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

edited out:

phillies wrote:Does anyone remember another case of numbered subbands being mentioned?

TheMonster wrote:I just happened upon another item that helps to elucidate the "hyperspace band(s)" issue.

Shadow of Saganami, Chapter 8 wrote:"Helm," Helen said, "come to one-one-niner by zero-four-six at five hundred and eighty gravities, translation gradient of eight-point-six-two to h-band Zeta-one-seven. I'm uploading the waypoints now."

So we know there are at least 17 Zeta bands (unless the numbering system starts at a higher level for the higher Greek letters, sort of like a BINGO game). The translation gradient doesn't provide any units, so it must be a unit-less quantity (one in which any units would cancel each other out, such as "kilometers per kilometer")

The fact that the course she'd laid out called specifically for band Zeta-17 rather than a lower-numbered (sub-)band within the Zeta band(s) suggests either that the grav wave between the Lynx Terminus and Spindle wasn't as strong at a lower band, or perhaps even that there is variation in the effective velocity multiplier due to hyperspatial compression even between two (sub-)bands that bear the same Greek letter designation.

Not were a specific number of bands is mentioned, but there are many passages that say that there are multiple bands between each wall.

Honor’s convoy was cruising along in the mid-delta bands, HotQ

Our ships are restricted to the middle gamma bands, HotQ

“Too high. We bounced off the iota wall a day out of Yeltsin.” HotQ

Even for courier boats, who routinely rode the risky upper edge of hyper-space's theta band, SVW

Elliot had held the convoy to the lower delta bands, HAE

twice translating through two distinct sets of hyper bands HAE

translating steadily down the alpha bands as they rode one of hyper-space's gravity waves towards the normal-space wall. ToF

Hyper-space consists of multiple regions or layers—called "bands"—of associated but discrete dimensions. MTH

There are in addition, between 50-100 references that refer to alpha bands, plural, beta bands, plural, delta bands, plural, theta bands, plural, etcetera.

glossery, AAC, WOH wrote:Alpha translation—
The translation into or out of the alpha (lowest) bands of hyper-space.

Hyper-space-
Multiple layers of associated but discrete dimensions which bring points in normal-space into closer congruence, thus permitting effectively faster than light travel between them. Layers are divided into "bands" of closely associated dimensions. The barriers between such bands are the sites of turbulence and instability which become increasingly powerful and dangerous as a vessel moves "higher" in hyper-space.

Garth 2 wrote:here a though, now that the Manties know about the 'streak drive science' and have a lot more knowledge about gravity then anyone else, and have a lot of hyper-scientists. Could this result in a new and deeper understanding of hyper-space, resulting in access to even more levels?

After all the streak drive was a 'brute force' approach maybe a more elegant solution could now be found?

Possibly.

Although, oddly the reason I think this might not happen (or at least not before the end of the war with the SL & MALign) is because that would be too similar to the situation with Grayson and the compensator.

Having Manticore take someone else's propulsion/speed related breakthrough and refine it to even better and more revolutionary (and militarily advantageous) performance might be too much of a repeat.

(Now a deeper understanding of Hyper that led to something else besides even higher accessible hyper bands; that I could see happening.)

Jonathan_S wrote:

Garth 2 wrote:here a though, now that the Manties know about the 'streak drive science' and have a lot more knowledge about gravity then anyone else, and have a lot of hyper-scientists. Could this result in a new and deeper understanding of hyper-space, resulting in access to even more levels?

After all the streak drive was a 'brute force' approach maybe a more elegant solution could now be found?

Possibly.

Although, oddly the reason I think this might not happen (or at least not before the end of the war with the SL & MALign) is because that would be too similar to the situation with Grayson and the compensator.

Having Manticore take someone else's propulsion/speed related breakthrough and refine it to even better and more revolutionary (and militarily advantageous) performance might be too much of a repeat.

(Now a deeper understanding of Hyper that led to something else besides even higher accessible hyper bands; that I could see happening.)

possibily but what else could it lead to?

Artifical junctions?

Garth 2 wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:(Now a deeper understanding of Hyper that led to something else besides even higher accessible hyper bands; that I could see happening.)

possibily but what else could it lead to?

Artifical junctions?

What about a way to roughly predict direction and/or distance of a wormhole from looking at one end?

I can imagine the use for that in at least one location..

savadrin wrote:they didn't get complete spec's, just the guy behind the theory. the science and number crunching guy. leave the rest up to the engineers like lewis and forraker.

It's not clear that Simoes was "the guy behind the theory". It's stated elsewhere that Streak drive development took a long time (IIRC, a century) and an enormous amount of money (Trillions of credits.) Essentially, the math said you should be able to climb higher in hyperspace, but no one had been able to for centuries, so everyone gave up trying - except the Mesan Alignment.

Dr. Simoes was engaged in Streak drive research (and apparently doing something important enough that Isobel Baldasano told Jack McBryde to make keeping Dr. Simoes focused after the termination of his daughter at least until his current research was completed a personal project), but I don't think he invented the thing. (As a WAG, his research was aimed at improving the drive and making it possible to climb even higher that current generation Streak boats could.).

That said, he can provide the theory on which the Streak drive was based, and I doubt it will take long, relatively speaking, for Manticore and Haven's engineers to build a working prototype.

