Some Wormhole Questions

kzt wrote:

Randomiser wrote:Once you positively know something can be done, that is a huge impetus to research in itself. Give Sonya, Forraker and Grayson all the theory as well and I would expect them to crack the implementation pretty fast.

They have personally demonstrated exactly what improvements to the hyperdrive that convinces you they are ideally suited to rapidly turn theory into working hardware?

I think I agree with Randomizer here. Foracker has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to take the tech available to her and apply it in novel ways... even when the tech wasn't quite up to snuff. Give her good stuff and she will think she's in heaven. As for Sonja, let's see... The list of her accomplishments is SDps, clacs, ftl communication, mistletoe, apollo, shrikes, ferrats, and more. She has a wonderful way of throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks.

Neither of them works alone or in a vacuum. But team up the research community at Bolthole with with what Simoes knows and I bet we get a streak drive. Hopefullr Simoes can come up with enough hints on the spider to get GA researchers on the road to figuring out the spider. But we don't know that yet.

Don

n7axw wrote:

Randomiser wrote:Once you positively know something can be done, that is a huge impetus to research in itself. Give Sonya, Forraker and Grayson all the theory as well and I would expect them to crack the implementation pretty fast.

kzt wrote:They have personally demonstrated exactly what improvements to the hyperdrive that convinces you they are ideally suited to rapidly turn theory into working hardware?

I think I agree with Randomizer here. Foracker has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to take the tech available to her and apply it in novel ways... ... She has a wonderful way of throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks.

Neither of them works alone or in a vacuum. But team up the research community at Bolthole with with what Simoes knows and I bet we get a streak drive. Hopefullr Simoes can come up with enough hints on the spider to get GA researchers on the road to figuring out the spider. But we don't know that yet.

I think I've got to side with KZT's point here.

Hyperspace generators haven't been any part of R&D anywhere except the MAlign; Everybody Knows you can't get into the Iota Band and survive, so there are no hyperspace scientists in the R&D communities. Everybody Knows how the generators work but nobody specializes in expanding the theory because Everybody Knows it's a dead end.

I think Forracker and Hemple will quickly assemble the necessary scientists and technicians, and Forracker's experience with brute force expediencies will help, but they're going to be starting at square one when it comes to to the Streak Drive.

I'm going to go the other way.

David has stated in several pearls dealing with the sources of the Manticoran tech ascendancy that Manticore, for several reasons, is the single greatest concentration of hyperphysics knowledge and study in human space.

Further, there are strong indications even in the original tech essay in SVW that applied hyperphysicists are always looking to extend the reach into the layers of hyperspace. It is the continuing holy grail of applied hyper physics and hyper engineering simply because each band step is SO FRICKING VALUABLE to interstellar transport, and to space naval operations.

Now, let us consider who is the largest space transport operating star nation in the galaxy, with the most advanced navy and the need to push that navy all over the star map to cover that carrying trade. Hmm?

I think the research is always there, just like wormhole research. It just isn't necessarily the top project, because there haven't been any promising approaches or breakthroughs in a long time...until now.

You think that Klaus Hauptman wouldn't constantly be funding some university 'pure' research that could lead to pushing into the higher bands?

The difference for the MAlign effort is that they have made it a Manhattan Project/Moon Race for decades, maybe a century or two, not just the equivalent of NASA's contsant efforts on airfoil efficiency and rocket fuel formulations.

dreamrider

Termini distances. I'm not saying that there isn't some macro termini celestial neighborhood clustering effect that Dr Nix will write a paper on for David someday.

However, I think that two reasons that some of them appear 'clustered' to us are:
a) David has only really shown us on his maps a subset of hyper links that are closely associated, busy, and pertinent to his immediate stories.
b) We are instinctively comparing the often substantial gap between 'nearby' termini to the inherently enormously long (and wholly symbolic) lines that indicate the hyper connections between the termini. That visual comparison gives a false sense of tiny scale to the gaps.

dreamrider

dreamrider wrote:I'm going to go the other way.

David has stated in several pearls dealing with the sources of the Manticoran tech ascendancy that Manticore, for several reasons, is the single greatest concentration of hyperphysics knowledge and study in human space.

Further, there are strong indications even in the original tech essay in SVW that applied hyperphysicists are always looking to extend the reach into the layers of hyperspace. It is the continuing holy grail of applied hyper physics and hyper engineering simply because each band step is SO FRICKING VALUABLE to interstellar transport, and to space naval operations.

I'd quibble that higher hyper bands clearly aren't all that important to interstellar transport since the vast majority of merchant ships give up 4 bands and a 56% savings is transit time just for maintenance and cost saving reasons.

If anything I'd expect any non-military R&D on hypergenerators to work on getting merchant spec generators up to the Epsilon bands without incurring noticeably higher upfront or ongoing costs than the current Delta bands generators.


Not that specific non-military ships wouldn't benefit from cracking the Iota wall - passenger liners, dispatch boats, etc. But it's mostly a military benefit. (Of course we can't rule out that any R&D breakthrough might provide insights into how to improve both military and merchant spec hyper generators; so more reliable Epsilon capable generators might have given clues into Iota capable ones; or vise versa)

Jonathan_S wrote:(Of course we can't rule out that any R&D breakthrough might provide insights into how to improve both military and merchant spec hyper generators; so more reliable Epsilon capable generators might have given clues into Iota capable ones; or vise versa)

Which is a good portion of what happened with the Streak Drive, there is a mention of good bit of it being combining existing developments in an novel way rather than a completely new development.