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Honorverse ramblings and musings

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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by Jonathan_S   » Thu Jun 22, 2017 5:49 pm

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robert132 wrote:
I suspect that we might find that the solution to the Streak Drive may be so simple that the Manty (and other) hyper physicists may slap their foreheads (Homer Simpson-like) "Why didn't we think of that" similar to the answer to the less sophisticated (advanced) yet more efficient Grayson compensators.

Maybe. But compensators, while they'd plateaued in the last 50 - 100 years before OBS had be subject to slow but steady improvements over the centuries. (Which kind of hid that there was an alternate path that got overlooked).

I got the impression that, in contrast, scientists had beat their heads against the Iota wall long enough, with no breakthroughs or improvements, that they'd basically given up on cracking it. So I suspect that it's more than "one simply trick you'd never have thought of" and that even with improvements in the general tech level that cracking the Iota (and Kappa) walls wasn't exactly a trivial exercise.

But I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Still knowing something can be done is a strong motivator for figuring out how; and having Simones to provide assistance should speed work along nicely.
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by kzt   » Thu Jun 22, 2017 6:50 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:Still knowing something can be done is a strong motivator for figuring out how; and having Simones to provide assistance should speed work along nicely.

We've had the basic theory for how to make a fusion reactor for 60 years, and we are still "30 years away" from having one work. So sometimes there is a lot more complexity to the engineering than the science.
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by cthia   » Thu Jun 22, 2017 8:05 pm

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kzt wrote:
Jonathan_S wrote:Still knowing something can be done is a strong motivator for figuring out how; and having Simones to provide assistance should speed work along nicely.

We've had the basic theory for how to make a fusion reactor for 60 years, and we are still "30 years away" from having one work. So sometimes there is a lot more complexity to the engineering than the science.

True of course. But my thoughts were similar to robert132's which prompted the post. No doubt the engineering is complicated, but I'd imagine simply a challenge to Manticoran genius.

What bugs me is the uncharacteristic behaviour of the Manties of giving up.* Which is beginning to appear to me that it is a matter of necessity (barring something more Machiavellian). With ownership of the MWJ network, hitting their heads against the Iota and Kappa walls just isn't such a pressing need.

Also, the MAlign wanted and needed to keep the discovery a secret -- hence, a dispatch boat of normal size. I don't suppose there's any reason the technology cannot be applied to freighters? Which would limit shipping times during legs where junctions aren't available. Yet I don't suppose it would cut shipping times for some non perishable shipments on certain routes enough to forego the more expensive junction costs, therefore a Machiavellian motive for Manticoran interests not to want to pursue the research.

*Note: I do seem to recall that the Manties didn't give up so easily and iinm textev gave some details fraught with pitfalls and failures.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by Brigade XO   » Thu Jun 22, 2017 8:33 pm

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I suspect that true commercial use of Streak Drive would start with higher value/perishable cargos and not get into the general bulk ships for a long time.

The MAlignment is using this capasity in things larger that dispatch boats particularly as any abnormaly large DB would attract attention but the more general purpose (though small for freight/transport) ships would probably not attract any attention other than just a small variation in size from other shipping. Remember, DBs tend to mean that someone wants something brought or communicated really quickly and anything other than routine DB traffic would be noticed by someone. Streak Drive ships being used to move agents/clandestine military supplies and the like between places that have no idea of the time and travel framework of the ships involved aren't going to spark much interest unless something untoward happens. It is entirely possible that any Streak ships that were in the Mesa system when the place got invested are going to have self-destruct systems used to keep them from being captured. You may wonder why an otherwise "civilian" merchant ship or "yacht" blew up but you probably aren't going to get much usable from the wreckage if the reactor vaporized the ship.

Putting Steak Drives into things like DD's and BCs would continue to grow the sizes but would also enhance their abilitys to get places quickly and certainly shave transit time in emergencies or urgent responce.
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by Duckk   » Fri Jun 23, 2017 7:59 am

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MoH:

The streak drive represented a fundamental advance in interstellar travel, and there was no indication anyone else was even close to duplicating it. For centuries, the theta bands had represented an inviolable ceiling for hyper-capable ships. Everyone had known it was theoretically possible to go even higher, attain a still higher apparent normal-space velocity, yet no one had ever managed to design a ship which could crack the iota wall and survive. Incredible amounts of research had been invested in efforts to do just that, especially in the earlier days of hyper travel, but with a uniform lack of success. In the last few centuries, efforts to beat the iota barrier had waned, until the goal had been pretty much abandoned as one of those theoretically possible but practically unobtainable concepts.

