Honorverse ramblings and musings

Brigade XO wrote:I suspect that true commercial use of Streak Drive would start with higher value/perishable cargos and not get into the general bulk ships for a long time.

kzt wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Still knowing something can be done is a strong motivator for figuring out how; and having Simones to provide assistance should speed work along nicely.

We've had the basic theory for how to make a fusion reactor for 60 years, and we are still "30 years away" from having one work. So sometimes there is a lot more complexity to the engineering than the science.

Jonathan_S wrote:To nitpick we've had plenty of reactors that can create nuclear fusion - you can even build one as a table-top science project (Farnsworth-Hirsch fusor). What none of them has managed to do yet is produce more usable energy than it takes to run them.

cthia wrote:With ownership of the MWJ network, hitting their heads against the Iota and Kappa walls just isn't such a pressing need.

Also, the MAlign wanted and needed to keep the discovery a secret -- hence, a dispatch boat of normal size. I don't suppose there's any reason the technology cannot be applied to freighters? Which would limit shipping times during legs where junctions aren't available. Yet I don't suppose it would cut shipping times for some non perishable shipments on certain routes enough to forego the more expensive junction costs, therefore a Machiavellian motive for Manticoran interests not to want to pursue the research.

Jonathan_S wrote:Unless the breakthroughs that make a Streak Drive capable of accessing the kappa bands also made it more economical to operate and maintain than a normal military hyper generator I doubt we'll see general adoption of streak drive into merchant service -- even after it's declassified.

The streak drive hyper generator does give you 1.45 faster transit than a military grade (Theta band capable) hyper generator. But if it wasn't cost effective for most merchants to upgrade to the 2.29x faster military grade (compared to their Delta band capable merchant hyper generator) I don't think the upgrade from 2.29x to 3.33x will be enough to tip the scales.

Especially since something described as a brute force solution, and that we know to be larger (and presumably more complex overall) is likely more expensive to build, operate, and maintain than the current military hyper generators.


Some civilian ships will jump at the chance, but most will likely remain happily plodding along in the Delta bands. (Unless, as some here have speculated, spin-off knowledge from the Streak Drive allows 'free' improvements to merchant hyper generator design; allowing access to Epsilon or Zeta bands with a generator having basically the same total cost of ownership as the current Delta band designs)

Jonathan_S wrote:

Potato wrote:Exactly. Here is an even older discussion (specifically point C):

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/si ... ngton/67/1

But in the case of the Streak Drive the MAlign was the one to reap the benefits of synthesizing various breakthroughs in (apparently) unrelated fields to enabled them to build on those to a successful breach of the Iota wall.

To some extent it's because they were looking, but they still (it seems) couldn't have done it without other people's breakthroughs.


But those breakthroughs sound like they were pretty recent, at a time when Manticore was fixated on the looming war with Haven; if not actually fighting it -- and were focusing their R&D on Project Gram (which eventually gave them the Ghost Rider family of tech). If not for that they might have already noticed the applicability of those disparate breakthroughs to the problem of improving hyper generators.

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:But in the case of the Streak Drive the MAlign was the one to reap the benefits of synthesizing various breakthroughs in (apparently) unrelated fields to enabled them to build on those to a successful breach of the Iota wall.

To some extent it's because they were looking, but they still (it seems) couldn't have done it without other people's breakthroughs.


But those breakthroughs sound like they were pretty recent, at a time when Manticore was fixated on the looming war with Haven; if not actually fighting it -- and were focusing their R&D on Project Gram (which eventually gave them the Ghost Rider family of tech). If not for that they might have already noticed the applicability of those disparate breakthroughs to the problem of improving hyper generators.

Yet we don't know if a Manticoran path of a "brute force" approach wouldn't have led to an alternate more readily available solution perhaps even more efficient, akin to everyone overlooking Grayson's solution of fusion reactors.

