cthia wrote:What surprises me, IINM, is that a fleet can just sit in hyper. That isn't intuitive.
SWM wrote:?
I'm not sure why that isn't intuitive. A starship can sit still in space. An ocean ship can sit in the ocean. Why would it be surprising that a hyper-going ship sit in hyper? I ask for curiosity's sake--you must have a different image of hyper than I do, and I'm curious what it could be.
cthia wrote:I'm sure it's just a function of my misunderstanding of Honorverse hyperspace travel. I am under the impression that hyperspace travel is dependent on sails. And that sails must be properly configured before hyper, lest ship destruction. Well, while in hyper, to stop is a function of lowered sails? Intuitively that seems dangerous.
Akin to sailing on the ocean. Tacking and jibing is very important. An improper jibe can seriously damage a sailboat, or even capsize it. In the Honorverse, I would think, raising the sail within a grav wave could kill you.
Again, my stupidity is a function of my not knowing what's going on in the books. Can't wait to see it on HD.
This is why I asked the question about hyper limits and all. Trying to visualize.
Oh. And to put it all in perspective, I relate grav waves to wind currents. For grounding.
You need to think of hyper space as normal space with a few additional characteristics.
For normal space, Newton's Laws of Motion apply. They also apply in hyperspace. And
there is no weather in normal space that is powerful enough to produce immediate, significant and--on the from a human observer's viewpoint observing for a minute or less--immediately noticeable propulsion effects.
Hyperspace has gravity waves, but not everywhere in it--most of hyperspace is a big rift--think of a cobweb where the web strands are the gravity waves and the empty space between the strands is the rift. And in a gravity wave, you need Warshawski sails to accelerate, decelerate, change direction, and to siphon energy from the eddy produced by the sails interaction with the wave in order to power.
If you aren't in a gravity wave in hyperspace, you use the impeller drive for acceleration, deceleration, and direction changes.
Instead of thinking of a normal sailboat in the water, a better analogy might be a submarine that can 'fly' above the water (normal space) where there is never any wind blowing or waves on the water. This 'flying' submarine has to use its propeller(s) in order to accelerate, decelerate, and change direction. This would be the equivalent of using the impeller drive in normal space. And since it is 'flying' above the water (traveling in normal space), it has no interaction with the water (hyperspace).
Now imagine the submarine going below the surface of the water (the alpha wall). It crosses instantly (or so near instantly as to make no difference) into the water and is immediately subject to the forces in the water.
If the submarine emerges into a rift, it continues on with the same speed minus the translation energy bleed (think of this as a splash, except that hyperspace splashes always travel in the same direction of crossing the wall (surface layer of the water) of the ship that produces the splash. In other words splashes can occur down--a ship translating into hyper--as well as up--a ship translating into normal space). The submarine must use its propeller(s) (impeller drive) to accelerate, decelerate and change direction.
If the submarine emerges into a gravity wave it continues on with the same speed minus the translation energy bleed
and is immediately subject to the forces of the gravity wave--think of gravity waves as currents with turbulent and calm eddies--and must have its Warshawski sails deployed to safely ride the current--at least until the ship stabilizes itself relative to the gravity wave. And the submarine uses its sails to accelerate, decelerate, change direction and provide power.
For climbing up the higher hyperspace bands, think of the submarine crossing from layers (hyper bands) of less dense water to layers of more dense water, with 'splashes' (translation energy bleed) as it crosses each layer (hyper band interface) as it moves from layer to layer (from one hyper band to another).
. Neither does she. But her