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Total Members Voted: 0

Voting closed: April 07, 2013, 10:34:35 am

[piecewise]

Cthunkan, feeling mighty pleased with his industrial suit regardless of whether it's working out as good as intended, walks about for a moment, considering a list of people he could try and bother. None of them, however, hold his present interest terribly well. So instead he goes off to try out the computers.

Find a computer terminal and search for when exactly was it that the Altered Wars ended, and what criteria were used to determine this. Was it just a declaration by the UWM after a period of prolonged peace, or something more concrete?

((Hell will freeze over before you type with those gigantic sausage fingers of yours.))

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqjF7HKSaaI

[Nunzillor]

Hi there, I'm Eddie and I'll be accompanying you all on the mission.  Do any of you have concrete and actionable ideas as to how we can either collect or destroy the source of the extreme cold on Heph with minimal damage to Heph itself?

Also, are there any volunteers for field commanders among those who have been on several missions?

Excuse me sir, are you an officer of some sort?  If so, can you recommend any general strategies for succeeding in the mission?

[Radio Controlled]

Yeah, it's a hacksaw and a piece of wood to bite down on.
We can get some limiters for him but if he really fucks up, they won't last for long.

"Well Ronald, it seems they found a sort of solution for those arms. It's a pair of limiters that should help restrain their destructive potential. Be warned however, they probably can't hold up against the full power of those arms, so be careful. If they have a cost, and you cannot pay right now, the team fund will cover it, but you'll have to pay the cost back later. You're free to go on the condition that you keep these on at all times, and try not to let anything happen again. Next time innocent bystanders get hurt, those arms are coming off, one way or another. Do we understand each other?"

Well the forcefield's movement and orientation is related to the projecting material, so you'd have to vibrate that.

and is this a workable/viable idea? Could it combine the strengths of forcefield and monowire?

Well, it couldn't get through the force field, could it?

No, but it could be next to it, so that if the forcefield cuts but doesn't get through, the monowire is pushed down alongside it into the cutting front and 'takes over' from the forcefield. Does that make more sense?

I assume the rest of these things were handled by Miya and the gnomes. I think Thats what I saw.

Yes they were, far as I see. Much thanks to the wiki gnomes helping out in these troubling times. Now say it with me: 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Comrade P.]

We'll have the guy who invented the thing, Anton, with us, hopefully. So I imagine we get him safely there, he figures an appropriate course of action, we do it. I din't sign up for brainy part of this, I signed up to provide manpower, and that is what they took more that 15 people on the case for, I believe.
Other than that, just ensuring it is frozen real good and won't spread would be an acceptable mission plan. We'll pour some liquid helium on it, maybe spray some goop over the shabby places to secure them.

[Nunzillor]

I've heard a terrible rumor that Anton may have succumbed to something called "stasis catatonia." I'm not sure if it's true, but we should be prepared to act without him just in case.

While I think it would be ideal to destroy the source of the cold completely, I agree that merely preventing its spread is an excellent general plan if the anomaly's destruction is impossible or too dangerous to pursue.  Does everyone else agree that we should only prevent its spread, or are there any other plans to destroy or collect the anomaly?

I suppose once we have heard all the plans people propose, we can decide collectively which we wish to pursue.

[Parisbre56]

((Do note that an important piece of info that was not given on our briefing was that the Doc said that that thing might have changed forms after coming to our world and stabilizing.))

[Nunzillor]

"Damn, I sure wish some sort of near-omniscient intelligence could tell us what the current situation with the anomaly is on-planet."

Ask Steve

[Radio Controlled]

((Do note that an important piece of info that was not given on our briefing was that the Doc said that that thing might have changed forms after coming to our world and stabilizing.))

((Yeah, but far as I know Doc only ever said that directly to Sean himself, and Sean never said anything about it, so I didn't know if Miya would know (and be able to mention it) unless he was involved in mission planning from the beginning, and really looked into all the available info. But once you're on Hep, one of you could still contact Aresteve or the Doc and see what you can learn.))

[Moopli]

I vote that we contain the entire affected zone first, then spend some time taking samples of affected material, figure out as much as we can about the anomaly, for example, if the stuff we extract is simply regular cold stuff or was infected somehow by the thermophage. Then we test out sample extraction and containment procedures by going further and further into the cold zone, taking samples of hopefully non-anomalous regular crap that was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, so we can not only look at what the thermophage does, but improve extraction procedures. As we go in deeper, maybe we can get data on the nature of the original containment failure, figure out how the thermophage got out.