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:But in the case of the Streak Drive the MAlign was the one to reap the benefits of synthesizing various breakthroughs in (apparently) unrelated fields to enabled them to build on those to a successful breach of the Iota wall.

To some extent it's because they were looking, but they still (it seems) couldn't have done it without other people's breakthroughs.

But those breakthroughs sound like they were pretty recent, at a time when Manticore was fixated on the looming war with Haven; if not actually fighting it -- and were focusing their R&D on Project Gram (which eventually gave them the Ghost Rider family of tech). If not for that they might have already noticed the applicability of those disparate breakthroughs to the problem of improving hyper generators.

Yet we don't know if a Manticoran path of a "brute force" approach wouldn't have led to an alternate more readily available solution perhaps even more efficient, akin to everyone overlooking Grayson's solution of fusion reactors.

The Honor of the Queen, Chapter 5 wrote:Old-fashioned electric arc and laser welders glared and sputtered, despite the wastefulness of such primitive, energy-intensive techniques compared to modern chem-catalyst welders. Hard-suited construction crews heaved massive frame members around, overcoming mass and momentum by brute muscle power without the tractor/counter-grav exo-suits Manticoran workers would have used as a matter of course, and it took her a while to realize (and even longer to accept) that some of them were using rivet guns. The local orbital power receptors were huge and clumsy and looked none too efficient, and her sensors said at least half the structures out there were using fission power plants! Fission plants weren’t just old-fashioned; they were dangerous technical antiques, and their presence baffled her. The original Church of Humanity’s colony ship had used fusion power, so why were the colonists’ descendants using fission power nine hundred years later?

The Honor of the Queen, Chapter 14 wrote:Grayson fusion plants were four times as massive as modern reactors of similar output (which was why they still used so many fission plants), and their military hardware was equally out of date—they still used printed circuits, with enormous mass penalties and catastrophic consequences for designed lifetimes—though there were a few unexpected surprises in their mixed technological bag. For example, the Grayson Navy had quite literally invented its own inertial compensator thirty T-years ago because it hadn’t been able to get anyone else to explain how it was done. It was a clumsy, bulky thing, thanks to the components they had to use, but from what he’d seen of its stats, it might just be marginally more efficient than Manticore’s.

Echoes of Honor, Chapter 3 wrote:Three sets of eyebrows flew up as one, and Truman smiled thinly. Humanity had abandoned fission power as soon as reliable fusion plants became available. Not only had fusion posed less of a radiation danger, but hydrogen was one hell of a lot easier and safer (and cheaper) than fissionables to process. And, Truman knew, Old Earth's Neo-Luddite lunatics, who'd been doing their level best to abolish the very concept of technology as somehow inherently evil about the time fusion power first came along, had managed to brand fission power with the number of the beast as the emblem of all that was destructive and vile. Indeed, the rush to fusion had been something much more akin to a stampede, and unlike most of the claptrap the Neo-Luddites had spouted, fission power's evil reputation had stuck. Contemporary journalists had taken the negatives for granted at the time, since "everyone knew" they were true, and no popular historian had been particularly interested in reconsidering the evidence since, especially not when the technology was obsolete, anyway. So for most of the human race, the very concept of fission power was something out of a dark, primitive, vaguely dangerous, and only dimly remembered past.
"Yes, I said 'fission,'" Truman told them after giving them most of a minute to absorb it, "and it's another thing we've adapted from the Graysons. Unlike the rest of the galaxy, they still use fission plants, although they've reduced their reliance on them steadily for the last thirty or forty years. But Grayson—and, for that matter, Yeltsin's asteroid belts, as well—are lousy in heavy metals . . . and fissionables. They'd bootstrapped their way back to fission power by the time of their Civil War, and by the time the rest of us stumbled across them again and reintroduced them to fusion, they'd taken their fission technology to levels of efficiency no one else had ever attained. So when we added modern, lightweight antiradiation composites and rad fields to what they already had, we were able to produce a plant which was even smaller—and considerably more powerful—than anything they'd come up with on their own.

