tlb wrote:It is not just theorizing, Herlander Simões told them that such a drive exists; although he was not working on it, so we do not know how much more he could have said. Also the Detweilers know that it was mentioned, because one of the books has that report getting back to them.
The Detweilers don't count here. They got the report back and they know it to be true, but that's irrelevant from the point of view of the GA.
Simões did give a name to the drive they had theorised after the Strike, so that came to add weight to the theory. But they have to consider the possibility that Simões made it up, or that he was misled by the Alignment into believing such a thing existed.
kzt wrote:Well, sure, it's a lot like on December 8th 1941 the USN decided that Japanese aircraft carriers are a myth.
But that's what the RMN is doing. WTF?
You tell me what is going on.
I'd rather RFC did
What cannot be denied is that someone had very good stealth and managed to penetrate all the security in three different systems (Manticore-A, B, and Yeltsin's Star). Whether they were using a unknown principles on the drive or not is itself not the issue; it's possible that it's using wedges, but somehow the stealth is much, much better than the Alliance thought possible. Since they penetrated three systems' security, it can't have been a simple exploiting of a flaw, because it's unlikely all three would have the same. Unless it was an institutional flaw, but that still leads to revolutionary breakthrough.
Either way, now that they've got sensor readings from the Battle of Galton, and samples from the wreckage, can any of that explain the incursions during the Strike? Could the Hastas with graser missiles have penetrated that deeply? Could any of the ships captured after the battle or scanned during it have escaped detection after their alpha translation? Could those graser missiles have produced the observed beams that struck the four space stations?
And all of this is 2 years after the Strike, 2.5 after the forces would have left their home port, so one should expect to find something that is even better than what was used in the attack.