Honorverse ramblings and musings

cthia wrote:One other question.

When a ship is running for the hyper limit, does it not have to severely reduce speed making it more vulnerable to missile fire? And can sails be deployed in advance of reaching the limit? Or is it hindered, like deploying a ragtop is speed limited?

Would this decrease in speed have been an opportune time for Fearless to destroy Coglin's ship, or would the size of the Q-ship have taken too much time to destroy even practically sitting still?

I was thinking, since the Tellerman Wave is so dangerous, that a lot has to go on on a ship to prepare for hyper, during which time she's very vulnerable.

In my head, I can't shake the image during those desperate hyper moments...

"Helm! Hurry up and hyper. Go!!!"

If Sirius had not come back at Fearless, crossed the hyper limit, and translated to the alpha band, she still would have been under impeller drive.

The only time you rig Warshawski sails prior to translating to hyper-space from normal space is when the volume of normal space you are in directly corresponds to a volume of hyper-space in the alpha band that is occupied by a gravity wave, or if you are approaching a wormhole terminus prior to making transit.

The Tellerman wave does not encompass the entire Basilisk system:

On Basilisk Station, Chapter 27 wrote:"We'll be going in pursuit of Sirius, Mr. McKeon. It's imperative that we stop her from leaving the system. What's her current heading?"
"She's steadied down on two-seven-four by zero-niner-three true from the primary, Captain," Lieutenant Brigham's crisp voice replied for the exec.
"What's out there, Mercedes?"
"At her current heading and acceleration she'll hit the hyper wall about one light-minute this side of the Tellerman wave, Captain," Brigham said after a moment, and Honor swallowed a silent curse. She'd been afraid of something like that.

The Tellerman wave is one full light minute away from the hyper limit. It is not mentioned whether that light minute is measured in normal space or hyper-space. Worst case scenario for Fearless is it is measured in normal space, which would put the edge of the Tellerman wave approximately 0.968 light seconds from the hyper limit in the alpha band.

First Sirius has to get into hyper-space, then Sirius has to reach the Tellerman wave, because the gravity wave isn't that close to the hyper limit:

On Basilisk Station, Chapter 30 wrote:Fearless was out-gunned by a factor of ten, whether Harrington knew it or not, but RMN cruisers were tougher than the numbers might suggest. If he turned on her, she would not only have the higher base velocity as they closed, but her higher acceleration and lower mass would make her far more maneuverable than Sirius in close combat. The way she'd taken out the courier boat's drive told him Harrington was no shiphandler to take lightly, and if his sidewalls were tougher than hers, her main impeller bands were just as impenetrable as his own. If he got drawn into a close-range dogfight against a more agile opponent, she might just get lucky and score a hit or two in the right place before she died. If she crippled his Warshawski sails, for example, it wouldn't even matter whether or not he could get into hyper. He'd get home eventually, no doubt, but he could never reach the rendezvous in time to stop the task force. Not under impeller drive alone, and especially not when he'd have to detour around the Tellerman rather than using it.

***Snip***

Without the alpha node, Fearless couldn't reconfigure her forward impellers for Warshawski sail. If Sirius broke through into hyper-space and reached the Tellerman, she would run away from Fearless at over ten times the cruiser's maximum acceleration . . . and Honor couldn't follow her into the wave on impellers alone, anyway.

And Sirius could potentially get into hyper and get home eventually using the impeller drive (instead the of Warshawski sails) without being immediately destroyed, simply by detouring around the gravity wave. Which would not be an option if Basilisk lies directly in the Tellerman wave.

