Streak Drives

OK so how long do you think it's going to be until the GA develops new destroyer classes or light cruisers ships (which are the traditional classes used for scouting and long range recon) fitted with the newer Streak drives that Herlander Simões's knowledge will give them. I expect that's where will see them first (that and fast diplomatic/military courier ships) given the lead times to design and build smaller ships verses larger ones.
Also how does the GA finally figure out the Spider drive and especially (and more importantly) how to detect them. So far as I can recall they don't even have wreckage from a Spider drive equipped ship or missile to work with and Simões only knows the name, not the operating principals.

Larry

It will take longer for the GA to develop a production streak drive then you might think. As they don't have anyone who has access to how the hardware works they will have to do it from first principles, and they will need a fully modern production facility and the best hyperspace generator designers. Which is also not as easy as you may think, because the current hyperspace generator design is about 300 years old, so a lot of things about the design may well fall under the whole "That's how we do it" category without people really understanding all the details of the physical design. There is a reason why all the standard hyperdrive actual implementation details exist, but they may well be due to things like the defaults of a layout program used 300 years ago. That was a problem the MA overcame with the Gen 1 version years ago.

Spider is a long long time, they need to launch an entire R&D program. Capturing an example is the only way to speed that up, there are too many damn details.

kzt wrote:It will take longer for the GA to develop a production streak drive then you might think. As they don't have anyone who has access to how the hardware works they will have to do it from first principles, and they will need a fully modern production facility and the best hyperspace generator designers. Which is also not as easy as you may think, because the current hyperspace generator design is about 300 years old, so a lot of things about the design may well fall under the whole "That's how we do it" category without people really understanding all the details of the physical design. There is a reason why all the standard hyperdrive actual implementation details exist, but they may well be due to things like the defaults of a layout program used 300 years ago. That was a problem the MA overcame with the Gen 1 version years ago.

Spider is a long long time, they need to launch an entire R&D program. Capturing an example is the only way to speed that up, there are too many damn details.

Somehow, I doubt he posted this wanting an answer based in reality...

Knowing the math equations doesn't tell you jack crap about how to design the actual machine other than a framework for what can be certain, WILL NOT WORK.

Theoretically, we have the ability to build a light based computer... The theory hasn't helped anyone attain this lofty goal now has it?

Theory, even correct theory is dime a dozen.

As far as Streak's, would take a while to develop because they have to get around the "Not Invented Here" syndrome they have regarding hyper. Or at least "its not offensive/defense, we dont care"


Spider-drive, the GA wouldn't even care to develop their own drive, although possibly for very small craft to do stealth insertions. LAC's and various assault shuttles for example, where stealth could play a big deal for a first strike before they switch to wedges.


Eventually being the key word, courier boats, destroyers and light cruisers would the general choice for the streak drives. Manticore and Grayson might be the only/first ones who'd consider putting Streak drive into heavy cruisers, light cruisers might be detached eyes but heavy cruisers are the detachable workhorses of the RMN/GSN fleets.

Heavy cruisers (often abbreviated to CA for "Cruiser, Armored") were a class of medium combatants. They were designed for long-term independent action as a system picket, a heavy commerce protection unit and as a screening unit for capital ships.

Bolded the key bits, they're designed for long term deployments, and either raiding or protecting commerce long from home. And if the smaller craft have Streak, they might need it too just too just to do the job.

The answer to this question is the same one Comrade Accountant gave Comrade Manager when he was asked what 2 + 2 equaled.

"Whatever you need it to be."

Seriously, Herlander Simoes was working on a "Streak Drive Improvements" project. While Jack McBryde said that the people in the Gamma Center didn't know anything about the operational end of things, he was probably talking about operational from his viewpoint: getting out in the field, bribing people, assassinating foes, digging out blackmail material, etc., not talking about engineering details.

I think the odds are pretty good that Herlander knows a lot more about the practical details of the streak drive than he's aware of.

Then there's Jack's brother Zack. While RFC might throw him away after developing that subplot this far, I seriously doubt it, and Zack is not only a project manager who is three steps below Albrecht Detweiller himself, he's a synthizer who puts things together than lesser mortals would think aren't related, to produce a "how did he do that?" result. I think the odds are pretty good that he had his hand in both the streak drive and spider drive development.

Streak drive is simply an adaption of existing system,Mao with the aid of the good doctor, it should be manageable to get the engine working. Hopefully as a normal sized engines for wide fleet use.their ships are already faster in system, this would allow greater speeds when traveling between systems.
A fan fix story I read, claimed a way to beat the issue, is to reinforce or replace the components that fail when the ships attempt to traverse the bands.
The alliance would have a great advantage due to the wormhole network, that would be exponentially expanded with increased hyper.

