Rebuilding Blackbird for the GSN

Tenshinai wrote:On the other hand, what they DO have is instituitional experience in rapid expansion.
More experienced workers would of course be better, but they have effectively already done something similar once, even if from a better position, it still helps a LOT knowing how to quick-educate new workers.

In fact, in this they may actually be in a better position now than Manticore, who has always been able to draw from existing workforces, at worst they have only needed to improve skills and add specialty skills, while Grayson in relatively short order trained up people who had ZERO previously useful experience.

So while Manticore can probably restart faster, Grayson MAY be able to expand faster, because they already know how to masstrain the workforce needed from zero.

Maybe.

That can be a possibility. I remember Caparelli commented about the number of people that were working in the Grayson shipyards and the reply was that Graysons are used to working without much of the tools that Manticoran yards have and therefore they are used to a lot of 'manual labor' in space.

With most of the old school workers 'out of the picture', the new training that new Grayson workers can include increased reliance on the tools mentioned earlier and thus, they would become more efficient.

Rakhmamort wrote:

Tenshinai wrote:On the other hand, what they DO have is instituitional experience in rapid expansion.
More experienced workers would of course be better, but they have effectively already done something similar once, even if from a better position, it still helps a LOT knowing how to quick-educate new workers.

In fact, in this they may actually be in a better position now than Manticore, who has always been able to draw from existing workforces, at worst they have only needed to improve skills and add specialty skills, while Grayson in relatively short order trained up people who had ZERO previously useful experience.

So while Manticore can probably restart faster, Grayson MAY be able to expand faster, because they already know how to masstrain the workforce needed from zero.

Maybe.

That can be a possibility. I remember Caparelli commented about the number of people that were working in the Grayson shipyards and the reply was that Graysons are used to working without much of the tools that Manticoran yards have and therefore they are used to a lot of 'manual labor' in space.

With most of the old school workers 'out of the picture', the new training that new Grayson workers can include increased reliance on the tools mentioned earlier and thus, they would become more efficient.

But if the "instutitute" got blown away as well, there is no basis to train the follow on groups.

Yes, knowledge SHOULD have been codified and stored offsite, but it is amazing the thousands of little things that do not make in into documentation. My Teams's been documenting our jobs (at different levels from main roles to minute details) for the last 3 years - we no longer finish one and either that hardware gets replaced and we need to learn the new equipment or something breaks and one of us does a 30 second fix that never made it into the docs, so we need to start again (because someone originally argued that the 50 "little fixes" didn't belong there").

Point being, without the cadres, there is no "institutional knowledge" to pass along. Even reading from the manual (no matter how detailed) will be clumsey and the outcome full of mistakes.

But if the "instutitute" got blown away as well, there is no basis to train the follow on groups.

Yes, knowledge SHOULD have been codified and stored offsite, but it is amazing the thousands of little things that do not make in into documentation. My Teams's been documenting our jobs (at different levels from main roles to minute details) for the last 3 years - we no longer finish one and either that hardware gets replaced and we need to learn the new equipment or something breaks and one of us does a 30 second fix that never made it into the docs, so we need to start again (because someone originally argued that the 50 "little fixes" didn't belong there").

Point being, without the cadres, there is no "institutional knowledge" to pass along. Even reading from the manual (no matter how detailed) will be clumsey and the outcome full of mistakes.

The batch for Blackbird, and those before that, were not trained at Blackbird, as it didn´t exist yet.

And there is ZERO reason to expect the basic training and support structure suddenly being transferred there.

And since the other orbital infrastructure was apparently not destroyed(or Grayson would be rapdily approaching starvation, and that WOULD be noted in the doom'n'gloom reports), the vast majority should still exist.

Specialist training may have been moved to Blackbird once it was started up, as their respective workloads was moved there, but even that isn´t entirely likely as the already functional system around the homeplanet, well there´s little reason to specifically remove it.


Oh your certainly right that the vast amounts of on-the-job experience will be more or less lost, and that means it will probably take years to get back to pre-OB levels of efficiency.

But that´s not the part i was talking about, but rather the training they get up until a worker starts doing his job. The more basic part.

