Killer Terminii?

SYED wrote:When they fully survey a worm hole, they can geneally estimate their length, so if they do, how would the reconcile the idea that the wormhole is near a black hole, if there is not blackhole near by.

Textev?

As far as I recall, the only thing they can tell from the survey is the location and enterence vector. You can't make a guess at length unless you go through, figure out where you are, and calculate it from there.

SYED wrote:When they fully survey a worm hole, they can geneally estimate their length, so if they do, how would the reconcile the idea that the wormhole is near a black hole, if there is not blackhole near by.

I don't think they can - the length of the Manticore-Lynx bridge seemed to come as a surprise to the survey crew.

Jonathan_S wrote:
Reading ToF after WoH it really, immediately, struck me the difference in how the risks of wormhole surveying were presented. WoH had nothing more than vague scary stories. ToF had references to specific known disasters.

*Clearly* the intervening 4 years was a busy and unhappy time for wormhole surveyors!

Patentmike wrote:

And if people do start linking the memory of that killer terminus with the Torch terminus, they are more likely to conclude that there is a natural hazard on the far side than to decide it is enemy action.

I am not so sure. We have lots of talk, Cachat et al about Mesa's overt use of Verdant Vista making no sense. At some point, Verdant Vista as an anchor for the wormhole will come up.

I speculate, based on really thin textev, that the Alignment learned something from the Torch Wormhole that led them to the Streak Drive. Someone in Naval Intelligence is going to do a search that draws the correlation and voila, the wormhole becomes the focus of much scrutiny.

By the way, the really thin textev is the difference in the Torch Wormhole's profile (gravity wave profile?) from the previously utilized types.

Patentmike

To be clear, I do agree that at some point, someone on Torch might come up with the idea that the loss of the survey ship was not an accident. What I was saying in the post you quote is that comparing this incident to the previous incident of a lost survey ship is more likely to make them think it is an accident than an attack. So I'm hoping they ignore the previous disappearance when they sit down to analyze the current disappearance.

By the way, I think you mean spider drive, not streak drive. The streak drive is simply an oversized hyper generator. The spider drive is the real scientific breakthrough. It's been suggested before that analysis of the Twins helped lead to the spider drive, but there is no text evidence. On the contrary, there is text evidence that the Alignment is still mystified by the phenomenon of the Twins. Even if the spider drive did come from analyzing the Twins, it is unlikely that analysis of just the Torch terminus will lead to that kind of breakthrough for the allies.

The streak drive is simply an oversized hyper generator.

Textev?

I remember the streak drive being described as very large, but not as JUST an oversized hyper generator. I got the impression there was more to it.

So I'm hoping they ignore the previous disappearance when they sit down to analyze the current disappearance.

More broadly, my point is that data somehow connected with the Alignment will "hit" data from the Torch wormhole and will cause the Manties to ignore the previous disappearance. The streak drive was one candidate I came up with, but, at this point, the data could come from Mesa itself.

Patentmike wrote:I remember the streak drive being described as very large, but not as JUST an oversized hyper generator. I got the impression there was more to it.

You are correct, it's a huge breakthrough. People had been trying to get to that level in Hyper for centuries and failing.

kzt wrote:

Patentmike wrote:I remember the streak drive being described as very large, but not as JUST an oversized hyper generator. I got the impression there was more to it.

You are correct, it's a huge breakthrough. People had been trying to get to that level in Hyper for centuries and failing.

But at the same time it is "just" a better hyper generator that reaches 2 new hyper bands that others cannot; it is not a radically divergant technology (like the spider drive). To an outside observer, a streak drive is simply an oversized hyper generator.

Theemile wrote:

kzt wrote:You are correct, it's a huge breakthrough. People had been trying to get to that level in Hyper for centuries and failing.

But at the same time it is "just" a better hyper generator that reaches 2 new hyper bands that others cannot; it is not a radically divergant technology (like the spider drive). To an outside observer, a streak drive is simply an oversized hyper generator.

I guess. And it was described (IIRC) as a bit of a brute force solution.

Still, I suppose it's possible and some new insight into how hyper worked was derived from close observation of the unique situation of the 'Twins'. Possibly of whatever interaction the two wormhole termini have that causes the 'kick' observed by Harvest Joy. Speculating further such a new insight might have given researchers a clue on how to crack the Iota wall.

Patentmike wrote:

The streak drive is simply an oversized hyper generator.

Textev?

I remember the streak drive being described as very large, but not as JUST an oversized hyper generator. I got the impression there was more to it.

Means it takes roughly twice the internal volume required. It fits into a courier boat that does not look overly enlarged and suspicious to other people. Granted, a hyper gen scaled up for a 8,500,000 ton hull might mass more than the entire dispatch boat does, but it will only displace a few broadside weapons(or something else).

It's like swapping engines in cars. 4 cyl for a V8 - increases the engine weight and fuel consumption a lot, but overall vehicle weight is a smaller increase.

There's obviously something else to it, in a similar way that a military/courier grade hyperdrive is more expensive and maintenance intensive than the types most merchies use. But that newness is an evolution of existing technology.

The spider drive is completely new and can't be retrofitted or used as a modification. It also can't be used simultaneously with an impeller-ringed hull because the physics are incompatible.

munroburton wrote:There's obviously something else to it, in a similar way that a military/courier grade hyperdrive is more expensive and maintenance intensive than the types most merchies use. But that newness is an evolution of existing technology.

The spider drive is completely new and can't be retrofitted or used as a modification. It also can't be used simultaneously with an impeller-ringed hull because the physics are incompatible.

But from a practical matter, it's unlikely that any existing ships (other than military cargo ships like missile colliers with large open spaces anyway) will be retrofitted to take streak drives. The hyper drive has to be pretty close to the center of the ship for its field to efficiently cover everything, so there's bound to be a lot you'd have to cut through just to get to it, then you have to move a lot of other things to make room for the larger drive.

However, if you have a general idea of how big a streak drive needs to be, you could start building ships now with deliberately over-sized hyper drive spaces, expecting to put a streak drive in later, but before everything is completely built around the drives.

If you're careful about it, you might even be able to design, say, SD(P)s and CLACs with the hyper drive located a few decks above the boat bays, with the space between the hyper drive and the boat bays expected to be removed to let you swap them out. All the power connections etc. to the intervening space would have to be carefully laid out so that they can be disconnected and reconnected easily. Maybe the removable space is configured as one or more modules to make the swap easier to accomplish.

That's something for Shannon, Sonja, and Simões to work on at Bolthole. They'll have to figure out if it's feasible.