SLN, and MAlign playing catch up with Manticoran superiority

tlb wrote:Note that this is available anywhere, so presumably within the hyper-limit. We know that the Silver Bullets were able to maneuver within the hyper-limit at Beowulf.

We weren't reacting to the fact that spiders worked inside the hyperlimit. Wedges do too, after all.

Instead, it's the punching through the alpha wall while inside of them. Could this mean a transition into hyperspace from inside the hyperlimit?

tlb wrote:Note that this is available anywhere, so presumably within the hyper-limit. We know that the Silver Bullets were able to maneuver within the hyper-limit at Beowulf.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:We weren't reacting to the fact that spiders worked inside the hyperlimit. Wedges do too, after all.

Instead, it's the punching through the alpha wall while inside of them. Could this mean a transition into hyperspace from inside the hyperlimit?

But it does NOT say that, all it says is that the tractor beam can punch far enough out of normal space to grab hold of the alpha wall. There is nothing about going through the wall, unless that is in someone's fevered imagination.

So far as we know, going through the alpha wall while inside the hyper-limit is forbidden. Presumably it has been attempted by an earlier mad scientist (Dr Joe Buckley Jr, perhaps).

I hope my brain does not become permanently warped thinking about this stuff. But this is simply how my warped brain works. It is unavoidable. If you factor in the warped subject of space-time, then Bob's your uncle and misery loves company. I hope I do not bend anyones sensibilities in n-space.

The spider drive
For all intents and purposes an LD’s tractors create “tractor beams” of intensely focused gravity that punch through n-space all the way into hyperspace. A spider drive is effectively a gravity drive.

Let's pause for clarification of information found in the drunken wiki.

The impeller drive is also a phased array “gravity drive.”

The wiki goes on to say …

It could also be used for propulsion in hyperspace, but was highly dangerous when making contact with a gravity wave. Transforming it into a Warshawski sail largely removed this danger.

The impeller wedge siphons energy from hyperspace. So, a wedge punches clean through to hyperspace and I assume to the alpha wall. Obviously a lot of energy is released from hyper which is absorbed by the wedge. The amount of energy released from hyper through the hole in the wall separating n-space from hyperspace is not enough energy to overcome the very powerful wedge. It would be enough energy to destroy the ship if the ship is actually in hyper where there is no wedge to protect it. The danger is actually from the grav waves that are found in hyperspace. Enter the Warshawski sail to tame the grav waves.

I expect when something that holds a lot of energy is pierced, that energy will flow through the bridge (piercing). Entropy. The powerful wedge absorbs this energy. From where does this energy flow? Is the wedge siphoning energy from hyperspace alone or from a grav wave?

A spider drive pierces the wall separating n-space and hyper as well all the way to the alpha wall. Why is there no release of energy which I would expect to destroy a ship without a wedge to protect/absorb the energy? The gravity beams actually lock onto the wall providing a permanent purchase point in deep space. Energy flowing through the bridge is uninterrupted.

We must be mindful that the alpha wall is not a physical structure made of bricks. Instead, it is a barrier. What is this barrier made of? Is it some construct of gravity? Yes, it is. Thus, the alpha wall does not need to be pierced. Gravitational waves interact with gravity.

Each wave causes the others to change slightly. The interactions create new types of waves with their own independent frequencies. These new waves are smaller, more chaotic, and more unpredictable than the original ones.

It seems like something bad should happen to the LD, which has no wedge to absorb the flow of energy. For sake of conversation, let's substitute electricity for the energy. Why isn't the LD destroyed? If it were in hyperspace without a sail it would be. I don't assume there is a such thing as barely touching a grav wave and surviving? Perhaps being in n-space the LD is grounded? At any rate, the LD isn't utilizing the energy exchange. It is relying on being dragged along by the gravitic purchase point in hyperspace. But what about the energy that is flowing through the bridge? And if the LD is being dragged along by the permanent “gravitic chains* that have locked onto the alpha wall, why is that acceleration so low? The apparent velocity of the purchase point in hyper should be higher than the relative velocity of the purchase point in n-space. But alas, the purchase point seems to be constantly broken and reestablished in “micro-bursts” and if you visualize the “micro-burst-long” purchase points propelling the ship as little feet that are running (raising up and down losing and reestablishing a purchase point with the ground) very quickly, it would appear acceleration should be higher.

But if that concentrated beam of gravity makes contact with a grav wave, then that purchase point’s apparent velocity should be much faster than an LD’s acceleration. Even for a micro-burst of contact. And the energy bleed (feedback) from the grav wave should definitely destroy the LD.

