Did the MBS corner the market on trade?

cthia wrote:Thanks! I kept thinking about some sort of docking facility, but didn't know how feasible such plans were. Without a docking facility, any place may as well be used for a base.

Repair ships may not be as efficient but may be safer if the base is overrun. An awful lot of infrastructure is lost in those cases. And probably personnel as well. In the past I questioned the logic of investing so much time and resources on a faraway base which can't be adequately defended during war. I asked long ago how many ships does it take to make a fleet.

One reason I thought the RMN courted planets in Silesia is to establish basing rights. I would assume a fleet base in an inhabited system is preferred, obviously.

Can a repair base effect any type of repair? I suppose the replacement of Warshawki Sails and Tuners is the most difficult, from what I gathered during the yoyoing of Young. LOL

At any rate, isn't some place to dock essentially a space station?

BTW, where exactly is Henke based out of?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Tenth Fleet was based out of Spindle.

If there is not a docking station, then something like Spindle seems to be more of a gathering place than a base. I do not expect anything as elaborate as HMSS Hephaestus, but the system defense LAC's, as a minimum, need someplace to be kept and maintained; without tying a CLAC to a specific location. I expect, at some point, more extensive repair facilities and administrative offices will be added.

Yes, this involves additional infrastructure; However Marsh, Spindle and San Martin are significant enough to justify the expense and exposure. As the SEM expands more naval nodes will need to be created.

cthia wrote:Thanks! I kept thinking about some sort of docking facility, but didn't know how feasible such plans were. Without a docking facility, any place may as well be used for a base.

Repair ships may not be as efficient but may be safer if the base is overrun. An awful lot of infrastructure is lost in those cases. And probably personnel as well. In the past I questioned the logic of investing so much time and resources on a faraway base which can't be adequately defended during war. I asked long ago how many ships does it take to make a fleet.

One reason I thought the RMN courted planets in Silesia is to establish basing rights. I would assume a fleet base in an inhabited system is preferred, obviously.

Can a repair base effect any type of repair? I suppose the replacement of Warshawki Sails and Tuners is the most difficult, from what I gathered during the yoyoing of Young. LOL

At any rate, isn't some place to dock essentially a space station?

BTW, where exactly is Henke based out of?

I suspect there are a range of capabilities in repair bases. Under the Peeps due to limitations in trained personnel we know most of their repairs were straight replacements from spare parts - so their repair bases (until you get back to the major ones - are probably quite limited in what they can repair and presumably just stock even more spare replacement modules that ship's can carry themselves.
Navies with more skilled and trained personal can do more actual repair.

But even there repair bases are probably limited in what they can tackle. Or at least what they should handle. You don't want to tie up your front-line repair base for months or multiple-years getting a heavily damaged ship back into full fighting shape. You need that capacity free to patch up ships that can return to active duty sooner. So they presumably focus on quick repairs that are outside the skill or equipment of the ships crew, or patching up ships just well enough to send them back to a full shipyard.

(Recall the debate in SVW about whether or not it made sense to tackle Nike's damaged fusion reactor at Hancock or sending her back to the Manticoran yard for that repair. In that case it came down just in favor of doing it onsite. Though during wartime they might have decided the other way to keep that capacity free for patching up ships that could be back in service sooner)

Sails and tuners probably are probably about the most time consuming of routine maintenance. But in their favor they're out on the hull and not buried behind layer after layer of armored bulkheads with masses of utilities running through them. I suspect replacing the fusion reactor on an SD is far more work that replacing the nodes and tuner - Nike's issue except made worse by even more and thicker armor to work through and being deeper in the hull. And of course battle damage can be worse than any routine maintenance.
(Kind of like how changing a timing belt might be one of the most labor intensive routine maintenance job on a car, but it's still a lot less work that getting it back into shape after a major accident)

Having an inhabited planet in the same system as your fleet or repair base can be nice. More opportunities for R&R, they can presumably supply fresh food, and depending on their technology level may be able to provide at least some supplies, or even workers for the station. But shipping is cheap and easy in the Honorverse, so its hardly insurmountable to put a fleet based or repair base in an uninhabited system if there doesn't happen to be an inhabited one in the right place.

