Very Long Range Exploration In The Honorverse? ...

Dafmeister wrote:

richardinor wrote:I remember something being said in one of the books about people continually exploring and moving out to get away from Frontier Security.

It's in Torch of Freedom (which I just started re-reading). There's an excerpt from a book publish several decades into the future talking about how some inhabitants of the Verge were from families that had moved three, four, even five times to stay ahead of OFS.

HB of CJ wrote:Excellent discussion everyone and thank you. I was thinking more of rich individual, corporate or perhaps planetary funded very long range exploration expeditions concurrent with the Honorverse within the most recent novels.

Driving reasons? Perhaps economic, political, religious, social and all the other normal needs. And perhaps not the normal inducements. How far could have mankind, (and maybe others gotten way out in the far far beyond?

How far would be far? And if a suitable colony or outpost planet was discovered, would there be some advantage, (if any) of keeping such a discovery very secret from practically everyone? I'm thinking MA, Sollie or other bolt holes.

HB of CJ (old coot) Junior Captain.

Theemile wrote:
At the time, Manticore was odd in having the extra cash to place into the trust. Not saying they were alone, but they were an exception to the rule that colonies put every penny in the expedition.

Without the trust and some smart financial advisors, there would have been no frigates or advisors waiting for the colonists.

So the average colony is not expecting a welcome when they land.

BobfromSydney wrote:

Theemile wrote:
At the time, Manticore was odd in having the extra cash to place into the trust. Not saying they were alone, but they were an exception to the rule that colonies put every penny in the expedition.

Without the trust and some smart financial advisors, there would have been no frigates or advisors waiting for the colonists.

So the average colony is not expecting a welcome when they land.

I remember in another thread I brought up the issue of the Manticore Colony Trust Fund.

It seemed hard to believe for me that during the many centuries between the Colonists leaving Earth and the slow boat arriving at Manticore nobody embezzled the MCT Fund. Or that it didn't fall afoul of either stock market crashes or bank collapses (or a combination of the above).

The best argument put forth to me was that the Fund was put into the care of a committee of family members of the colonists and that these paragons of virtue stretched out their lifespan expressly for the purpose of keeping the fund on track by spending most of their time in cryosleep. Furthermore as the centuries rolled on and these family members were periodically awoken to attend board meetings they were able to keep up with economic, political, social and technological changes in order to make sound investment decisions, keeping the MCT Fund growing ahead of inflation etc.

Does anyone else think that this seems very unlikely to succeed?

It is a question of agency: All the beneficiaries (owners) of the fund are on the Colony Ship. The Agents (Managers of the Fund) do not directly benefit from the end goals of the fund. Who or what is preventing the fund from being looted by unscrupulous managers during all those centuries? It would need to be actively managed because no investment remains stable, profitable and can keep up with inflation over nearly half a millennium.

Anyone have any better suggestions/explanations as to how the MCT Fund was able to stay on target, not lose its capital and avoid embezzlement?

Don't say that it was given into the care of very trustworthy and reliable bankers. Anyone who has taken even a cursory look at the financial industry knows that all the operators are predators.

Dauntless wrote:

BobfromSydney wrote:...

I remember in another thread I brought up the issue of the Manticore Colony Trust Fund.

It seemed hard to believe for me that during the many centuries between the Colonists leaving Earth and the slow boat arriving at Manticore nobody embezzled the MCT Fund. Or that it didn't fall afoul of either stock market crashes or bank collapses (or a combination of the above).

The best argument put forth to me was that the Fund was put into the care of a committee of family members of the colonists and that these paragons of virtue stretched out their lifespan expressly for the purpose of keeping the fund on track by spending most of their time in cryosleep. Furthermore as the centuries rolled on and these family members were periodically awoken to attend board meetings they were able to keep up with economic, political, social and technological changes in order to make sound investment decisions, keeping the MCT Fund growing ahead of inflation etc.

Does anyone else think that this seems very unlikely to succeed?

It is a question of agency: All the beneficiaries (owners) of the fund are on the Colony Ship. The Agents (Managers of the Fund) do not directly benefit from the end goals of the fund. Who or what is preventing the fund from being looted by unscrupulous managers during all those centuries? It would need to be actively managed because no investment remains stable, profitable and can keep up with inflation over nearly half a millennium.

Anyone have any better suggestions/explanations as to how the MCT Fund was able to stay on target, not lose its capital and avoid embezzlement?

Don't say that it was given into the care of very trustworthy and reliable bankers. Anyone who has taken even a cursory look at the financial industry knows that all the operators are predators.

good question. all i can suggest is that it was given to agency to manage on the understanding that they got something like 20% of the trust earnings each year?


i know they could have stolen it but hopefully a reputable firm (if such a thing really exists) would have taken the long view and decided that 20% for the next 200 yeas was a better deal then stealing it all outright now.

though the odds of one firm staying in business long enough is remote.

tinfoil wrote:Don't forget that sapce volume increases as the CUBE of distance.

There's 8 times as much space to explore when you double the distance you are travelling.

Chuck in new starting points for exploration every time a new nexus winds up in 'spatia igcognita'.


Finding new systems to settle might not require particul;arly long journeys.

IIRC, House of Steel assets that the discovery and exploitation of Manticore's junction greatly increased exploration and settlement in the 'haven Sector'.

JohnRoth wrote:

tinfoil wrote:Don't forget that sapce volume increases as the CUBE of distance.

There's 8 times as much space to explore when you double the distance you are travelling.

Chuck in new starting points for exploration every time a new nexus winds up in 'spatia igcognita'.


Finding new systems to settle might not require particul;arly long journeys.

IIRC, House of Steel assets that the discovery and exploitation of Manticore's junction greatly increased exploration and settlement in the 'haven Sector'.

Not quite. Remember that Sol is in a spiral arm, and that the galactic disk is only about a thousand light-years thick at this location. Once you move outside of the arm or the disk, there are a lot fewer stars to investigate. The area with the most stars looks more like a cylinder than a sphere.

The other thing to remember is that there is this weird group of people called astronomers, and they have these unlikely instruments called telescopes. Projecting that 2000 years into the future suggests that there may well be huge orbiting observatories with improved instrumentation, like 100-meter optical telescopes and radio telescopes with 100,000 kilometer baselines. In another thread I "invented" an observatory called the JAO - Jupiter Astronomical Observatory, located in Jupiter's leading Lagrangian point. Add in a similar observatory at, say, Beowulf, for a reasonably long baseline for triangulation, and they probably know where everything in the galaxy is that isn't obscured by too much dust. At least, everything that's an active star. They might have missed a horde of brown dwarves and loose planets.

Bottom line is that there are probably a huge number of stars that are known to have "earth-like" planets that nobody has sent a scout to check out the biosphere in detail.