Note: I do not know why in the HV ships cannot enter hyper from inside the hyper limit. Reasons why this cannot happen and also the result of said attempt vary from author to author in the sci-fi world from an inoperable engine to the destruction of the ship to the destruction of the system.

At any rate, I assume in the sci-fi world any contact with hyperspace from inside of a gravity well is highly frowned upon or fatal. So, as far as an LD is concerned, I am surprised that contact with gravity waves in hyperspace with a gravity beam from inside the limit is possible.

penny wrote:The spider drive
For all intents and purposes an LD’s tractors create “tractor beams” of intensely focused gravity that punch through n-space all the way into hyperspace. A spider drive is effectively a gravity drive.

--- skip ---

The impeller wedge siphons energy from hyperspace. So, a wedge punches clean through to hyperspace and I assume to the alpha wall.

--- skip ---

A spider drive pierces the wall separating n-space and hyper as well all the way to the alpha wall.

--- skip ---

At any rate, I assume in the sci-fi world any contact with hyperspace from inside of a gravity well is highly frowned upon or fatal. So, as far as an LD is concerned, I am surprised that contact with gravity waves in hyperspace with a gravity beam from inside the limit is possible.

If the spider drive had the same effect on the alpha wall as a wedge, then it could be detected the same as a wedge. But it does not and so it can not; instead the penetration is only TO the alpha wall and NOT THROUGH it. Therefore the spider drive does NOT contact hyperspace, since it is grabbing at the wall between normal space and the Alpha band. So we should not expect it to draw power the same as a wedge drive ship.

Note that is the attempt at a transition that is the problem for a ship; because wedge drives do operate within the hyper-limit, so a ship driven by a wedge is still drawing power then. We have even seen several examples of shoulder fired wedge weapons from the planet surface.

NOTE: the comments about gravity waves, most likely refer to ships in hyperspace and not just drawing power from it. Otherwise ships moving anywhere in normal space might have to worry about hitting a gravity wave (isn't Yeltsin surrounded by them?).

penny wrote:It would be enough energy to destroy the ship if the ship is actually in hyper where there is no wedge to protect it. The danger is actually from the grav waves that are found in hyperspace. Enter the Warshawski sail to tame the grav waves.

I expect when something that holds a lot of energy is pierced, that energy will flow through the bridge (piercing). Entropy. The powerful wedge absorbs this energy. From where does this energy flow? Is the wedge siphoning energy from hyperspace alone or from a grav wave?

Where does it say that the energy siphoned off by an active wedge would be enough to destroy the ship?

Though even if true it seem irrelevant. Ships can only access it by having their wedge active, and the siphoned power is less than the wedge needs to maintain itself -- so there's no net flow of energy towards the ship. Instead the wedge drains power from both the ship's reactor and hyperspace.

(And a ship doesn't need a wedge to protect it in hyper -- as the early hyper-capable exploration ships used reaction drives (and more recently we've see ships lose or shut down their drive in hyper and be fine)

I'm extra confused by suddenly pulling grav waves and sails into this. Yes running into a grav wave without an active sail is very dangerous -- inability to detect and avoid them was fatal to all early hyper ships (whether reaction drive or impeller powered). But you go on to speculate that because (you claim) drawing power from hyper is dangerous and grav waves are dangerous that likely you're drawing power from grav waves -- which seems fallacious logic.

Plus we know that ships wedges work anywhere in normal space -- not just within systems that lie within a grav wave. How could their wedge be siphoning power from a grav wave when the nearest wave is many lightyears away?



Now, about the only thing we have in the books about this is from AoV

Ashes of Victory wrote:And not even a superdreadnought has enough onboard power generation to bring its wedge up initially without using its capacitors. Just maintaining it once it is up, even with the energy-siphon effect when it twists over into hyper, requires a huge investment in power, and initiating the impeller bands in the first place raises the power requirement exponentially. So even when they're not doing anything else, most warships tend to have at least one fusion plant on-line to charge up their capacitor rings

However RFC's old post on this was saved in the infodumps, and goes into more detail.

runsforcelery wrote:Whenever an impeller drive vessel activates its wedge, whether in normal-space or hyper-space, it "bends" space around itself. [...] It is the "bending" effect on the Alpha wall, for example, which makes it possible to detect and track impeller footprints in real-time at ranges of up to several light-minutes. The same phenomenon operates in hyper- space, except that the hyper-wall being bent isn't necessarily the Alpha wall; it's whatever the next higher hyper-wall may be.

When the wall is bent, energy is siphoned across it from the "higher" hyper band on its other side. Hyper-space is an area of inherently higher energy levels, and the siphon effect could be considered a sort of strictly limited, primitive ancestor of the "core tap" in the Mutineers' Moon Universe. The initial power for the wedge has to come from internal sources -- current generation and stored power. Once the initial energy investment is made, something like 60% of the energy necessary to maintain and power the wedge is drawn through the "siphon" effect.
[...]
The siphon effect is operable anywhere, anytime. The ability to raise a wedge, which interacts with the hyper wall, is not the same thing as being able to translate an entire starship across that hyper wall.