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:But in the case of the Streak Drive the MAlign was the one to reap the benefits of synthesizing various breakthroughs in (apparently) unrelated fields to enabled them to build on those to a successful breach of the Iota wall.

To some extent it's because they were looking, but they still (it seems) couldn't have done it without other people's breakthroughs.

But those breakthroughs sound like they were pretty recent, at a time when Manticore was fixated on the looming war with Haven; if not actually fighting it -- and were focusing their R&D on Project Gram (which eventually gave them the Ghost Rider family of tech). If not for that they might have already noticed the applicability of those disparate breakthroughs to the problem of improving hyper generators.

Yet we don't know if a Manticoran path of a "brute force" approach wouldn't have led to an alternate more readily available solution perhaps even more efficient, akin to everyone overlooking Grayson's solution of fusion reactors.

Vince wrote:Grayson's more efficient solutions were in inertial compensators and to a lessor extent, fission reactors (which still required Manticoran engineering to make practicable for LACs as opposed to fixed installations), not fusion reactors. One of the reasons they advanced fission power further than Old Earth ever did was they regressed technologically--their fusion reactor tech at the time of The Honor of the Queen was much cruder, to point that:

The Honor of the Queen, Chapter 5 wrote:Old-fashioned electric arc and laser welders glared and sputtered, despite the wastefulness of such primitive, energy-intensive techniques compared to modern chem-catalyst welders. Hard-suited construction crews heaved massive frame members around, overcoming mass and momentum by brute muscle power without the tractor/counter-grav exo-suits Manticoran workers would have used as a matter of course, and it took her a while to realize (and even longer to accept) that some of them were using rivet guns. The local orbital power receptors were huge and clumsy and looked none too efficient, and her sensors said at least half the structures out there were using fission power plants! Fission plants weren’t just old-fashioned; they were dangerous technical antiques, and their presence baffled her. The original Church of Humanity’s colony ship had used fusion power, so why were the colonists’ descendants using fission power nine hundred years later?

The Honor of the Queen, Chapter 14 wrote:Grayson fusion plants were four times as massive as modern reactors of similar output (which was why they still used so many fission plants), and their military hardware was equally out of date—they still used printed circuits, with enormous mass penalties and catastrophic consequences for designed lifetimes—though there were a few unexpected surprises in their mixed technological bag. For example, the Grayson Navy had quite literally invented its own inertial compensator thirty T-years ago because it hadn’t been able to get anyone else to explain how it was done. It was a clumsy, bulky thing, thanks to the components they had to use, but from what he’d seen of its stats, it might just be marginally more efficient than Manticore’s.

Echoes of Honor, Chapter 3 wrote:Three sets of eyebrows flew up as one, and Truman smiled thinly. Humanity had abandoned fission power as soon as reliable fusion plants became available. Not only had fusion posed less of a radiation danger, but hydrogen was one hell of a lot easier and safer (and cheaper) than fissionables to process. And, Truman knew, Old Earth's Neo-Luddite lunatics, who'd been doing their level best to abolish the very concept of technology as somehow inherently evil about the time fusion power first came along, had managed to brand fission power with the number of the beast as the emblem of all that was destructive and vile. Indeed, the rush to fusion had been something much more akin to a stampede, and unlike most of the claptrap the Neo-Luddites had spouted, fission power's evil reputation had stuck. Contemporary journalists had taken the negatives for granted at the time, since "everyone knew" they were true, and no popular historian had been particularly interested in reconsidering the evidence since, especially not when the technology was obsolete, anyway. So for most of the human race, the very concept of fission power was something out of a dark, primitive, vaguely dangerous, and only dimly remembered past.
"Yes, I said 'fission,'" Truman told them after giving them most of a minute to absorb it, "and it's another thing we've adapted from the Graysons. Unlike the rest of the galaxy, they still use fission plants, although they've reduced their reliance on them steadily for the last thirty or forty years. But Grayson—and, for that matter, Yeltsin's asteroid belts, as well—are lousy in heavy metals . . . and fissionables. They'd bootstrapped their way back to fission power by the time of their Civil War, and by the time the rest of us stumbled across them again and reintroduced them to fusion, they'd taken their fission technology to levels of efficiency no one else had ever attained. So when we added modern, lightweight antiradiation composites and rad fields to what they already had, we were able to produce a plant which was even smaller—and considerably more powerful—than anything they'd come up with on their own.

