Space Industry

Zakharra wrote: They are going to put in better defenses and extend the range of their sensor net. They are also deliberately planning the stations and shipyards so they will be somewhat mobile and have effective defenses. The stations before were allowed to grow and expand as need dictated in an organic manner; not in a planned way.

Increasing the range of the sensor net is of absolutely zero utility. The problem is the response time. This is not fixable without vast investments in mobile forces and dozens of additional sensor sites. If you add a dozen new sensor sites just like the entire existing Manticore sensor network and say 120 task forces each of 12 SD(P)s and 12 CLACs (10 assigned to each sensor site) for investigation of anomalies around Manticore then you can start to deal with the issue in a serious way.

Silesia may be in a better position to develop satellite yards than Talbott. One big disincentive for satellite yards for the SEM is that the Junction ties things together so well - it's hard to get too distant from it, so the time-to-yard is low from there to anywhere, or at least, from there to most places.

Silesia's only relatively close to the Gregor or Basilisk termini though, while Lynx is right there next to the Talbott Quadrant. Talbott's planets didn't have the industry or economy to draw much commerce before the terminus discovery, while Silesia had been one of the big markets for the Star Kingdom, a long-term target for the PRH, and a nearer term one for the Andermani. So however much of a mess it was, there are people, industry, and some education there - not up to Manticoran or core Solarian standards, I'm sure, but probably not too bad.

I don't see them trying to develop really serious yards out there, mind you - the defensive benefits of dispersal aren't outweighed by the defensive benefits of concentrating what you have to defend at one place where you can concentrate your defenses too, and the sheer efficiency boost industry has from the infrastructure in the Manticore System is irresistible. But the factors that made Grendelsbane grow in the first place will have close cousins applying out in Silesia too.

Hi all,

With reference to Bolthole, according to one of the pearls (I think), it is a world within the Republic, although on the far side of the Republic from Manticore whose coordinates were never discovered. IIRC, it was a poor, isolated system whose economy came to completely depend on the naval research and construction going on there.

I can see some logic to a Manticoran bolthole. Grendlesbane didn't really qualify as that since its coordinates were known throughout both wars and thus proved vulnerable during a moment of weakness during Thunderbolt.

The problem would be figuring out where to put it. Even now Manticore is not so spread out that it would be able to hide its bolthole within the confines of the empire. The only thing I can think of is to find some remote corner of the verge that would be uninhabited and plant a colony whose purpose would be to provide that ace in the hole that Manticore lacked at Oyster Bay.

Don

n7axw wrote:I can see some logic to a Manticoran bolthole. Grendlesbane didn't really qualify as that since its coordinates were known throughout both wars and thus proved vulnerable during a moment of weakness during Thunderbolt.

The problem would be figuring out where to put it. Even now Manticore is not so spread out that it would be able to hide its bolthole within the confines of the empire. The only thing I can think of is to find some remote corner of the verge that would be uninhabited and plant a colony whose purpose would be to provide that ace in the hole that Manticore lacked at Oyster Bay.

Don

Starting from scratch or nearly scratch, in the middle of a war, with a society in which information tends to be reasonably free... is not likely to work out quickly or in perfect silence. Haven and Mesa had so much time to prepare Bolthole and Darius before they became important. Manticore would have to start from something decently well established already to get to something decently effective in any practical time period, which would make secrecy an unaffordable luxury.

If they were to start from scratch, there are probably out-of-the-way systems with useful resources or living space not so terribly far out from Basilisk. That would still put it conveniently close, relatively speaking.

JeffEngel wrote:Silesia's only relatively close to the Gregor or Basilisk termini though, while Lynx is right there next to the Talbott Quadrant.

That's not correct. Silesia is quite densely populated with inhabited systems, while Talbott Cluster is very sparsely populated with inhabited systems. In volume, the Talbott Cluster is twice as wide as all of Silesia. The center of Silesia is closer to Basilisk than the center of the Talbott Cluster is to the Lynx Terminus.

Silesia has never been an effective unified state largely due outside pressures. Like the mysterious forces that assassinated the last effective government and many of their prominent supporters.

kzt wrote:Silesia has never been an effective unified state largely due outside pressures. Like the mysterious forces that assassinated the last effective government and many of their prominent supporters.

The Malign mayhaps?

Zakharra wrote:

kzt wrote:Silesia has never been an effective unified state largely due outside pressures. Like the mysterious forces that assassinated the last effective government and many of their prominent supporters.

The Malign mayhaps?

Even just Manpower - the portions of it outside the onion, practicing free-range villainy - may have sufficed for that. It was a big market for the slave trade, in fair part perhaps because the government was unable to stop it.

SWM wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:Silesia's only relatively close to the Gregor or Basilisk termini though, while Lynx is right there next to the Talbott Quadrant.

That's not correct. Silesia is quite densely populated with inhabited systems, while Talbott Cluster is very sparsely populated with inhabited systems. In volume, the Talbott Cluster is twice as wide as all of Silesia. The center of Silesia is closer to Basilisk than the center of the Talbott Cluster is to the Lynx Terminus.

Thanks. It hadn't looked like that from the maps in the books, but it's clear on the whole-known-space one on the Honorverse wiki:
http://honorverse.wikia.com/wiki/File:H ... 36b6y3.png

From there, it looks like the least-time route to Celebrant (to take the northernmost bit of the Talbott Quadrant) may actually be shorter going through Matapan than Lynx.

The density of the Silesia really sticks out on that map. Granted, I'm sure the map isn't showing a lot of places - a huge number of places - just for lack of interest or mention of them, and because it'd be an illegible cloud if it tried. But (I'm pretty sure - correct me if I'm wrong) all the Silesian dots represent inhabited systems and all the Talbott dots represent all or just about all the inhabited systems out that way.

So - where am I far, far off here, or if I'm not, what made Silesia such a hotbed of colonization?

JeffEngel wrote:

SWM wrote:That's not correct. Silesia is quite densely populated with inhabited systems, while Talbott Cluster is very sparsely populated with inhabited systems. In volume, the Talbott Cluster is twice as wide as all of Silesia. The center of Silesia is closer to Basilisk than the center of the Talbott Cluster is to the Lynx Terminus.

Thanks. It hadn't looked like that from the maps in the books, but it's clear on the whole-known-space one on the Honorverse wiki:
http://honorverse.wikia.com/wiki/File:H ... 36b6y3.png

From there, it looks like the least-time route to Celebrant (to take the northernmost bit of the Talbott Quadrant) may actually be shorter going through Matapan than Lynx.

The density of the Silesia really sticks out on that map. Granted, I'm sure the map isn't showing a lot of places - a huge number of places - just for lack of interest or mention of them, and because it'd be an illegible cloud if it tried. But (I'm pretty sure - correct me if I'm wrong) all the Silesian dots represent inhabited systems and all the Talbott dots represent all or just about all the inhabited systems out that way.

So - where am I far, far off here, or if I'm not, what made Silesia such a hotbed of colonization?

No, you aren't way off there. The density of populated planets in Silesia is really high. It's not clear why that is so. But it is an example of how clumpy colonization got once the hyperdrive, and later the wormhole, came along.