An example of ships in normal space that have lost an alpha node and the star system the are in lies directly in a gravity wave:

Ashes of Victory, Chapter 21 wrote:Diamato remembered the unending succession of disasters, the helplessness with which he had watched other battleships being clawed down, blown apart by those incredible LACs' impossible grasers or—possibly even worse—fired into just until they lost an alpha node or two. With even one alpha node down, it was impossible to generate a Warshawski sail, and Hancock lay directly in the path of a grav wave. Which meant no one without Warshawski sails could maneuver in hyper at all . . . and that, in turn, meant there would be no escape from the vengefully pursuing Manty superdreadnoughts of the system's inner picket. The SDs could cross the hyper wall and maneuver freely, which meant they would run the battleships down with absurd ease no matter what normal-space velocity they might have attained, and once a true ship of the wall brought a mere battleship to action, there could be only one outcome.

The above quote understates the difficulty for a ship in normal space wanting to translate to hyper-space without Warshawski sail capability if the star system it is in lies directly in a gravity wave. If it attempts to do so, it is immediately destroyed.

Hyper translation

Does the transition have to be made under impeller drive or Warshawski sail, or either?

Outside a grav wave's area of influence, you do not necessarily have to be underway to make a hyper transit; it's just a little safer because the forward movement gives you more dimensional stability when you crack the wall. If, however, you are making transit into a grav wave, you must have rigged at least one set of Warshawski sails, or grav shear will destroy your vessel as you enter the grav wave's area of influence.

Italics are the author's, boldface and underlined text is my emphasis in all quotes from books and the reference pearl.

Vince wrote:

cthia wrote:One other question.

When a ship is running for the hyper limit, does it not have to severely reduce speed making it more vulnerable to missile fire? And can sails be deployed in advance of reaching the limit? Or is it hindered, like deploying a ragtop is speed limited?

Would this decrease in speed have been an opportune time for Fearless to destroy Coglin's ship, or would the size of the Q-ship have taken too much time to destroy even practically sitting still?

I was thinking, since the Tellerman Wave is so dangerous, that a lot has to go on on a ship to prepare for hyper, during which time she's very vulnerable.

In my head, I can't shake the image during those desperate hyper moments...

"Helm! Hurry up and hyper. Go!!!"

If Sirius had not come back at Fearless, crossed the hyper limit, and translated to the alpha band, she still would have been under impeller drive.

The only time you rig Warshawski sails prior to translating to hyper-space from normal space is when the volume of normal space you are in directly corresponds to a volume of hyper-space in the alpha band that is occupied by a gravity wave, or if you are approaching a wormhole terminus prior to making transit.

The Tellerman wave does not encompass the entire Basilisk system:

On Basilisk Station, Chapter 27 wrote:"We'll be going in pursuit of Sirius, Mr. McKeon. It's imperative that we stop her from leaving the system. What's her current heading?"
"She's steadied down on two-seven-four by zero-niner-three true from the primary, Captain," Lieutenant Brigham's crisp voice replied for the exec.
"What's out there, Mercedes?"
"At her current heading and acceleration she'll hit the hyper wall about one light-minute this side of the Tellerman wave, Captain," Brigham said after a moment, and Honor swallowed a silent curse. She'd been afraid of something like that.

The Tellerman wave is one full light minute away from the hyper limit. It is not mentioned whether that light minute is measured in normal space or hyper-space. Worst case scenario for Fearless is it is measured in normal space, which would put the edge of the Tellerman wave approximately 0.968 light seconds from the hyper limit in the alpha band.

First Sirius has to get into hyper-space, then Sirius has to reach the Tellerman wave, because the gravity wave isn't that close to the hyper limit:

On Basilisk Station, Chapter 30 wrote:Fearless was out-gunned by a factor of ten, whether Harrington knew it or not, but RMN cruisers were tougher than the numbers might suggest. If he turned on her, she would not only have the higher base velocity as they closed, but her higher acceleration and lower mass would make her far more maneuverable than Sirius in close combat. The way she'd taken out the courier boat's drive told him Harrington was no shiphandler to take lightly, and if his sidewalls were tougher than hers, her main impeller bands were just as impenetrable as his own. If he got drawn into a close-range dogfight against a more agile opponent, she might just get lucky and score a hit or two in the right place before she died. If she crippled his Warshawski sails, for example, it wouldn't even matter whether or not he could get into hyper. He'd get home eventually, no doubt, but he could never reach the rendezvous in time to stop the task force. Not under impeller drive alone, and especially not when he'd have to detour around the Tellerman rather than using it.

