JohnRoth wrote:What occurs to me is that the way it was originally stated, it would be really obvious that there was a wormhole terminus nearby. You'd be losing ships in job lots, and the place where you lost them would point right at the wormhole.
SWM wrote:RFC has a explained a bit about that.
If you are specifically thinking of the Manticoran junction, there are some things to remember. First, back when the MWJ was discovered, hyperspace travel was not as safe as it is today. There was a higher incidence of unexplained disappearances in the vicinity of Manticore, but traffic was low enough that it was not that obvious. Ships sometimes just didn't make it, and most of the time it wasn't because of resonance zones. Second, people did not yet know as much about junctions and resonance zones. Most people did not know what signs to look for. Third, the search for wormholes was not on everyone's radar. Fourth, no one ever expected a junction quite like Manticore's. It is such a large junction that it set new standards.
If you are talking about other wormholes: Manticore is the largest known junction. No other junction is as deadly as the MWJ. Most are only mildly hazardous.
JohnRoth wrote:No, I'm not thinking specifically about the MWJ. The way it was originally stated in OBS, and given the geometry stated later (the base of the cone is twice as wide as the hyper limit) it would be impossible to transit through hyper to or from normal space across a full half sphere around the star - and that's assuming that the base of the resonance zone is a flat plane through the star.
This is not "there are lots of hazards to navigation, so nobody notices one more." This is more like: as soon as resonance zones were discovered, everyone with a computer and access to ship loss statistics would be in a race to discover the wormhole termini.
lyonheart wrote:Hi JohnRoth,
First wormholes were unknown when Manticore was settled in 1416 PD.
Secondly, most trade Manticore and everyone then had was with the SL, ie inward not outward where the WHJ is, and the colony had far more on its plate than to wonder about the occasional anomaly until after the first several wormholes were discovered and differences between them and the other known navigational hazards could begin to be deciphered, so the RMN might have started looking only 20-30 years before discovering the WHJ in 1585, IIRC.
In my mind's eye, I've imagine a long service officer of Russian extraction tediously mapping that whole volume, first looking for navigational hazards, then possible hints of a wormhole before finally succeeding, NTM surprising and shocking Beowulf when these nominal neo-barbs show up suddenly, except they just discovered the biggest WHJ.
Regarding the AAC textev, it seemed obvious that HA-H was referring to jumping from a spot outside the RZ that was 8th Fleet's assembly point once they had transited to another point outside the RZ near Chin's 3rd Fleet within the parameters HA-H specified.
Just how big the RZ is at the WHJ apex has been duscussed before, some thinking its only a million or two kilometers, others several million.
Until RFC gets more definite, that will remain our state.
L
I think you missed the point. I was not, let me repeat that, not, talking about Manticore specifically. I was talking about the more general proposition.
After all, a "resonance zone" is this huge cone-shaped volume of hyperspace in the lower bands that can be detected. If it couldn't be detected, it wouldn't have any effect on ships transiting it. It's about as hard to see as the elephant standing in the middle of the room.
Once the phenomenon of resonance zones gets discovered and understood, you're going to have people out there with resonance zone detectors (however they work) looking for them, especially since they point right at the wormhole terminus.