Solarian Military Catchup Attempts

Dafmeister wrote:Given that the internal structures of ship hulls routinely survive compensator failures undamaged, this would not be beyond the capabilities of Honorverse starship engineering. Come to that, missiles don't have compensators at all and they survive accelerations two orders of magnitude greater than any ship is capable of.

Dafmeister wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:
And how does it manage this trick? If it only accelerates the nodes, the mechanical stress on the stalks the nodes are set on must be terrific. If it operates on the ship's hull and not on the contents, there needs to be something strange about the hull. I've never seen an explanation, credible or otherwise.

Frankly, the whole compensator thing has always seemed to me to be an authorial arm-wave to make the impeller drive physics match the needs of the plot.

Given that the internal structures of ship hulls routinely survive compensator failures undamaged, this would not be beyond the capabilities of Honorverse starship engineering. Come to that, missiles don't have compensators at all and they survive accelerations two orders of magnitude greater than any ship is capable of.

JohnRoth wrote:

SWM wrote:The impeller does not act on everything inside its field. It appears that the impellers act directly on the ship hull, or perhaps just on the impeller nodes which are attached to the hull. In the absence of a compensator field, everything else is subject to inertia. So, as the ship hull is accelerated at 600 gees, the stuff inside would hit the back wall at high velocity. So, no, it doesn't act they way you hypothesize. There is no varying field effect within the impeller wedge--the impeller is only accelerating the ship hull. Everything else would not be accelerated (and thus be crushed against the back of the hull) unless you have an inertial compensator.

And how does it manage this trick? If it only accelerates the nodes, the mechanical stress on the stalks the nodes are set on must be terrific. If it operates on the ship's hull and not on the contents, there needs to be something strange about the hull. I've never seen an explanation, credible or otherwise.

Frankly, the whole compensator thing has always seemed to me to be an authorial arm-wave to make the impeller drive physics match the needs of the plot.

Joat42 wrote:

Dafmeister wrote:Given that the internal structures of ship hulls routinely survive compensator failures undamaged, this would not be beyond the capabilities of Honorverse starship engineering. Come to that, missiles don't have compensators at all and they survive accelerations two orders of magnitude greater than any ship is capable of.

Yes, the internal structure may survive but there are equipment on the ships that aren't as sturdy and wont probably survive a compensator failure.

The description of how the impeller propulsion works is that the ship "floats" between the wedges of stressed gravity and then "surfs" the space-time wave that is created by the wedges by changing the geometry of them.

This implies that the space-time topography isn't flat/linear and that the effect of this topography on the ship while accelerating is out of phase which means that even though the whole ship is affected you will have a gravitational gradient through the ship which the compensator nullifies through the inertial sump.

At least, that is how I understand it and I may be wrong.

SWM wrote:

Joat42 wrote:Yes, the internal structure may survive but there are equipment on the ships that aren't as sturdy and wont probably survive a compensator failure.

The description of how the impeller propulsion works is that the ship "floats" between the wedges of stressed gravity and then "surfs" the space-time wave that is created by the wedges by changing the geometry of them.

This implies that the space-time topography isn't flat/linear and that the effect of this topography on the ship while accelerating is out of phase which means that even though the whole ship is affected you will have a gravitational gradient through the ship which the compensator nullifies through the inertial sump.

At least, that is how I understand it and I may be wrong.

I don't know of any text saying that the ship floats between the wedge planes and surfs the space-time wave. Do you have a citation? That does not match other textev.

Joat42 wrote:

SWM wrote:I don't know of any text saying that the ship floats between the wedge planes and surfs the space-time wave. Do you have a citation? That does not match other textev.

It's just analogies, the ship can be considered to be "floating" between the wedges it creates since the ship can move somewhat relative to it's wedges. Since the geometry of the wedges are most wide at the bow and narrowest aft the space-time distortion would be the strongest aft which means in a sense that the ship "surfs" on that distortion. Whether the ship is pulled forward or accelerating down a gravity gradient is a moot point since the outcome of both effects is the same.

dreamrider wrote:It doesn't "surf". It is constantly being squirted forward like a watermelon seed between two big fingertips. Which happen to move along with it.

(I'll bet you any amount of money that is how David came up with the concept.)

dreamrider

Joat42 wrote:

SWM wrote:I don't know of any text saying that the ship floats between the wedge planes and surfs the space-time wave. Do you have a citation? That does not match other textev.

It's just analogies, the ship can be considered to be "floating" between the wedges it creates since the ship can move somewhat relative to it's wedges. Since the geometry of the wedges are most wide at the bow and narrowest aft the space-time distortion would be the strongest aft which means in a sense that the ship "surfs" on that distortion. Whether the ship is pulled forward or accelerating down a gravity gradient is a moot point since the outcome of both effects is the same.

SWM wrote:My question was, do you have citations? It's hard to discuss it without know exactly what text you are getting this from.

Joat42 wrote:

SWM wrote:My question was, do you have citations? It's hard to discuss it without know exactly what text you are getting this from.

Pearls of Weber: Wedge geometry