Do we think existing ships could be upgraded, or will streak ships be restricted to newly built ships?

SYED wrote:Streak drive is simply an adaption of existing system,Mao with the aid of the good doctor, it should be manageable to get the engine working. Hopefully as a normal sized engines for wide fleet use.their ships are already faster in system, this would allow greater speeds when traveling between systems.
A fan fix story I read, claimed a way to beat the issue, is to reinforce or replace the components that fail when the ships attempt to traverse the bands.
The alliance would have a great advantage due to the wormhole network, that would be exponentially expanded with increased hyper.

Do we think existing ships could be upgraded, or will streak ships be restricted to newly built ships?

Streak drives incorporate a lot of technology that nobody else thinks applies to a hyper generator; they also occupy twice the volume of a similar hyper generator, so installing one in an existing ship would require rebuilding the ship.

That's why it took so long to develop it, and why I think that it'll take Zack McBryde, or some captured hardware, to get one working for the GA. On the other side, Manticore and, to a lesser extent Haven, has a lot of experience in miniaturizing components, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if they come up with a streak drive that's actually a drop-in replacement.

On the gripping hand, David has said there are only two more books in the series and two more major battles. That may not give time to develop the streak drive and use it. If, as he's intimated, there's a follow-on series that starts another 20 to 30 years later, we may see streak drive ships being commonplace.

JohnRoth wrote:
Streak drives incorporate a lot of technology that nobody else thinks applies to a hyper generator; they also occupy twice the volume of a similar hyper generator, so installing one in an existing ship would require rebuilding the ship.

SOME ships would require rebuilding. Dispatch Boats for example would need to be entirely new construction because there is literally no extra room on the ship. SD(p)s and BC(p)s on the other hand would only need to stick a streak drive at the front of their pod bay and wall it off before they are set to go. Depending on if it needs to be at the center of the ship or not, a CLAC may be able to sacrifice one to four LAC docks to incorporate a streak. Even the current BCLs might be able to use the streak drive if their current hyper drive is in a room next to a storage room or some unimportant (read; enlisted) birthing for example. It would take some time and a small redesign, but it is possible. The smaller the ship, the harder is will be to find the extra room to stick the thing.

crewdude48 wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:
Streak drives incorporate a lot of technology that nobody else thinks applies to a hyper generator; they also occupy twice the volume of a similar hyper generator, so installing one in an existing ship would require rebuilding the ship.

SOME ships would require rebuilding. Dispatch Boats for example would need to be entirely new construction because there is literally no extra room on the ship. SD(p)s and BC(p)s on the other hand would only need to stick a streak drive at the front of their pod bay and wall it off before they are set to go. Depending on if it needs to be at the center of the ship or not, a CLAC may be able to sacrifice one to four LAC docks to incorporate a streak. Even the current BCLs might be able to use the streak drive if their current hyper drive is in a room next to a storage room or some unimportant (read; enlisted) birthing for example. It would take some time and a small redesign, but it is possible. The smaller the ship, the harder is will be to find the extra room to stick the thing.

I thought the Streak was really just a differently built hyper generator. Slightly larger than the generators everybody else uses.

But otherwise anything a standard hyper generator does, the Streak does, with the option of doing it better. So after Manticore figures it out, and starts building in their own miniaturizing, it'll probably take the same space as standard hyper.

You wouldn't need to have a standard hyper generator, and a streak generator, it's one or the other. So even DB's wouldn't require much alteration for fielding Streak drives. Depends how much Manticore can shrink it.

JohnRoth wrote:The answer to this question is the same one Comrade Accountant gave Comrade Manager when he was asked what 2 + 2 equaled.

"Whatever you need it to be."

Seriously, Herlander Simoes was working on a "Streak Drive Improvements" project. While Jack McBryde said that the people in the Gamma Center didn't know anything about the operational end of things, he was probably talking about operational from his viewpoint: getting out in the field, bribing people, assassinating foes, digging out blackmail material, etc., not talking about engineering details.

I think the odds are pretty good that Herlander knows a lot more about the practical details of the streak drive than he's aware of.

No, the actual implementation was done on Darius. He might have known some of the people involved from before, but he never would have seen the actual equipment. And the MA leadership was confident he knew nothing about implementation details.

To bring back the throwaway comment Relax made, we have some significant theory on optical transitors. They have proved maddingly difficult to implement at any usable scale. The same way we have been "30 years from having commercial fusion power plants" for the last 50 years. You need the theory, but sometimes developing the theory is much easier than implementing it in hardware.