying fortresses of stupendous might. Under-jets (gah!). Twelve against
Prellin's base. At least two-score beams from 12 maulers (probably
quite a few more, I can probably ignore this). High explosive shells by the
hundred. Tractors and pressors. Maulers are NEVER ultra-fast shaped. As of Battle of Thrale have dreadful primary batteries. Enough to
defeat
any smaller ship conclusively.

Transports: The commissariat and service units are carried by these.

Prellin's ship: Hidden in building covering an entire city block and 80
stories tall. Cylindrical screen. At least five up-to-the-minute
first-line space artillery beams. Takes up almost the entire building,
though there are "outer offices" conducting legitimate transactions.
Ethan D. Wembleson and Sons, Inc., 4627 Boulevard Dezalies, Cominoche,
Quadrant Eight, Bronseca. Howard Webleson aka Prellin. Beams cannot
penetrate maulers' screens. Super-dreadnought. Fast, but not as fast as the Dauntless (which is the fastest thing in space, yo). Tractor shears (which are universal equipment these days). Three simultaneous primary shots did GURPS Stark damage against her.

Flotilla ZKD: Composed of the Dauntless's sister-ships. On shake-down cruise. 54 units (w/ Pasteur).

Pasteur: New hospital ship. The only Red Cross ship in space that could leg it, parsec for parsec, with the Dauntless. Cost 200 million credits. Gravity-pads cut to zero, 1.4 G's from under-jets, the maximum allowed. Can engulf indetectable speedster, and presumably the gig, too. Still in service as of the Battle of Thrale.

Gig: Carried in Dauntless. Brakes at least 5 (500?) G's, probably more. At least two crew run it.

First-line super-dreadnoughts: The only type used in the operation. Built throughout the galaxy. Built and armed. Rebuilt and rearmed. Weapons made more powerful. Screen made stronger. Primaries made more powerful and longer-lasting, newly devised shells. New and heavier Q-type helices. Larger and more destructive duodec bombs. Formation moved at almost 100 pph. Tellurian armada of 80 super-dreadnoughts plus the Directrix. Sleek. Secondaries, tight-beam-directed duodec bombs which loop to gain momentum, Q-type helices improved by Medonian tech screwed in, biting, gouging. Shear-planes, hellish knives of force. Rods, cones, shears and planes of pure force. Boskone has a similar fleet, but without primaries and Z9M9Z. Red K6T screen used for battle flag and identification. All primaries which could be brought to bear made 200 million shots (this is useless info, really). 0.02% of the Boskonian fleet escaped to return to Jarnevon. Defending Tellus, 12.5% of the battleships in the shock globe were destroyed, though they were manned by robots. Boskone may have had primaries by the time of the tube attack on Tellus. Ultra-fast shape.

Z9M9Z: Whole ship built around an Operations tank. Gigantic tear drop. Technically the Z9M9Z, socially the Directrix, and ordinarily GFHQ. No offensive armament. Every possible defense. Capable of directing efficiently a million combat units, a million separate flotillas. Tank: 700 feet in diameter and 80 feet thick in the middle, over 17 million cubic feet. Full circle of million plug board surrounding tank. "Reducer" is standard ten-foot tank. Haynes "looked up into the immense lens" of the tank. I think it's standing vertically. Sleek. 200 Rigellian switch-board operators. Haynes calls the captain Rex. Tractors and pressors. Flexible, that is, not aultimately rigid, tubes for boarding. Can hold thousands of men. Utterly unlike any
other vessel ever to fly, even to the most casual observer.

Jalte's guardian citadels: Fortresses. (Probably upgraded versions of Helmuth's fortresses.) Repowered, defenses stiffened. Formidably armed and armored planetoids. Projectors batter quite a few GP ships down to the wall-shields. Mastodonic fortresses. Could withstand conventional attack, but not primaries. Mobile citadels.

Super-mauler: Gigantic, cumbersome and slow. Little faster than a free planet (15 pph according to GURPS). Like Helmuth's fortresses of space, only larger. Like the special defense cruisers of the Patrol, only its screens are vastly heavier. Like a regular mauler, except that it had only one weapon. All of its incomprehensible mass was devoted to one thing - power! It could defend itself, and if it could get close enough to its objective it could do plenty of damage. Its dreadful primary was the first weapon ever developed capable of cutting a Q-type helix squarely in two. Definately not planets. Not as powerful as a fortified, mobile planet. Designed to attack fortified, mobile planets (contradiction? I guess they run in packs). Their primaries burn out shells in a twinkling of an eye (?) which would last ten seconds in a first-line battleship's (Dauntless-class, version 3) primary projector. Still not enough to get through the Boskonian planetary shields. Planetary fixed-mount weapons took down course after course of super-mauler shields before the super-maulers were withdrawn. Flares cannot be baffled. AKA fortresses (I THINK "fortresses" refers to super-maulers).

