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SPOILER SEASON IS OVER FOR TEiF!!!

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Re: SPOILER SEASON IS OVER FOR TEiF!!!
Post by Theemile   » Fri Dec 03, 2021 5:39 pm

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Jonathan_S wrote:Well they were certainly intended to be self-sufficient. And the ones that survived until the point interstellar trade became economically certainly proved that they had been self-sufficient.

But there was probably at least one failed colony where, despite their plans, they weren't able to remain self-sufficient and simply died off before hyperspace travel became safe.


Well, yeah!

Which is why a colony expedition should mitigate those issues by not waking people up until the food production facilities and industry is up and running to a self-sustaining level. They should wake up people in phases, those who are needed to set those up, and carefully examine the surplus and backup plans before moving to the next phase.

The expeditions that wake up everyone within a month of arriving aren't very well-planned.

Calvin's expedition, for having no suitable diversion plans, was very poorly planned. Why the hell did they even decelerate into the system? Grayson was another nut-job. Manticore almost failed over the Plague Years. And the New Berlin colony prior to Gustav Anderman is another example. Darwin is almost surely rolling in his tomb for those people having survived...

Beowulf and Haven on the other hand appear to have been very well-planned and successful at that.


Calvin's expedition was also one of the first handful of expeditions (iirc #2 or 3), and it was definitely stretching the tech to go that far.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: SPOILER SEASON IS OVER FOR TEiF!!!
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Fri Dec 03, 2021 6:13 pm

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Theemile wrote:Calvin's expedition was also one of the first handful of expeditions (iirc #2 or 3), and it was definitely stretching the tech to go that far.


Very likely. Dark Fall says:
Dark Fall wrote:But on the day the transmission confirming the Beowulf Expedition’s safe landing in their destination star system, her son Angus had begun the countdown for Calvin’s Hope’s launch.

Now, four hundred and two years later, the great-great-grandchildren of that ship’s crew had reached their destination.


That day was 135 years after the Beowulf Expedition launched. It's not necessarily the second expedition, because 135 years + countdown is a long time to wait. There might have been a few more in that time. One of the Anthology stories during this epoch talks about how expeditions are being launched all the time, but I think that's a bit later.

But the problem is that they waited for Beowulf so they knew what had worked for Beowulf. They also had 135 years more of technological progress.

The text does talk about contingency:
Dark Page wrote:“Our reserve will carry us another seventy-five years—maybe ninety, if we stretch it hard and start winding our population down pretty damned quickly—and that’s about it.” She smiled without any humor at all. “I’m sure three quarters of a century seemed like an ample safety margin to the mission planners.”

“And it should’ve been,” Seong Cho Mee, the ship’s logistics manager pointed out. She shook her head. “No one could have predicted this, Shirley!”


The problem I see is that nowhere in their contingencies did they plan to redirect to another system. For all the extra century of contingency, they seem to have had a single point of failure on the Calvin System. If that system had proven unsuitable for life (and it did), there was little they could do.

At least for Manticore, they had a survey ship there and back again, so they had a full report. The problem was that the local fauna was too compatible with human life. Calvin had no such thing: they launched the first moment they could. Maybe Angelique and Angus Calvin were reckless, maybe they simply had no choice.
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Re: SPOILER SEASON IS OVER FOR TEiF!!!
Post by Theemile   » Mon Dec 06, 2021 10:52 am

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Theemile wrote:Calvin's expedition was also one of the first handful of expeditions (iirc #2 or 3), and it was definitely stretching the tech to go that far.


Very likely. Dark Fall says:
Dark Fall wrote:But on the day the transmission confirming the Beowulf Expedition’s safe landing in their destination star system, her son Angus had begun the countdown for Calvin’s Hope’s launch.

Now, four hundred and two years later, the great-great-grandchildren of that ship’s crew had reached their destination.


That day was 135 years after the Beowulf Expedition launched. It's not necessarily the second expedition, because 135 years + countdown is a long time to wait. There might have been a few more in that time. One of the Anthology stories during this epoch talks about how expeditions are being launched all the time, but I think that's a bit later.

But the problem is that they waited for Beowulf so they knew what had worked for Beowulf. They also had 135 years more of technological progress.

The text does talk about contingency:
Dark Page wrote:“Our reserve will carry us another seventy-five years—maybe ninety, if we stretch it hard and start winding our population down pretty damned quickly—and that’s about it.” She smiled without any humor at all. “I’m sure three quarters of a century seemed like an ample safety margin to the mission planners.”

“And it should’ve been,” Seong Cho Mee, the ship’s logistics manager pointed out. She shook her head. “No one could have predicted this, Shirley!”


The problem I see is that nowhere in their contingencies did they plan to redirect to another system. For all the extra century of contingency, they seem to have had a single point of failure on the Calvin System. If that system had proven unsuitable for life (and it did), there was little they could do.

At least for Manticore, they had a survey ship there and back again, so they had a full report. The problem was that the local fauna was too compatible with human life. Calvin had no such thing: they launched the first moment they could. Maybe Angelique and Angus Calvin were reckless, maybe they simply had no choice.


