Information I'd love to know

Jonathan_S wrote:I think there's a better sensor range number somewhere, but the first I found was the liner Artemis easily observed the destroyer Hawkwing during her unannounced drill at 30 lightseconds -- basically 9 million km.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:I think there's a better sensor range number somewhere, but the first I found was the liner Artemis easily observed the destroyer Hawkwing during her unannounced drill at 30 lightseconds -- basically 9 million km.

And even by the Beta bands, with their 767x compression factor, that 30 LM visibility should see any ship that enters the Beta bands (and brings up it's wedge) from within 6.4 light hours of normal space around your ship. And given that Manticore's hyper limit is less that 1 light hour across; a warship sitting at the hyper limit in the Beta bands (or higher) should see any conventional ship entering or leaving the system in its hyper band. (But we've never seen that actually happen in the books)


In the Alpha bands the compression ratio isn't high enough for a single ship to monitor the entire perimeter, even in theory. If sitting on the hyper limit I think a warship would "only" be able to see about 20% - 25% of the periphery of the hyper limit -- but working out the exact answer seems like it'd be a bit annoying (not knowing a ready-made formula for calculating the percentage of the surface area of a sphere that lies within another sphere)

penny wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:
And even by the Beta bands, with their 767x compression factor, that 30 LM visibility should see any ship that enters the Beta bands (and brings up it's wedge) from within 6.4 light hours of normal space around your ship. And given that Manticore's hyper limit is less that 1 light hour across; a warship sitting at the hyper limit in the Beta bands (or higher) should see any conventional ship entering or leaving the system in its hyper band. (But we've never seen that actually happen in the books)


In the Alpha bands the compression ratio isn't high enough for a single ship to monitor the entire perimeter, even in theory. If sitting on the hyper limit I think a warship would "only" be able to see about 20% - 25% of the periphery of the hyper limit -- but working out the exact answer seems like it'd be a bit annoying (not knowing a ready-made formula for calculating the percentage of the surface area of a sphere that lies within another sphere)

How? Or why? Can a ship leaving the Alpha band entering the Beta band be detected? That would be an upward translation and they do not cause any bleed. But a ship in another band should certainly not be detected. They are out of phase. Things are moving much faster in the higher band to the point that it becomes blurry, then invisible.

Jonathan_S wrote:The books don't say so explicitly - but ships bleed energy whether going up to down - so I figure they'll make an arrival 'flare' visible of gravametrics within the band they translate into. Sure from normal space a ship translating into the Alpha bands makes no signal. Most you might see is their wedge signal disappear.
But if a ship happened to be nearby in the Alpha bands when they popped up into them? Figure there'd be some translation flare they could see -- both snips now being in the same band.

Still, what I was actually thinking (but see I failed to explain in my post) is that they'd see a conventional wedge / sail powered ship because it'd bring up it's drive. And we know from that text that an active drive can be seen by warship sensors in hyper at least 30 LS away within the same hyper band.

So even if there isn't an upwards translation flare in the destination hyper band, if a ship fires up its wedge or sail that close you'd think it should be seen (yet that never seems to happen in the books). And most of the time, unless you're playing silly buggers, you have your drive active as you transition.
(Obviously a spider drive wouldn't create such a drive signal - but I had been thinking of regular ships)

markusschaber wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:The books don't say so explicitly - but ships bleed energy whether going up to down - so I figure they'll make an arrival 'flare' visible of gravametrics within the band they translate into. Sure from normal space a ship translating into the Alpha bands makes no signal. Most you might see is their wedge signal disappear.
But if a ship happened to be nearby in the Alpha bands when they popped up into them? Figure there'd be some translation flare they could see -- both snips now being in the same band.

Still, what I was actually thinking (but see I failed to explain in my post) is that they'd see a conventional wedge / sail powered ship because it'd bring up it's drive. And we know from that text that an active drive can be seen by warship sensors in hyper at least 30 LS away within the same hyper band.

