Gas Stations, or....

cthia wrote:

fallsfromtrees wrote:[quote="cthia]

I don't mean detriment in that sense. What I mean is this, your imperative is ...

"Scout for a system way off the beaten path."
That's going to lower the available choices.

"The system must also be off the beaten path where no one goes."
That lowers the possibilities even further.

"By the way, it also has to be near a gas giant."


In addition to whatever other stipulations a feasible bolthole make, finding one to suit so many natural parameters and factor in an added necessity to be local to a gas giant, and that suitable location to have been found twice, by two separate entities, strikes me as falling under a very rare umbrella.

And if it is specified that that gas giant be a certain type, well ...

And I'm assuming the MAlign needs hydrogen too, for whatever reasons. They don't take their classified Mercedes out of local space for a spin.[/quote]
The point I was attempting to make was that if you happened across such a system by accident, then the probabilities of finding such a system are irrelevant. This might well be what happened with the MAlign. My point was that hiding in a system every KNOWS is uninhabitable is a great way to hide, since everyone KNOWS that they couldn't be there.[/quote][/quote][/quote]
Yes, of course. And it makes sense that an uninhabitable system might make a good hidey hole. I understood that. But I don't understand why a gas giant would make a system uninhabitable. Lest I misunderstand and you mean an uninhabitable system which also sports a suitable gas giant. Which means that the MAlign really struck it lucky. I don't disagree in the possibility, mind you, but it happening twice ...[/quote]

cthia wrote:

swm wrote:What's wrong with water, ammonia, and methane? All of those contain hydrogen. Hydrogen can be extracted from those planets quite easily.

Wrong with it? Absolutely nothing SWM. But I don't see extracting hydrogen from these elements to be any more efficient than collecting from surrounding space as opposed to collecting from appropriately seeded nebulas and gas giants. In the former case, I see production, like the US, but limited production as opposed to Iran, Kuwait, Russia where the process eliminates so many steps. So I see some systems with vast reserves because of a much simpler, efficient process.

I loosely liken it to the environmental department of my company. Hydrocarbon removal from pipeline leaks across the country. Collecting hydrocarbons embedded within soil strata isn't any more difficult than collecting from groundwater, just a much slower process. *Years as opposed to months. The difference being some systems producing fifty million barrels a day of liquid hydrogen as opposed to five million.

I could be wrong of course, with advanced Honorverse tech, but that's how I see it.

kzt wrote:IIRC, it appears to be the case that systems with gas giants and asteroids are pretty common across the galaxy. Almost certainly vastly more common than systems with inhabitable planets.

SWM wrote:

kzt wrote:IIRC, it appears to be the case that systems with gas giants and asteroids are pretty common across the galaxy. Almost certainly vastly more common than systems with inhabitable planets.

We don't know that. First of all, there is only very limited evidence suggesting asteroids in other star systems; we have no good evidence of asteroids in any system other than our own. Second, our observations are only now starting to be able to detect planets of the size we would consider habitable. Giant planets are far easier to detect, so that is what we have detected first. We have a pretty good idea that planets are fairly common, but we have no idea how common planets the size of the Earth are, let alone how many are in the habitable zone.

saber964 wrote:On the make up of solar system, The current theory of small rocky inner planets and gas giant outer is well less than well put together. With discovery in the last 20 or so years of 2-500 exo-planets. One of the first exo-planetary system discovered contained 4-6 planet that were 3-5x Jovian sized and orbiting the star at 30 to 70miilion miles and another contained two gas giants orbiting at 80 million and 110 million miles with 5 rocky planets starting at 200 million miles.

JeffEngel wrote:

SWM wrote:We don't know that. First of all, there is only very limited evidence suggesting asteroids in other star systems; we have no good evidence of asteroids in any system other than our own. Second, our observations are only now starting to be able to detect planets of the size we would consider habitable. Giant planets are far easier to detect, so that is what we have detected first. We have a pretty good idea that planets are fairly common, but we have no idea how common planets the size of the Earth are, let alone how many are in the habitable zone.

For examples of asteroid belts, in HoS, we have 0 in Manticore-A, 3 in Manticore-B (and some indications that at least one of the belts is especially rich, but having three in the system cannot hurt either), and 1 in Yeltsin's Star.

With 1+ belt in 3 systems, which are not likely to be represented on the basis of having belts, there's some decent reason to suppose that asteroid belts in the Honorverse are at the very least not a rarity.

Obviously, these are unrepresentative systems for having habitable worlds, but I don't think we've reason to suppose that having habitable worlds tends to go along with having asteroid belts. (I am as always open to growing better informed that way.)

fallsfromtrees wrote:As far as it placing too specific a requirement on a MAlign bolthole, it might well be that finding such an oddity caused the MAlign to decide to put Darius there, simply because of its obvious unsuitability.

Weird Harold wrote:

fallsfromtrees wrote:As far as it placing too specific a requirement on a MAlign bolthole, it might well be that finding such an oddity caused the MAlign to decide to put Darius there, simply because of its obvious unsuitability.

Suitability or unsuitability had nothing to do with the establishment of Darius; Darius is at one (of four) terminus of the Felix Wormhole and was discovered and colonized as a result of the secret exploration of that wormhole.

The odds are very good that the Darius system includes a Gas Giant or two so fuel for the Sharks and Lenny Dets isn't a problem.

Weird Harold wrote:The odds are very good that the Darius system includes a Gas Giant or two so fuel for the Sharks and Lenny Dets isn't a problem.