What's the chance of a Streek Drive Super Dreadnought?

Except they have had the ability to have the same merchant ship to go three times faster for years.

Yet very few merchants avail themselves to it. Though in the books we do see more merchants with improved generators than anything else.

Where the break point is in that cost benefit analysis we don't know. Though with RFC's predilection with ship history it probably is much higher than most people think.

Meager food for thought,
T2M

Relax wrote:Well even an SD(8M tons) only takes 12 minutes to charge its hyper drive, who knows about civi. So for a typical freighter, it takes all of 3 translations or is it 4? To get to their standard Delta bands. Or as little as 40 minutes out of a trip lasting a week or more... Not exactly a deal breaker.

If a streak drive does allow kappa, and 5000C multiplier, what does this say about civis only using 1000c multiplier Delta bands? Seems 5X speed increase for a freighter would blow away(compensate) any financial initial vested capital considerations in a VERY short time period. Your single Freighter just multiplied its carried trade by 4X. I took 1X out for transhipping intervals(time in port).

I would point out that all time critical cargo in the world today are carried on UPS/FedEx jumbo jets traveling at 600mph and they find it VERY profitable. Profitable enough to buy and maintain VERY expensive jumbo jets.

If it wasn't for the Panama canal limiting ships to a mere 900 feet, every ship built since 1960 would have been 1200 to 1500 feet long once we figured out how to build quality steel. This allows a cruise speed from 20knots to around 25 knots as I recall. I would have to look up hull length speed again as I don't have this number fixed in my mind. Of course said monster ships also spend 2-3 days in port loading/unloading while their cruise across the pacific/Atlantic etc doesn't take all that long. Their main limiting factor is their load/unload time. IE they really need an automatic unloading sorting system like how UPS/FedEx do it. Ah unions wouldn't like that so we do it the slow inefficient way. Keeps more super high paying no brains required union port jobs! A crane operator makes well over $100,000 a year here in Seattle. The drivers carrying said TEU a whopping half mile to the train tracks make nearly as much as well. Talk about a scam and we wonder why there is no money to upgrade the port facilities. Well ya, the thugs took it all and now have their hands out to the taxpayer asking for more. Anyways. Off the soap box.

thinkstoomuch wrote:Except they have had the ability to have the same merchant ship to go three times faster for years.

Yet very few merchants avail themselves to it. Though in the books we do see more merchants with improved generators than anything else.

Where the break point is in that cost benefit analysis we don't know. Though with RFC's predilection with ship history it probably is much higher than most people think.

Meager food for thought,
T2M

Relax wrote:Well even an SD(8M tons) only takes 12 minutes to charge its hyper drive, who knows about civi. So for a typical freighter, it takes all of 3 translations or is it 4? To get to their standard Delta bands. Or as little as 40 minutes out of a trip lasting a week or more... Not exactly a deal breaker.

If a streak drive does allow kappa, and 5000C multiplier, what does this say about civis only using 1000c multiplier Delta bands? Seems 5X speed increase for a freighter would blow away(compensate) any financial initial vested capital considerations in a VERY short time period. Your single Freighter just multiplied its carried trade by 4X. I took 1X out for transhipping intervals(time in port).

I would agree to all your points.

That is why the Honorverse has Dispatch Boats and High speed passenger liners. If it is time critical it isn't generally going on that 16 knot supertanker or container ship though.

Yep once Streak Drive gets to be public knowledge it will be used by some ships. Maybe even more than currently use current fastest means.

But the problem is the same, to get stuff from "a" to "b" as cheaply as possible. That also meets the customers needs. Everything is going to get factored in and the guy cheapest to meet that customer requirement wins.

Just like when I ordered tires for the motorcycle. Not spending more than the cost of the tire to fly it to me. Unless ...

(yes they did list the next day delivery cost option, no ___ it was more than the tires cost right there on the page and motorcycle tires are NOT cheap)

Have fun,
T2M

Relax wrote:I would point out that all time critical cargo in the world today are carried on UPS/FedEx jumbo jets traveling at 600mph and they find it VERY profitable. Profitable enough to buy and maintain VERY expensive jumbo jets.

If it wasn't for the Panama canal limiting ships to a mere 900 feet, every ship built since 1960 would have been 1200 to 1500 feet long once we figured out how to build quality steel. This allows a cruise speed from 20knots to around 25 knots as I recall. I would have to look up hull length speed again as I don't have this number fixed in my mind. Of course said monster ships also spend 2-3 days in port loading/unloading while their cruise across the pacific/Atlantic etc doesn't take all that long. Their main limiting factor is their load/unload time. IE they really need an automatic unloading sorting system like how UPS/FedEx do it. Ah unions wouldn't like that so we do it the slow inefficient way. Keeps more super high paying no brains required union port jobs! A crane operator makes well over $100,000 a year here in Seattle. The drivers carrying said TEU a whopping half mile to the train tracks make nearly as much as well. Talk about a scam and we wonder why there is no money to upgrade the port facilities. Well ya, the thugs took it all and now have their hands out to the taxpayer asking for more. Anyways. Off the soap box.