***Snip***

Without the alpha node, Fearless couldn't reconfigure her forward impellers for Warshawski sail. If Sirius broke through into hyper-space and reached the Tellerman, she would run away from Fearless at over ten times the cruiser's maximum acceleration . . . and Honor couldn't follow her into the wave on impellers alone, anyway.

And Sirius could potentially get into hyper and get home eventually using the impeller drive (instead the of Warshawski sails) without being immediately destroyed, simply by detouring around the gravity wave. Which would not be an option if Basilisk lies directly in the Tellerman wave.

An example of ships in normal space that have lost an alpha node and the star system the are in lies directly in a gravity wave:

Ashes of Victory, Chapter 21 wrote:Diamato remembered the unending succession of disasters, the helplessness with which he had watched other battleships being clawed down, blown apart by those incredible LACs' impossible grasers or—possibly even worse—fired into just until they lost an alpha node or two. With even one alpha node down, it was impossible to generate a Warshawski sail, and Hancock lay directly in the path of a grav wave. Which meant no one without Warshawski sails could maneuver in hyper at all . . . and that, in turn, meant there would be no escape from the vengefully pursuing Manty superdreadnoughts of the system's inner picket. The SDs could cross the hyper wall and maneuver freely, which meant they would run the battleships down with absurd ease no matter what normal-space velocity they might have attained, and once a true ship of the wall brought a mere battleship to action, there could be only one outcome.

The above quote understates the difficulty for a ship in normal space wanting to translate to hyper-space without Warshawski sail capability if the star system it is in lies directly in a gravity wave. If it attempts to do so, it is immediately destroyed.

Hyper translation

Does the transition have to be made under impeller drive or Warshawski sail, or either?

Outside a grav wave's area of influence, you do not necessarily have to be underway to make a hyper transit; it's just a little safer because the forward movement gives you more dimensional stability when you crack the wall. If, however, you are making transit into a grav wave, you must have rigged at least one set of Warshawski sails, or grav shear will destroy your vessel as you enter the grav wave's area of influence.

Italics are the author's, boldface and underlined text is my emphasis in all quotes from books and the reference pearl.

Vince, what another fine post - that answers a lot of questions. Even ones I didn't know I had. Now if I can just let the new questions trying to congeal in my mind settle. I'll ask.

Oh. And thanks!

An even better example than Hyper translation on why you need Warshawski sails rigged when you translate from normal space to hyper-space from a star system that lies directly in a gravity wave:

Mission of Honor, Chapter 20 wrote:Dr. Joseph Buckley had been a major figure in the development of the original impeller drive on Beowulf in the thirteenth century. Unhappily, he hadn’t been one of the more fortunate figures. He’d been a critical part of the original developmental team in 1246, but he’d had a reputation among his peers even then for being as erratic as he was brilliant, and he’d been determined to prove it was accurate. Although Adrienne Warshawski was to develop the Warshawski sail only twenty-seven years later, Buckley had been too impatient to wait around. Instead, he’d insisted that with the proper adjustment, the impeller wedge itself could be safely inserted into a hyper-space gravity wave.
Although several of his contemporaries had acknowledged the theoretical brilliance of his work, none had been prepared to endorse his conclusions. Unfazed by his peers’ lack of confidence, Buckley—whose considerable store of patents had made him a wealthy man—had designed and built his own test vessel, the Dahak, named for a figure out of Babylonian mythology. With a volunteer crew embarked, he’d set out to demonstrate the validity of his work.
The attempt, while spectacular, had not been a success. In fact, the imagery which had been recorded by the Dahak’s escorts still turned up in slow motion in HD compilations of the most awe-inspiring disaster footage in galactic history.
While Buckley undeniably deserved to be commemorated alongside such other greats as Warshawski and Radhakrishnan, and despite the huge body of other work he’d left behind, it was the dramatic nature of his demise for which he was best remembered. And his various namesakes in SLN service had fared little better than he himself had. Of the current ship’s predecessors, only one had survived to be withdrawn from service and decommissioned.