Special defense cruisers: Probably refers to special scouting cruisers and/or heavy cruisers (see above). Have tough screens.

Five-man speedsters: Used to detect hyperspatial tube formation in the Solarian system.

Power houses: Comparatively small, tiny compared to maulers. No weapons, defensive screen. Atomic motors, exciters, intakes and generators. Mobile. Components of the sun beam.

Boskonians attacking Lyrane: Ultra-fast shape. Probably second-line or out of date battleships. 12 Lyranian body-lengths shorter than Dauntless (assuming 5' 11" feet per body-length, that's 2029 feet long). (Helen is 5' 11") Slower than Dauntless (surprise surprise!). Beams of insufficient power to crush Dauntless's screens. Tractor shears. Cruiser.

"Cartiff's" ship: Ultra-fast, dead black. Armed and armored like a super-dreadnought. Carries an armored truck, like a wheeled tank, with screens like a cruiser. Pilot tank is a three dimensional chart. Ten immense beam-dirigible torpedoes, used to destroy Bleeko's mine. Cruiser. Muffled under-jets. Tractor beam. Sleek flyer. Camouflaged warship. Baffled jets. Heavily armed "merchantman," (quotes Doc's).

Nadreck's speedster: Ultra-refrigerated. Non-ferrous. Undetectable. Except for racial considerations, identical to Kinnison's indetectable speedster.

Scout Cruisers: Comparatively small. Not well screened or armed. Ultra-fast, and equipped with the most powerful detectors, spotters and locators known.

Light Cruisers: Screens. Primaries and secondaries. Heavier screen and more powerful beams than cruising bombers. Tractor zone. Tractor beams used to toss nega-bombs back at enemy.

Cruising Bombers: New type of light cruiser. Designed to throw negative-matter bombs at close range. Shorter range weapons than conventional light cruiser. Less and cooler beams and less screens than conventional light cruiser, due to space taken up by bomb tubes. Tractor beams. Bomb tubes essentially tractor beams. One bomb will take out any cruiser out of action. Bombs are almost 1/10th the mass of a cruising bomber. Boskonians have essentially the same ships.

Heavy Defensive Cruisers: Probably the same as the heavy cruiser and/or special scouting cruisers above. Developed for hunting down Boskonian commerce raiders. Practically impenetrable screen. Refitted with tractor zones and bomb tubes. Never before used in Grand Fleet formation, so probably not the heavy cruiser, which participated in the assault on Helmuth's base. Probably are the Special Scouting Cruisers, though.

Heavy Battleships: Not the same as Dauntless-class super-dreadnoughts, but used in a similar role in Grand Fleet operations. (Could these be the globular super-dreadnoughts from the beginning of GP, refitted with cosmic energy screens and Medonian tech? Maybe, maybe not. They might be new-build ships.)

Boskonians at Battle of Klovia: can be assumed to be more or less the same as GP.

Flitter: "Gannel" owned one. Could fly high enough to be indetectable. (I think this is described in more detail in The Vortex Blaster)

Motorcycle scouts: Boskonians use 'em.

"Gannel's" Thralian speedster: Crew of six. Can fit in Dauntless's hold. Has sufficient weapons to force a Patrol "sneak-boat" to engage, cripple and board it.

GP Sneak-boat: Small enough for the above Thralian speedster to cripple and board it. (Probably some kind of speedster or small scout.)

"Gannel's" Boskonian Grand Fleet: More and heavier flying fortresses,
more
and faster battleships and super-dreadnoughts, more and faster cruisers
and scouts, more and deadlier weapons. Small in total numbers than GP,
but with more and heavier super-maulers. Each world contributed 1-2
maulers and 4-12+ battleships to the fleet. GP Grand Fleet is 40%
bigger.
Boskonian and GP ships are not identical, but principles of sound
engineering dictated that the externals should be essentially the same.
The minor differences could not be perceived until the vessels had
actually landed.

