Rebuilding Blackbird for the GSN

Grashtel wrote:

kzt wrote:The mysterious vanishing of the entire orbital infrastructure of Grayson still puzzles historians decades later....

An obvious solution is that it was moved out to Blackbird, even at teeny tiny fractions of a gravity continuous accelerations soon add up making moving space stations around in the same system entirely possible with Honorverse tech

Or at least the horribly outdated pre-alliance ship construction yards were broken down and replaced by the Blackbird yards.

And I could see the old forts getting scrapped, but possibly replaced by newer Apollo + LAC forts; those might still be in orbit...

But I'd assume the orbital farms hadn't been moved or decommissioned (they may be as the Skydomes covered farms take over; but I doubt that's happened yet).



But if all the ship repair and construction moved out to Blackbird it all smashed by Oyster Bay. That'd take out the majority of the trained shipyard workers. Yes there should be some vacuum trained repair workers working to keep the remaining orbital farms and forts humming along; but that's not much of a base to rebuild your yards from.

wholf359 wrote:Does this spell the end of the GSN being a powerhouse of shipbuilding for the near to mid term do we think or can they rebuild just as fast as the RMN or even faster?

Probably. And that's fine. A second-tier (albeit rapidly growing pre-Oyster Bay) single-system polity without a wormhole junction or any other hugely valuable assets to sit on ought not to have the 5th-largest conventional navy in human space. They do 'now' because Benjamin was covering for High Ridge's mistakes, but they can't afford to do that indefinitely.

Considering the nature of the shipyards in Yeltsin (stand alone), it must have taken a lot of Alignment missiles to take them all out.

roseandheather wrote:Haven is also probably going to be a tremendous help. Given the pre-existing relationship between the two - by which I mean all the Cerberus escapees and People's Republic defectors, like Yu, Caslet, etc. - I can see the Pritchart Administration capitalizing on that and sending as much help as possible to help with Blackbird. All three Alliance navies are a bit stretched for personnel, of course, but I would not at all be surprised to see Havenite shipyard workers as loaners on the new Blackbird as well as helping out in the GSN (which would free up Manticoran loaners for service elsewhere).

(My Bold)
I would think that once Haven starts implementing the automation the RMN & GSN have, there should be more people available to crew the new ships, of course getting the new ships out of the yet to be completed yards is the problem at the moment. I wonder if Sharron & Sonia can come up with more automation in the yards?

T&R
GJS

George J. Smith wrote:

roseandheather wrote:Haven is also probably going to be a tremendous help. Given the pre-existing relationship between the two - by which I mean all the Cerberus escapees and People's Republic defectors, like Yu, Caslet, etc. - I can see the Pritchart Administration capitalizing on that and sending as much help as possible to help with Blackbird. All three Alliance navies are a bit stretched for personnel, of course, but I would not at all be surprised to see Havenite shipyard workers as loaners on the new Blackbird as well as helping out in the GSN (which would free up Manticoran loaners for service elsewhere).

(My Bold)
I would think that once Haven starts implementing the automation the RMN & GSN have, there should be more people available to crew the new ships, of course getting the new ships out of the yet to be completed yards is the problem at the moment. I wonder if Sharron & Sonia can come up with more automation in the yards?

T&R
GJS

I don't think yard space is going to be an immediate issue, with Bolthole and the regular Haven yards still very much in the picture. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if production at the Havenite yards actually goes down in the immediate future; if the combined Allied navies decide that they can manage for a while with what they've got plus what's currently in the slips in the Haven yards, it might well make more sense to pause the laying down of new construction so that the slips will be free for the first products of the Foraker-Hemphill Carnival Of Carnage. It would also allow time to start upgrading the Haven yards with Manticoran/Grayson equipment and methods.

I think you are missing a couple of points.
Firstly, for at least Manticore, the three major stations represented the majority of the shipyard capacity for the system. Yes, there were Grayson type yards (we have a description of them visible "near" Weyland Station). It sounds like -from the books- that all of the Grayson shipyard capability was moved out to Blackbird. So Grayson lost its yards and Manticore lost the STATIONS and yards.

Maticore had a lot more than just shipyards on those stations. It also had a vast amount of the related manufacturing and orbital manufacturing there. Grayson would have, I presume, have moved the ship related manufacturing out to Blackbird as that was where the products would be needed.

In both cases, the basic materials are comming from the asteroid belts. Blackbird is essentially right next to the source of the material. It doesn't make much sense to ship the materials into Grayson orbit, make stuff and then ship it out to Blackbird so the related industries (to shipbuilding etc) would have either been moved out there (hook up a tug and do it) or new, more efficent operations would have been built near Blackbird.

Before either system can build both the shipyards and then new ships in them, both systems are going to have to reestablish manufacturing facilities to produce the things they need to build with. That starts right down to the level of living or manufacturing structures (and the grav plates, wires, light fixtures, plumbing, enviornmental systems, fusion power plants, etc) to build the equipment in. So they may get a lot of things- including "small" manufacturing operations or components of various production lines and structures) from places such as Beowulf or even Haven to jump-start the process, but they are going to have to build-out their manufacturing at all levels to be able to both train their own people and provide for local production of everything from the pieces they need to live in space, build (and repair and arm) starships, and create consumer and commercial goods for local use and export.

