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Lord Breakwater

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Re: Lord Breakwater
Post by Theemile   » Mon May 09, 2022 11:34 am

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Jonathan_S wrote:
tlb wrote:I did not realize that RFC refuses to discuss this story as being the source of FTL communication. In that case, we only have David Weber and Eric Flint as authors of that part of the Honorverse inhabited by Honor Harrington herself.

It's not a horrible story -- but the phrasing of the conclusion rubbed me the wrong way.

Every engineer or scientist for the last 7 centuries who'd given even a passing through to the holy grail of faster than light communication would have jumped at the impeller wedge and Warshawski detector as the logical basis.

Right after Warshawski realized that her detector was seeing updated from impeller wedges at faster than light (which should have been almost immediately) there would have been an inevitable rush of scientists and engineers trying to turn that discovery into a workable FTL com system -- though they obviously failed. (Probably due to the size, cost, and performance limits of impeller nodes of the day -- but it's also possible the detection range on the original Warshawskis would have make for impractically short ranged FTL even if a useable data rate had been possible)


So Hempill's "revelation" shouldn't have been written as if Honor was the first person in history to realize you could use a signal that traveled faster than light to send data faster than light. But it was written like that (before she pondering how the new tech being developed might be turned to the problem of making this more practical). And that bugged me.

Instead I feel that it should have been written as Hemphill musing on how everyone had long ago given FTL comms up as one of those things that the engineering (for a practical version) just wasn't doable, despite the underlying physics being sound, but now that she's reminded of it there is all that new tech that might be turned to finally making it a practical reality.


I felt the same way, but my issue was also the timing. Honor didn't get the CA fearless until very late 1900/early 1901. According to the story, she had at least 1 cruise on the new Fearless with Cardones, before the story happened. Cardones is returned to the Farless in time for the early 1902 trip to Grayson - with early FTL drones.

Hemphill would have had to come up with a new drone design (or find a way to modify the existing hardware), iron out the details, produce the new hardware and distribute it (and the control software and training) fleet wide inside of 6 months during peace time for Honor to have it in HoQ. And this is a navy that is "cheap", not wanting to expend expensive drones or missiles.

It definitely wasn't a simple rebuild of an existing drone, as i suggested it might - from HoQ:
“Basically, Admiral,” he said, “it’s a reversion to old-fashioned Morse code. Our new-generation RDs carry an extra gravity generator which they use to create extremely powerful directional pulses. Since gravitic sensors are FTL, we have effective real-time receipt across their maximum range.”
“That’s brilliant,” a captain with Office of Shipbuilding insignia murmured. Then he frowned. “And difficult, I’d imagine.”
“It certainly is,” McKeon said feelingly. “The power requirement is enormous—our people had to develop an entire new generation of fusion plants to pull it off—and that’s only the first problem. Designing a pulse grav generator and packing it into the drone body came next. As you can probably imagine, it uses up a lot more mass than a drive unit, and it was a monster to engineer. And there are certain fundamental limitations on the system. Most importantly, it takes time for the generator to produce each pulse without burning itself out, which places an insurmountable limit on the data transmission speed. At present, we can only manage a pulse repetition rate of about nine-point-five seconds. Obviously, it’s going to take us a while to transmit any complex messages at that rate.”


That suggests years worth of effort by multiple teams and disciplines, and multiple design iterations to me, not a quick redesign and deployment inside of 6 months.
Last edited by Theemile on Mon May 09, 2022 4:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Lord Breakwater
Post by kzt   » Mon May 09, 2022 11:58 am

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tlb wrote:Do you mean Charles (no last name) from With One Stone by Timothy Zahn? Which showed the preliminary idea for FTL communication? I should have included that as a canon story as well.

No, it isn't. Everyone already understood how to use the wedge for basic signalling. It's like crediting Georgy Zhukov as the father of tank warfare. You'll also notice there has been no further development of system capable of knocking down single layer wedges. You might ask 'what has single layer wedges besides merchant ships?'

Missiles.
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Re: Lord Breakwater
Post by kzt   » Mon May 09, 2022 12:03 pm

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Stirling's stores are worthwhile. Now that I think of it, I'm not sure he did two, but the one I'm thinking of is worthwhile.
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Re: Lord Breakwater
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Mon May 09, 2022 12:56 pm

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Theemile wrote:Hemphill would have had to come up with a new drone design (or find a way to modify the existing hardware), iron out the details, produce the new hardware and distribute it (and the control software and training) fleet wide inside of 6 months during peace time for Honor to have it in HoQ. And this is a navy that is "cheap", not wanting to expend expensive drones or missiles.


In which case, the conclusion of the story should have been written as Hemphill thinking "I know something you don't."
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Re: Lord Breakwater
Post by Jonathan_S   » Mon May 09, 2022 3:37 pm

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Theemile wrote:I felt the same way, but my issue was also the timing. Honor didn't get the CA fearless until very late 1900/early 1901. According to the story, she had at least 1 cruise on the new Fearless with Cardones, before the story happened. Cardones is returned to the Farless in time for the early 1902 trip to Grayson - with early FTL drones.

Hemphill would have had to come up with a new drone design (or find a way to modify the existing hardware), iron out the details, produce the new hardware and distribute it (and the control software and training) fleet wide inside of 6 months during peace time for Honor to have it in HoQ. And this is a navy that is "cheap", not wanting to expend expensive drones or missiles.

Damn -- I'd overlooked that. Now I'm also annoyed at the timing :D
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Re: Lord Breakwater
Post by tlb   » Mon May 09, 2022 4:55 pm

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kzt wrote:Stirling's stores are worthwhile. Now that I think of it, I'm not sure he did two, but the one I'm thinking of is worthwhile.

You are right; I cannot find a second (Mission of Honor is my last searchable text), but obviously "A Whiff of Grapeshot" is very much canon. The Honorverse fan Wiki lists it as his only input to the series.
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Re: Lord Breakwater
Post by Robert_A_Woodward   » Tue May 10, 2022 1:32 am

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Jonathan_S wrote:
Theemile wrote:I felt the same way, but my issue was also the timing. Honor didn't get the CA fearless until very late 1900/early 1901. According to the story, she had at least 1 cruise on the new Fearless with Cardones, before the story happened. Cardones is returned to the Farless in time for the early 1902 trip to Grayson - with early FTL drones.

Hemphill would have had to come up with a new drone design (or find a way to modify the existing hardware), iron out the details, produce the new hardware and distribute it (and the control software and training) fleet wide inside of 6 months during peace time for Honor to have it in HoQ. And this is a navy that is "cheap", not wanting to expend expensive drones or missiles.

Damn -- I'd overlooked that. Now I'm also annoyed at the timing :D


To begin with, the recon drones (with 1st generation grav com) introduced in _Honor of the Queen_ had to have been in production testing months before _HotQ_ and probably had to be in design at the time of _On Basilisk Station_.
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Re: Lord Breakwater
Post by Theemile   » Tue May 10, 2022 8:31 am

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Robert_A_Woodward wrote:
To begin with, the recon drones (with 1st generation grav com) introduced in _Honor of the Queen_ had to have been in production testing months before _HotQ_ and probably had to be in design at the time of _On Basilisk Station_.


Yeah, that was my point, and the text from HoQ makes the system engineering out to be a monster (new gen of fusion plant for starters). There is no way to fit it into the time frame cleanly.
******
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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