New Manty ship ideas.

Jonathan_S wrote:Well we did have a short silly "what if" not too long about the effect of landing an SD on a planet.


But basically, we have no evidence that counter grav can scale up endlessly.

The largest vehicles I believe we've seen with counter-grav are in the < 500 ton range. A very long way from even a LAC, much less a capital ship.


Odds are that there's an upper limit to counter grav around the size of a cargo shuttle (otherwise people would use larger cargo shuttles, or just land merchant ships to offload) making the whole idea a technical nonstarter (as well and a solution in search of a problem)

Counter gravity is used in the Honorverse in massive buildings, which weigh significantly more than starships, I'd be willing to bet.

I don't see any reason why you couldn't build some sort of contra gravity method of orbiting and deorbiting any size ship on an inhabited planet with gravity levels that humans could survive on. Question being, why would you want to?

I could see some minor construction. Maybe LAC bases or missile construction and storage, but full up fleet construction and docking on a planet? Can't see it.

What happens when you have to scramble your fleet on intercept, and a substantial part of your fleet is in-atmosphere? They are NOT accelerating at 500g inside atmosphere. Period. I haven't done the math, but I'd say that the energy released from accelerating at 500g in atmosphere would be something on the order of the Tunguska event. For each ship.

Maybe a moderate sized moon with no atmosphere for a large fleet base or shipyard. Never a planet.

Remember one more thing. Exposing ships to air people can breathe exposes them to something that might be very dangerous to Honorverse ships. Oxidation of armor, nodes, and sensor systems.

Cheopis wrote:Counter gravity is used in the Honorverse in massive buildings, which weigh significantly more than starships, I'd be willing to bet.

I'm not so sure about that. Countergrav in buildings allows you to build taller or more massive buildings than you would be able to with traditional construction techniques, but it can't alter the properties of the ground on which that building stands. If anything, buildings will mass less than starships (The World Trade Center towers had a weight of about 1.5 million tons, according to the web); if only because there usually isn't much reason to build them that large.

I don't see any reason why you couldn't build some sort of contra gravity method of orbiting and deorbiting any size ship on an inhabited planet with gravity levels that humans could survive on. Question being, why would you want to?

It's also unknown whether countergrav tech can scale in a way that would make this possible for large ships.

I could see some minor construction. Maybe LAC bases or missile construction and storage, but full up fleet construction and docking on a planet? Can't see it.

Even then, given the scale at which these things are produced, the overhead involved in getting all the parts to the actual shipyards doing the final assembly, or getting munitions to fleets, would rise dramatically if they are manufctured dirtside (And that is assuming that dirtside manufacturing is even possible; there may be parts involved that will have to be produced in microgravity for whatever reason).

LAC bases on planets aren't all that efficient either. A space-based LAC can be launched and recovered easily, it can be away under impeller drive in a matter of seconds after launch, while wear and tear on components due to reentry heat is not a factor at all.

What happens when you have to scramble your fleet on intercept, and a substantial part of your fleet is in-atmosphere? They are NOT accelerating at 500g inside atmosphere. Period. I haven't done the math, but I'd say that the energy released from accelerating at 500g in atmosphere would be something on the order of the Tunguska event. For each ship.

Amen.

Maybe a moderate sized moon with no atmosphere for a large fleet base or shipyard. Never a planet.

Remember one more thing. Exposing ships to air people can breathe exposes them to something that might be very dangerous to Honorverse ships. Oxidation of armor, nodes, and sensor systems.

I think anything with a big gravitational pull of its own is right out. Everything else being equal, the energy expenditure in moving up and down the gravity well would very soon become a factor in the economy of such an arrangement.

Cheopis wrote:Counter gravity is used in the Honorverse in massive buildings, which weigh significantly more than starships, I'd be willing to bet.

My impression is that countergrav is only used in the *construction* of buildings in the Honorverse, and not a part of the completed building. It's a hell of a lot easier (not to mention cheaper) to float the construction materials to the top with CG than it is to have to keep moving those damn cranes around and up with each new floor.

That's not to say that CG might not be used in buildings as a safety measure. For instance, during an earthquake (Sphinxquake? Mantiquake? Gryphquake?), CG generators on each floor may be used to prevent the building from falling until people can evacuate.

That seems plausible. A building that requires a constant, uninterrupted power supply of some magnitude in order to remain standing seems like a Bad Idea.

I would expect counter grav to be used in very large buildings operations as well as in construction. Things like elevators and possibly part of the plumbing. Window would also be a good application. Whatever you did, you would need mechanical safety devices in case of power failures.

Brigade XO wrote:I would expect counter grav to be used in very large buildings operations as well as in construction. Things like elevators and possibly part of the plumbing. Window would also be a good application. Whatever you did, you would need mechanical safety devices in case of power failures.

Funny you should mention that. I was just reading Beauty and the Beast from Beginnings, and there's a throwaway line where Alfred takes a "grav lift" to his floor in his dormitory.

So yeah, I can see smaller CG generators being used in the operations of a large building, but *not* being used to keep the building itself standing (except in emergencies).

The E wrote:That seems plausible. A building that requires a constant, uninterrupted power supply of some magnitude in order to remain standing seems like a Bad Idea.

Or a really well developed technology and a couple very reliable backups. Or perhaps in the case of an emergency, the backup system would lay the building on it's side.

Flying around in planes that have no physical connection between the pilot's controls and the flight surfaces is kind of scary too - but people do it every day.

Brigade XO wrote:I would expect counter grav to be used in very large buildings operations as well as in construction. Things like elevators and possibly part of the plumbing. Window would also be a good application. Whatever you did, you would need mechanical safety devices in case of power failures.

I can kind of see one place where you might get away with using counter grav structurally; and that would be if you were putting up a major residential tower on anything but full rock.

You'd need extremely outsized foundations to keep the building from settling over the years, because it's in effect floating in the ground. Maybe you could use counter grav to reduce the buildings apparent mass and thus the size of its foundation (still plenty to hold it up, but not enough to float it permanently without any settling).

Since the counter grav is only preventing a long term issue (settling; especially uneven settling over many years) it's not a safety issue if it loses power or fails. You've got plenty of time (weeks or even months) to repair or restore it without any safety impact.


Mind you I'd still prefer driving really long pilings down to solid rock, but if that's not practical...

Jonathan_S wrote:Mind you I'd still prefer driving really long pilings down to solid rock, but if that's not practical...

Well as I recall, the one time we saw any detail of a construction project in the Honorverse that's exactly what they were doing.

Brigade XO wrote:I would expect counter grav to be used in very large buildings operations as well as in construction. Things like elevators and possibly part of the plumbing. Window would also be a good application. Whatever you did, you would need mechanical safety devices in case of power failures.

More than likely power supplies would be included built in or have a battery backup. Have an IKEA lamp that has a solar powered / recharged battery pack. No plugin. You have to put the power pack in direct sunlight to recharge it. Likely batteries will be better in the HV.