Boskonian flagship: Crudeness and inefficiency incarnate compared to
the
Z9M9Z, but far better than any previous Boskonian operations center.
Crew
of 1500. Cannot control groups of 300-400 sub-fleets to destroy 50
sub-fleets; this is the exclusive province of the Z9M9Z. "Great
flagship." Built specifically to be the flagship. Recognizable by
Thralians on sight. Under-jets. 1/8th mile is minimum safe distance
from
under-jets. Airlocks (duh). Helicopters with the narrow snouts of
needle-ray projectors visible. Can hold thousands upon thousands of
troops, if necessary.


Sunbeam: Klovia's sunbeam produces well over 4,000,000 tons per second
of
energy.


'Copter: Helicopter. At least two carried in Dauntless standard. Spy ray. At least two needle beams. "Pencil of destruction." Very accurate. Radiates the entire spectrum of vibrations. Carried two passengers. Needle beams powered from ship via power beam.


Plantery-based weapons are extremely powerful. Shields cannot be breached with primaries. Beams which rival primaries in intensity and of 100 times their effective aperture. Beams encased in Q-type helices against atmosphere.


GP Armor: Black and silver. 4c in interplanetary space with Bergenholms. At least 5 Gs inert. Bergenholm can be adjusted to cover three or so people. Batteries (accumulators) hold myriawatt-hour after myriawatt-hour. Drain was sufficient to cause noticible power shortage in Delgonian city, and the batts charges faster than the firing DeLameters would drain them. Took hours to charge accumulators. Defensive fields inches from surface of armor. Space armor all looks alike (GP and Boskonian).

Kinnison's peculiar armor: Has controls. Flaring drivers. Spings and shock absorbers. Shining alloy. Doesn't scratch or dent under heavy machinegun fire. Helmet built up of inches-thick laminated alloys. No window or port. Pretty close to a ton. Kinnison won't be walking around in it, but flying it. Flares are heavily baffled. Bergenholm (of course!). Locking toggles. Screens almost that of a battleship; armor, relatively, as strong. Projector scarecly less powerful than a semi-portable. No machine gun. Magnetic clamps (on hands?). Cannot throw switches; does not bear any of the small and delicate external mechanisms so characteristic of the ordinary space-suit.

Dress Uniform: Space-black and silver. Golden meteors on collars. Polished ray-pistols and other items of equipment, including Bergs, on belts. Tight-beam ultra communicators strapped to chests.

Uniform: Four silver bars indicate captain rank. Golden meteors on collars. Space-black and silver.

Grays: Unardorned neutral-colored leather. Round, almost visor-less cap. Heavily and softly quilted to protect from armor helmet. Heavy goggles, opaque to harmful radiation. Short jacket, trim breeches, high boots. Mirror-polished gray boots.

Nurse Uniform: Saucy white cap. Cross-surmounted wedge on cap = sector chief nurse. Crisp and spotless white.

DeLameter: Aperture and blast are adjustable. Minimum aperture is pencil-sized. Boskone uses 'em too. Ugly. Worn, rough-checkered grips. Fully-charged
magazines. Burned, scarred, deeply-pitted orfices.

Semi-portable projectors: must always be powered by ship via power beam.


Notes: "Less than one" ly is within sensor range. "Less than one" ly can be traveled in 30 seconds by a SLOW ship. Ships' hulls are ferrous, as electromagnets attract to them. Base commander threatens to have Blakeslee "spread-eagled across the mouth of number six projector." Projectors have a large mouth, eh? Full coverage screens block vision. Ultra-wave communictors propagate at 19 billion c, not 19 trillion c, as stated in GURPS Lensman. Screens can be made more powerful with Medonian tech, but not to block primaries. Ships rebuilt with Medonian tech go faster. Kinnison says "I don't need ports or windows," WRT his
indetectable speedster. This suggests that ports and windows are
standard equipment in GP ships, though I don't remember them ever being
mentioned. I'm convinced that the battle-cruiser watching over Kinnison on Redlix and
Wild Bill's ship both have under-jets like a speedster. This may be
commonplace in smaller ships, and was only adopted in larger ships
comparitivly recently. Kinnison's battle-cruiser Brittania (II) was
almost certainly a big teardrop. Hundreds of miles is "pointblank" range for secondaries. Medonian generators and transmitters seem to equal more powerful screens. 60,000 parsecs from Sol to edge of Milky Way nearest Lundmark's Nebula. This impossible, isn't it? Henderson is 28 soon after the beginning of SSL.

