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

psy9o wrote:I seem to remember also that the streak drive is almost twice as big as a normal drive.

Many people are making a wrong assumption here. There is no such thing as a streak DRIVE. It is just an Alignment code name for ships with a completly normal drive that are fitted with a new HYPER GENERATOR that allows them to use the next 2 hyper bands. So the drive itself is no different than before. The new hyper generator is twice as big as the old version.

Relax wrote:Simoes only knows the math. He had NO involvement with the actual development of the real world item.

TheMonster wrote:

kzt wrote:And given that Manticore doesn't have any R&D facilities right now I doubt they will have a working model in a month or three.

They have something better. They have virtually the entire staff from Weyland heading to Bolthole with Simões to create a joint GA R&D project. If any Grayson R&D people are available, the synergy could be insane, given how their designs have pushed the state of the art in so many ways.

What Simões can tell about the Mesan design is that the Streak drive is roughly twice the size of a normal hyper generator. He also knows what its power requirements are, and anything else about how it fits into a ship design. The people planning future SD(P)s and CLACs should be able to design around those rough specs (with some cushion; any space left over can be filled with extra armor) while the Streak Drive team turns whatever Simões knows into working designs for DBs and DDs and works their way up to the bigger drives.

Once the Streak Drive design is proven, few if any military ships will be built without them. Even supply and repair ships that are expected to keep up with a fleet of Streak Drive wallers will have to use them too.

Actually he was a leader of team, that was improving first generation of streak drive. So I strongly suspect, that he had all technical data and schematics of the first gen.

Dalin wrote:Actually he was a leader of team, that was improving first generation of streak drive. So I strongly suspect, that he had all technical data and schematics of the first gen.

Since there was no indication that he actually brought any documents with him, that is of limited value. It's like getting the lead designer for a new radar and asking him to reproduce the engineering blueprints for the last generation from memory. Except in this case it has been stated that he didn't actually work with the hardware at all.

kzt wrote:Since there was no indication that he actually brought any documents with him, that is of limited value. It's like getting the lead designer for a new radar and asking him to reproduce the engineering blueprints for the last generation from memory. Except in this case it has been stated that he didn't actually work with the hardware at all.

Not exactly, because radar is a thoroughly understood piece of kit. Incremental improvements on its design aren't particularly radical, and don't require any special thinking. Simões, on the other hand, was lead researcher in a project that cracked a problem that was generally considered impossible by the rest of the scientific community. It's more like getting Werner von Braun or Robert Oppenheimer - they know all the theory and can guide others to recreate the details to get to the same results.

sawa wrote:Many people are making a wrong assumption here. There is no such thing as a streak DRIVE. It is just an Alignment code name for ships with a completly normal drive that are fitted with a new HYPER GENERATOR that allows them to use the next 2 hyper bands. So the drive itself is no different than before. The new hyper generator is twice as big as the old version.

What, exactly, is the practical difference between a "hyper drive" and a "hyper generator"? If I say "the stealthed DD engaged its hyper drive", does anyone think it's one bit different from saying "the stealthed DD engaged its hyper generator"?



What Simões has already told the GA about the Streak Drive includes the fact that it's twice the size of a conventional hyper drive (and whether that increased size reflects any difference in shape), and presumably what its power requirements are.

If I were on Hemphill/Foraker's staff, I'd look at the evolution of hyper generator designs between conventional designs and the known Mesan Streak Drive as described by Simões, then extrapolate the changes accordingly, allowing an even larger space in SD(P) and CLAC designs than would be expected. We know that the fraction of the total ship volume occupied by the hyper drive gets smaller as the size of the ship goes up, so it shouldn't be difficult to set aside that extra space on the largest ships.

Then as the longer lead times for building SD(P)/CLACs imply that significant progress in refining the drive design can be made between when the hulls are laid down and their completion, I'd deliberately hold off as long as possible putting in the hyper drive and the things between it and the nearest surface of the ship, finishing everything else possible so as to install the latest tested design before closing it up.

In fact, while the SD(P)s and CLACs were being built, I'd deliberately build some SD(P)/CLAC-sized drives into much smaller test ships, just to be able to put designs that had worked in the real world into these ships.

If there's a way to deliberately make the hyper generator easy to upgrade as the drive research continues, I'd do that, too. If the sizes work out right, I'd put it right above the boat bay, since you already have a big access way there.

TheMonster wrote:

sawa wrote:Many people are making a wrong assumption here. There is no such thing as a streak DRIVE. It is just an Alignment code name for ships with a completly normal drive that are fitted with a new HYPER GENERATOR that allows them to use the next 2 hyper bands. So the drive itself is no different than before. The new hyper generator is twice as big as the old version.

What, exactly, is the practical difference between a "hyper drive" and a "hyper generator"? If I say "the stealthed DD engaged its hyper drive", does anyone think it's one bit different from saying "the stealthed DD engaged its hyper generator"?

I think it's a difference of the dimension the generator moves you in. A 'drive' moves you in relativistic, three-dimensional space. A hyper generator doesn't move you one inch in normal space, but does move you 'up' or 'down' the hyperspace gradient. It's a pedantic difference, but it's a difference.

TheMonster wrote:

sawa wrote:Many people are making a wrong assumption here. There is no such thing as a streak DRIVE. It is just an Alignment code name for ships with a completly normal drive that are fitted with a new HYPER GENERATOR that allows them to use the next 2 hyper bands. So the drive itself is no different than before. The new hyper generator is twice as big as the old version.

What, exactly, is the practical difference between a "hyper drive" and a "hyper generator"? If I say "the stealthed DD engaged its hyper drive", does anyone think it's one bit different from saying "the stealthed DD engaged its hyper generator"?

