Back from LA with Honorverse move news

kzt wrote:http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-temporal/empirical-findings.html

This is due to the well-studied phenomenon of visible persistence. When we are shown a brief visual stimulus, the resulting visual experience is typically a good deal longer than the stimulus itself: e.g., the visible persistence of a single 1 msec flash can vary between 100 msec and 400 msec, depending on the type of flash and the adaptive state of the eye.[44]
....
With the eye, perception is less delicate. Two sparks, made to fall beside each other in rapid succession on the centre of the retina, ceased to be recognized as successive by Exner when their interval fell below 0.044 second [44msec] (1890: 613)
...
These 19th century figures have largely survived the test of time. Pockett (2003) recently attempted to replicate Exner's findings using contemporary equipment. When shown two 1 msec flashes of LED light in succession her subjects only began to see two flashes (rather than one) when the illuminations were separated by at least 45–50 msec – very much in line with Exner's results.

Exactly. Simple mechanistic explanations of perception don't work well. I've got an amusing personal experience of this: back when I was doing more introspection, there was some construction going on in the neighborhood. I noticed that I'd developed some kind of a tick: each time a very loud mechanical hammer went off, a muscle twitched. The amusing thing: the sensation of the muscle twitching was earlier than the sound of the hammer. Time travel? Clairvoyance? Nah. The "direct" path for auditory processing to consciousness seems to be enough longer than the "indirect" path that produces the sensation of the muscle twitch to create a delay that let them get out of order.

I prefer to say that we're aware of a "constructed reality," that is, a reality that's constructed by processes in our brains that have been adapted over millions of years to handle things we actually deal with. Our ancestors didn't need to deal with millisecond flashes that presented themselves only a few milliseconds and a few arc-seconds apart to handle the "four f's": food, fight, flight and f---.

On the subject of differentiating the ships nationality, one thing to think about is the tech level and professionalism of the construction yards.

RoM: Highly advanced tech base with very professional and motivated shipyards. The tech base means their ships can be "sleeker" for want of a better term. As well as more finished. Their welding technology and the professionalism of the welders could mean welds so smooth that even at arms length you would have a hard time spotting the weld. So close range shots of the ships (say they fill the screen) the hulls would look absolutely smooth. The ships would also have something close to an organic look.

PRoH: Tech not quit as good as RoM, and a labor force that doesn't really care from what I can tell. Welding technology almost as good, but with the lack of care for the finished product, the welds would be obvious (which isn't bad on it's own) and sloppy looking. From a distance, there would be a faint grid of lines on the surface of the ship (which could also help to define size).

Greyson/Masada: Low tech (relatively speaking), and Greyson has a fairly skilled and motivated space industry (I'm including Masada in this entry by giving their space industry the benefit of the doubt. Not enough was really written about their work ethic to go one way or the other). Their space welding may be inefficient enough that they rivet their hulls together. I actually doubt this is the case, but it would visually point out how "backward" these "fission using neobarbs" are (steampunk without the steam)

Just my two cents

RavenHawk wrote:On the subject of differentiating the ships nationality, one thing to think about is the tech level and professionalism of the construction yards.

RoM: Highly advanced tech base with very professional and motivated shipyards. The tech base means their ships can be "sleeker" for want of a better term. As well as more finished. Their welding technology and the professionalism of the welders could mean welds so smooth that even at arms length you would have a hard time spotting the weld. So close range shots of the ships (say they fill the screen) the hulls would look absolutely smooth. The ships would also have something close to an organic look.

PRoH: Tech not quit as good as RoM, and a labor force that doesn't really care from what I can tell. Welding technology almost as good, but with the lack of care for the finished product, the welds would be obvious (which isn't bad on it's own) and sloppy looking. From a distance, there would be a faint grid of lines on the surface of the ship (which could also help to define size).

Greyson/Masada: Low tech (relatively speaking), and Greyson has a fairly skilled and motivated space industry (I'm including Masada in this entry by giving their space industry the benefit of the doubt. Not enough was really written about their work ethic to go one way or the other). Their space welding may be inefficient enough that they rivet their hulls together. I actually doubt this is the case, but it would visually point out how "backward" these "fission using neobarbs" are (steampunk without the steam)

Just my two cents

Re: welds. If you mean the SKM/SEM ships wouldn't have visible panel lines, you are correct, but for the wrong reasons. The hulls of Honorverse ships are not welded panels. They are basically a one-piece skin that is grown in place, through nanotech. No seams anywhere, no different-shade panels like the aztec pattern on Star Trek ships, no "armor panels" like in Battlestar Galactica or Star Wars.

This is why it's so difficult to remove/replace anything that can't get taken out through a hatch. There's mention of this difficulty in whichever book it was that Honor had to have Paul replace something or other (give me a break - it's been many months since I read that book).

You may still have a point with regards to pre-alliance Grayson tech, but the PRH would probably have the same nanogrow armor/skin tech.

There's an infodump about this somewhere.

