SLN, and MAlign playing catch up with Manticoran superiority

penny wrote:So yes, I will stand by own assessment that such a huge amount of energy would destroy a ship without something to protect that ship. In hyper that is the sails. In n-space the “phased array” of the wedge protects warships.

But the LD “grabs a hold” of a very powerful concentrated band of gravity with a very concentrated beam of gravity. And get this. It holds onto it!

In n-space an LD has no wedge or sails to blunt the flow of energy!


And the LD has the nerve to open this flow of energy from hyperspace from within the hyper limit, which seems to be highly frowned upon at the risk of death and dismemberment of ones members.

The wedge exerts many times more pressure on the alpha wall than the spider drive does. So much so that the wall is "bent" and energy flows through it from the Alpha band (according to the author), while the spider drive exerts so little than it does not even cause a detectable ripple (also according to the author). So why do you want to insist that the spider drive creates a flow of energy from the Alpha band? A flow of energy that you believe will cause damage to the spider drive ship. Isn't it simpler to just believe that the spider drive does NOT create an energy flow, unlike the very much stronger wedge?

penny wrote:So yes, I will stand by own assessment that such a huge amount of energy would destroy a ship without something to protect that ship. In hyper that is the sails. In n-space the “phased array” of the wedge protects warships.

But the LD “grabs a hold” of a very powerful concentrated band of gravity with a very concentrated beam of gravity. And get this. It holds onto it!

In n-space an LD has no wedge or sails to blunt the flow of energy!


And the LD has the nerve to open this flow of energy from hyperspace from within the hyper limit, which seems to be highly frowned upon at the risk of death and dismemberment of ones members.

tlb wrote:The wedge exerts many times more pressure on the alpha wall than the spider drive does. So much so that the wall is "bent" and energy flows through it from the Alpha band (according to the author), while the spider drive exerts so little than it does not even cause a detectable ripple (also according to the author). So why do you want to insist that the spider drive creates a flow of energy from the Alpha band? A flow of energy that you believe will cause damage to the spider drive ship. Isn't it simpler to just believe that the spider drive does NOT create an energy flow, unlike the very much stronger wedge?

Jonathan _S wrote:Again, the LD's drive is explicitely said not to create the "bent" space which is the only known mechanism to cause power to be siphoned from the higher hyper band -- nor are we told the form of that energy. There is, as far as I can see, no basis in the text or RFC's posts to say that the LD opens this flow of energy.

Yes there is. Again, the LD's tractors create powerful beams of gravity that are powerful enough to punch holes through local space. The gravity beams attach themselves to the alpha wall. If the alpha wall is not gravity what else could it be? You know. Sam Kinison says SAY IT! SAY IT! SAY IT!

It has to be gravity. Again ...

Gravity reacts with gravity waves

IOW, "gravitationally conductive cable" is projected into a region of hyperspace. If hyperspace contains no energy, where does that leave the LD?

Energy is released from hyper in the LDs case.

penny wrote:Yes there is. Again, the LD's tractors create powerful beams of gravity that are powerful enough to punch holes through local space. The gravity beams attach themselves to the alpha wall. If the alpha wall is not gravity what else could it be? You know. Sam Kinison says SAY IT! SAY IT! SAY IT!

Why would it have to be gravity? Why would gravity attract to gravity? It's like saying light creates light or attracts to other light: it doesn't. In fact, two beams of light crossing each other will continue undisturbed. EM fields interact with charge, not other EM fields.

If it weren't for the fact that the tractors can grab onto it, I'd have called the walls simple energy barriers. Like the gap you described between the wall outlet and the TV plug: there's a "wall" between the electrons on either side, but a sufficiently strong electric field could jump over it. Interestingly, this may also create a siphon effect, because now there is an ionised path of much lower electrical resistance.

But the tractors can grab onto it, so it has to be something physical.

Gravity reacts with gravity waves

No, it doesn't.

IOW, "gravitationally conductive cable" is projected into a region of hyperspace. If hyperspace contains no energy, where does that leave the LD?

Energy is released from hyper in the LDs case.

But you're assuming that you've connected to the higher energy domain in the first place. You can use a hose to climb a dam or move laterally along it without water draining through it: you don't need to go over the top to reach the water there or through the dam. You can use pickaxes on the dam too and move yourself alongside it, without puncturing the dam and water flowing through the holes.

Where are we going with this, anyway? Why would it matter if the LD can get energy from hyperspace or can't?

penny wrote:If hyperspace contains no energy, where does that leave the LD?

No one is disputing that the Alpha band contains energy, so I assume you meant "If there is no energy transfer from hyperspace, where does that leave the LD?". The answer is that the LD then behaves the same as the Ghost or Shark class ships, which were created as training ships for the LD.

penny wrote:Yes there is. Again, the LD's tractors create powerful beams of gravity that are powerful enough to punch holes through local space. The gravity beams attach themselves to the alpha wall. If the alpha wall is not gravity what else could it be? You know. Sam Kinison says SAY IT! SAY IT! SAY IT!