Italics are the author's, boldface is my emphasis.

Regarding the Warshawski sails. Has textev given the time required to deploy the sails? Is it the same regardless of tonnage?

And this...

The gravitic nodes used to produce the sail had to be tuned to work with each other properly, and if sufficiently out of tune, a sail could fail catastrophically.

...makes me wonder why nodes are not knocked out of tune more often than they are in battle, even if they aren't destroyed. Or perhaps some of the incidences that the nodes have been taken out may actually refer to tuning from upset mechanical components?

cthia wrote:

The gravitic nodes used to produce the sail had to be tuned to work with each other properly, and if sufficiently out of tune, a sail could fail catastrophically.

...makes me wonder why nodes are not knocked out of tune more often than they are in battle, even if they aren't destroyed. Or perhaps some of the incidences that the nodes have been taken out may actually refer to tuning from upset mechanical components?

You are almost certainly right that some of the incidences of nodes being taken out during battle are due to tuning problems. The text sometimes notes that the nodes can be brought back online after X amount of work.

cthia wrote:Regarding the Warshawski sails. Has textev given the time required to deploy the sails? Is it the same regardless of tonnage?

The only time I recall offhand where specific timing of sail rigging was mentioned was in OBS when Fearless is heading out the Junction.

On Basilisk Station wrote:"Rig foresail for transit."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am. Rigging foresail—now."
No observer would have noted any visible change in the cruiser, but Honor's instrumentation told the tale as Fearless's impeller wedge dropped abruptly to half-strength. Her forward nodes no longer generated their portion of the normal-space stress bands; instead, they had reconfigured to produce a circular disk of focused gravitation that extended for over three hundred kilometers in every direction from the cruiser's hull. The Warshawski sail, useless in normal-space, was the secret of hyper travel, and the Junction was simply a focused funnel of hyper-space, like the eye of a hurricane frozen forever in normal-space terms.
"Stand by to rig aftersail on my mark," Honor murmured as Fearless continued to creep forward under the power of her aft-impellers alone. A new readout flickered to life, and she watched its numerals dance steadily upward as the foresail moved deeper and deeper into the Junction. There was a safety margin of almost fifteen seconds either way, but no captain wanted to look sloppy in a maneuver like this, and—
The twinkling numbers crossed the threshold. The foresail was now drawing sufficient power from the tortured grav waves twisting eternally through the Junction to provide movement, and she nodded sharply to Santos.
"Rig aftersail now," she said crisply.
"Rigging aftersail," the engineer replied, and Fearless twitched as her impeller wedge disappeared entirely and a second Warshawski sail sprang to life at the far end of her hull from the first.

But even that isn't clear if 15 seconds is the total window to rig the aft-sail, or if it's (say) 60 seconds +/- 7.5 seconds. It also doesn't cover whether there was prep-time before the order to rig them was given; since it was hardly a surprise that Fearless would need them. Nor does it touch on any possible differences due to tonnage (or due to merchant vs military drives)

However, the overall impression is that it doesn't take long at all (less than a minute?) to switch from wedge to sails. (Though obviously if you were sitting with cold nodes you'd have many minutes of delay bringing anything up)

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:
Regarding the Warshawski sails. Has textev given the time required to deploy the sails? Is it the same regardless of tonnage?

The only time I recall offhand where specific timing of sail rigging was mentioned was in OBS when Fearless is heading out the Junction.