You know, I wonder if Project Gram and the incredible tech that has come out of it, has enabled breakthroughs in the private sector, made possible by the declassification of certain research. Would such products which are available to the SK's private sector also be made available to all of the SK's allies and newly acquired territories?

It seems like techno-nerds all over the galaxy would visit the SK, who's sole job is to research both common and advanced technologies. Aren't there certain US products that cannot be exported to other countries?

cthia wrote:You know, I wonder if Project Gram and the incredible tech that has come out of it, has enabled breakthroughs in the private sector, made possible by the declassification of certain research. Would such products which are available to the SK's private sector also be made available to all of the SK's allies and newly acquired territories?

It seems like techno-nerds all over the galaxy would visit the SK, who's sole job is to research both common and advanced technologies. Aren't there certain US products that cannot be exported to other countries?

I have no doubt the answer is yes. Metallurgy and composite materials engineering resulting from the study of better armour; better grav controls lead to civilian improvements; the compact fission and fusion reactors once declassified should revolutionise small craft endurance too.

And whenever the FTL communicators get declassified, it'll spawn a whole new industry. I actually expect the RMN has been working with civilian companies for civilian applications on this. The genie is out of the bag, so everyone knows it will happen. Better to ensure it's a Manticoran company that gets first mover advantage.

Edit - I see ThinksMarkedly tackled how useful it might be to have these declassified; and rated them somewhat higher than I did. While I mostly tackled whether they'd be declassified anytime soon.

cthia wrote:You know, I wonder if Project Gram and the incredible tech that has come out of it, has enabled breakthroughs in the private sector, made possible by the declassification of certain research. Would such products which are available to the SK's private sector also be made available to all of the SK's allies and newly acquired territories?

It seems like techno-nerds all over the galaxy would visit the SK, who's sole job is to research both common and advanced technologies. Aren't there certain US products that cannot be exported to other countries?

Most, probably all, of Gram would still be classified and restricted to the military. And the issue with export control is that it's fine if you're trying to prevent someone from buying a lot of your stuff to use in ways you disapprove of, but it doesn't stop them from buying it to reverse engineer within your territory. And it's hard to prevent at least a little export controller material from getting smuggled out. So you have to figure that the details behind the functionality of items that are export controlled but otherwise available to the domestic civilian market will rapidly leak to any motivated enemy or competitor. So definitely not to be risked lightly.

It's not clear exactly which bits of advanced tech came out of Gram - but let's attribute it all there and look at the impacts of releasing it.

* Baffles, enabling true MDMs. The grav shielding might have some odd civilian use I'm not envisioning but its militarily critical and while both Haven and the Andies figured out the trick it's still a very valuable secret and not to be shared.

* Micro-fusion plans, enabling the power budgets of the new dazzler & dragon's teeth ECM warheads and the unprecedented endurance of the Ghost Rider recon drones. Seems too poorly shielded for most civilian use and unnecessary in shuttles or starships. Offers a significant military advantage and so far no-one outside Manticore appears to have duplicated it. May have some practical civilian uses but that's not enough IMHO to justify releasing it.

* LAC fission plants. In my opinion the least sensitive tech since once the idea is out there it's no great engineering challenge to match up century old designs with modern rad shielding make churning some out. But I'm not sure where the use would be that would justify the civilian radioactive waste and meltdown concerns just to get reduced fuel consumption at moderate peak power levels.

* FTL comms, high bandwidth FTL comms, FTL fire control. One gives a head starts into the next. The communication is useful for civilians within a planetary systems but the risk to the engineering details getting out still argues to keep the actual designs and hardware under tight government control while possibly letting civilian comm traffic use the hardware (Hermes buoys)

* Beta-squared nodes. Most useful for small in-system civilian runabouts that, like old LACs, couldn't afford the mass/volume for full power old-style nodes. But that doesn't seem a compelling reason to release something that helps small warships cram in significantly more fighting potential. (also not clear to what extent the mass reductions can be separated from the FTL signalling mentioned above - since Shrikes are specifically noted to have high bandwidth FTL due to their Beta-squared nodes). Freighters and Liners would get some benefit from Beta-squared node; but not a huge benefit (not like a little destroyer or CL that's trying to cram in everything it can within a limited displacement)

* Improved compensators (probably didn't fall under Gram) - somewhat useful in slightly cutting down hyper transit times and making it harder for pirates to intercept. But most civilian ship transit time is spent at max velocity where the compenstor doesn't help. And since they rarely justify spending for military grade rad shielding or hyper generators; either of which would provide far more transit time reduction than an improved compensator. Can't see this getting released to most civilians.

