why stay in hyper for only 10 years?

captinjoehenry wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:That chart is for the Honorverse; there is zero evidence that it bears any relationship to Terran Federation Hyperdrives.

well that is true but i don't have anything else to go on and the TF has much more advanced tech than the honorverse as shown by its computers and having a hypercom but then again i could be totally wrong in my assumptions

EDIT: BEHOLD THE TEXTEV: "First, Operation Ark's plan had required the colony fleet to remain in hyper for a minimum of ten years before even beginning to search for a new home world. That had carried it literally thousands of light years from the Federation..." (OAR pg 29 (trade paperback book)) underline added by me

That says "thousands of light years." Thousands implies a lot less than fifty thousand. So I would say that your estimate of their velocity is too high. Assuming "thousands" means less than ten thousand, the velocity has to be more than 100 c and less than 1000 c.

The technology of the Honorverse and Safehold cannot be compared easily. The hyperspace of Safehold is not the same as the hyperspace of the Honorverse. Nor is the gravitics of the Honorverse the same as the gravity control of Safehold. The physics is different, and you cannot make any assumptions about what is possible in one fictional universe based on a different fictional universe.

SWM wrote:

captinjoehenry wrote:well that is true but i don't have anything else to go on and the TF has much more advanced tech than the honorverse as shown by its computers and having a hypercom but then again i could be totally wrong in my assumptions

EDIT: BEHOLD THE TEXTEV: "First, Operation Ark's plan had required the colony fleet to remain in hyper for a minimum of ten years before even beginning to search for a new home world. That had carried it literally thousands of light years from the Federation..." (OAR pg 29 (trade paperback book)) underline added by me

That says "thousands of light years." Thousands implies a lot less than fifty thousand. So I would say that your estimate of their velocity is too high. Assuming "thousands" means less than ten thousand, the velocity has to be more than 100 c and less than 1000 c.

The technology of the Honorverse and Safehold cannot be compared easily. The hyperspace of Safehold is not the same as the hyperspace of the Honorverse. Nor is the gravitics of the Honorverse the same as the gravity control of Safehold. The physics is different, and you cannot make any assumptions about what is possible in one fictional universe based on a different fictional universe.

ok fair enough but still if they took 10 years to travel let's say 7500 light years then if they stayed in hyper for 50 years they would 37500 light years away at which point they can be entirely certain that the Gbaba won't ever find them because if they look that far whenever they hunt down one civilization then the TF would never have gotten started and they could just go straight to TF tech levels and I recall that it has been stated that the cyro pods can keep someone alive for about 100 years so 50 years would be more than safe enough and avoid the whole need for them to go bush to avoid detection. Now this would prevent the whole story from happening so I am glad they did not do it but I am curious as to why the TF did not do this instead of their plan. In other words I am curious to what we can think of for potential reasons why the TF made operation ark plan call for only 10 years in hyper instead of lets say 50.

captinjoehenry wrote:

SWM wrote:That says "thousands of light years." Thousands implies a lot less than fifty thousand. So I would say that your estimate of their velocity is too high. Assuming "thousands" means less than ten thousand, the velocity has to be more than 100 c and less than 1000 c.

The technology of the Honorverse and Safehold cannot be compared easily. The hyperspace of Safehold is not the same as the hyperspace of the Honorverse. Nor is the gravitics of the Honorverse the same as the gravity control of Safehold. The physics is different, and you cannot make any assumptions about what is possible in one fictional universe based on a different fictional universe.

ok fair enough but still if they took 10 years to travel let's say 7500 light years then if they stayed in hyper for 50 years they would 37500 light years away at which point they can be entirely certain that the Gbaba won't ever find them because if they look that far whenever they hunt down one civilization then the TF would never have gotten started and they could just go straight to TF tech levels and I recall that it has been stated that the cyro pods can keep someone alive for about 100 years so 50 years would be more than safe enough and avoid the whole need for them to go bush to avoid detection. Now this would prevent the whole story from happening so I am glad they did not do it but I am curious as to why the TF did not do this instead of their plan. In other words I am curious to what we can think of for potential reasons why the TF made operation ark plan call for only 10 years in hyper instead of lets say 50.

