Technology Evolution

One of the things that really impresses me about Weber's work is his ability to "innovate" naturally. most specifically I would point to the invention of the missile pod. At some point long ago, that I can't quite remember, Honor pulls one of her sneaky maneuvers creating the first pod. What this action was, again I don't remember. Could somebody please help? Are there any other examples of this kind of tech development you can think of within his books?

I'm not sure what you are referring too. Missile pods were old tech that had been abandoned for general use before the development of better/cheaper/small mass drivers was done by the RMN.

druppel1987 wrote:One of the things that really impresses me about Weber's work is his ability to "innovate" naturally. most specifically I would point to the invention of the missile pod. At some point long ago, that I can't quite remember, Honor pulls one of her sneaky maneuvers creating the first pod. What this action was, again I don't remember. Could somebody please help? Are there any other examples of this kind of tech development you can think of within his books?

Honor didn't create the pods or their use. The first book she uses missile pods in is 'Short Victorious War'. The ability to use them to create a massive first punch came about because of beefed up mass drivers developed by Manticore. I can't find the exact passage. The gist of it is this. The use of missile pods had been dropped because the mass drivers in the pods couldn't match the ship born ones for accelerating the missiles. This caused the missile salvo's to come in separately. Manticore had developed much smaller more powerful mass drivers which allowed the missiles to accelerate with shipborne missiles and come in one massive wave.

The other tech development I enjoyed watch develop were the LAC's and the grav wave pulse generating com gear. Watching them progress through the books was a lot of fun.

druppel1987 wrote:One of the things that really impresses me about Weber's work is his ability to "innovate" naturally. most specifically I would point to the invention of the missile pod. At some point long ago, that I can't quite remember, Honor pulls one of her sneaky maneuvers creating the first pod. What this action was, again I don't remember. Could somebody please help? Are there any other examples of this kind of tech development you can think of within his books?

I think what you *might* be referring to is her use of Wayfarer's missile pods leading to the development of the podlayer. Even if it is, you would still be wrong, in a way. Honor never "created" anything along those lines - she just helped to prove the concept, work out some of the bugs in the system, and devlop doctrine for combat use.

Even with all that, the podlayer itself was more or less in development for many years before it had even been "tested" on the Wayfarer (and her sister Q-Ships). It was one of the many ideas coming from King Roger's Weapons Development Program that is at the heart of I Will Build My House Of Steel.

About the only thing you could say she "created", was a means of communicating FTL using the impeller nodes of the ships in code patterns, which later culminated in the development of the FTL comms and the Apollo Control Missile. Even then, I believe that there was some inkling of that in King Roger's program, alongside the DDM and MDM.

That should answer your question about other tech developments. One thing that was "developed" led - directly or indirectly - to something else, which led to something else, and so on. Yes, David is pretty good about doing that sort of thing, rather than just creating a new weapon out of nothing, like many other SF books tend to do.

MaxxQ wrote:About the only thing you could say she "created", was a means of communicating FTL using the impeller nodes of the ships in code patterns, which later culminated in the development of the FTL comms and the Apollo Control Missile. Even then, I believe that there was some inkling of that in King Roger's program, alongside the DDM and MDM.

That's a silly retcon by Zahn (iirc). It's not like it wasn't generally understood.

kzt wrote:

MaxxQ wrote:About the only thing you could say she "created", was a means of communicating FTL using the impeller nodes of the ships in code patterns, which later culminated in the development of the FTL comms and the Apollo Control Missile. Even then, I believe that there was some inkling of that in King Roger's program, alongside the DDM and MDM.

That's a silly retcon by Zahn (iirc). It's not like it wasn't generally understood.

Thank you. That attribution of the FTL comms concept really bothered me. One too many innovations by Her Honor for my suspension of disbelief.

Dca wrote:

kzt wrote:That's a silly retcon by Zahn (iirc). It's not like it wasn't generally understood.

Thank you. That attribution of the FTL comms concept really bothered me. One too many innovations by Her Honor for my suspension of disbelief.

You both will note that I had the word "created" in quotes. Followed by my thought that it possibly/probably was already a known technique?

I never said that she actually *did* create FTL comms, but as far as we know, she *was* the first to use it in a combat situation.

kzt wrote:That's a silly retcon by Zahn (iirc). It's not like it wasn't generally understood.

(reordered quotes)

MaxxQ wrote:

Dca wrote:Thank you. That attribution of the FTL comms concept really bothered me. One too many innovations by Her Honor for my suspension of disbelief.

You both will note that I had the word "created" in quotes. Followed by my thought that it possibly/probably was already a known technique?

I never said that she actually *did* create FTL comms, but as far as we know, she *was* the first to use it in a combat situation.

Yeah, in my opinion at most Honor's use was a heads up / reminded to the tech-heads associated with the WDB that even a very limited, and low baud rate, FTL signal can be tactically significant.

I agree Zahn oversold the impact on Hemphill and FTL comms in his shirt story.

I don't recall the name of the story, but it was in Silesia where Honor is working in coordination with an Andermani BC to trap a rogue cruiser posing as a Manty. Honor uses her wedge to signal to the BC that the situation is ripe. Sonja Hempel reads the after action report and gains inspiration for ftl communication from Honor's creative use of her wedge. So no, Honnor didn't invent ftl system, but she did provide inspiration for it.

Don

n7axw wrote:I don't recall the name of the story, but it was in Silesia

With One Stone by Timothy Zahn. I think most of us remember the story; we just think the author oversold Honor's probable impact on FTL comm invention.