[Atlan]

Well, according to our careful scientific evaluation of the text, the beam would have to be narrower than any illustration could properly convey anyway.

Actually, Primaries need not even be more powerful than secondaries in total output: considering that the early primaries were described as being nothing more than overloaded secondaries on a needle-ray setting. Usually beams are described as being much wider than that. But with a high-powered small focus setting that power which is normally splashed all over a shield is now concentrated on a very small spot.
Think of it this way. A battleships 16 inch gun cannot penetrate a layer of modern tank armor. (it`ll destroy the tank by shock, but that`s not the point, the armor will hold)
A 120 mm APFSDS will penetrate modern tank armor.
The 16 inch cannon has far much more power, but because it splashes it over a large area, it fails to penetrate the armor, whereas the APFSDS concentrates all of its energy on a very small part of the armor, and thus pierces it.
The battleship gun is a secondary, the APFSDS is a primary, and there you have your explanation of why primaries penetrate shields and secondaries do not. The primaries focuss less power on a very small spot in a very short amount of time, and temporarlily overload the shields and go through the ship.

This does play merry hell with any power calcs though....

btw, very nice site, and a wonderful attempt at making sense of the Lensman stories.

[Currald]

Thanks for the props!

You make a good point, and I agree with you as far as your statements go. However, it is strongly implied in the text that the primaries handle considerably more power than the secondaries, as well as being of tighter beam. I will have to carefully consider the damage yields in light of what you say, and also in light of the damage rules in GURPS Lensman, which are qualitatively different between secondaries and (primaries and needle beams). I still have two primary sources to go through before I start hitting secondary sources, so GURPS will have to wait a bit for my in-depth analysis.

[Atlan]

Thanks for the props!

You make a good point, and I agree with you as far as your statements go. However, it is strongly implied in the text that the primaries handle considerably more power than the secondaries, as well as being of tighter beam. I will have to carefully consider the damage yields in light of what you say, and also in light of the damage rules in GURPS Lensman, which are qualitatively different between secondaries and (primaries and needle beams). I still have two primary sources to go through before I start hitting secondary sources, so GURPS will have to wait a bit for my in-depth analysis.

Well, the APFSDS comparision only goes so far, and I misapplied it a bit. You are right when you say that the Primaries output is greater than that of a secondary, but it gets at least some of it`s shield piercing powers not from mere raw power, but the application of said power over a very small surface of the shield, and that is at once the factor which will make quantifying their actual output so difficult.

[Currald]

I agree.

[Darth_Shinji]

Well I conceed my earlier objections to you two.

However I have other questions about the sheild pentrating/power output point, Isn't Currald's calcs the minuim power needed to pentrate a q-helix that can withstand the conditions of a stars heart?

And assumeing that there is some difference between pentration and minuim power, does it matter from a debating stand point?

[Currald]

I think I already took it into account when I made my calculations. Over at TrekBBS I fooled the Trekkies into figuring out how much energy the Enterprise-D's shields would have to absorb per second in the center of Sirius B. I divided that number by the surface area of the Enterprise, giving us a joules per m^2 number. I then calculated the minimum possible area of the primary beam (the cross-section of a pencil) and calculated the joules for that number of m^2. That's how I got the low-end number.
Now secondaries are trickier, since they have an adjustable aperture. It may be that the aperture makes no difference against screens, that they simply absorb the energy and go down, until things are sufficiently weakened that a needle beam can punch through. That seems to be that way the descriptions usually go. The whole screen changes color, sometimes a bit blotchily (is that a word?).

[LadyTevar]

:Stuggles to get thru the high-tech and higher-math, eyes cross::


Dammit! Please, please spare me? Especially since the only books I've been able to get my hands on are "First Lensman" and "Dragon Lensman", which I bought *after* I saw the Lensman anime on cartoon network one night and wanted to learn/read more.

If you know where the other books, starting with "TriPlanetary" and going forward, can be found, please let me know?

[Currald]

Here. But I seriously recommend that you start with Galactic Patrol, work your way to the end, and then read the prequels. Also, skip any prologues, prefaces, or introductions you encounter. [/url]

[Currald]

I started making Dauntless schematics. Am I on the right track?[/url]