Did the MBS corner the market on trade?

Galactic Sapper wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Weber's comments about the risk of locking down the MWJ with mass transits suggests that Manticore might regulate ship displacement to avoid lockdowns. If this is true then it is possible that there are some ships operating that are so massive that they have to make their entire journey through hyperspace without ever transiting a wormhole. Possible cargos would be very large fabrication modules that can produce SDs.

This is extremely unlikely, as current warship tonnages are limited by the technical capacity of compensators. Anything much larger than an SD would be effectively unable to move at all, as compensator efficiency drops to zero well below 10 million tons.

I was not referencing warships. I specifically cited a humongous industrial cargo as an example.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:I was not referencing warships. I specifically cited a humongous industrial cargo as an example.

The point stands. I mentioned SDs in particular because they're built to the upper limit of what compensator design can allow. If SDs could be built bigger, they would be.

The thing would not be able to move under its own power, or even be towed, at greater than whatever it's grav plates could compensate. There's a reason Manticore builds modular forts to assemble on site rather than building forts that can then be carried through the junction with something even larger.

I'd have to look up the reference and math it out, but as a ballpark putting a 20 MT fort (plus ~5 MT carrier kinda like a matryoshka doll that fits over the fort) would only lock the Junction down for an hour or so. Annoying but hardly something that can't be scheduled around.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:I was not referencing warships. I specifically cited a humongous industrial cargo as an example.

Galactic Sapper wrote:The point stands. I mentioned SDs in particular because they're built to the upper limit of what compensator design can allow. If SDs could be built bigger, they would be.

The thing would not be able to move under its own power, or even be towed, at greater than whatever it's grav plates could compensate. There's a reason Manticore builds modular forts to assemble on site rather than building forts that can then be carried through the junction with something even larger.

I'd have to look up the reference and math it out, but as a ballpark putting a 20 MT fort (plus ~5 MT carrier kinda like a matryoshka doll that fits over the fort) would only lock the Junction down for an hour or so. Annoying but hardly something that can't be scheduled around.

You are wrong about not being able to move, because forts can move. Forts are just not built with Alpha nodes (probably) and a hyperdrive generator (definitely). But grav plates just limit the max acceleration, not the max size. An SD need not be the largest hyper capable vessel. We are not completely sure how big the Leonard Detweiler clas is going to be. The Pearls even make a brief mention that not all cargo ships have compensators, but do not mention if that is due to size or cost. It is possible that the forts were built in modules, because they wanted to use existing cargo ships; not necessarily because they could not build a transporter.

You may be right about how much is needed to actually lock down a junction for more than an hour. I know that I have gotten that wrong before.

Galactic Sapper wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Weber's comments about the risk of locking down the MWJ with mass transits suggests that Manticore might regulate ship displacement to avoid lockdowns. If this is true then it is possible that there are some ships operating that are so massive that they have to make their entire journey through hyperspace without ever transiting a wormhole. Possible cargos would be very large fabrication modules that can produce SDs.

This is extremely unlikely, as current warship tonnages are limited by the technical capacity of compensators. Anything much larger than an SD would be effectively unable to move at all, as compensator efficiency drops to zero well below 10 million tons.

Anything over the compensator's mass limit can be fitted with grav plates and still move at up to ~150g. The (7MT) Caravan-class freighter's 80% max accel is listed as 152g, so this is clearly adequate for civilian traffic.

munroburton wrote:
Anything over the compensator's mass limit can be fitted with grav plates and still move at up to ~150g. The (7MT) Caravan-class freighter's 80% max accel is listed as 152g, so this is clearly adequate for civilian traffic.

The problem with 150gs being limited by grav plates is the crew still feels 5 gs. Fine for battle maneuvers strapped into a grav couch with anti-grav suits. But hours or days on end? How do you eat, or sleep, or bathe? No, any non-battle maneuvers are limited to 50gs on RMN grav plates, and 100 on MAlign plates, where the crew still has a 1g shirt sleeve environment.

munroburton wrote:Anything over the compensator's mass limit can be fitted with grav plates and still move at up to ~150g. The (7MT) Caravan-class freighter's 80% max accel is listed as 152g, so this is clearly adequate for civilian traffic.

Theemile wrote:The problem with 150gs being limited by grav plates is the crew still feels 5 gs. Fine for battle maneuvers strapped into a grav couch with anti-grav suits. But hours or days on end? How do you eat, or sleep, or bathe? No, any non-battle maneuvers are limited to 50gs on RMN grav plates, and 100 on MAlign plates, where the crew still has a 1g shirt sleeve environment.

Although I agree with you about the problem of felt acceleration, I strongly disagree with the idea that it goes on for days. All space craft only accelerate until they reach the maximum velocity set by particle shielding. Being capable of a higher acceleration just means that the max velocity is reached sooner. A ship that can only handle 50gs will take 10 times longer to do so than a ship that can handle 500gs. It is only during periods of acceleration or deceleration that this limitation is felt; so on a trip of several days the bulk of the time is spent at the velocity set by the shielding at a comfortable environment of 1g.

