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League FTL

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Re: League FTL
Post by Weird Harold   » Sun May 15, 2016 10:16 pm

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MuonNeutrino wrote:(Also, please, it's morse code, not morris code. I know it's a nitpick, but it annoys me. XD)


You mean there is no code here?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZjLATAUwao
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Answers! I got lots of answers!

(Now if I could just find the right questions.)
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Re: League FTL
Post by Brigade XO   » Sun May 15, 2016 10:46 pm

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The US bomber campaign against the Japanese Home Islands had several components. One was high level "strategic" bombing using B-29's using high explosives specific targest such as heavy industry and transportation hubs and things like bridges. Japan was deploying fighters that could reach the '29s but not in any of the numbers nessisary to make the type of inpact their earlier fighters had against things like B-17's , 24s etc.

Another of the components was the firebomb raids. Essentialy the B-29's were using something like cluster-bombs that, once dropped, would break open to distribute incendiary bomblets over wide areas. That did several things that the HE bombings had great difficulty accomplishing. A lot of the industry was scattered through the cities in things which we would now consider almost Mom & Pop Cottage Industry shops or lots and lots of light industrial buildings. A lot of the building in most cities (not in the heavy industrial parts) were highly flammable. Where it was almost impossible to target these small to medium manufacturing locations for use of HE from the altitudes the B-29s could use for daylight bombing, the incendiaries made it possible to essentialy scatter the bomblets over wide swaths of the cities and set large sections on fire. Those fires typicaly merged into massive infernos of fire-storms which would wipe out everything. The residential building and all that light industrial was all intermixed. The manufacturing capability- and a lot of the people who were doing the manufacturing along with the residence of those areas were wiped out.

For one take on the strategy and history of the firebombing campaign, try "A Torch to the Enemy". It was brutal and effective.
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Re: League FTL
Post by Weird Harold   » Sun May 15, 2016 11:45 pm

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Rincewind wrote:In all the posts on this thread there is one point that has not been considered. All your points have been about the League & especially, the SLN, as a whole. What I wonder is about individual systems within the League.


What we know of the SLN R&D state as of Adm Byng's demise:

Storm From The Shadows
Chapter Forty-three wrote:
"Reconnaissance drones," Byng repeated carefully.

"Yes, Sir. I think the Manty destroyers probably deployed them on their way in. Now these new Manties have tapped into them, and they're receiving real-time reconnaissance reports on us."

"I see."

Byng couldn't quite keep his incredulity out of his expression, although he managed to keep it out of his voice. But really! He was willing to concede that the Manties had at least some sort of ship-to-ship FTL communications ability—ONI had tentatively confirmed that much—but to build the same capability into something the size of a recon drone? Not even that stupid lieutenant of Mizawa's had suggested that! Or, at least, Byng didn't think he had, and he suddenly found himself wondering if perhaps he ought to have read those memos for himself rather than simply accepting Thimár's summary of their content.

He brushed that thought firmly aside. There'd be time enough to worry about it later; right now he needed to concentrate on the matter at hand, and he tried—really tried—to consider Mizawa's preposterous notion dispassionately. But no matter how hard he tried, it remained just that: preposterous.
R&D was beginning to experiment with the same FTL technology back home, and unlike many of his fellows, Byng had made it a point to follow at least the unclassified aspects of their efforts. According to them, just the power storage any grav-pulse installation would have required would have been impossible to fit into any drone-sized platform. And that completely ignored the fact that actually generating the pulse in the first place took the equivalent of an all-up impeller node, many times the size of any recon drone ever built!

"I appreciate the warning, Captain," he said after a few moments, choosing his words with some care as he spoke for the benefit of the flag bridge recorders, "but I strongly suspect that the reports about faster-than-light recon drone transmissions have . . . grown in the telling, let's say. As you may know, our own research people"—by which, of course, he meant Battle Fleet's researchers—"have been looking into this alleged capability of the Manties. Our own R and D indicates that it probably is possible, at least on the level of gross communication, but the sort of bandwidth which would be required for any useful reports from something like a recon drone is highly unlikely. And even if it were possible, the energy budget and the sheer mass of the hardware would almost certainly limit it to something the size of a starship."


Later in that conversation, there's also a discussion of missile ranges referencing the size of the Technodyne missiles used in Monica.

The problem with all of the hints we get about SLN, MAlign, or League Member's R&D is that they haven't cracked the size problem. I would guess that individual League Members might be as far advanced with FTL Comm that they're at the level of Haven's drone control LACs as far as miniaturization. The Pulse Repetition Frequency would be low enough that three or four Bit pre-arranged codes are the fastest way of transmitting info. Very much like Morse Code sent by a total novice telegrapher.