The difference is one of semantics. Most readers, seeing the term "hyper drive", will think somewhat in terms of Star Trek's warp drive, which provides propulsion that enables a star ship in the Trek universe to move faster than light. In the Honorverse however, the hyper drive or alternately the hyper generator does not provide a propulsive effect, but instead "translates" the ship out of normal space into hyperspace, where you still can't actually exceed the speed of light, but due to the distance between points in hyper being being less than corresponding distances between points in normal space, allows the ship to practically exceed the speed of light in normal space (as seen from the point of view of an outside observer). The ship mounting a hyper drive/generator must have some other means of producing acceleration. In the days before impeller drives, ships used reaction drives (some type of rocket engines), then when the impeller drive (which provides a propulsive effect on the ship mounting it) was invented it was used (in normal space, and outside of gravity waves in hyper-space), then when the Warshawski sail was invented, the sail provided propulsion in a gravity wave in hyper-space.

More Than Honor, The Universe of Honor Harrington, (1) Background (General) wrote:The major problem limiting hyper speeds was that simply getting into hyper did not create a propulsive effect. Indeed, the initial translation into hyper was a complex energy transfer which reduced a starship's velocity by "bleeding off" momentum. In effect, a translating hypership lost approximately 92% of its normal-space velocity when entering hyper. This had unfortunate consequences in terms of reaction mass requirements, particularly since the fact that hydrogen catcher fields were inoperable in hyper meant one could not replenish one's reaction mass underway. On the other hand, the velocity bleed effect applied equally regardless of the direction of the translation (that is, one lost 92% of one's velocity whether one was entering hyper-space from normal-space or normal-space from hyper-space), which meant that leaving hyper automatically decelerated one's vessel to a normal-space velocity only 08% of whatever its velocity had been in hyper-space. This tremendously reduced the amount of deceleration required at the far end of a hyper voyage and so made reaction drives at least workable.

***Snip***

Once a vessel enters hyper, it is placed in what might be considered a compressed dimension which corresponds on a point-by-point basis to "normal-space" but places those points in much closer congruity. Hyper-space consists of multiple regions or layers—called "bands"—of associated but discrete dimensions. Dr. Radhakrishnan (who, after Adrienne Warshawski, is considered to have been humanity's greatest hyper-physicist) called the hyper bands "the back-flash of creation," for they might be considered echoes of normal-space, the consequence of the ultimate convergence of the mass of an entire normal-space universe. Or, as Dr. Warshawski once put it, "Gravity folds normal-space everywhere, by however small an amount, and hyper-space may be considered the 'inside' of all those little folds."
In practical terms, this meant that for a ship in hyper, the distance between normal-space points was "shorter," which allowed the vessel to move between them using a standard reaction drive at sublight speeds to attain an effective FTL capability. Even in hyper, ships were not capable of true faster-than-light movement; the relatively closer proximity of points in normal-space simply gave the appearance of FTL travel, which meant that as long as a vessel was dependent on its reaction drive and could not reach the higher hyper bands, its maximum apparent speed was limited to approximately sixty-two times that which the same vessel could have attained in normal-space.

Italics are the author's, boldface emphasis is mine.

Whenever I see the term streak drive, I mentally substitute the phrase "super hyper generator" to avoid the confusion of thinking that the streak drive is a new form of propulsion, as opposed to a piece of equipment that allows the ship mounting it to enter hyperspace from normal space, exit hyperspace to normal space, and both "climb" and "descend" within and across hyper bands within hyper space.

Simos's greatest value is that he can verify that what was previously believed impossible is, indeed, possible...and he can provide mathematical verification of at least some portion of his assertions.

He doesn't need to talk about the hardware, designs or any of that.

He just needs to provide the info he has, and others will work the hardware out.

Just like the 1632 or Safehold series of books - the end result is now known, so lets apply invention and experimentation till we get to the known result.

We need a device that can use some form of distilled petroleum to power itself that can fly...

How do we accomplish that? Duno...but we know it can be accomplished, and the books from uptime tells up the math that is necessary for the thing to work.

Does it mean we can do it NOW? No.

We don't have the know how, industrial base or anything of the sort...

Does it mean we can do it...YES...because what we don't have we can learn and make.

Simos is the uptime book.

They will get it done.

Werrf wrote:I think it's a difference of the dimension the generator moves you in. A 'drive' moves you in relativistic, three-dimensional space. A hyper generator doesn't move you one inch in normal space, but does move you 'up' or 'down' the hyperspace gradient. It's a pedantic difference, but it's a difference.

I can be as pedantic as anyone, and for what I think is a good reason: Using sloppy terminology leads to sloppy thinking.

But DW has seen fit to have people in the Honorverse call this thing "Streak Drive". As you say above, the hyper generator does indeed "drive" the ship "up" or "down" the hyperspace "dimension". And in doing so, it not only allows ships to reach higher hyper bands than ever before, but it apparently improves the safety margins for the previously-highest bands, or the MAlign would be losing Streak Drive DBs at too high a rate for them to be useful.

This last point is the only reason why putting a Streak Drive on anything bigger than a DD would be worth pursuing; if it only raises the ceiling on what's possible but does nothing for what's safe, nobody will want to risk losing significant numbers of SD(Ps), CLACs, etc. just to get to the target a few days sooner.

Mitchell, Esq. wrote:Simos's greatest value is that he can verify that what was previously believed impossible is, indeed, possible...and he can provide mathematical verification of at least some portion of his assertions.

He doesn't need to talk about the hardware, designs or any of that.

He just needs to provide the info he has, and others will work the hardware out.

Particularly as to a large extent the Streak Drive is a novel combination of existing technologies rather than an entirely new development. As Manticore and Beowulf at least will have almost certainly been keeping up with new developments as much as possible its very likely that they know about some if not all of the enabling technologies for the Streak Drive making building their own version that much easier.