Italics are the author's, boldface is my emphasis.

THE DEVICE

"Did she kill them?" asked Victor.

Fallon nodded, pointing to the small tracking device in his left hand. Victor was unable to interpret the readings on the screen. The chemo-hormone sensor was a highly specialized piece of equipment. As rare as it was expensive. That was the reason, Durkheim had told Victor, that he was assigning Fallon to the squad. The citizen sergeant was an expert with the device.

"Her traces are all over them," said Fallon. "Adrenaline reading's practically off the scale. That means either fear or fury—or both—and as you can see . . ." He shrugged. "She didn't have much to fear. Besides—"

He pointed to the head of one of the corpses. The filthy, bearded thing was unnaturally twisted. "Broke neck." He pointed to another. "Same." Then, at the third, whose throat had clearly been crushed as well as slit. "And again."

Fallon rose. "Didn't know the girl had training, but that's what you're seeing." He studied the sensor screen. "But there's someone else's readings here, too. Besides her and the croaks. Male readings. Prepubescent, I'm pretty sure."

Victor glanced around. The Scrags had now collected in a body around them, staring at the tracker in the sergeant's hand. For all their strutting swagger, and their pretensions at superhuman status, the Scrags were really nothing much more than Loop vagabonds themselves. They were clearly intimidated by the technical capacity of the SS device. During the hours in which they had organized a search for the girl after discovering her escape, before they finally admitted their screw-up to their Mesan overlords, the Scrags had accomplished absolutely nothing. After they found the bodies and the lean-to, the girl's trail seemed to have vanished.

"Can we follow her?" Victor asked. "Or them?"

Fallon nodded. "Oh, sure. Nothing to it. Won't be quick, of course. But—" He cast a sour glance at the nearby Scrags. "Since they at least had the sense to come to us before too much time had gone by, the traces are still good. Another couple of days, and it would have been a different story."

"Let's to it, then."

They set off, following the traces picked up by the sensor. Victor and Citizen Sergeant Fallon led the way, flanked by the other three SS soldiers in Fallon's squad. Victor and Fallon didn't bother carrying their weapons to hand. The other SS soldiers did, but they held the pulse rifles in a loose and easy grip. The Scrags trailed behind, with their own haphazard weaponry. For all the bravado with which they brandished the guns, they reminded Victor of nothing so much as a flock of buzzards following a pack of wolves.

He glanced sideways at Fallon. The citizen sergeant was too preoccupied with reading the tracker to notice the scrutiny. There was no expression on his lean-jawed, hatchet face beyond intense concentration.

Like a hawk on the prowl. Which, Victor knew, was an apt comparison. Fallon was a raptor—and he was hunting bigger prey than a fourteen-year-old girl.

-snip-


But Lars found her, instead. And brought the terror back.

"People are coming," he hissed. "With guns."

Startled, Helen lifted her eyes. She had been looking at the floor, picking her way through the debris which filled what seemed to have once been a wide hallway. From a corner twenty feet ahead and to her left, Lars flicked his lantern on and off, showing her where he was hidden.

She extinguished her own lantern and moved toward him, as quickly as she could in the darkness.

"Who are they?" she whispered.

"Most of 'em are Scrags," came the answer. "Must be a dozen of 'em. Maybe more. But there's some other people leading them. I don't know who they are, but they're real scary-looking. One of them has some kind of gadget."

Helen was at his side, her hand resting on the boy's shoulder. She could feel the tremor shaking those slender bones.