If, over the course of our probing we come up with a good total containment method, then we could slowly shrink the containment zone so damages can be fixed. If we can develop a containment method that can isolate the thermophage well enough, then we might be able to contain it long enough to get it up into space.

If we can develop a good containment method but can't shrink the containment zone incrementally, then we'll probably have to send in a team to extract the thing.

Personally I wouldn't consider the mission successful until the thing is sitting in a research station in a suitable orbit. Is this planet's L2 point in permanent, or reasonably-heavy shadow? With some cheap stationkeeping that would make a perfect location.

Of course, once the thing is well-contained, we could likely call it a day and leave the rest to someone else. I wont like it, but we could.

*ramble ramble ramble*

Oh yeah, as for containment, the current plan I'm thinking of testing is to put it in a Fermi gas within a magnetic vessel, like the bastard child of a fusion power plant. Charge it with cold electrons, keep it suspended within. Though that would only work if it's made of conventional matter. Could be a portal to the elemental plane of ice for all we know.

[NJW2000]

Alternatively, why don't we blow the damn thing into orbit? Because in space, there is zero heat. And then we can contain it from there. We all have suits that can survive cold and vacuum. And honestly, if we take the calmer approach, do you think it'll sit there and let itself be contained, without trying to kill us in horrible ways? I've read up on some previous missions. They don't send us after nice stuff. In my opinion, we gotta take the offensive.

  So we drill or hide a nuke under it, detonate it, and comb the wreckage with ships and amps. In space.

[Lenglon]

[Sure] ...h-hello?...i-im Abigail S-South (Abigail is staring at Lyra very intensly)

I look at Abigail. "mrow." and walk towards her, circling her once before sitting down, watching this girl who looks so much like I used to.
((sorry about the slow response, am having network issues.))

[NAV]

De-wikify my blaster pistol and any token radio got from the purchase.

It is purged from history.

[Moopli]

That would be a great way to destroy every single facility nearby, and a very poor way to launch the thing into space. We don't know what the anomaly will do to the blast wave, we can be reasonably sure it would find any fireball delicious, and the most we can do is disperse the anomaly into thousands of suborbital arcs. What happens when we can't intercept, say, half of the ejecta, and thus turn a huge chunk of the planet into an icepocalypse? You think this planet is expendable? Far better to try sealing the thing within a structure capable of safely carrying it out to space. That actually has a chance at success.

Speak at Steve: "Computer, I know you think I'm nuts but I am downright sane compared to some people here"

[Nunzillor]

In my opinion, your plan sounds very reasonable.  Can you please elaborate on proposed containment and sample extraction procedures?  Or do you feel that those can be better developed on Hephaestus through testing once we arrive?

We should see what the others say, but I too fear that your plan may cause too much collateral damage.  I think the idea of launching it into space, however, could be further developed with a different methodology if others also disagree.

[Moopli]

Yeah, it does have merit, and could've worked if the situation were different. For example, a casaba-howitzer to both fling something off-planet and destroy it with ionizing radiation. With something that seems to screw with thermodynamics, sitting in an important area, I wouldn't want to take that chance.

Anybody know what sort of space-launch infrastructure the planet has, hopefully nearby? If we manage a containment method, whether we can send it up would greatly depend on what is possible.

Oh yeah -- elaboration. I'm not too sure, much of this will depend on the exact situation planetside, but I gather that we already have a bunch of different kinds of containment devices for strange items, so it's possible we wouldn't have to develop something new at all. Extraction procedures are even more contingent on the situation, I would imagine.

Oh, uh, right, where are we going, by the way? I've heard "Hep", "Heph", and other similar noises but I know nothing about the place. What's it like, particularly regarding infrastructure?

Hell, I don't even know who you guys are, apart from seemingly being in the same position as I am, tasked with dealing with this thermal anomaly. Do you know what year it is? The computer won't tell me anything.

Hey, do we have casaba-howitzers? If not for this mission, seems like they might come in handy some other time. And do you know how easily, smoothly, and quickly we could send an intermodal shipping container to high orbit from planetside? Can we do bigger?