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.