Secondly it seems a given that Manticore both trusts Beowulf and is comfortable with using Beowulf produced equipment and parts to do its rebuild so I guess Grayson would as well. A primary thought would be that not only is Beowulf producing "stuff" to Manticorian standards and with shared (and probably equal) tech on a lot of stuff so Grayson would be comfortable with using that source for the initial help. If Haven were to provide (and, one presumes charge for) machines, fabrication units, orbital structures, I suspect that both Manticore and Grayson would take and use the equipment and structures as a way to bootstrap the manufacturing capacity. Would they prefer Manticore and Grayson tech, of course. But they would take the Haven (or Aldermani or Zanzabarian or even Solly) produced orbital facilities and equipment and use it to build up and out from that start.

IF Grayson had moved ALL of its orbital manufacturing out to Blackbird then it is all gone. Certainly we have it as canon that all the shipbuilding is gone. But how much of the facilities in Grayson orbit is manufacturing related to the orbital farms? The farms did not get hit in Oyster Bay. Unless I have totally missed something, the strike was against the shipbuilding and related manufacturing plus military base facilities out around and servicing Blackbird. If the Alignment didn’t have the weapons to target the relatively soft targets of orbital farms, why would it have hit the relatively “minor” production facilities that serviced the Farms? I would guess that this included parts of Skydomes dedicated to the Farms and possibly to fabrication for ground based structure. Much more effective to hit all the orbital farms and devastate the Grayson population without targeting the planet. You don’t even have to cause the farms to fall…..GTs sweeping the graser beams through (and a graser is going to go right through both sides a Farm like butter) would cause explosive decompression to a significant portion of each Farm with the result of destroying the crops (and any animals) plus kill a significant portion of the crew).

kzt wrote:The mysterious vanishing of the entire orbital infrastructure of Grayson still puzzles historians decades later....

Grashtel wrote:An obvious solution is that it was moved out to Blackbird, even at teeny tiny fractions of a gravity continuous accelerations soon add up making moving space stations around in the same system entirely possible with Honorverse tech

Jonathan_S wrote:Or at least the horribly outdated pre-alliance ship construction yards were broken down and replaced by the Blackbird yards.

And I could see the old forts getting scrapped, but possibly replaced by newer Apollo + LAC forts; those might still be in orbit...

But I'd assume the orbital farms hadn't been moved or decommissioned (they may be as the Skydomes covered farms take over; but I doubt that's happened yet).



But if all the ship repair and construction moved out to Blackbird it all smashed by Oyster Bay. That'd take out the majority of the trained shipyard workers. Yes there should be some vacuum trained repair workers working to keep the remaining orbital farms and forts humming along; but that's not much of a base to rebuild your yards from.

Pre-Alliance, Grayson had a huge % of their population working in the asteroid belts and orbit in the construction role. There may be some civilian nodes in the asteroid belts which survived which could have a cadre of workers to help rebuild.

Then again, the 298 Million people living in Manticore B space outside of Weyland don't have a single manufacturing or construction node between them, so it wouldn't be suprising if all the Grayson construction personel got wacked.

That wasn't me, that was someone's response to my comment.

kzt wrote:That wasn't me, that was someone's response to my comment.

Sorry KT - I had them flipped - better?

Jonathan_S wrote:
The thing that really hurts is Grayson is probably far less capable than Manticore of attracting replacement workers.

They don't have as broad an industrial workforce to draw from, aren't as attractive to immigration, and don't have a pool of former shipyard workers who've (thanks to prolong) taken up 2nd or 3rd careers elsewhere and can be brought back to help start-up and run the new stations.

I'm assuming their economy is going to be able to support some significant level of rebuilding, but how well they'll be able to staff the new shipyards / repair yards...

On the other hand, what they DO have is instituitional experience in rapid expansion.
More experienced workers would of course be better, but they have effectively already done something similar once, even if from a better position, it still helps a LOT knowing how to quick-educate new workers.

In fact, in this they may actually be in a better position now than Manticore, who has always been able to draw from existing workforces, at worst they have only needed to improve skills and add specialty skills, while Grayson in relatively short order trained up people who had ZERO previously useful experience.

So while Manticore can probably restart faster, Grayson MAY be able to expand faster, because they already know how to masstrain the workforce needed from zero.

Maybe.

roseandheather wrote:Haven is also probably going to be a tremendous help. Given the pre-existing relationship between the two - by which I mean all the Cerberus escapees and People's Republic defectors, like Yu, Caslet, etc. - I can see the Pritchart Administration capitalizing on that and sending as much help as possible to help with Blackbird. All three Alliance navies are a bit stretched for personnel, of course, but I would not at all be surprised to see Havenite shipyard workers as loaners on the new Blackbird as well as helping out in the GSN (which would free up Manticoran loaners for service elsewhere).

Yeah, Haven is the only one with largescale capacity, so it´s likely they will shoulder a LOT of the needs for maybe 2-3 years after OB.