Admittedly it has been a few years since I've read one of the books that covers construction, so ty for the reminder. I was remembering when the reactor was cracked and they worried that a weld wouldn't be strong enough to be safe. If I remember correctly, they had spoken of "chem welding," and it being easier to go vertical to replace the reactor instead of through the thicker side armor. (same book. Just remember it was the third)

TSVW. The grown armor was a new feature of the modern BCs and above IIRC.

RavenHawk wrote:Admittedly it has been a few years since I've read one of the books that covers construction, so ty for the reminder. I was remembering when the reactor was cracked and they worried that a weld wouldn't be strong enough to be safe. If I remember correctly, they had spoken of "chem welding," and it being easier to go vertical to replace the reactor instead of through the thicker side armor. (same book. Just remember it was the third)

Welcome to the forums. Hope you enjoy your visits and continue to put forth your ideas. We might shoot them down, but then again, you get to shoot down ours.

kzt wrote:TSVW. The grown armor was a new feature of the modern BCs and above IIRC.

It was not clear to me that all grown armor was new at the time. What I recall is that this particular armor was new, and especially hard to cut through. It might not have meant that grown armor was a new concept--it could simply have been an improvement over previous grown armor.

SWM wrote:It was not clear to me that all grown armor was new at the time. What I recall is that this particular armor was new, and especially hard to cut through. It might not have meant that grown armor was a new concept--it could simply have been an improvement over previous grown armor.

SVW says:
""I know The Book insists on coming in from the side to avoid the control runs, but that part was written before the new alloys came in. I imagine we'll see some quiet procedure changes once BuShips digests our reports, because this is not only faster, but it's going to let us put things back together more quickly, even with the need to rewire."
Honor nodded in agreement. The R&D types' latest armor—a complex ceramic and metal alloy unbelievably light for its volume and toughness—was formed in place as part of the basic hull matrix, not added on later. That gave it vastly improved integrity against damage but meant there were no convenient sections to pull in the event of repairs.

That seems to strongly indicate that the 'new alloys' in question are different from the older versions in that there are no armour sections to pull off - which in turn suggests that growing the armour in place is indeed a new development.

Werrf wrote:

SWM wrote:It was not clear to me that all grown armor was new at the time. What I recall is that this particular armor was new, and especially hard to cut through. It might not have meant that grown armor was a new concept--it could simply have been an improvement over previous grown armor.

SVW says:
""I know The Book insists on coming in from the side to avoid the control runs, but that part was written before the new alloys came in. I imagine we'll see some quiet procedure changes once BuShips digests our reports, because this is not only faster, but it's going to let us put things back together more quickly, even with the need to rewire."
Honor nodded in agreement. The R&D types' latest armor—a complex ceramic and metal alloy unbelievably light for its volume and toughness—was formed in place as part of the basic hull matrix, not added on later. That gave it vastly improved integrity against damage but meant there were no convenient sections to pull in the event of repairs.

That seems to strongly indicate that the 'new alloys' in question are different from the older versions in that there are no armour sections to pull off - which in turn suggests that growing the armour in place is indeed a new development.

Ah, yes, you're right. It does imply that earlier armors were installed in pieces. The earlier armors might have been built by nanites, too, but it wasn't the single integrated whole which we are discussing. Thanks.

Thank you very much for this intriguing exposition I looked up the high altitude nuclear tests done around 1960 (wikipedia..) and the best fit is probably Starfish Prime, as it's the highest altitude explosion (400km).

Here's an excerpt from the rapport: "At zero time at Johnston, a white flash occurred, but as soon as one could remove his goggles, no intense light was present. A second after shot time a mottled red disc was observed directly overhead and covered the sky down to about 45 degrees from the zenith..." The rapport goes on to describe the intense auroras that followed but that isn't really relevant to us.

It seems the nuclear flash occurs even at an exoatmospheric detonation and is of sufficient duration to be readily observed.

SWM wrote:[continuing the physics calculations]

The limit of detection with the naked eye is an apparent magnitude of 6, but I don't believe you could detect a momentary flash that faint. So let us suppose a detection limit of apparent magnitude 5. That means the explosion would have to be 20 magnitudes brighter, or 1.0e10 times brighter. To do that, we move the explosion 1.0e5 times closer. Absolute magnitude is the apparent magnitude at a distance of 10 parsecs, or 32.6 light-years. Dividing by 1.0e5, we see that the explosion will very briefly be apparent magnitude 5 at a distance of 2.8 light-hours. 10 times closer will be 5 magnitudes brighter (i.e. magnitude 0, as bright as Sirius).

Conclusion: a nuclear explosion 17 light-minutes away might be (very briefly) as bright as Sirius, and potentially visible much further. Very interesting!

Mitigating factors: I'm not sure how long a flash has to be before it is actually detected by the eye. The flash lasts longer than 100 microseconds, of course, but it decays rapidly. I'm not sure exactly how rapidly, and I'm not sure how to model the light-integration of the eye. So this is a big guesstimate here--I easily could be off by several magnitudes brightness.