* Improved stealth - no civilian use could justify releasing this.

* Improved endurance missile nodes - nothing civilian would use these. So even though several outside governments seem to have independently reproduced this I don't see any upside to making the tech public.

* Bow walls - no legit civilian use. So even though at least Haven, and possibly the Andies had independently figured out the trick, there doesn't seem any upside to releasing this.

Did I forget any major breakthroughs?

Many of these have limited to no civilian use I can see to offset the military risk of releasing them. And the ones that do have civilian uses still seem far to risky to make public yet.

Jonathan_S wrote:* Baffles, enabling true MDMs. The grav shielding might have some odd civilian use I'm not envisioning but its militarily critical and while both Haven and the Andies figured out the trick it's still a very valuable secret and not to be shared.

It looks like the Andies figured it out via industrial espionage, while the Havenites did so by getting specimens from debris, smuggled out of the systems under Alliance control during the inter-war period.

No one else has had access to even a sample. All of the battles during the Manticoran-Solarian war ended with the Solarians not having even sensor recordings, except for Hypatia. It's unclear whether the remainder of the Solarian task force had the presence of mind to collect samples of the missiles fired at them during the battle and before they were run out of town by Megan Petersen. I suspect they were too busy trying to survive to think about that.

We can't dismiss a civilian application for the baffle, though, just because we can't think of a reason yet. Right now, though, it's Top Secret because it confers a strategic advantage militarily over everyone else.

Many of these have limited to no civilian use I can see to offset the military risk of releasing them. And the ones that do have civilian uses still seem far to risky to make public yet.

You mentioned the power budgets for Dazzlers and Dragon's Teeth, but those two are also new. ECM and ECCM, as well as the sensing equipment aboard the Ghost Riders, can probably make a huge dent on civilian applications for data transmission, even without FTL. And I can imagine what the entertainment industry could make out of a Dazzler!

Improving gravitic sensors, even a little, or just making them cheaper, can also help with navigation safety. If any non-broke system can buy a set of Manticoran System Detection buoys that allow precise detection of freighters missing the translation and getting stranded a light-day out, reduction in insurance premiums alone will pay for the cost. And if that allows detecting pirates lying doggo in the outer system, even better.

There are probably more things that never came to fore that were still produced by Gram. And there are probably 3 to 10 more things for each one that did that didn't pan out for military applications but could still be used for civilian ones. For example, if Gram had come up with an improved grav plate that allowed for 150 gravities to be compensated, we wouldn't have heard because it's of no use for a warship with compensators or for small ships that can pull 300 gravities under stealth.

Maybe someone else would be interested in that technology.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:* Baffles, enabling true MDMs. The grav shielding might have some odd civilian use I'm not envisioning but its militarily critical and while both Haven and the Andies figured out the trick it's still a very valuable secret and not to be shared.

It looks like the Andies figured it out via industrial espionage, while the Havenites did so by getting specimens from debris, smuggled out of the systems under Alliance control during the inter-war period.

No one else has had access to even a sample. All of the battles during the Manticoran-Solarian war ended with the Solarians not having even sensor recordings, except for Hypatia. It's unclear whether the remainder of the Solarian task force had the presence of mind to collect samples of the missiles fired at them during the battle and before they were run out of town by Megan Petersen. I suspect they were too busy trying to survive to think about that.

We can't dismiss a civilian application for the baffle, though, just because we can't think of a reason yet. Right now, though, it's Top Secret because it confers a strategic advantage militarily over everyone else.

Many of these have limited to no civilian use I can see to offset the military risk of releasing them. And the ones that do have civilian uses still seem far to risky to make public yet.

