Honorverse ramblings and musings

cthia wrote:Should Star Trek's Prime directive be observed by Manticore? Should treecats be given weapons to use against hexapumas? It could upset the balance of nature in the bush. Heck, treecats could use frisbees manufactured with small explosives set to go off when it comes in the vicinity of pumas. Talk about a frisbee coming in hot!

At any rate, treecats have natural enemies, yet I haven't heard of treecat/human alliances benefiting the treecats in that respect. Treecats aren't ambushed by Peeps, they're ambushed by 'Pumas.

OrlandoNative wrote:Actually, that's an interesting question.

Manticore actually *does* observe something like the "Prime Directive" in regards to the natives of the Basilisk system.

As for treecats, however, given some of the stories in the anthologies they were "spying" on the human colonists before it would appear the colonists realized they were sentient - or at least *how* sentient. So, to some extent, "cultural contamination" has already occurred.

While hexapuma's are obviously a threat to individual (and possibly small groups of) treecats, it wouldn't appear they're a threat to the treecat species as a whole. Actually, in most cases it would appear the actual threat is more to a treecat not paying attention to their surroundings than one that is alert. Or ones that are too young or inexperienced to be able to keep/get out of the way.

In any case, treecats can now communicate directly with at least some humans, and, as far as I remember, NONE of them have asked for defensive weapons made by humans.

But should they have to ask before it should be offered? Treecats are sentient beings. They are living in the bush but are not savages. If they are to be accepted as equals to humans then they should be afforded the same rights and courtesies as humans. If we befriended a group of humans in a remote part of a planet and they were being killed by large predatory animals, would we not say "Here, this is a gun. Aim. Pull trigger. After the smoke clears, no more 'Puma."

Let the treecats decide after offering.

When it comes to treecats vs hexapumas the treecats avoid them if at all possible. That being said treecats prefer to heard hexapumas out of the area and train young hexapumas to avoid treecat area. Also some hexapumas learn to respect treecats. Read in ABF when the hexapuma hesitated before attacking.

SWM wrote:

Relax wrote:Um, there is a grav wave between Grayson and Manticore. It was simply never shown in the books. It was an "aside" note when traveling in the 3rd chapter?

I stand corrected. Grayson is in a grav wave. They never explicitly say so in the book. But when Honor's ships first arrive at Grayson in Chapter 5, they are using Warshawski sails. We never get a description of the grav wave, but it does describe the sails flaring as they transit into normal space.

But the book doesn't even mention a grav wave in that chapter. The only use of the term grav wave is in Chapter 22 when Admiral Matthews says that Grayson ships can't accelerate as fast in a grav wave as Manticoran ships, so they probably cannot get to Manticore before the Manticoran freighters that have already left.

I guess Cthia might get his wish after all.

Actually, it does. In the same chapter that covers the trip from Manticore to Yeltsin's Star, it mentions the grav wave; and talks about the sails and what they look like in hyperspace. I don't believe it names it, though, and I believe it says it's not a strong one.

Jonathan_S wrote:IIRC grav waves don't have to extend to every hyper band. So it seems possible that Grayson might sit in a grav wave that begins in the Delta bands and extends some unknown number of bands upwards.

I don't think there's any justification for that assumption.

Indeed, it's much more likely that gravity waves in a particular region permeate *all* the various spatial domains, from n-space to the highest hyper band - whatever that may be. Remember, hyperspace seems integrally related with gravity - note the hyper limit of a star; which appears to be related to it's mass and gravity.

Otherwise, areas like the Selkar drift wouldn't be so dangerous. A ship could just keep translating up the hyper bands until it found one that was "empty".

Even, however, if it *was* correct that a gravity wave might not encompass the entire set of hyper bands in a particular region, it would be *far* more likely that it would start with n-space and proceed upwards, not start in some arbitrary hyper band and go from there. Since gravity waves are a gravitic phenomenon, there must be some interaction between masses and space/time forming them. None of the books, to my knowledge, have even *speculated* about anything other than possibly sub-atomic particles naturally inhabiting the hyper bands; certainly not anything on the order of masses needed to strain space enough to produce wave phenonmenon.

OrlandoNative wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:IIRC grav waves don't have to extend to every hyper band. So it seems possible that Grayson might sit in a grav wave that begins in the Delta bands and extends some unknown number of bands upwards.

I don't think there's any justification for that assumption.

Indeed, it's much more likely that gravity waves in a particular region permeate *all* the various spatial domains, from n-space to the highest hyper band - whatever that may be. Remember, hyperspace seems integrally related with gravity - note the hyper limit of a star; which appears to be related to it's mass and gravity.

Otherwise, areas like the Selkar drift wouldn't be so dangerous. A ship could just keep translating up the hyper bands until it found one that was "empty".

Even, however, if it *was* correct that a gravity wave might not encompass the entire set of hyper bands in a particular region, it would be *far* more likely that it would start with n-space and proceed upwards, not start in some arbitrary hyper band and go from there. Since gravity waves are a gravitic phenomenon, there must be some interaction between masses and space/time forming them. None of the books, to my knowledge, have even *speculated* about anything other than possibly sub-atomic particles naturally inhabiting the hyper bands; certainly not anything on the order of masses needed to strain space enough to produce wave phenonmenon.

You need to re-read Shadow of Saganami--specifically, the part where Helen has to chart the course from the Terminus to Spindle. Also, OBS' reference to the Tellerman Wave; and the bit in HAE regarding the Selkar Rift.

Edit: the Selkar Rift extended up high enough in the bands that MERCHANTS could not avoid it. The text doesn't say a warship couldn't go above it.


