Thursday March 9, 2006
Note: A "K-Sink" is a little bit like a heat-sink. It is not where you put unwanted heat, though. It is where you put unwanted kinetic energy. Since the point is to get rid of it, rather than banking it against some future need, most k-sinks are designed to take an impact of some sort and turn it into heat, which is allowed to bleed away through traditional heat sinks or advanced cooling systems.

The trick, of course, is aligning the K-sinks such that impacts from enemy attacks make the air conditioning work a little harder rather than knocking the building down. This task would be made very much easier if architects knew exactly where and when the enemy attacks would be coming from. Of course, if they knew that they'd end up as very successful generals rather than architects.

Book 7: Emperor Pius Dei
 Part V: Glamour Assault
Thursday March 9, 2006

Transcript

Kevyn:The active array gave me a good picture of the HTRN building. Or, in this case, a bad picture.
Captain Tagon:What's wrong? What do you see?
Kevyn:The superstructure is made of compressed ferro-ceramic composites in fullerene sheaths.
Kevyn:There are k-sinks throughout, and with the exception of a few office windows the building is plated with the same composites you find in warship hulls.
Captain Tagon:That sounds overengineered for a television company.
Kevyn:You could knock this building down with a nuke, but it would have to be on the inside of the building.