<snip>
Maybe someone else would be interested in that technology.

Let us not forget that project GRAM started as an intake of technologies from across known space by the MMM. Every new gizmo or development was collected by ship crews and brought back to Manticore to identify and research.

So as far as we know, the multi-drive baffle started life as a civilian zero gee hot tub invented in the far side of the league.

Theemile wrote:So as far as we know, the multi-drive baffle started life as a civilian zero gee hot tub invented in the far side of the league.

Indeed. It looks to me that the baffle is some special material with quantum-gravitic properties not found elsewhere. But we don't know where that material was found or how it was developed. So as you say a hot tub that works in zero-gee might have been the original product!

Connecting the dots is the difficult part here.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:You mentioned the power budgets for Dazzlers and Dragon's Teeth, but those two are also new. ECM and ECCM, as well as the sensing equipment aboard the Ghost Riders, can probably make a huge dent on civilian applications for data transmission, even without FTL. And I can imagine what the entertainment industry could make out of a Dazzler!
[snip]
There are probably more things that never came to fore that were still produced by Gram. And there are probably 3 to 10 more things for each one that did that didn't pan out for military applications but could still be used for civilian ones. For example, if Gram had come up with an improved grav plate that allowed for 150 gravities to be compensated, we wouldn't have heard because it's of no use for a warship with compensators or for small ships that can pull 300 gravities under stealth.

Maybe someone else would be interested in that technology.

I don't know that there's anything special about a dazzler's transmitters besides the amount of power you can stuff into the available volume of a missile chassis. Probably the best look we got at them was the ex-SLN BCs at Monica and their tech advisors mostly seemed surprised that that level of jamming could come from a missile as opposed to a warship. So unless the civilian use requires the particular combination of small size, high power, and reasonable endurance (traded off against frequent reactor rebuilds) there doesn't seem anything in a dazzler's power output you couldn't reproduce off the shelf by going somewhat larger. (And presumably the civilian applications don't need to deliver their transmitter at 46,000 gees )

As far as I recall Project Gram hasn't shut down; and it's been running for decades as the deepest cover part of Manticoran R&D - so there are also presumably plenty more things in the pipeline that simply haven't matured to the point where they've rolled out widely enough to come up in the books. But yes, there may have been some spinoffs or dead-ends that yielded no military benefit that have been quietly slipped to some less secret group for eventual civilian release.

(Though if they had come up with better grav plates then, assuming no significant downside in terms of volume or normal power usage, I'd expect to see those rolled out into military ships. Warships do occasionally need to maneuver hard with thrusters where the compensator can't help. Allowing higher emergency thrust without injuring the crew would be worth some costs. (sure, not ever use is a memorable as Honor's trick at Cerberus; but dodging while working to bring your wedge up would come up more commonly). And small craft use grav plates and more powerful ones would, if nothing else, somewhat improve survivability during some crashes - again justifying installation of improved ones (assuming no major downside tradeoffs)

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Theemile wrote:So as far as we know, the multi-drive baffle started life as a civilian zero gee hot tub invented in the far side of the league.

Indeed. It looks to me that the baffle is some special material with quantum-gravitic properties not found elsewhere. But we don't know where that material was found or how it was developed. So as you say a hot tub that works in zero-gee might have been the original product!

Connecting the dots is the difficult part here.

It's actually a carefully projected plane of focused gravity[1].

House of Steel wrote:The most critical breakthrough was what Sonja Hemphill and some of Gram’s other team leaders had dubbed simply “the baffle”—essentially, a very carefully designed generator which would project a tame plate of focused gravity to shield adjacent, inactive impeller rings from an active one.

So maybe somewhat like a very small carefully shaped and controlled sail.

Though I suppose we can't entirely rule out some person on the far side of space, with more engineering talent that sense, designing a small focused gravity plate to use a the sides of a tub (but might be hard to route the jets through it for a proper hot-tub)


[1] Thought I'd remembered it was a energy projection of some sort. Fortunately it was easy to find the quote by text search - HoS being the only place it's called a "baffle"; and other uses of the word being vanishingly rare within the books