The Federation was quite confident that 10 years travel was more than enough. There was no reason to go 50 years when 10 was enough. Even if they had gone 50 years, they would still have done 500 years of waiting at low tech before building to high tech again. If 10 years is enough, then it is enough.

If they traveled 50 years, you would be asking why they didn't go 400 years. There was no reason to go 50 years--the Federation was dead certain that ten years was enough. And they were correct. The Gbaba never found Safehold.

captinjoehenry wrote:
ok fair enough but still if they took 10 years to travel let's say 7500 light years then if they stayed in hyper for 50 years they would 37500 light years away at which point they can be entirely certain that the Gbaba won't ever find them because if they look that far whenever they hunt down one civilization then the TF would never have gotten started and they could just go straight to TF tech levels and I recall that it has been stated that the cyro pods can keep someone alive for about 100 years so 50 years would be more than safe enough and avoid the whole need for them to go bush to avoid detection. Now this would prevent the whole story from happening so I am glad they did not do it but I am curious as to why the TF did not do this instead of their plan. In other words I am curious to what we can think of for potential reasons why the TF made operation ark plan call for only 10 years in hyper instead of lets say 50.

If the plot was going to progress your way, they would have needed different leadership than what was appointed.

Also, it's possible that there were more limiting factors than we have been told, such as maximim range and durability of the trasports. Or maybe they never believed going further would be needed.

This is kind of fruitless speculation in a way since I doubt that the question will ever be addressed or resolved.

Don

captinjoehenry wrote:ok fair enough but still if they took 10 years to travel let's say 7500 light years then if they stayed in hyper for 50 years they would 37500 light years away at which point they can be entirely certain that the Gbaba won't ever find them because if they look that far whenever they hunt down one civilization then the TF would never have gotten started and they could just go straight to TF tech levels and I recall that it has been stated that the cyro pods can keep someone alive for about 100 years so 50 years would be more than safe enough and avoid the whole need for them to go bush to avoid detection. Now this would prevent the whole story from happening so I am glad they did not do it but I am curious as to why the TF did not do this instead of their plan. In other words I am curious to what we can think of for potential reasons why the TF made operation ark plan call for only 10 years in hyper instead of lets say 50.

Obviously, there's only one who knows the answer to that one.
Speculating, the limiting factor might have been energy reserves. I'm not sure what hyperdrives are running on, but it's probably not gasoline . And since we don't have them today, you probably need quite fancy materials to operate hyperdrives for longer periods. Moreover, they should suck up a lot of energy.
Now, based on the assumption that you'd need a high-tech manufacturing base with relevant emissions to produce whatever those hyperdrives need, your effective range even at 500c is limited. Moreover, the Gbaba are obviously able to do more, let's say 600c, in hyperdrive (with sensors operating; otherwise you can hide within 500 ly...). So you have to figure in sweeping searches in the near and medium range around the TF. And if your route is cluttered with the remains of a refuelling operation, you'd stake out your flight path for the Gbaba to follow.
Now, Kau-Yung (and Schueler, incidentally) assumed that the Gbaba actually would come looking in the Safehold region of space for up to 500 yrs, so Safehold being "silent" for about 1000 yrs makes sense.
If you'd built your refueling operation, though, might be the results would be detectable; triggering the waypoints argument.
If these considerations apply, doing a trade-off between range, payload and safety from detection is quite an issue (the TF got wrong once before), and they might end up with the Safehold Scenario as a solution.

One issue that hasn't been raised is the time limitation for safely staying in cryo. Merlin figured it at 40 years or so, and that was pushing it. That's why one of the theories of what's under the temple (or on the Hamilcar if it still exists and is in an elongated orbit) is that shifts of "archangels" and crew are alternately waking from cryo, exercising, taking their life extending drugs and updating their nannites, then going back into cryo again - for no more than 40 years at a time, and probably much less than that.