It has to be gravity. Again ...

Gravity reacts with gravity waves

IOW, "gravitationally conductive cable" is projected into a region of hyperspace. If hyperspace contains no energy, where does that leave the LD?

Energy is released from hyper in the LDs case.

Technically the text says the spider drive nodes project "spurs or spikes of intensely focused gravity"; not "beams". But that might be quibbling.

I can't find any place in the books where it explicitely says regular tractor (or presser) beams are gravity based -- though it does seem logical. And they probably are because the MoH goes on to say "For all intents and purposes, each of those spurs was almost like generating a tractor or a presser beam"

That said, gravity acts on everything - that's kind of it's thing . Tractor and pressor beams certainly work on physical objects -- not gravity.

And the Alpha wall (or any hyper wall) works just like RFC says it does (or in this case stays silent about). It just doesn't logically follow that a gravity spur can only grab a gravity effect.

And since we're told the spider drive isn't even powerful enough to create the kind of ripple the RMN uses for FTL comms - it seems like not only is is vastly weaker than a wedge but it's also vastly weaker than a Hermes buoy. (And I hope you aren't going to claim that those pull down energy from hyperspace)

Jonathan_S wrote:I can't find any place in the books where it explicitely says regular tractor (or presser) beams are gravity based -- though it does seem logical. And they probably are because the MoH goes on to say "For all intents and purposes, each of those spurs was almost like generating a tractor or a presser beam"

It seems like the only possible answer because the only other force we know of that can act at a distance is electromagnetism (the weak and strong nuclear forces only really act in ranges comparable to an atomic nucleus, though some sci-fi settings have used long-ranged weak nuclear force disruption as a weapon principle). And we know that electromagnetism won't attract everything equally. You can try this experiment at home: pick up a fridge magnet and try to stick it to a wooden kitchen cabinet.

I suppose that under an intense enough EM field, everything may turn ferromagnetic... but I wouldn't want to have any sensitive electronics around. Or any electronics at all, whether sensitive or not. Come to think of it, probably not anything metallic.

Jonathan_S wrote:Technically the text says the spider drive nodes project "spurs or spikes of intensely focused gravity"; not "beams". But that might be quibbling.

I can't find any place in the books where it explicitely says regular tractor (or presser) beams are gravity based -- though it does seem logical. And they probably are because the MoH goes on to say "For all intents and purposes, each of those spurs was almost like generating a tractor or a presser beam"

That said, gravity acts on everything

If we don't accept that it just works and begin to ask why does it work, then we could also ask how a gravity beam could work as either a tractor or a pressor beam. A tractor beam can hold something at a fixed distance and a pressor beam can push things away, but gravity only wants to pull things together. So in what way can a gravity beam push something away or hold it at a fixed distance without using additional beams?

tlb wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Technically the text says the spider drive nodes project "spurs or spikes of intensely focused gravity"; not "beams". But that might be quibbling.

I can't find any place in the books where it explicitely says regular tractor (or presser) beams are gravity based -- though it does seem logical. And they probably are because the MoH goes on to say "For all intents and purposes, each of those spurs was almost like generating a tractor or a presser beam"

That said, gravity acts on everything

If we don't accept that it just works and begin to ask why does it work, then we could also ask how a gravity beam could work as either a tractor or a pressor beam. A tractor beam can hold something at a fixed distance and a pressor beam can push things away, but gravity only wants to pull things together. So in what way can a gravity beam push something away or hold it at a fixed distance without using additional beams?

Or how tractors seem to be able to pretty tightly focus their attraction.

Remember just before Honor and her armsmen are attacked at Regiano she's not sure if the platform they're dining on is being held up be countergrav or tractors. Tractors wouldn't seem to be a possibility if they couldn't be very narrowly aimed - since if they zoned the whole platform you'd presumably be in zero-g as the attractive force of the tractors perfectly countered the pull of gravity. (Or at the very least you'd be able to feel weird tugs as a tractor/pressor set tried to hold the whole thing at a fixed distance)

I'd suspect they'd only be a possible method for that if they could carefully hit just, say, the corners -- area where the patrons and staff wouldn't be walking into the beams.

tlb wrote:If we don't accept that it just works and begin to ask why does it work, then we could also ask how a gravity beam could work as either a tractor or a pressor beam. A tractor beam can hold something at a fixed distance and a pressor beam can push things away, but gravity only wants to pull things together. So in what way can a gravity beam push something away or hold it at a fixed distance without using additional beams?

Countergrav.

A somewhat serious comment.
We all postulate this and that in RFC's fictional universe. Ever consider the old saw that in an infinite universe anything that can be concieved will eventually happen? The example is that a troop of monkeys randomly typing on typewriters will at some point print out every one of Shakespeare's plays perfectly?
Another is that a group identical to your family will be picknicing on a verdant hillside, that will suddenly collapse exposing a tunnel full of hungry tigers. In infinity it will occur infinite times.
So Honor lives somewhere, having the same adventures as we are reading about.