Shannon Foraker

Direwolf18 wrote:I went to a pretty good Engineering School, Georgia Institute of Technology. I had more then one professor (a majority actually) who were fantastic brilliant researchers. People EXACTLY like Shannon Foraker and fellow egg heads.

They also had a pronounced tendency to teach while turned to the blackboard, staring at their feet. Understanding the words coming out of their mouth was difficult enough, but even when you did, I can't tell you how many teachers I had that assumed you knew how to get from A to B to C, because it was clearly simple and they were busy talking about D. I spent more then a few packed study sessions with TAs trying to teach the class the professor was getting paid to do. Research ability and intelligence assuredly does NOT translate into quality teaching ability.

Research ability and intelligence assuredly does NOT translate into quality teaching ability.

cthia wrote:....I recall a particular incident that indeed exposed a bit of this rare teaching skill. I forget the particular battle, but Honor had set up her [apparently non wall of battle ships] to shift into an ambiguous V formation, to allow graser fire from each of her ships no matter the angle. Shannon was the only one to reason that, and to figure out that what the RHN were seeing, was not what they were seeing. I wish I had finger access to that passage "See these light codes? Now watch the dance they perform," says Shannon.

"That's an inverted wall of battle. But that would be tantamount to suicide for [fill in ship type]," says CO.

"Exactly, if they were [fill in ship type]," responds Shannon.

No, textev gave many shining examples of Shannon's ability to teach.

Hutch wrote:Just for your reference, that was at Fourth Yeltsin where Warner Caslet was her Captain (I think it was the ill-fated PNS Vaubon, but I could be wrong)

cthia wrote:Indeed I do remember that particular hold card now that you've turned it face-up Hutch. It is a hilarious passage as well. And if I think about it, it makes sense. Shannon speaks 'puters. Thanks for uprighting this weeble wobble. Apology to you and Biochem.

Also, thanks for referencing that passage so that I may find it.

Flag in Exile wrote:"Something funny going on here, Skip."
" 'Funny'? What d'you mean 'funny'?" Citizen Commander Caslet demanded. TG 14.1 sped straight towards the enemy at a combined closing velocity of over forty-six thousand KPS, which meant maximum effective missile range would be just over thirteen million kilometers. They'd enter that range in less than five more minutes, and he was more anxious than he wanted to reveal. Vaubon was only a light cruiser, hardly a high-priority target with battleships to shoot at, but there were light units on the other side, as well, and they might well choose to engage Vaubon simply because she was small enough they might actually get through her defenses.
"It's just—" Citizen Lieutenant Foraker leaned back, rubbing the tip of her nose, then grimaced. "Let me show you, Skip," she said, and switched her own tactical readouts to Caslet's tertiary display. "Watch this motion," she said, and he gazed intently at the display as the raggedy-assed enemy formation bobbed and swirled. There'd been some movement in it all along, but it had become more pronounced as the range dropped—a fact he'd put down to nerves.
"I don't—" he began, but Foraker was tapping commands into her console, and Caslet's mouth closed with a snap as the same movement replayed itself. The only difference was that this time a half-dozen or so of the dots left little worms of light behind, charting their paths, and the "formation" they'd dropped into. . . .
"What is that?" he asked slowly, and this time there was more than a trace of worry in his techno-nerd tactical officer's reply.
"Skip, if I didn't know better—and I don't know better—I'd say six of those battlecruisers just slid into a modified vertical wall of battle."
"That's crazy, Shannon," Caslet's astrogator said. "Battlecruisers don't form wall against battleships! That'd be suicide!"
"Yep," Foraker agreed. "That's exactly what it would be—for battlecruisers."
Caslet stared at the glowing light worms and felt his stomach drop clear out of the universe. It wasn't possible. And even if it were possible, surely one of the battlecruisers or battleships with their better sensors and more powerful computers would have seen it before a light cruiser did!
But those battlecruisers and battleships didn't have his resident tac witch, a cold, clear voice said in his brain.
"Communications! Get me a priority link to the Flag—now!"

[snip some back and forth on the flagship]
Citizen Vice Admiral Alexander Thurston punched a query into his console, and his face went pale as dispassionate computers answered it. No, that interval was all wrong for a wall of battlecruisers—but it was just right for one of superdreadnoughts. . . .

Flag In Exile, Chapter 18 wrote:"Talk to me, Shannon!" he said sternly, and she straightened with a start. She looked at him blankly for a moment, then grinned.