So even if there isn't an upwards translation flare in the destination hyper band, if a ship fires up its wedge or sail that close you'd think it should be seen (yet that never seems to happen in the books). And most of the time, unless you're playing silly buggers, you have your drive active as you transition.
(Obviously a spider drive wouldn't create such a drive signal - but I had been thinking of regular ships)

30LS in the alpha band, with the scaling factor of 62, correspond to 31 light hours in normal space. (For comparison, Voyager 1 is currently 22.5 light hours from earth, Voyager 2 about 18.)

The hyper limit of Manticore A is 22 light minutes, so yes, a ship waiting somewhere near the hyper limit in the alpha bands should be able to see everything happenling close to the hyper limit in the alpha bands, even on the opposite side of the star.

Maybe it's a plot device, maybe the effective range is much shorter within the hyper limit - as transitions are not possible within the limit, maybe the "walls" behave differently, and grav sensors have a shorter range?

Greentea wrote:I was reading House of Steel and I found myself wishing that two pieces of information were there. I'd love to know who all of the peers in the Manticoran House of Lords are, or at least their titles, and I wish I knew who all of the Steadholders are. There are only 82 of them, but we only know about a handful of them. What do you wish you knew?

Brigade XO wrote:Space travel, even hyperspace travel, seems to be more or less constant from place to place regardless of the direction of travel. If it takes a military cruiser x days to go from system X to System Y, it seems to takes the same amount of time to go in the opposite direction.

In general what is missing is anything like the effect that either winds or ocean currents have on travel on Earth, either by aircraft or a ship in the ocean. The times really only seem to be effected by the relative speed a given hyper capable ship is able to safely make. A convoy with military escort is going to be limited to the best speed of the slowest of the convoy members.

There are gravity waves and other things but other than wormholes to cut massive amounts of time off trips, nobody is mentioning that the amount of time expected for a both legs of what amounts to a round trip between two systems for the same is anything other than the same duration. In days at least.

Prior to the Warshawski Sail, not only had dimension shear made translating into the upper bands dangerous, but the successive velocity losses had made it highly uneconomical for any reaction drive ship. Now the lost velocity could be rapidly regained and the higher, "faster" bands could be used to sustain a much higher average velocity. As a result, the dreaded grav wave became the path to ever more efficient hyper travel, and captains who had previously avoided them in terror now used their new instrumentation to find them and cruised on standard impeller drive between them.

Of course, there wasn't always a grav wave going the direction a starship needed, but with the grav detector to keep a ship clear of naturally occurring grav waves impeller drive could, at last, be used in hyper-space. In addition, it was possible for a Warshawski Sail ship to "reach" across a wave (which might be thought of as sailing with a "quartering breeze") at angles of up to about 60° before the sails began losing drive and up to approximately 85° before all drive was lost. By the same token, a hypership could sail "close-hauled," or into a grav wave, at approach angles of 45°. At angles above 45°, it was necessary to "tack into the wave," which naturally meant that return passages would be slower than outgoing passages through the same region of prevailing grav waves. Thus the old "windjammer" technology of Earth's seas had reemerged in the interstellar age, transmuted into the intricacies of hyper-space and FTL travel. By 1750 pd, however, sail tuners had been upgraded to a point which permitted the "grab factor" of a sail to be manipulated with far more sophistication than Dr. Warshawski's original technology had permitted. Indeed, it became possible to create a negative grab factor which, in effect, permitted a starship to sail directly "into the wind," although with a marginally greater danger of sail failure.

tlb wrote:The gravity wave is the only thing in hyperspace that has the same effect as wind or currents on the old sailing ships

tlb wrote:The gravity wave is the only thing in hyperspace that has the same effect as wind or currents on the old sailing ships

Jonathan_S wrote:Or it was.

But now, with negative grab factor sails, I expect there's no longer any difference between sailing "upwind" or "downwind" -- leaving nothing that seems to still exert a 'wind or current' effect on starships.