Rob

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:
You need to re-read Shadow of Saganami--specifically, the part where Helen has to chart the course from the Terminus to Spindle. Also, OBS' reference to the Tellerman Wave; and the bit in HAE regarding the Selkar Rift.

Edit: the Selkar Rift extended up high enough in the bands that MERCHANTS could not avoid it. The text doesn't say a warship couldn't go above it.


Rob

SoS was the counter example I thought of as well. But that's a wave that doesn't reach higher than IIRC the Delta bands. So it clearly shows that a grav wave might not go all the way up. Can't offhand think of a clear example of a grav wave not reaching all the way down.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:
You need to re-read Shadow of Saganami--specifically, the part where Helen has to chart the course from the Terminus to Spindle. Also, OBS' reference to the Tellerman Wave; and the bit in HAE regarding the Selkar Rift.

Edit: the Selkar Rift extended up high enough in the bands that MERCHANTS could not avoid it. The text doesn't say a warship couldn't go above it.


Rob

SoS was the counter example I thought of as well. But that's a wave that doesn't reach higher than IIRC the Delta bands. So it clearly shows that a grav wave might not go all the way up. Can't offhand think of a clear example of a grav wave not reaching all the way down.

That was my last point. Any gravity wave would almost *have* to have an n-space component, and there's no logical reason to suppose it could "skip" various intermediate bands and not skip others; even if there *was* some upper band at which it became unnoticeable.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:
You need to re-read Shadow of Saganami--specifically, the part where Helen has to chart the course from the Terminus to Spindle. Also, OBS' reference to the Tellerman Wave; and the bit in HAE regarding the Selkar Rift.

Edit: the Selkar Rift extended up high enough in the bands that MERCHANTS could not avoid it. The text doesn't say a warship couldn't go above it.


Rob

SoS was the counter example I thought of as well. But that's a wave that doesn't reach higher than IIRC the Delta bands. So it clearly shows that a grav wave might not go all the way up. Can't offhand think of a clear example of a grav wave not reaching all the way down.

OrlandoNative wrote:That was my last point. Any gravity wave would almost *have* to have an n-space component, and there's no logical reason to suppose it could "skip" various intermediate bands and not skip others; even if there *was* some upper band at which it became unnoticeable.

Hi, Orlandonative. You are missing a point here.

Grav waves do NOT EXIST in n-space at all, except for wormhole/junction bridges. They are sort of like terrestrial lightning, I think, an energy flow of a specific direction and limited in space (a lot longer duration, though.) That is sort of the whole point of Hyperspace---the situation there is not the same as n-space.

Rob

I remember a post a few days ago (that right now I can't seem to find) about relativistic effects and the impeller drive. Specifically time dilation.

I've been thinking about that, and also have re-read a major portion (though not all) of HotQ; and thought about recent titles where MDM's achieve a significant percentage of c; and it's not clear that a vessel, or for that matter a missile, under impeller drive actually *does* undergo time dilation.

So far, the only (and very oblique, as far as any "why" goes) reference seems to be in HotQ when Fearless is on it's way to Yeltsin's Star from Manticore. There's a mention that while part of the voyage takes 10 days, it only takes 9 on the "ship's clocks". We know, from pretty much *all* the books, that while it takes time in n-space to go from the hyper limit to planetary orbit, in most cases that's a mere number of hours; and in general using non-relativistic speeds - so time dilation shouldn't apply for *that* part of the journey.

Yet, traveling in hyper doesn't suffer under the limitations of n-space; and the *relative* velocity in hyper isn't much different than what might be reached in n-space; it's just that *in relation* to n-space, what is a fraction of light speed in hyper translates to thousands of times light speed in n-space. Actually, I suspect it's more of a comparison of distance traveled in how much time; each hyper band seems to shrink the distance that's observed to be traveled rather than actually increase any "real" velocity.

If that is true, however, then the discrepancy between the "ship's clocks" and a n-space observer is unlikely to be because of time dilation due to relativistic effects - since the ship isn't traveling at relativistic velocities; it would appear to be more a function of some variance in rates of time passage in hyper vs n-space.

That might also explain something else that that discussion also brought to mind in the case of missiles.

Someone noted that at some point a missile's velocity should exceed c. However, it's obvious that without a hyper generator of it's own, a missile would have to stay in n-space, and there's no (even theoretical) means for any object with greater than zero rest mass to exceed the speed of light as long as it does.

Also, in a long distance missile engagement, the MDM missiles of Apollo *are* likely to enter at least the lower regions of relativistic effect. *If* they were susceptible to relativistic effects, however, it *should* keep them from being able to acquire new target locks, maneuver effectively, or, for that matter, keep their ECM effective. After all, at those velocities their experential time rate should be *slower* than that of their targets; and their sheer momentum should make last minute course correction difficult if not impossible.

But from battle descriptions, that doesn't seem to be the case.

Based on all of this, it would *appear* that either they're not (somehow) experiencing relativistic effects, or else they're somehow *selecting* which effects they experience.

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:
Hi, Orlandonative. You are missing a point here.

Grav waves do NOT EXIST in n-space at all, except for wormhole/junction bridges. They are sort of like terrestrial lightning, I think, an energy flow of a specific direction and limited in space (a lot longer duration, though.) That is sort of the whole point of Hyperspace---the situation there is not the same as n-space.

Rob

Actually I don't think so. If grav waves *didn't* exist in n-space, then there wouldn't have been any concern that Wayfarer would be torn apart by the Selkar Sheer; since after her hyper converter was destroyed she was in n-space along with the Peep battlecruiser.

The wormhole junctions are like eddies or whirlpools - matter following certain paths through the stressed space get "sucked in" and end up popping out elsewhere.