In Beginnings, there was a financial meltdown just after the Beowulf expedition left, and there were no follow on expeditions for quite a time (75 years?). I'm probably misremembering the Calvin story because David rewrote it several times with us repeatedly pointing out the timing errors (like being a cryo ship before cryo being invented, leaving in the middle of the period when no ships left Earth, etc.). So, I might be wrong on the expedition #, but it was still early in the process, and 400 light years (vs 40 for Beowulf) without Hyper scouting was really audacious.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: SPOILER SEASON IS OVER FOR TEiF!!!
Post by Jonathan_S   » Mon Dec 06, 2021 11:01 am

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Theemile wrote:
In Beginnings, there was a financial meltdown just after the Beowulf expedition left, and there were no follow on expeditions for quite a time (75 years?). I'm probably misremembering the Calvin story because David rewrote it several times with us repeatedly pointing out the timing errors (like being a cryo ship before cryo being invented, leaving in the middle of the period when no ships left Earth, etc.). So, I might be wrong on the expedition #, but it was still early in the process, and 400 light years (vs 40 for Beowulf) without Hyper scouting was really audacious.

Didn't one of the early snippets actually talk about them having a hyper scout's survey report (centuries before the invention of the hyper drive)?
Thankfully there was time for it to get rewritten to address such issues.
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Re: SPOILER SEASON IS OVER FOR TEiF!!!
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Mon Dec 06, 2021 6:25 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:Didn't one of the early snippets actually talk about them having a hyper scout's survey report (centuries before the invention of the hyper drive)?
Thankfully there was time for it to get rewritten to address such issues.


I don't know, I've never seen Dark Page early snippets. The final text has no such thing, as you say.

Anyway, like Austin Grayson later, Angelique Calvin was trying to launch at all costs to leave Earth behind. It's not surprising they gave themselves no second option. What's surprising is that someone actually survived.
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Re: SPOILER SEASON IS OVER FOR TEiF!!!
Post by Theemile   » Wed Dec 08, 2021 12:16 pm

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Jonathan_S wrote:Didn't one of the early snippets actually talk about them having a hyper scout's survey report (centuries before the invention of the hyper drive)?
Thankfully there was time for it to get rewritten to address such issues.


I don't know, I've never seen Dark Page early snippets. The final text has no such thing, as you say.

Anyway, like Austin Grayson later, Angelique Calvin was trying to launch at all costs to leave Earth behind. It's not surprising they gave themselves no second option. What's surprising is that someone actually survived.


Hey - the original copy is still there:
http://forums.davidweber.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8822&p=246162&hilit=calvin%27s+hope#p246162

This original version gave the wrong date of the Beowulf expedition departure, left during the previously stated departure void, was the #2 expedition, Calvin III had been hyper scouted years before hyper was invented, and was a cryoexpedition >250 years before the process was perfected.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
Top
Re: SPOILER SEASON IS OVER FOR TEiF!!!
Post by cthia   » Thu Dec 23, 2021 7:09 am

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Did textev ever give the population of the Inner Onion? Because if the Onion's population is low enough, you would have to expect that the MA would assign a specially built LD as the Onion's command post and escape vehicle ...

ONION ONE

Did all of Houdini's people end up on Galton???

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: SPOILER SEASON IS OVER FOR TEiF!!!
Post by tlb   » Thu Dec 23, 2021 9:30 am

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cthia wrote:Did all of Houdini's people end up on Galton???

We know that the MacBryde brother and his girlfriend (Gail?) ended at Darius. I would expect most to go to Darius, to limit the outside information going to Galton.

But wouldn't that also be suspicious? If they can work out prominent names of people in Houdini, then anyone who did not arrive at Galton is someone who went elsewhere.
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Re: SPOILER SEASON IS OVER FOR TEiF!!!
Post by cthia   » Thu Dec 23, 2021 11:36 am

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tlb wrote:
cthia wrote:Did all of Houdini's people end up on Galton???

We know that the MacBryde brother and his girlfriend (Gail?) ended at Darius. I would expect most to go to Darius, to limit the outside information going to Galton.

But wouldn't that also be suspicious? If they can work out prominent names of people in Houdini, then anyone who did not arrive at Galton is someone who went elsewhere.

Thanks for the correction. They all went to Darius and not Galton.

About Gail. Is that the same Gail Weiss who had been gaming out tactical scenarios for System Alpha / Galton? What was her expertise when she was on Mesa, that she would be a proper fit for Tactical Analysis 3 in the Darius System?

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: SPOILER SEASON IS OVER FOR TEiF!!!
Post by phillies   » Thu Dec 23, 2021 2:38 pm

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It is not obvious that you actually need to go there to find habitable planets. Space telescopes like the Webb and Hubble, and a few generations beyond, will do that for you.

Jonathan_S wrote:
Theemile wrote:
In Beginnings, there was a financial meltdown just after the Beowulf expedition left, and there were no follow on expeditions for quite a time (75 years?). I'm probably misremembering the Calvin story because David rewrote it several times with us repeatedly pointing out the timing errors (like being a cryo ship before cryo being invented, leaving in the middle of the period when no ships left Earth, etc.). So, I might be wrong on the expedition #, but it was still early in the process, and 400 light years (vs 40 for Beowulf) without Hyper scouting was really audacious.

Didn't one of the early snippets actually talk about them having a hyper scout's survey report (centuries before the invention of the hyper drive)?
Thankfully there was time for it to get rewritten to address such issues.
Top

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