This makes it clearer that he envisions it a drawing from the hyper hyper band; rather than a grav wave located within it.

And clearly he envisions it as a limited amount of power being siphoned, as it can't even fully power a wedge.

tlb wrote:

tlb wrote:Note that this is available anywhere, so presumably within the hyper-limit. We know that the Silver Bullets were able to maneuver within the hyper-limit at Beowulf.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:We weren't reacting to the fact that spiders worked inside the hyperlimit. Wedges do too, after all.

Instead, it's the punching through the alpha wall while inside of them. Could this mean a transition into hyperspace from inside the hyperlimit?

But it does NOT say that, all it says is that the tractor beam can punch far enough out of normal space to grab hold of the alpha wall. There is nothing about going through the wall, unless that is in someone's fevered imagination.

So far as we know, going through the alpha wall while inside the hyper-limit is forbidden. Presumably it has been attempted by an earlier mad scientist (Dr Joe Buckley Jr, perhaps).

What do you think will happen if you grab a hold of a very powerful electrified fence?

Now what do you think will happen if you grab a hold of a very powerful electrified fence with a very powerful band of electricity?

penny wrote:What do you think will happen if you grab a hold of a very powerful electrified fence?

Now what do you think will happen if you grab a hold of a very powerful electrified fence with a very powerful band of electricity?

The Alpha wall between normal space and the Alpha band is NOT an "electrified fence".

The wedge goes through the Alpha wall to get energy from the Alpha band. The spider drive does NOT go through, it only grabs the wall. The wedge has a much stronger effect on the wall, which is why it is detectable. Again from the MoH:

Chapter 28 wrote:Powerful as it might be, it was less than a shadow compared to the output of even a single one of any starship's beta nodes, far less an alpha node. It wasn't even enough to produce the "ripple" along the hyper-space wall which Manticore used for its FTL communications technology. But it did lock onto the wall, and that provided the ship which mounted it a purchase point in deep space—one which was always available, anywhere, in any direction

PS: here is an answer to the question about whether the spider drive is visible; from Storm from the Shadows:

Chapter 40 wrote:But there was no gravitic distortion around these ships, nothing to bend and blur light waves, because they didn't use impeller wedges.

penny wrote:What do you think will happen if you grab a hold of a very powerful electrified fence?

Now what do you think will happen if you grab a hold of a very powerful electrified fence with a very powerful band of electricity?

tlb wrote:The Alpha wall between normal space and the Alpha band is NOT an "electrified fence".

A better analogy is probably then a dam.

The dam itself isn't electrified or dangerous. But it is damming the lake on the other side, such that the level of water there is higher than the level of water here. A tap allows water to flow through and the difference in level be used for electricity generation (a hydroelectric power plant).

ThinksMarkedly wrote:A better analogy is probably then a dam.

The dam itself isn't electrified or dangerous. But it is damming the lake on the other side, such that the level of water there is higher than the level of water here. A tap allows water to flow through and the difference in level be used for electricity generation (a hydroelectric power plant).

Then in that analogy the wedge slightly "bending" space, and with it the hyper wall, would be like slightly cracking open a wicket gate to allow water to start flowing down the penstock into the turbine.

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:What do you think will happen if you grab a hold of a very powerful electrified fence?

Now what do you think will happen if you grab a hold of a very powerful electrified fence with a very powerful band of electricity?

The Alpha wall between normal space and the Alpha band is NOT an "electrified fence".

The wedge goes through the Alpha wall to get energy from the Alpha band. The spider drive does NOT go through, it only grabs the wall. The wedge has a much stronger effect on the wall, which is why it is detectable. Again from the MoH:

Chapter 28 wrote:Powerful as it might be, it was less than a shadow compared to the output of even a single one of any starship's beta nodes, far less an alpha node. It wasn't even enough to produce the "ripple" along the hyper-space wall which Manticore used for its FTL communications technology. But it did lock onto the wall, and that provided the ship which mounted it a purchase point in deep space—one which was always available, anywhere, in any direction

PS: here is an answer to the question about whether the spider drive is visible; from Storm from the Shadows:

Chapter 40 wrote:But there was no gravitic distortion around these ships, nothing to bend and blur light waves,*** because they didn't use impeller wedges.

*** is my own.


***Sci-fi constantly writes me a prescription for these behemoth sized pills that are hard to swallow. But I will accept it because the author stone cold said so.