I think you are missing an important economical point. Is there enough economical demand to satisfy the 4x increase in available cargo transfer?

I mean, sure sector capitals and 2nd tier planets can probably handle such increased tonnages but those are relatively rare outside the SLN "core worlds"

Also on a similar tangent, the existing prime trade zones are based on the WHJs, negating the advantages of Steak drive.

Even if RMMM switched to medium-rare steak drive, it would take some time (a decade or two is my guess) for the overall interstellar economy to grow big enough to support the new developments.

Relax wrote:Well even an SD(8M tons) only takes 12 minutes to charge its hyper drive, who knows about civi. So for a typical freighter, it takes all of 3 translations or is it 4? To get to their standard Delta bands.

I think the key to this question is the "s" in "bands". You start in n-space and make one "upward" translation across the "Alpha wall" to the "lowest" of the Alpha bands. We do not know how many Alpha bands there are or how long it takes to make a transition from one alpha band to the next.

We also don't know if there are the same number of Beta bands as Alpha bands. But let's do some speculating and see if we can come up with something to put it in perspective.

We could take an example from quantum physics and look at electron shells and orbitals:

Shell|Number of orbitals
1 | 1 (s)
2 | 4 (s, 3p)
3 | 9 (s, 3p, 5d)
4 | 16 (s, 3p, 5d, 7f)
5 | 25 (s, 3p, 5d, 7f, 9g)

The obvious formula is that the nth shell has n² orbitals. If a similar formula were applied to hyperspace, with n-space arbitrarily considered n=1:
Range | Number of bands | Cumulative Total
Α | 4 | 4
Β | 9 | 13
Γ | 16 | 29
Δ | 25 | 54
Ε | 36 | 90
Ζ | 49 | 139
Η | 64 | 203
Θ | 81 | 284
Ι | 100 | 384
so to break the Kappa Wall, you'd need 385 upward translations.

And that's just assuming a quadratic function. If it went cubic (and there's no reason not to think it would be cubic or worse) the number of upward translations for each successive band gets progressively worse, and it starts to make sense that you'd only bother to make that many translations if you were going a very long distance.

Oh dear. Its not bands. It band. Singular. Sorry for confusion. It is BANDS when you cross multiple hyper walls.

http://www.davidweber.net/posts/15-hyperband-graph.html

Within said band is a velocity multiplier. Lower at the lower END of the band and higher at the top end.

Cronicler wrote:Also on a similar tangent, the existing prime trade zones are based on the WHJs, negating the advantages of Steak drive.

Even if RMMM switched to medium-rare steak drive, it would take some time (a decade or two is my guess) for the overall interstellar economy to grow big enough to support the new developments.

I think the steak drive is in another Weber series. :)

Relax wrote:Oh dear. Its not bands. It band. Singular. Sorry for confusion. It is BANDS when you cross multiple hyper walls.

But in other contexts, a "band" of hyperspace is treated as more than a single entity, as if additional translations carry a ship through "sub-bands" or some damn thing without crossing a "wall" to the next "band".

Regardless of the precise terminology, the idea that moving from Alpha to Beta is a "longer" step than going from N-space to Alpha, and each additional step is progressively longer than the last, fits into other things we're familiar with from real-world science.

kzt wrote:

Cronicler wrote:Also on a similar tangent, the existing prime trade zones are based on the WHJs, negating the advantages of Steak drive.

Even if RMMM switched to medium-rare steak drive, it would take some time (a decade or two is my guess) for the overall interstellar economy to grow big enough to support the new developments.

I think the steak drive is in another Weber series. :)

Yeah i think so too, probably a series where they use dogs to move some gigantic hamster wheels on the engine room and need to be feed with steak

The important point that we're missing is that we don't know how much a merchant version of a streak drive will cost over and above the older hyper generator. So we've got some people arguing that it's going to cost too much to use except in specialty applications, and others that it will revolutionize shipping.

The fact is that it all depends on what price tag DW wants to hang on the thing. And he hasn't said.

Cronicler wrote:I think you are missing an important economical point. Is there enough economical demand to satisfy the 4x increase in available cargo transfer?

If the marginal cost of the new hyper generator is less than the marginal cost in crew salaries, depreciation, supplies and maintenance of a 20% reduction in transit time, yes, it'll get used.

Cronicler wrote:I mean, sure sector capitals and 2nd tier planets can probably handle such increased tonnages but those are relatively rare outside the SLN "core worlds"

Also on a similar tangent, the existing prime trade zones are based on the WHJs, negating the advantages of Steak drive.

I would dispute that. We have lots of examples of clusters that don't have internal bridges. I expect that most cargos don't go through a hyper bridge at all. The entire notion for Lacoon I was to withdraw ships, thus crippling SL trade by reducing the available carrying capacity. It was Lacoon II that closed off wormhole terminals.

Cronicler wrote:Even if RMMM switched to medium-rare steak drive, it would take some time (a decade or two is my guess) for the overall interstellar economy to grow big enough to support the new developments.

Older ships will be retired when they're no longer competitive. It won't take an expansion of trade possibilities.