What Checkov's Guns have you found in the Honorverse

SWM wrote:

vietnamabc wrote:So now after Mission of Honor we know there are 3 types of existing drive: normal impeller wedge, streak drive and spider drive, only the first can be crammed into a missle, now maybe in the future, MAN or GA can figure out how to squeeze the other two into the missle: imagine missle with crazy acc (>0.3c) or stealth missle with the mega pod salvo, things might be very interesting.

You can't count Streak Drive unless you also count HyperDrive. Streak Drive is just an improved HyperDrive. Streak Drive does not produce any acceleration; it only lets the ship transit between hyperspace bands. The Alignment has not produced any "crazy acc" drive.

Thx, just review a bit, is Hyper Drive part of an Impeller Wedge Drive or it require a separate Drive? I remember that only ships with Alpha Node can go Hyper, so is it a matter of power needed or something else?

I think you are confusing the sail with the hyper generator. You don't need a sail to enter hyper. You need a sail to survive a grav wave in hyper. You need both a sail and a hyper generator to make a WH transition.

vietnamabc wrote:

SWM wrote:You can't count Streak Drive unless you also count HyperDrive. Streak Drive is just an improved HyperDrive. Streak Drive does not produce any acceleration; it only lets the ship transit between hyperspace bands. The Alignment has not produced any "crazy acc" drive.

Thx, just review a bit, is Hyper Drive part of an Impeller Wedge Drive or it require a separate Drive? I remember that only ships with Alpha Node can go Hyper, so is it a matter of power needed or something else?

You do not need nodes at all to enter hyperspace. Scout ships were exploring hyperspace long before impeller nodes were invented--they used ordinary thrusters with low accelerations. All you need to enter hyperspace is a hyperspace generator. The Streak drive is simply a variety of hyperspace generator, able to reach higher bands of hyperspace than previous generators.

You might be thinking of wormholes, where you need both a hyperspace generator and a Warshawski sail to stabilize you.

vietnamabc wrote:So now after Mission of Honor we know there are 3 types of existing drive: normal impeller wedge, streak drive and spider drive, only the first can be crammed into a missle, now maybe in the future, MAN or GA can figure out how to squeeze the other two into the missle: imagine missle with crazy acc (>0.3c) or stealth missle with the mega pod salvo, things might be very interesting.

0.3c is not an acceleration number, it is a velocity.

It is also not a very high velocity relative to currently achievably missile velocities. Mk23 missiles at long range are often at 0.7c or higher by the time they reach attack range.

In some of the battles we've seen in the last 5-6 books, the combatant ships were already at 0.3c or better when they were launching missiles.

While I am of the school who believe/suspect that the large spider drive ships will turn out to also have a (less than efficient) version of the impeller drive, considering the form factor constraints of the two systems, I think it unlikely that they can be made compatible on the same chassis.

What I think MAY be possible would be an impeller drive 2nd stage/payload on a spider drive stealth chassis. This also fits with the direction that MAlign missile designers have already taken with the Cataphract series.

Streak drive, of course, as others have pointed out, is not really a space drive that creates motion, it is an improved hyper generator for translation to/through the bands of hyperspace. It really has no foreseeable role in missile combat.

dreamrider

Here's one I don't think has been mentioned before: in Cauldron of Ghosts, Chapter 56, on page 465 of the hardcover we find a person named Chicherin in the Mesan General Board meeting. He's a board member of something called the "Mesan Genetic Consultancy" that provides genetic modifications for planetary colonists. He's a Mesan Alpha who is a member of the Mesan Alignment, from a family that's been Alignment members for generations. MGC has been instrumental in the "uplift" of the general Mesan population.

This is all we know about him. We don't know his first name, or even if Chicherin is his first or last name. IIRC, he hasn't appeared before and doesn't appear again.

This board meeting takes place immediately after the explosive windup of Houdini, so he's probably still going to be around when Admiral Henke arrives with blood in her eye, and as a member of the General Board, he's going to be in the spotlight.

