Prometheus and the Beowulf Expedition

I've been re-reading Dark Fall recently and it has me thinking about certain events in the Honorverse timeline.

From the timeline, we know that the Diaspora of humanity began in 1 PD or 2103 CE with the departure of the first manned, slower-than-light starship Prometheus.

From Dark Fall, we know the STL colony ship Calvin's Hope arrived at Calvin III to find it uninhabitable in 552 PD after a 402 year journey, having departed Sol 135 years after the Beowulf Expedition.

Now a 402 year flight by the Calvin's Hope and an arrival at Calvin III in 552 PD equals a departure year of 150 PD. A departure year of 150 PD minus 135 years equals a departure year of 15 PD for the Beowulf Expedition.

So 15 years after the departure of the Prometheus, the expedition that would found the colony that by 1923 PD would be viewed as "humanity's oldest extrasolar colony".

But, if Prometheus' departure was 15 years ahead of the Beowulf Expedition, what happened to her and the colony she most likely established? I am assuming that she was a colony ship because that's the only type of ship that seems logical that would be launching from Callisto, as By The Book establishes that moon of Jupiter as the launching point for all outbound colony missions.

There are several factors that could have happened to her and/or her colony. Prometheus could have suffered an engineering failure or other unknown fate in route. Or she could have reached her destination, but her attempt to colonize it was unsuccessful, resulting in the failure of the colony and the death of the colonists. Or the method of propulsion used by the Beowulf Expedition could have been more efficient than the the method the Prometheus possessed and they simply overhauled the older ship during flight.

I know I'm probably rambling about something that we can never know about unless RFC weighs in on it or that he may have already mentioned in another post somewhere. Guess the only real answer to my question is nothing is set in stone in the Honorverse until RFC makes it canonical... until he or someone else retcons it at least.

CaptainPerseus wrote:I've been re-reading Dark Fall recently and it has me thinking about certain events in the Honorverse timeline.

From the timeline, we know that the Diaspora of humanity began in 1 PD or 2103 CE with the departure of the first manned, slower-than-light starship Prometheus.

From Dark Fall, we know the STL colony ship Calvin's Hope arrived at Calvin III to find it uninhabitable in 552 PD after a 402 year journey, having departed Sol 135 years after the Beowulf Expedition.

Now a 402 year flight by the Calvin's Hope and an arrival at Calvin III in 552 PD equals a departure year of 150 PD. A departure year of 150 PD minus 135 years equals a departure year of 15 PD for the Beowulf Expedition.

So 15 years after the departure of the Prometheus, the expedition that would found the colony that by 1923 PD would be viewed as "humanity's oldest extrasolar colony".

But, if Prometheus' departure was 15 years ahead of the Beowulf Expedition, what happened to her and the colony she most likely established? I am assuming that she was a colony ship because that's the only type of ship that seems logical that would be launching from Callisto, as By The Book establishes that moon of Jupiter as the launching point for all outbound colony missions.

There are several factors that could have happened to her and/or her colony. Prometheus could have suffered an engineering failure or other unknown fate in route. Or she could have reached her destination, but her attempt to colonize it was unsuccessful, resulting in the failure of the colony and the death of the colonists. Or the method of propulsion used by the Beowulf Expedition could have been more efficient than the the method the Prometheus possessed and they simply overhauled the older ship during flight.

I know I'm probably rambling about something that we can never know about unless RFC weighs in on it or that he may have already mentioned in another post somewhere. Guess the only real answer to my question is nothing is set in stone in the Honorverse until RFC makes it canonical... until he or someone else retcons it at least.

Yeah, big inconsistencies in the timeline. These were brought up when the original snerked version of Dark Fall came out. David tweaked the final a little bit, but the numbers just don't add up. If you search Dark Fall, you can see the discussions from back then.

David quickly changed all the issues, but it still wasn't clean. here is the original if you want to read it. See if you can find all the issues with the story before you read the comments.