Here, Grayson expanded its space capable workforce to an extreme degree in remarkably short time, and the presence of female workers, which apparently did not effectively exist at all until more recently, shows that their masstraining can make decent workers out of even those with zero previously relevant experience.

Meanwhile, Manticore has had a HUGE space industry for a very long time, every time they have needed to expand(as far as we know), they have done so by drawing a lot from previously trained personnel that have since gone on elsewhere, and as such they have never been forced to set up masstraining for previously "raw recruits" so to speak.


BTW, "instutitute"?

Remember my snark about "Historians are still puzzled by the mysterious disappearance"?

The previous infrastructure was in orbit around Grayson, it all mysteriously vanished. Remember that this was stuff that was used to service things around and build infrastructure for Grayson, not military construction way the hell out on the edge of the system. It also was owned by people other then the people developing blackbird.

What I suspect is that there will be A new model Hespestus/Vulcan clone of a highly automated space station going up in Grayson Orbit. This will likely take a while to build probably significantly longer than the Manticoran yards.

In one of the short stories(can't rember the name but it was from the same author as the leters home free story) there was mention about regenerating that infrastructure being a huge priority. There was also mention of getting more women involved, in Particular it sounded like Steadholder Bancroft was going to be pushing for having his female steaders available to assist in this. Which is a fundemental shift in Grayson politics, and means that a whole segment of the population that hadn't been involved in modernization will now be available.

Grayson was also getting into the civilian ship construction game. So they know there's a market, and probably a soon to be growing market for cargo ships(Haven). So it makes good finacial sence to be involved in that side of things again... eventually.

Oystrer Bay hurt them but it didn't destroy them, they'll be back stronger and bigger in the end. And hey they now have a new vendetta of nearly Masadan size level of hatred for the Alignment. The old Testement style vengence will be theirs.

kzt wrote:Remember my snark about "Historians are still puzzled by the mysterious disappearance"?

The previous infrastructure was in orbit around Grayson, it all mysteriously vanished. Remember that this was stuff that was used to service things around and build infrastructure for Grayson, not military construction way the hell out on the edge of the system. It also was owned by people other then the people developing blackbird.

Grayson doesn't seem to be sentimental about keeping obsolete stuff. If Blackbird was sufficiently far advanced technologically speaking then why would they keep their existing yards going? They'd not want to spend the money, personnel or time on them when the same money, personnel and time would get more results out at Blackbird.

Sure, all the old platforms wouldn't have been switched off overnight ... But their work would've progressively gone to Blackbird, could they keep upgrading to keep up?

kzt wrote:Remember my snark about "Historians are still puzzled by the mysterious disappearance"?

The previous infrastructure was in orbit around Grayson, it all mysteriously vanished. Remember that this was stuff that was used to service things around and build infrastructure for Grayson, not military construction way the hell out on the edge of the system. It also was owned by people other then the people developing blackbird.

AFAIK, it didn´t so much vanish as it was no longer mentioned.

And as the texts following OB has not mentioned the imminent risk of mass starvation on Grayson, then it´s still there, as that´s where they have their primary food production.

Probably along with minor leftovers of the earlier shipyard industries.

Grayson had a large space born industry prior to alliance with Manticore. Many of those personell would be retired or inactive and thus not taken out with strike by Mesa. I wouldn't be surprised to see large numbers of these people called up to serve as training cadre for newbees to replace those lost in the strike.

Manticore probably won't be quite as involved due to need to replace its own space industry. But I would be surprised if a certain salamander we have all come to know and love didn't come up with a quite a bit of money to grease the wheels and get things under way again.

Don

Manticore, if I remember correctly, is planning to build something like the previous Hephaestus albeit this one designed to grow from the very start.

Grayson 'prefers' stand alone shipyards. Easier to set up/build but a bit less efficient. Considering the attack that took out their old shipbuilding capacities, I think Grayson would stick to the stand alone yards since it is going to be more difficult to take out a lot of scattered singletons compared to one big shipyard complex. I suppose they'd probably equip the new stand alone shipyards of theirs with some sort of propulsion so it can change it's position from time to time to make it harder to take them out.

Equipping the yard with propulsion would probably take a lot away from the style of building they use. However, once the basic framework is done for the ship it would probably be possible to use a tug to move it every month or so.