On Basilisk Station wrote:"Rig foresail for transit."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am. Rigging foresail—now."
No observer would have noted any visible change in the cruiser, but Honor's instrumentation told the tale as Fearless's impeller wedge dropped abruptly to half-strength. Her forward nodes no longer generated their portion of the normal-space stress bands; instead, they had reconfigured to produce a circular disk of focused gravitation that extended for over three hundred kilometers in every direction from the cruiser's hull. The Warshawski sail, useless in normal-space, was the secret of hyper travel, and the Junction was simply a focused funnel of hyper-space, like the eye of a hurricane frozen forever in normal-space terms.
"Stand by to rig aftersail on my mark," Honor murmured as Fearless continued to creep forward under the power of her aft-impellers alone. A new readout flickered to life, and she watched its numerals dance steadily upward as the foresail moved deeper and deeper into the Junction. There was a safety margin of almost fifteen seconds either way, but no captain wanted to look sloppy in a maneuver like this, and—
The twinkling numbers crossed the threshold. The foresail was now drawing sufficient power from the tortured grav waves twisting eternally through the Junction to provide movement, and she nodded sharply to Santos.
"Rig aftersail now," she said crisply.
"Rigging aftersail," the engineer replied, and Fearless twitched as her impeller wedge disappeared entirely and a second Warshawski sail sprang to life at the far end of her hull from the first.

But even that isn't clear if 15 seconds is the total window to rig the aft-sail, or if it's (say) 60 seconds +/- 7.5 seconds. It also doesn't cover whether there was prep-time before the order to rig them was given; since it was hardly a surprise that Fearless would need them. Nor does it touch on any possible differences due to tonnage (or due to merchant vs military drives)

However, the overall impression is that it doesn't take long at all (less than a minute?) to switch from wedge to sails. (Though obviously if you were sitting with cold nodes you'd have many minutes of delay bringing anything up)

Wow! Thanks for that passage Johnathan. Even if it's the max of 60 seconds, that's still much better that the several minutes (~ 5) I was thinking. Of course, I'm sure that even a minute can feel like an eternity when you're on the run! Especially the more fragile CLACs.

And of course, this doesn't take into account any delay brought on from internal power problems from damage incurred.

A thought. I wonder how many ships are lost from the nodes suddenly going out of tune during the 15 second safety margin? It doesn't seem like 15 seconds is enough time to abort. Is aborting that far into the maneuver even possible?

IIRC, the sails don't suddenly go out of tune (I learned that from OBS when the 'powers that be' toyed with Pavel Young), however, that is dependent upon a navy that adheres to recommended life expextancies of the entire system - which IIRC, the sails and nodes are normally replaced together. The implication is that I would NOT want to be aboard a Solarian warship about to translate! I'd feel safer dodging MDM's on a highwire in the wind.

One other related question. In case of bridge fatalities (and the astrogator is one of them), who else on the bridge is capable of filling in at astrogation? I know the captain is, or should be. But I wouldn't think she'd be the optimum choice under the conditions - she's needed in the command chair. (I'm not so sure putting that much pressure on Honor's math skills falls under the heading of a good idea either. )

And I wonder if the captain can complete the cycle, from beginning to end from her command chair?

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Regarding the Warshawski sails. Has textev given the time required to deploy the sails? Is it the same regardless of tonnage?

The only time I recall offhand where specific timing of sail rigging was mentioned was in OBS when Fearless is heading out the Junction.

On Basilisk Station wrote:"Rig foresail for transit."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am. Rigging foresail—now."
No observer would have noted any visible change in the cruiser, but Honor's instrumentation told the tale as Fearless's impeller wedge dropped abruptly to half-strength. Her forward nodes no longer generated their portion of the normal-space stress bands; instead, they had reconfigured to produce a circular disk of focused gravitation that extended for over three hundred kilometers in every direction from the cruiser's hull. The Warshawski sail, useless in normal-space, was the secret of hyper travel, and the Junction was simply a focused funnel of hyper-space, like the eye of a hurricane frozen forever in normal-space terms.
"Stand by to rig aftersail on my mark," Honor murmured as Fearless continued to creep forward under the power of her aft-impellers alone. A new readout flickered to life, and she watched its numerals dance steadily upward as the foresail moved deeper and deeper into the Junction. There was a safety margin of almost fifteen seconds either way, but no captain wanted to look sloppy in a maneuver like this, and—
The twinkling numbers crossed the threshold. The foresail was now drawing sufficient power from the tortured grav waves twisting eternally through the Junction to provide movement, and she nodded sharply to Santos.
"Rig aftersail now," she said crisply.
"Rigging aftersail," the engineer replied, and Fearless twitched as her impeller wedge disappeared entirely and a second Warshawski sail sprang to life at the far end of her hull from the first.