From background to "The Universe of Honor Harrington" in More than Honor:

No vessel may exceed .6 c in hyper (.8 in normal-space) because radiation and particle shields cannot protect them or their passengers at higher velocities.

tlb wrote:Although I agree with you about the problem of felt acceleration, I strongly disagree with the idea that it goes on for days. All space craft only accelerate until they reach the maximum velocity set by particle shielding. Being capable of a higher acceleration just means that the max velocity is reached sooner. A ship that can only handle 50gs will take 10 times longer to do so than a ship that can handle 500gs. It is only during periods of acceleration or deceleration that this limitation is felt; so on a trip of several days the bulk of the time is spent at the velocity set by the shielding at a comfortable environment of 1g.

From background to "The Universe of Honor Harrington" in More than Honor:

No vessel may exceed .6 c in hyper (.8 in normal-space) because radiation and particle shields cannot protect them or their passengers at higher velocities.

Thata's an easy calculation: 0.6c / (150 * earth gravity). Type that on Google. Answer: 1.415 days or nearly 34 hours. That's acceleration and deceleration, since you don't want to crash translate every time, though you may shave off a couple of hours at the end. And those pairs may not be once per voyage, since you may need to translate down to catch a grav wave or something.

There may be some crews that accept that, but I don't think it's more than a blip in the statistics.

What would make that better would be to have genetically-modified people to tolerate higher accelerations in comfort or to put the crew in semi-stasis while the ship accelerates on its own. The former seems unlikely in the current political context and the latter seems unlikely in the Honorverse.

Also, would a ship without compensators even be able to enter a grav wave? They'd detect them via the Warshawskis, but if they can't enter them, the trips would be much longer. Doesn't seem acceptable for merchant shippers' bottom lines.

Honorverse freighters accelerate at 150 gees because the technology available makes the marginal cost acceptable, not because it would be seriously problematic to accelerate at only one gee. Accelerating at one gee for about one month gets you to 3eex6 m/s or 1/10 cee. This would be an acceptable acceleration and deceleration time for a outside transport intended to transit in the Alpha band.

tlb wrote:Although I agree with you about the problem of felt acceleration, I strongly disagree with the idea that it goes on for days. All space craft only accelerate until they reach the maximum velocity set by particle shielding. Being capable of a higher acceleration just means that the max velocity is reached sooner. A ship that can only handle 50gs will take 10 times longer to do so than a ship that can handle 500gs. It is only during periods of acceleration or deceleration that this limitation is felt; so on a trip of several days the bulk of the time is spent at the velocity set by the shielding at a comfortable environment of 1g.

From background to "The Universe of Honor Harrington" in More than Honor:

No vessel may exceed .6 c in hyper (.8 in normal-space) because radiation and particle shields cannot protect them or their passengers at higher velocities.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:That's an easy calculation: 0.6c / (150 * earth gravity). Type that on Google. Answer: 1.415 days or nearly 34 hours. That's acceleration and deceleration, since you don't want to crash translate every time, though you may shave off a couple of hours at the end. And those pairs may not be once per voyage, since you may need to translate down to catch a grav wave or something.

There may be some crews that accept that, but I don't think it's more than a blip in the statistics.

What would make that better would be to have genetically-modified people to tolerate higher accelerations in comfort or to put the crew in semi-stasis while the ship accelerates on its own. The former seems unlikely in the current political context and the latter seems unlikely in the Honorverse.

Also, would a ship without compensators even be able to enter a grav wave? They'd detect them via the Warshawskis, but if they can't enter them, the trips would be much longer. Doesn't seem acceptable for merchant shippers' bottom lines.

But you do not really want to get to half of that, because .3c is the absolute max velocity to make a transition into hyperspace. I do not remember exactly, but commercial vessels can go past the Beta band.

You only need the sails (which were invented about 100 years before the compensator) and the hyperdrive generator to move through hyperspace. Check the material in More than Honor.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Weber's comments about the risk of locking down the MWJ with mass transits suggests that Manticore might regulate ship displacement to avoid lockdowns. If this is true then it is possible that there are some ships operating that are so massive that they have to make their entire journey through hyperspace without ever transiting a wormhole. Possible cargos would be very large fabrication modules that can produce SDs.

Maybe, but to cause significant lockdowns the transits have to be really large. Let's see, Astro Control mandates a minimum allowed transit interval of 60 seconds; but rarely approach that. Ships up to 6.125 mtons create a lockdown of no more than that. The largest warships we've seen are just under 8.8 mtons; and that mass would would produce a lockdown of just over 2 minutes (124 seconds). Even a 5 minute lockdown requires a transit massing 13.7 mtons; which is well beyond compensator limits - so the ship would have to keep the accel low enough to handle with grav plates. [15 min: 27.72 mtons; 30 min: 33.54 mtons; 45 min: 41.08 mtons] And 47.45 mtons would lock it down for an hour; which probably is more than Manticore would routinely allow - but it also several times the size of a fortress; at that point you're moving large stations in a single piece.

So I doubt ships so large that they'd lock a Junction leg down excessively are all that likely in the Honorverse.