***Snip***

"Well, anything I tell you from this far out's gonna be a guess, Skipper," Shannon warned.
"So guess."
"Yes, Sir." The tac officer tapped a function key, and two of the thirteen capital ship codes on her display were suddenly ringed in white. "It looks like they must've refitted even more heavily than we figured they would," she said, " 'cause I'm getting Manty emissions off all of them. Looks like they've done the next best thing to a complete replacement on their active sensors, but I'm picking up emissions from an Alpha-Romeo-Seven-Baker off these two puppies here, Skip."
"Are you, indeed?" Caslet murmured, and Foraker nodded happily. The AR-7(b) was the standard search radar mounted in PN dreadnoughts and superdreadnoughts. It wasn't as good as the Manty equivalent—after all, he thought sourly, what Republican equipment was?—but that was mostly because the Manties' enhancement let them do more with the data they picked up. The AR-7 was about as powerful as its Manticoran equivalent and, all in all, a damned good installation, so it made sense that the Grayson Navy would have retained it if it had survived the ships' capture.
"Yep," Foraker replied cheerfully, but then her smile faded. "Problem is, Skip, that these're the only two I'm sure about. I've got the computers trying to run a correlation between impeller strength and acceleration, but we know the Manties are refitting across the board with the new inertial compensator. We're still guessing how much that improves their efficiency, and these birds are taking it mighty easy, so I don't have max power signatures to work with, but it may give us something on their masses." She shrugged. "Our SDs are smaller than theirs are. If I can get an idea—"
She broke off as an alarm chimed softly. Her fingers flickered across her panel again, and her face lit with a devilish smile.
"Well, now! I may just owe my 'puters an apology." She touched another function key, and three more light codes suddenly grew white rims. "Okay, what we've got here is speculative as hell, Skipper, but stay with me for a minute." Caslet nodded, and the tac officer tapped one of the light codes which wasn't ringed in white. "What I've done, Sir—oh, damn. I mean Citizen Commander." She sighed, looking past Caslet at Jourdain with an expression that mingled repentance and impatience, then shrugged. "At any rate, what I've done is make the best read I can from this range on their impeller strengths and correlate it with their observed acceleration rate. It's not going to tell us much about absolute masses, but it can indicate which ships are bigger than others, right?"
"Right." Caslet tried very hard not to sigh. Shannon really didn't understand how irritating it was to have things you already knew explained to you. On the other hand, her lecture mode normally insured that she caught anything you might not know . . . or that you'd simply forgotten to consider.
"All right," the tac officer said. "What I can tell you for certain, Skip, is that this—" she tapped the display again "—is the biggest single ship I've got good reads on, and that makes her an SD." Caslet nodded again. That was an unprovable assumption, but it was also a virtual certainty, and his eyes narrowed as Foraker flicked a finger at the trio of lights she'd just painted with white borders. "Well, these three here are in the same mass neighborhood, but they're pulling the same accel with only point-niner-five the impeller strength. Assuming that all of 'em have the new compensators, then that means they're smaller than our big boy, but not a lot. If the big guy is an SD, that means they're a hell of a lot bigger than any DN I've ever seen. Matter of fact, they match pretty damned well with the impeller strengths on the two we know have our radars aboard."
"The Manties have some smaller superdreadnoughts," Caslet pointed out, and Foraker nodded.
"Yep, but we know how many of 'em they've got, and that's the other thing my 'puters've been up to. See, Intelligence says they've got thirty-two of those smaller SDs at Thetis and Lowell, and the spooks put another five of 'em down south at Grendelsbane. That only leaves sixteen more in the whole Manty Navy, and ten of them're supposed to be in their Home Fleet. There's no way anything could've gotten here from Manticore this fast, so we can ignore those ten—assuming Intelligence isn't talking out its ass again—and that gets us down to six unaccounted for. So since all five of these are smaller than Mister Big Fella, they're either five of the DuQuesne-class SDs the Manties gave Grayson or else they just happen to've sent out eighty-odd percent of all the Manty-built ships they could be in one fell swoop. I don't know what the odds against that are, Skip, but they've gotta be pretty high."
"Very good, Shannon," Caslet said with a smile, and patted her on the shoulder. She was right—it was speculative. But it was good, intelligent speculation, and if their orders wouldn't let them go in for a decent look that was about the best he could hope for. "Anything else?"
"You want pretzels with your beer, Skipper? There's no way I can say anything more certain from this far out." Foraker frowned and tapped in yet another command, then grimaced. "Nope. All those other drive sources are kicking up too much interference. I can tell you there are at least five more of the wall on the far side of their main body, but I can't tell you anything about them. And on this heading, they're not gonna give me a good look before they go completely out of range into the inner system."

aairfccha wrote:On the other hand there was this description of a congressional hearing (not actually shown) where she needed an interpreter to communicate with politicians.