Is this RFC foreshadowing someone who will be important? Is it someone that they decided to write out of the story and missed this two page passage? Only RFC knows for sure!

roseandheather wrote:Arnold Giancola, general selfish, horrible, all-round piece of shit for obvious Haven-hurting (and Manticore-hurting) reasons. I will never, ever forgive him.

Giancola was bad, but worse than the Masadan elders? Nope. Arnold was trying to make political points by stoking the situation up to a crisis, then "solving" it, but never, ever wanted to re-start the shooting war. He simply underestimated how Queen Elizabeth and President Pritchart would react.

Younger simply does not care what happens to anybody or everybody else - that's a whole 'nother level of evil.
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If a business tries something that doesn't work, they have to stop doing it or they will go broke. If the government tries something that doesn't work, they just keep shoveling our money into it forever.

dreamrider wrote:Streak drive, of course, as others have pointed out, is not really a space drive that creates motion, it is an improved hyper generator for translation to/through the bands of hyperspace. It really has no foreseeable role in missile combat.

Hey, the 0.3c and the streak drive being a quote "brute force solution" makes me wonder if the streak drive can get into hyper at significantly more then .3c? That would be interesting...

kzt wrote:

dreamrider wrote:Streak drive, of course, as others have pointed out, is not really a space drive that creates motion, it is an improved hyper generator for translation to/through the bands of hyperspace. It really has no foreseeable role in missile combat.

Hey, the 0.3c and the streak drive being a quote "brute force solution" makes me wonder if the streak drive can get into hyper at significantly more then .3c? That would be interesting...

And when was the last time any HV ship went past 0.3c in n space...? Try never.

For am 8Mton ship to hit 0.3c say from a parking orbit:
try 500g to start with obtains v=at

t= v/a = 300,000,000/500*10 = 60k s = 1000 minutes = you are joking.

500g, 60,000s, = distance traveled of 9 BILLION km.

Hyperlimits are expressed in couple hundred Million. For all intensive purposes not even a military hyper capable ship will even sniff 0.3c, let alone a freighter with a military drive.

I think the "breach" 0.3c into hyper limit can be put to bed, tucked in, and left to sleep for the foreseable HV future.

wastedfly wrote: For all intensive purposes

First, the most important part. What the heck is an intensive purpose? The saying is "For all intents and purposes." Intensive purposes is right up there with chester drawers (chest of drawers) as things that rustle my jimmies.

Then, on to the rest of your post.

wastedfly wrote:
And when was the last time any HV ship went past 0.3c in n space...? Try never.

For am 8Mton ship to hit 0.3c say from a parking orbit:
try 500g to start with obtains v=at

t= v/a = 300,000,000/500*10 = 60k s = 1000 minutes = you are joking.

500g, 60,000s, = distance traveled of 9 BILLION km.

Hyperlimits are expressed in couple hundred Million. For all intensive purposes not even a military hyper capable ship will even sniff 0.3c, let alone a freighter with a military drive.

I think the "breach" 0.3c into hyper limit can be put to bed, tucked in, and left to sleep for the foreseable HV future.

I think the last time the .3c limit was important was more recent than "never." Back in the pre impeller days it was important, as hydrogen catcher fields don't work in hyper, and they wanted to bring a much velocity across the wall as possible.

More recently, I could think of a few times when it could be important. A raiding force, emerging from hyper, and carrying some velocity down with them, then cutting a cord across the system, not actually stopping, and jumping back up when they come out the other side. It could become a real issue if the system they were raiding had a stronger mobile defense force than the raiders could handle, and they had to run away.

Do I think that it will be important commonly? No.
Would it be worth it to upsize the generators just to get to a higher limit? Again no.
Is it something that needs to be kept in mind? Most definitely.

crewdude48 wrote:

wastedfly wrote:
And when was the last time any HV ship went past 0.3c in n space...? Try never.

I think the last time the .3c limit was important was more recent than "never." Back in the pre impeller days it was important, as hydrogen catcher fields don't work in hyper, and they wanted to bring a much velocity across the wall as possible.

See that 'n' now???

Impellers mean zilch for this discussion. I don't care if your acceleration is from farting.

You have your own answer, "in hyper". 0.3c limit is for the change to hyper space ONLY. It has zero meaning once in hyper space.