First Technical Mission To Bolthole

“Well,” she said, “assuming this masterly summation of yours bears some nodding acquaintance to reality, I imagine the first technical mission to Bolthole—and I do hope you intend to tell us just where that is—” she gave him a speaking look “is going to be heading your way sometime very soon now. And I don’t think Mesa’s going to be a bit happy about that!”

ART, last paragraph Chapter 16.
Honor speaking to Theisman.

Please help.
For the life of me I cannot reason as to what this should be.

Out of necessity, it seems the GA's priority would be detection of the new drive technology.

Is it possible to reliably detect this new technology?
Will Simoes be able to impart enough technical information to assist in that endeavor?
Will the Mesan drive technology ultimately displace current drive technology in the Honorverse?

I have images of Mesan ships showing up in force in the Manticore system.
What strategic and tactical advantages will such an armada possess?

The spider drive creeps me out.
I do not like spiders.

Are we going to see these spiders in the upcoming movie?


Taskforce: Arachnid I, Arachnid II, Arachnid III
Operation: Spiderweb

Creepy.

cthia wrote:

“Well,” she said, “assuming this masterly summation of yours bears some nodding acquaintance to reality, I imagine the first technical mission to Bolthole—and I do hope you intend to tell us just where that is—” she gave him a speaking look “is going to be heading your way sometime very soon now. And I don’t think Mesa’s going to be a bit happy about that!”

ART, last paragraph Chapter 16.
Honor speaking to Theisman.

Please help.
For the life of me I cannot reason as to what this should be.

Manticore is relocating its R&D to a secure system with intact infrastructure and advanced shipyards, ie Bolthole. The Manties recognize that they got really lucky with the evacuation exercise on Weyland coinciding with the Oyster Bay attack's arrival preserving the majority of their R&D people and want to take advantage of this by getting them back to work somewhere safe ASAP with Bolthole being the bet option.

Out of necessity, it seems the GA's priority would be detection of the new drive technology.

Is it possible to reliably detect this new technology?

Almost certainly, at what range and how long it will take to develop is another matter though.

Will Simoes be able to impart enough technical information to assist in that endeavor?

Probably, he certainly knows a lot about the Streak Drive being one of the primary researchers for it, the Spider drive is a different matter but IMO he probably knows enough to at least give the GA a starting point.

Will the Mesan drive technology ultimately displace current drive technology in the Honorverse?

The Spider drive has too many disadvantage compared to a wedge to ever take over from it for most roles, it may have a place for stealth platforms though. The Streak drive is basically an improved hyper generator and will certainly displace standard ones for couriers/DBs and probably warships with the possibility of technical improvements for civilian grade hyper generators

I have images of Mesan ships showing up in force in the Manticore system.
What strategic and tactical advantages will such an armada possess?

It will be very stealthy, once it is detected though the disadvantages of the Spider drive (limited acceleration, no invulnerable wedge, problems with sidewalls) mean that they will be at a considerable disadvantage compared to normal ships. I am pretty sure that Spider ships will try to avoid situations where they have to engage conventional ships, instead being used for strategic bombardment strikes the Oyster Bay and for covert observation.

The spider drive creeps me out.
I do not like spiders.

Are we going to see these spiders in the upcoming movie?

IIRC the movie is going to be based on "The Honor of the Queen" which took place long before the Alignment became a visible player (and quite possibly before there were any Spider ships as they are a new development) so almost certainly not.

Meanwhile, I am quietly fetching a mop to deal with the considerable amount of drool on my keyboard that mysteriously appears whenever I think about Sonja Hemphill and Shannon Foraker having an actual working (and not just working??) relationship...

I do not think that you will see the spider drive in the movie because the movie is based on Honor of the Queen.The spider drive does not appear until Mission of Honor and A Rising Thunder which were written much later.

roseandheather wrote:Meanwhile, I am quietly fetching a mop to deal with the considerable amount of drool on my keyboard that mysteriously appears whenever I think about Sonja Hemphill and Shannon Foraker having an actual working (and not just working??) relationship...

See hon, even women have one track minds too!

Here's where my warped thinking becomes a liability.

Is it possible that Mesan drive technology can be adapted to its missiles?

If so, the GA may become toast.

bunyipbelle wrote:I do not think that you will see the spider drive in the movie because the movie is based on Honor of the Queen.The spider drive does not appear until Mission of Honor and A Rising Thunder which were written much later.

Thanks for the calming effect...now I remember reading that. But then we still have to worry about sequels. Darn!

cthia wrote:

roseandheather wrote:Meanwhile, I am quietly fetching a mop to deal with the considerable amount of drool on my keyboard that mysteriously appears whenever I think about Sonja Hemphill and Shannon Foraker having an actual working (and not just working??) relationship...

See hon, even women have one track minds too!

Here's where my warped thinking becomes a liability.

Is it possible that Mesan drive technology can be adapted to its missiles?

If so, the GA may become toast.

Spider drive missiles are basically graser torpedoes. Given the accel limits of the drive, the missiles may well end up slower than their target, which makes them moderately useful.

The spider-drive graser torpedoes are really big. It is not clear how much of that size is due to the graser and how much is due to limits on shrinking the spider drive.

SWM wrote:The spider-drive graser torpedoes are really big. It is not clear how much of that size is due to the graser and how much is due to limits on shrinking the spider drive.

I would guess that the drive is the primary size driver.

The graser, even against near stationary targets that can be effectively for it's entire firing duration, isn't so much more effective than a conventional laser head to justify building a missile at least 4x as large as a conventional one.

It's my belief that, if the drive could have given a useful acceleration in something much closer to the size of an SDM (or even DDM) that it would have been worth forsaking the graser head and building more of the (more easily carried and launched) missiles with the individually less damaging laser heads. (Heck, against completely surprised targets with no sidewalls up, a multifunction warhead nuke in boom mode might well be even more damaging than the graserhead.


But I admit that's all my own speculation.

Jonathan_S wrote:

SWM wrote:The spider-drive graser torpedoes are really big. It is not clear how much of that size is due to the graser and how much is due to limits on shrinking the spider drive.

I would guess that the drive is the primary size driver.

The graser, even against near stationary targets that can be effectively for it's entire firing duration, isn't so much more effective than a conventional laser head to justify building a missile at least 4x as large as a conventional one.

It's my belief that, if the drive could have given a useful acceleration in something much closer to the size of an SDM (or even DDM) that it would have been worth forsaking the graser head and building more of the (more easily carried and launched) missiles with the individually less damaging laser heads. (Heck, against completely surprised targets with no sidewalls up, a multifunction warhead nuke in boom mode might well be even more damaging than the graserhead.


But I admit that's all my own speculation.

Yeah, the most important part of the Graser torp isn't the graser's power, it is only a CL graser after all; it is the duration of the beam - some 100-1000x longer than usual. You are not going to get through SD Sidewalls with that, BUT any hard surface you hit is going to have to absorb the equivalent of 100s of CL graser shots in that one hit in a relatively short duration. That and the GT's low speed really makes it the MA's equivalent of Manticore's Mistletoe - best used in suprise situations against lightly guarded, non-maneuvering targets.