Part of cracking the size problem is the energy budget, and I haven't seen any indication that anyone outside the "Haven Sector" (including the Andermani) is even working on that aspect of the problem.
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Answers! I got lots of answers!

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Re: League FTL
Post by Jonathan_S   » Sun May 15, 2016 11:48 pm

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kzt wrote:It's not a story by David. And the timeline doesn't work. And the entire trick shown is trivially obvious. It's like getting inspired by a fire to come up with smoke signals, which 2 years later leads to IPv6 video conferencing over 5Ghz wireless.

Yeah the tone of Hemphill in With One Stone bothered me. Of course wedges are a potential FTL signaling method. The better approach seems like it would have been to muse that the low cyclic rate had rendered most attempts to utilize it tactically of limited benifit; especially as you needed a full ship to signal with at any useful range. Then go on to speculate that the new technologies might let you shrink it into a recon drone or increase the signaling rate into something useful.

If you went that way it doesn't come across like its a revelation that data that propagates at FTL speed could be used for FTL signaling. Instead you understand that everyone knows that, but prior attempt to take advantage of it had come to grief on limits of the existing tech; but now that Honor's actions refocused attention to it you can realize that breakthroughs made for unrelated reasons seem like they might be able to removes those practical limitations.
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Re: League FTL
Post by drinksmuchcoffee   » Mon May 16, 2016 6:14 pm

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kzt wrote:It's not a story by David. And the timeline doesn't work. And the entire trick shown is trivially obvious. It's like getting inspired by a fire to come up with smoke signals, which 2 years later leads to IPv6 video conferencing over 5Ghz wireless.


The first fiber optic cables (1975) had a bandwidth of about 45 mbit/sec. By 2006 that had improved to about 16 terabits/sec. So call it a factor of about 120000 improvement per decade.

Also keep in mind that the idea of fiber optic data transmission was a laboratory curiosity in the late 1960s.

So enormously rapid improvements in bandwidth are possible.
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Re: League FTL
Post by Joat42   » Tue May 17, 2016 4:21 am

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drinksmuchcoffee wrote:
kzt wrote:It's not a story by David. And the timeline doesn't work. And the entire trick shown is trivially obvious. It's like getting inspired by a fire to come up with smoke signals, which 2 years later leads to IPv6 video conferencing over 5Ghz wireless.


The first fiber optic cables (1975) had a bandwidth of about 45 mbit/sec. By 2006 that had improved to about 16 terabits/sec. So call it a factor of about 120000 improvement per decade.

Also keep in mind that the idea of fiber optic data transmission was a laboratory curiosity in the late 1960s.

So enormously rapid improvements in bandwidth are possible.

And the bandwidth improvement is mostly due to new encoding protocols and optical transceivers, the fibers have hardly changed at all.

I think the sticking point with SLN R&D is the huge bureaucracy around it which means it's not particularly efficient and it's further compounded by the NIH-mentality and entrenched scientific thinking. So I don't really expect any technological spurts coming out of the SL, especially regarding FTL comms.

---
Jack of all trades and destructive tinkerer.


Anyone who have simple solutions for complex problems is a fool.
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Re: League FTL
Post by Loren Pechtel   » Tue May 17, 2016 5:04 pm

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pnakasone wrote:Just the sheer amount of resources America was able to dedicate to the Manhattan Project was outstanding.

The SL if it can get its head out of rear and its act together just by the sheer amount of resources can match the RMN in very short time period.


And you can get a baby in a month with 9 women.
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Re: League FTL
Post by cthia   » Tue May 17, 2016 5:12 pm

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Loren Pechtel wrote:
pnakasone wrote:Just the sheer amount of resources America was able to dedicate to the Manhattan Project was outstanding.

The SL if it can get its head out of rear and its act together just by the sheer amount of resources can match the RMN in very short time period.


And you can get a baby in a month with 9 women.

:lol:

You don't want to be swilling hot coffee when you read this one - for you coffee drinkers.

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: League FTL
Post by Louis R   » Wed May 18, 2016 5:06 pm

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And it should be noted that even that only works for a while: the cadence isn't sustainable beyond 9 months.


Loren Pechtel wrote:
pnakasone wrote:Just the sheer amount of resources America was able to dedicate to the Manhattan Project was outstanding.

The SL if it can get its head out of rear and its act together just by the sheer amount of resources can match the RMN in very short time period.


And you can get a baby in a month with 9 women.
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