Question about data from unusual wormhole [possible Spoiler]

SCC wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:I think you've got the time sequence confused. At the time Dr. Simoes was working on the "Streak Drive Improvements" project at the Gamma Center, the original streak drive was a done deal and in routine use in MAlign couriers. If Zack had anything to do with the Streak Drive, it would have been the original version, which, as another commenter has pointed out, bears all the fingerprints of being a lash-up that was hurried into production without a lot of refinement.

Possible, but if Zack was the one who got the Streak Drive working in the first place, why wasn't he on the project to improve it? It also suggests that different people where brought in to improve it, that goes against how the MS seems to isolate it's scientists

From the couple of sentences I quoted, the MAlign seems to think Zack is most useful where he can go "if we put these three things together, look at what we've got!" That also implies that he needs to have all the accesses so he can spot those things that will pay off if they can be put together. For example, he apparently knows not only what's up with the Twins and that they connect to the Congo terminus, but he has a general sense of what the astrophysicists think about it.

Putting him on a more focused project (i.e. Streak Drive Improvements) would waste that talent.

You also need to remember that he's a project manager working directly for Anastasia Chernovsky, who in turn works directly for Daniel Detweiller. He's not a grunt researcher. Herlander Simoes is a grunt researcher.

More important than Zack knowing anything about streak (which he probably does, but Simoes knowledge of the math is probably more useful to a development establishment like Manti/Haven) is the fact that given his position, he undoubtedly DOES know the concept of spider, and the concept of the MAlign's rudimentary spider detection (among many other things.)

Concept is all that the "somewhat motivated" establishment behind micro-fusion, Gram, Ghost-Rider, Apollo, and Mk 16 really needs to break the physics to their will.

dreamrider

dreamrider wrote:More important than Zack knowing anything about streak (which he probably does, but Simoes knowledge of the math is probably more useful to a development establishment like Manti/Haven) is the fact that given his position, he undoubtedly DOES know the concept of spider, and the concept of the MAlign's rudimentary spider detection (among many other things.)

Concept is all that the "somewhat motivated" establishment behind micro-fusion, Gram, Ghost-Rider, Apollo, and Mk 16 really needs to break the physics to their will.

dreamrider

Excellent point. Also, unlike Simoes, he's far enough into the Onion to know the answers to all those pesky political questions that have been troubling the councils of the Great and the Wise.

JohnRoth wrote:

dreamrider wrote:More important than Zack knowing anything about streak (which he probably does, but Simoes knowledge of the math is probably more useful to a development establishment like Manti/Haven) is the fact that given his position, he undoubtedly DOES know the concept of spider, and the concept of the MAlign's rudimentary spider detection (among many other things.)

Concept is all that the "somewhat motivated" establishment behind micro-fusion, Gram, Ghost-Rider, Apollo, and Mk 16 really needs to break the physics to their will.

dreamrider

Excellent point. Also, unlike Simoes, he's far enough into the Onion to know the answers to all those pesky political questions that have been troubling the councils of the Great and the Wise.

This latter statement seems to me to be an unwarranted assumption. To make Zack a project manager bringing together scientific information to accomplish a goal like building the streak or the spider does not mean that he is knowledgable about the political side. In fact, given the Alignment's tendency to compartmentalize knowledge of the onion and reveal nothing but what any given person needs to do his/her job, I doubt that Zack will be a fountain of knowledge about the details of the onion. To be sure he will have an overall vision of the party line, but in all probability no knowledge of the nuts and bolts of how it fits together. My suspicion is that Jack knew as much as he did not because he had been let in on the full story, but because he was good at hacking computers.

Don