Jonathan_S wrote:I'm not sure how many (if any) wormhole termini are further than 10 light hours. Manticore's Junction is only about 7 light hours from the primary.
And a terminus is probably the furthest thing most ships ever visit in n-space.
Right, that was my point: only thing ships will find themselves further than 10 light-hours away from a star is a wormhole terminus. I didn't mean that all are more than 10 light-hours.
I remembered the MWHJ being 12 light-hours from Manticore-A, but looks like you're closer to the actual number. In Mission of Honor, ch. 42, Honor places a call to Queen Elizabeth from the terminus and there's a 6-minute (or so) lag time. At 62x FTL transmission, that's about 7 light-hours. Another aspect is that HMS Imperator was 19 hours' travel away from a zero/zero with Manticore. At its max accel, an Invictus can cover almost exactly 6 light-hours in 19 hours of travel. If we allow for Honor rounding down 19½ hours, that's still 377 light-minutes.
To that, we can add maybe a light-minute or two that Imperator had covered while Honor was getting the call set up with Elizabeth (an hour of here time) and up to 10 light-minutes of Manticore's orbit relative to the star.
Imperator would have reached 0.64c in this trip.
Though Binary systems might be a partial exception.
One of the books mentioned that a Marine pinnace had enough range to fly from Manticore to Gryphon (though it'd need extra supplies/life-support; at least if it was carrying passengers). I'm not sure if the economics make sense for sub-light freighters to ever carry freight between binary star systems; or whether the time savings from a short hop through hyper more than make up for the extra purchase and maintenance cost of the hyper generator. So I don't know if there is actual traffic out that far or it it was just a hypothetical)
Not sure... If the premise is 10 light-hours away from a star, then you'd be over 10 from both stars only if the two stars are over 20 light-hours away from each other. That's definitely possible; binary stars don't have to be close like Manticore A and B are. In fact, the further they are from each other, the more likely it is for there to be planets in the inner system. OTOH, there may be a range at which it's far enough for an outer belt to form but close enough for the other star to keep throwing those asteroids into the inner system...
We know that short hyperspace jumps are inaccurate. But how short? The 6 or 7 light-hours from the Junction is too close, which is why most ships take the route in n-space. The 11 to 14 light-hours between A and B was also too close for Adm. White Haven in 1543 PD (Karina Alexander, Third Countess White Haven), but technology has advanced since then so this doesn't mean much.