But the Mesan Alignment hadn't abandoned it, and finally, after the better part of a hundred T-years of dogged research, they'd found the answer. It was, in many ways, a brute force approach, and it wouldn't have been possible even now without relatively recent advances (whose potential no one else seemed to have noticed) in related fields. And even with those other advances, it had almost doubled the size of conventional hyper generators. But it worked. Indeed, they'd broken not simply the iota wall, but the kappa wall, as well. Which meant the voyage from New Tuscany to Mesa, which would have taken anyone else the next best thing to forty-five T-days, had taken Anisimovna less than thirty-one.


This is not a case of "Manties of giving up". It's over a millennia of failure by the entire galaxy. All that work, for zero return on investment. It clearly took a monumental effort for the Alignment to develop the streak drive, and even then, it was only recently that they got capable enough technology to help do it. If it were easy, anyone could have done it. The facts speak otherwise.
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by cthia   » Fri Jun 23, 2017 8:57 am

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Why does the idiom of "No pain No gain" suddenly come to mind? Oh well, perhaps it'll come to me. LOL

Duckks post strengthens my thoughts, at least in my own head...

"But the Mesan Alignment hadn't abandoned it, and finally, after the better part of a hundred T-years of dogged research, they'd found the answer."

The Manties gave up, perhaps not simply gave up, but gave up nonetheless, unless "abandon" isn't synonymous with giving up. The MAlign didn't. Clearly a case of "necessity being the mother of invention" in my book. With the MWJ in tow, the Manticorans simply are not in as much need as were the MAlign which goes to motive as to why they gave up.

"All that work for zero return on investment."

It isn't like they couldn't afford it which is no reason they should have given up. They simply didn't experience the same level of need.

"...it wouldn't have been possible even now without relatively recent advances (whose potential no one else seemed to have noticed) in related fields..."...

Which puts me on a collision course with the inspiration & impetus behind my original post...

In which I wonder(ed) just how true this would have been if the Manties had taken a brute force approach as well—or if indeed that brute force path would have led them to be as technologically innovative as the Graysons, w/o help, misdirection or distraction from "the entire galaxy."

I don't recall anyone implying that it was easy. And just when did Manticoran technological ingenuity begin depending or relying on "everyone else?"

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by Jonathan_S   » Fri Jun 23, 2017 10:35 am

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kzt wrote:
Jonathan_S wrote:Still knowing something can be done is a strong motivator for figuring out how; and having Simones to provide assistance should speed work along nicely.

We've had the basic theory for how to make a fusion reactor for 60 years, and we are still "30 years away" from having one work. So sometimes there is a lot more complexity to the engineering than the science.

To nitpick we've had plenty of reactors that can create nuclear fusion - you can even build one as a table-top science project (Farnsworth-Hirsch fusor). What none of them has managed to do yet is produce more usable energy than it takes to run them.
cthia wrote:With ownership of the MWJ network, hitting their heads against the Iota and Kappa walls just isn't such a pressing need.

Also, the MAlign wanted and needed to keep the discovery a secret -- hence, a dispatch boat of normal size. I don't suppose there's any reason the technology cannot be applied to freighters? Which would limit shipping times during legs where junctions aren't available. Yet I don't suppose it would cut shipping times for some non perishable shipments on certain routes enough to forego the more expensive junction costs, therefore a Machiavellian motive for Manticoran interests not to want to pursue the research.
Unless the breakthroughs that make a Streak Drive capable of accessing the kappa bands also made it more economical to operate and maintain than a normal military hyper generator I doubt we'll see general adoption of streak drive into merchant service -- even after it's declassified.

