Space Industry

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:

Draken wrote:SNIP
Why their are building them inside systems? Shouldn't it be easier to just build them in the interstellar space? There is very low chance that somebody will find them and we could transport there raw materials.

Snip

Mostly, this was answered by others; one point they didn't address was that you put the things you want protected inside a hyper limit so an attacker can't surprise you, dropping in out of hyper. A hyper limit of 20 light minutes approaches 360M km as a radius. That is a lot of space. In the case of the Blackbird Yard, they were outside the star's hyperlimit, but Uriel (the planet Blackbird orbited) was so big it had its own hyperlimit.

The logistics effort for supplying a major shipyard in the absence of extraction nodes, parts factories, nano-farms, etc., would not only be staggering, but it would not be possible to find crews for the freighters who never get too much to drink. It would be a security nightmare.

Rob

One problem with that "put it inside a hyper limit to protect it against surprise attacks" idea is that a system needs really good gravitic arrays to detect a downward transition at zero velocity, followed by going into stealth before firing up the wedge. Most systems don't have the kind of gravitic array that, for example Manticore, has in place.

The other piece is that the shipyard has everything except the raw materials gotten from a remote asteroid mining operation. Doing it any other way is, as you point out, asking for more trouble.

The asteroid mining operation doesn't have to be in an inhabited system, either.

With all of that, it's only slightly more reasonable than sticking it in the alpha band of hyperspace to improve stealth. Which has also been suggested.

Draken wrote:SNIP
Why their are building them inside systems? Shouldn't it be easier to just build them in the interstellar space? There is very low chance that somebody will find them and we could transport there raw materials.

Snip

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:Mostly, this was answered by others; one point they didn't address was that you put the things you want protected inside a hyper limit so an attacker can't surprise you, dropping in out of hyper. A hyper limit of 20 light minutes approaches 360M km as a radius. That is a lot of space. In the case of the Blackbird Yard, they were outside the star's hyperlimit, but Uriel (the planet Blackbird orbited) was so big it had its own hyperlimit.

The logistics effort for supplying a major shipyard in the absence of extraction nodes, parts factories, nano-farms, etc., would not only be staggering, but it would not be possible to find crews for the freighters who never get too much to drink. It would be a security nightmare.

Rob

JohnRoth wrote:One problem with that "put it inside a hyper limit to protect it against surprise attacks" idea is that a system needs really good gravitic arrays to detect a downward transition at zero velocity, followed by going into stealth before firing up the wedge. Most systems don't have the kind of gravitic array that, for example Manticore, has in place.

The other piece is that the shipyard has everything except the raw materials gotten from a remote asteroid mining operation. Doing it any other way is, as you point out, asking for more trouble.

The asteroid mining operation doesn't have to be in an inhabited system, either.

With all of that, it's only slightly more reasonable than sticking it in the alpha band of hyperspace to improve stealth. Which has also been suggested.

Sorry, but only the upward translation is without a footprint. Anyone coming IN would be visible.

Rob

Sorry, but only the upward translation is without a footprint. Anyone coming IN would be visible.

Rob

For some flavor of 'visible'. Tactics can adjust that quite a bit.

I'd like to see something on both what Grayson is doing to rebuild the in-system manufacturing infrastructure and what Benjamin is doing to trim back the growing political problems.
Grayson is probably going to have to draw from the same resourse pool as Manticore (essentialy Manticore and Beowulf) to regrow the industry.

Brigade XO wrote:I'd like to see something on both what Grayson is doing to rebuild the in-system manufacturing infrastructure and what Benjamin is doing to trim back the growing political problems.
Grayson is probably going to have to draw from the same resourse pool as Manticore (essentialy Manticore and Beowulf) to regrow the industry.

Somewhat. Grayson tends to do things differently though, so you may expect to see a lot more tolerance for drawing in more people from various nearby systems, perhaps trading starting labor experience for sheer numbers and on-the-job-training, and Grayson may well still have reserves of woman-power not already tapped to get employed.

Masadan immigrants - again, women especially - are another potential labor source. Granted, they're less likely to have the educational backgrounds to put them even within training distance of space industrial jobs, but they may free up other people who do for them.

JeffEngel wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:I'd like to see something on both what Grayson is doing to rebuild the in-system manufacturing infrastructure and what Benjamin is doing to trim back the growing political problems.
Grayson is probably going to have to draw from the same resourse pool as Manticore (essentialy Manticore and Beowulf) to regrow the industry.

Somewhat. Grayson tends to do things differently though, so you may expect to see a lot more tolerance for drawing in more people from various nearby systems, perhaps trading starting labor experience for sheer numbers and on-the-job-training, and Grayson may well still have reserves of woman-power not already tapped to get employed.

Masadan immigrants - again, women especially - are another potential labor source. Granted, they're less likely to have the educational backgrounds to put them even within training distance of space industrial jobs, but they may free up other people who do for them.

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Grayson's asteroid extraction industries were not attacked, but their space-slips and, of course, Blackbird were destroyed. However, other than Blackbird, which was more on the lines of a Manty Yard, the basic Grayson construction techniques are easier to recover.

Grayson's basic space industry may be back on its feet sooner than expected.

-- Stewart