"I think they're tracking us with it, Helen," he added. His voice was full of fear. "Our smell, maybe. Something."

Helen felt a shiver of fear herself. She knew that there were such devices, because her father had mentioned them to her. But the devices were very expensive.

-snip-

"Almost there," said Citizen Sergeant Fallon. "She can't be more than a hundred yards away. And whoever's with her. Youngsters, I think, the way these readings keep coming up. One boy and one girl, would be my guess. Her age or younger."

-snip-

She focused her eyes on the two Peeps in the very forefront. The leaders, obviously. The one on the left had all the earmarks of a veteran. He was studying a device held in his hand, his hatchet face bent forward and tight with concentration.

Her eyes moved to the man standing next to him. The officer in charge, she realized. She wasn't certain—it was hard to be, with prolong—but she thought he was as young in actual fact as his face would indicate.

She took no comfort in that youthfulness. She saw the veteran's head nod, like a hatchet striking wood, and his lips move. The young officer's face came up and he was staring directly at her, from a distance of not more than twenty yards.

He could not see Helen in the darkness, but she could see him clearly.

kzt wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Still knowing something can be done is a strong motivator for figuring out how; and having Simones to provide assistance should speed work along nicely.

We've had the basic theory for how to make a fusion reactor for 60 years, and we are still "30 years away" from having one work. So sometimes there is a lot more complexity to the engineering than the science.

Jonathan_S wrote:To nitpick we've had plenty of reactors that can create nuclear fusion - you can even build one as a table-top science project (Farnsworth-Hirsch fusor). What none of them has managed to do yet is produce more usable energy than it takes to run them.

cthia wrote:With ownership of the MWJ network, hitting their heads against the Iota and Kappa walls just isn't such a pressing need.

Also, the MAlign wanted and needed to keep the discovery a secret -- hence, a dispatch boat of normal size. I don't suppose there's any reason the technology cannot be applied to freighters? Which would limit shipping times during legs where junctions aren't available. Yet I don't suppose it would cut shipping times for some non perishable shipments on certain routes enough to forego the more expensive junction costs, therefore a Machiavellian motive for Manticoran interests not to want to pursue the research.

Jonathan_S wrote:Unless the breakthroughs that make a Streak Drive capable of accessing the kappa bands also made it more economical to operate and maintain than a normal military hyper generator I doubt we'll see general adoption of streak drive into merchant service -- even after it's declassified.

The streak drive hyper generator does give you 1.45 faster transit than a military grade (Theta band capable) hyper generator. But if it wasn't cost effective for most merchants to upgrade to the 2.29x faster military grade (compared to their Delta band capable merchant hyper generator) I don't think the upgrade from 2.29x to 3.33x will be enough to tip the scales.

Especially since something described as a brute force solution, and that we know to be larger (and presumably more complex overall) is likely more expensive to build, operate, and maintain than the current military hyper generators.


Some civilian ships will jump at the chance, but most will likely remain happily plodding along in the Delta bands. (Unless, as some here have speculated, spin-off knowledge from the Streak Drive allows 'free' improvements to merchant hyper generator design; allowing access to Epsilon or Zeta bands with a generator having basically the same total cost of ownership as the current Delta band designs)

cthia wrote:Perhaps, per contra, there's no reason newer JIT designs just coming off the assembly lines cannot deploy the technology and scratch the itch of a niche market with a "Fed Ex" service. Not an "overnight" service, but an "under nominal" service. Which, btw, would undoubtedly cost significantly more to ship, inasmuch as Fed Ex.'s own "overnight" service costs as much as tens of times more, especially factoring in supply (low availability of said transports) and demand.

Shamelessly borrowing Fed. Ex.'s successful slogan...

"When it absolutely, positively has to get there "overnight" err "under nominal."

I think the ever present human element is being discounted again (as always), along with the ever present and truthful "Build it and they will come" mentality.

.