Operation Ark required 8 million colonists to remain in cryo for 18 years. That was a HUGE risk. I imagine there were undoubtedly thousands, if not tens of thousands of casualties. Staying in hyperspace much longer simply wasn't an option, since the death curve for those in cryo would climb steeply as the years passed. Keep those millions in cryo for 40 years or more, and who knows what percentage would have survived? It wasn't a chance Merlin would have liked to take!

Admiral Pei figured 500 years were enough to prove that they'd escaped not only the Gbaba sphere of influence, but also any scouts the Gbaba may have sent out searching for any secret human colonies, but he added a 50% margin and woke Merlin up after 750 standard years. (We also have to remember that RFC's editor "fixed" the calendar in OAR and overlooked the fact that the calendar used on Safehold begins at the end of the War of the Fallen.) Suffice it to say, well over eight Terran centuries have passed since Operation Ark got underway.

The original plan anticipated 300 years or so for any Gbaban search to end, after which high tech would be reintroduced, giving Safehold time to develop superior weapons and ships that could destroy the Gbaba by the time the Gbaba detected Safehold's emissions. (And no, we don't know how far Safehold is from the nearest Gbaba outpost.) Obviously that period has been vastly extended, which doesn't mean any signals that Safehold generates (especially neutrinos) won't reach the Gbaba just as quickly. However, the Gbaba have likely stood down from the high alert status they were on while battling and destroying the Terran Federation. That ought to give Safehold a bit more time - and the ability to destroy any Gbaba scouts that arrive to check out the emissions created during the buildup period.

Another benefit of the delay is that the population of Safehold is much greater than it was several centuries ago. So if everyone could just be convinced by the Great Reveal and get on board with kicking some Gbaba posterior, the process should progress faster than expected, especially if the Hamilcar still exists, which was part of the original plan.

The first attack of the Safehold Federation on the Gbaba will come as a surprise... The last one will be inevitable.

As McGuiness has pointed out cryo time would probably been the limiting factor as not only did they have to fly away for ten years, they also had to find a suitable planet, then terraform it.
While Shan-wei was terraforming Safehold the rest of the fleet was in deep space, just in case the Gbaba found the terraforming fleet.
If they had, Operation Ark had to go back into hyper for ANOTHER ten years and find another suitable planet for the second terraforming fleet that they had.
There wouldn't have been any point to a third terraforming fleet, as the cryo units would have given out (or the people in them died anyway) before they could finish a third try.

On another note, even at a measly 300c in hyper for ten years would have been 3000 ly, which would be, "several thousand light years."

shayvaan wrote:As McGuiness has pointed out cryo time would probably been the limiting factor as not only did they have to fly away for ten years, they also had to find a suitable planet, then terraform it.
While Shan-wei was terraforming Safehold the rest of the fleet was in deep space, just in case the Gbaba found the terraforming fleet.
If they had, Operation Ark had to go back into hyper for ANOTHER ten years and find another suitable planet for the second terraforming fleet that they had.
There wouldn't have been any point to a third terraforming fleet, as the cryo units would have given out (or the people in them died anyway) before they could finish a third try.

On another note, even at a measly 300c in hyper for ten years would have been 3000 ly, which would be, "several thousand light years."

Another point other than the cryo systems is the rest of the lifesupport systems - the ships still had living crews which manned them. Yes, you could leapfrog in cryo so to limit aging, but at any time Someone was still awake and tending to the sleepers and the ships. We could suspect that O2 regeneration was near 100%, but they still would need food and sundaries. The longer the journey, the more space and mass needed to hold said items. Yes the TF was extremely high tech and could boost mass with no problem, but the ships were only so big and too long a voyage would start cutting into the cargo capabilities dedicated to the colony.

My guess is that the 10 years time - thousands of light years distance already includes a gigantic, paranoid safety margin.

See, the TF had only 14 major systems (I assume that means excluding very recent/small colonies?) IIRC, and their tech was actually slightly inferior to the Gbaba, so they couldn't have been outnumbered that massively since they lasted for decades.

So I can't really see the Gbaba having more than a couple of hundred systems themselves, which probably means a very small colonized sphere.