But even that isn't clear if 15 seconds is the total window to rig the aft-sail, or if it's (say) 60 seconds +/- 7.5 seconds. It also doesn't cover whether there was prep-time before the order to rig them was given; since it was hardly a surprise that Fearless would need them. Nor does it touch on any possible differences due to tonnage (or due to merchant vs military drives)

However, the overall impression is that it doesn't take long at all (less than a minute?) to switch from wedge to sails. (Though obviously if you were sitting with cold nodes you'd have many minutes of delay bringing anything up)

Yes, unfortunately that text does not really show how long it takes. While the text feels like it happens pretty quickly, David has also said elsewhere that the sails have to be up for a lot longer than you might think. It takes up to 3 minutes for a ship--with sails already up--to pass through the wormhole, and the text simply does not show that. The text depicts a compressed time frame, ignoring the tens of seconds of just sitting around between actions. Nor does the text show the 4 minutes it would take for a superdreadnought hyper generator to go from "ready to push the button" to "running and in hyperspace".

SWM wrote:Yes, unfortunately that text does not really show how long it takes. While the text feels like it happens pretty quickly, David has also said elsewhere that the sails have to be up for a lot longer than you might think. It takes up to 3 minutes for a ship--with sails already up--to pass through the wormhole, and the text simply does not show that. The text depicts a compressed time frame, ignoring the tens of seconds of just sitting around between actions. Nor does the text show the 4 minutes it would take for a superdreadnought hyper generator to go from "ready to push the button" to "running and in hyperspace".

True. And that's the problem trying to extrapolate from routine events (even before you start considering that parts might be omitted or compressed for readability and flow).

Too many of the delays that become critical in an emergency situation can be hidden by pipelining. The hyper generator delay gets lost because they simply hit the button 4 minutes before they want to jump - perfectly possible on a routing wormhole approach. There could certainly be other similar delays in rigging sails.


Even the other transit that I thought of later (8th fleet's emergency double transit from Trevor's Star to Basilisk) doesn't fully cover that.
We know the destroyers were coming through 10 seconds apart, and that they therefor had very little time to clear the exit. But again that doesn't show that they could convert from sails to wedge in under 10 seconds - just that they couldn't vary the total time by more than a few seconds without disaster.
It still could have taken 4 minutes (just for example; and I don't think it did). That would just mean that there were 24 DDs queued up sliding out the exit 'lane' in the middle of converting from sail to wedge.

cthia wrote:One other related question. In case of bridge fatalities (and the astrogator is one of them), who else on the bridge is capable of filling in at astrogation?

Any midshipman or other graduate of Saganami Island should be able to manage; We have several examples of Middies sweating through their rotation at astrogation.

cthia wrote:(I'm not so sure putting that much pressure on Honor's math skills falls under the heading of a good idea either. )

If you don't give her time to think about it, Honor is an intuitive navigator. Ref: her near miss of the Havenite courier when departing in pursuit of Sirius.

cthia wrote:And I wonder if the captain can complete the cycle, from beginning to end from her command chair?

Again, Ref: Honor departing Medusa in pursuit of Sirius; she didn't route the course through astrogation, she sent it directly to the Helmsman.

Also, ref: any of several midshipmen sweating through course calculations and worrying about the Captain (or Officer of the Watch) watching over their shoulder.