Garth 2 wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:(Now a deeper understanding of Hyper that led to something else besides even higher accessible hyper bands; that I could see happening.)

possibily but what else could it lead to?

Artifical junctions?

Improved Warshawski sensors?
That could help locate wormhole termini or improve gravimetric detection ranges (both of ships & grav wave turbulance) in hyper.

Possibly improved understanding of hyper physics is part of the solution for a usable spider drive detector. (Not detection the ship it's mounted on by saturating the area with recon assets, but actually seeing/detecting the drive itself)

Or, here's a long, long, standing one. The ability to enter hyper from above 0.3c. (It was even mentioned a few times in the older books that there had been research on this that was eventually abandoned after repeated, energetic, failures)

Or maybe something I've totally failed to think of. Basic research can often pay off in unexpected ways.

SWM wrote:

darrell wrote:Trueman was trying to shave every minute off the trip that she could. It is probable that she didn't cut much time off the lower, safer part of the theta bands, so I would be surprised if the average theta translation is much above double the duration of a translation in the lower bands. Even if she spend 10 times the normal translation time for each theata band, that still leaves hundreds of total sub bands, if not more than a thousand.

There are no safer parts of the Theta bands.

The way I picture it, Truman says, "We are at the top of the Eta band. Bring us up into the Theta band. Watch those generators carefully!" An hour later, "All right, the generator is still going smooth. Bring us up a bit further." An hour later, "Still going smooth. Take us up some more." Eventually, "The generator is getting a bit rough. Ease us up some more, but watch for spikes." Then, "All right, it's getting wobbly but it hasn't killed us yet. Take us the rest of the way up."

Ah contrair, no frair, there is multiple text sugesting that the lower portion of the theta band is safter than the upper portion.

As a result, 20th Century pd military starships routinely operate as high as the theta band of hyper-space. From "More Than Honor". If all of the Theta Band is dangerous, why do military ships routinely operate there?

Even for courier boats, who routinely rode the risky upper edge of hyper-space's theta band, From "Short Victorious War". The upper edge is risky, the lower portion is not.

they were designed to ride the ragged edge of the Theta bands, From "Crown of Slaves". Why is the upper edge ragged?

And there are many cases where warships not in emergency conditions run in the theta bands. whereas warships ranged as high as the eta or even theta bands From "Honor of the Queen".

Garth 2 wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:

Garth 2 wrote:here a though, now that the Manties know about the 'streak drive science' and have a lot more knowledge about gravity then anyone else, and have a lot of hyper-scientists. Could this result in a new and deeper understanding of hyper-space, resulting in access to even more levels?

After all the streak drive was a 'brute force' approach maybe a more elegant solution could now be found?

Possibly.

Although, oddly the reason I think this might not happen (or at least not before the end of the war with the SL & MALign) is because that would be too similar to the situation with Grayson and the compensator.

Having Manticore take someone else's propulsion/speed related breakthrough and refine it to even better and more revolutionary (and militarily advantageous) performance might be too much of a repeat.

(Now a deeper understanding of Hyper that led to something else besides even higher accessible hyper bands; that I could see happening.)

possibily but what else could it lead to?

Artifical junctions?

How about the ability to go directly from one end termini to antoher without going through the central nexus, which is theoretically possible. (Directly from Trevors star to Beowulf whithout touching base at manticore.)

Personally, I don't think it will happen, but it is fun to speculate.

DMcCunney wrote:

savadrin wrote:they didn't get complete spec's, just the guy behind the theory. the science and number crunching guy. leave the rest up to the engineers like lewis and forraker.

It's not clear that Simoes was "the guy behind the theory". It's stated elsewhere that Streak drive development took a long time (IIRC, a century) and an enormous amount of money (Trillions of credits.) Essentially, the math said you should be able to climb higher in hyperspace, but no one had been able to for centuries, so everyone gave up trying - except the Mesan Alignment.

Dr. Simoes was engaged in Streak drive research (and apparently doing something important enough that Isobel Baldasano told Jack McBryde to make keeping Dr. Simoes focused after the termination of his daughter at least until his current research was completed a personal project), but I don't think he invented the thing. (As a WAG, his research was aimed at improving the drive and making it possible to climb even higher that current generation Streak boats could.).

That said, he can provide the theory on which the Streak drive was based, and I doubt it will take long, relatively speaking, for Manticore and Haven's engineers to build a working prototype.

Actually, it is clear that Simoes was not the "guy behind the theory". He was in charge of improving the streak drive, not inventing it.

Torch of Freedom wrote:"Problem, Ma'am?"

"Herlander Simões," she said, and he grimaced. She saw his expression and nodded.

"I know he's been under a lot of strain, Ma'am," he began, "but, so far, he's been holding up his end of his project, and—"

"Jack, I'm not criticizing his performance so far. And I'm certainly not criticizing the way you've handled him so far, either. But he's deeply involved in the entire streak drive improvement program, and that's one of our critical research areas. For that matter, he's got peripheral involvement in at least two other projects. I think, under the circumstances, it's probably appropriate for us to show a little additional concern in his case."

Unsure if mesa was trying to reduce the size, crack another wall, reduce the complexity, or something else entirely.

I also wonder what those other projecst Simoes had "peripheral involvement in"? Possibly the torch wormhole??? Nah, probably not.