The streak drive hyper generator does give you 1.45 faster transit than a military grade (Theta band capable) hyper generator. But if it wasn't cost effective for most merchants to upgrade to the 2.29x faster military grade (compared to their Delta band capable merchant hyper generator) I don't think the upgrade from 2.29x to 3.33x will be enough to tip the scales.

Especially since something described as a brute force solution, and that we know to be larger (and presumably more complex overall) is likely more expensive to build, operate, and maintain than the current military hyper generators.


Some civilian ships will jump at the chance, but most will likely remain happily plodding along in the Delta bands. (Unless, as some here have speculated, spin-off knowledge from the Streak Drive allows 'free' improvements to merchant hyper generator design; allowing access to Epsilon or Zeta bands with a generator having basically the same total cost of ownership as the current Delta band designs)
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by munroburton   » Fri Jun 23, 2017 10:52 am

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cthia wrote:I don't recall anyone implying that it was easy. And just when did Manticoran technological ingenuity begin depending or relying on "everyone else?"


Actually, the House of Steel short story is quite illuminative as a whole on that matter. But especially this section:

“Well, what Dame Carrie’s done is to create what she’s rather grandiloquently dubbed the ‘Concept Development Office.’ Um, that’s us, Commander. You, me, Lieutenant D’Orville, and a batch of remarkably senior and closemouthed ratings and petty officers from the various technical branches. We don’t appear under that particular title on any of the BuWeaps organizational charts, and we don’t have an actual R and D budget, and no one’s letting us play with any hardware at the moment. But we do have direct access to Dame Carrie and quite a remarkable reach in terms of the information available to us. We’re not being allowed to do any development, but we’re doing one hell of a lot of research.”

“What sort of research, Sir?”

“We’re going through every technical report ONI’s generated in the last twenty T-years, Commander,” Adcock said flatly. “And we’re going through every report any of our reservists serving in the merchant fleet might happen to file between voyages. We’re also auditing every current R and D project BuWeaps is being allowed to pursue and looking back at all the ones BuWeaps wasn’t allowed to pursue, and we have subscriptions to all of the Manticoran—and Beowulfan—civilian technical journals, as well as the SLN’s Naval Quarterly. And the reason we’re doing that, Commander Winton, is because it’s our job to look at everything, whatever the source, and assume nothing about practicality or feasibility until we’ve put it under a microscope and looked at it molecule by molecule. For example, this”—he tapped the reader on his desk—“is Aberu and Harmon’s internal report on that ‘laser head’ they tested back in ’33. The Sollies turned it down, and I can see why, based on the tests. But we’re not going to simply take their word for how useless it was, because that’s our job: to come up with blue-sky ideas, concepts, possibilities—and they can be pretty screwy ones, I’ll grant you—for brand-new research projects. Off the books ideas and concepts that Dame Carrie doesn’t have to fight with Admiral Truman or Admiral Low Delhi about because none of them are official. I expect most of them to turn out to be just as impractical and unworkable as Admiral Truman would expect, but it’s just possible we might turn up a few worthwhile nuggets, while we’re at it. And I wouldn’t be so very surprised, actually, knowing Dame Carrie as well as I’ve come to know her, if she didn’t see your assignment to our little workshop as a way to generate friends in high places—possibly even very high places—when the time comes to dust off some of those more preposterous ideas and see what happens.”
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by Potato   » Fri Jun 23, 2017 11:05 am

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Exactly. Here is an even older discussion (specifically point C):

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/si ... ngton/67/1
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by Jonathan_S   » Fri Jun 23, 2017 11:13 am

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Potato wrote:Exactly. Here is an even older discussion (specifically point C):

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/si ... ngton/67/1

But in the case of the Streak Drive the MAlign was the one to reap the benefits of synthesizing various breakthroughs in (apparently) unrelated fields to enabled them to build on those to a successful breach of the Iota wall.

To some extent it's because they were looking, but they still (it seems) couldn't have done it without other people's breakthroughs.


But those breakthroughs sound like they were pretty recent, at a time when Manticore was fixated on the looming war with Haven; if not actually fighting it -- and were focusing their R&D on Project Gram (which eventually gave them the Ghost Rider family of tech). If not for that they might have already noticed the applicability of those disparate breakthroughs to the problem of improving hyper generators.
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