Living spaces in Honorverse

HB of CJ wrote:I can imagine mass public transit in the Honorverse in the huge mega cites and even inside the mega buildings is very fast and efficient. It might also be cheap and safe. Close to work would be good.

On the outer planets with little population and lots and lots of space like Montana, the ownership and use of a very fast air car or aircraft would be necessary. Maybe even sub orbital.

I wonder if in about 2200 years or so private ownership of what today could be described as a very fast aircraft or low orbiiting spacecraft will be realistic? How expensive would it be?

In AAC, the newly-enlisted Havenite who crashed into Giancola could afford his own aircar. And we knew Honorverse aircars are capable of speeds of at least 1000 kph.

drothgery wrote:

HB of CJ wrote:I can imagine mass public transit in the Honorverse in the huge mega cites and even inside the mega buildings is very fast and efficient. It might also be cheap and safe. Close to work would be good.

On the outer planets with little population and lots and lots of space like Montana, the ownership and use of a very fast air car or aircraft would be necessary. Maybe even sub orbital.

I wonder if in about 2200 years or so private ownership of what today could be described as a very fast aircraft or low orbiiting spacecraft will be realistic? How expensive would it be?

In AAC, the newly-enlisted Havenite who crashed into Giancola could afford his own aircar. And we knew Honorverse aircars are capable of speeds of at least 1000 kph.

Air cars in the Honorverse are so common place, adults don't even bat an eye when teenagers go on a trip of several hours and hundreds of kilometres long. Look at the trips Jessica and Anders made in ABF to Thunder River which IIRC was 600 km long.

Unless aircars can be folded into suitcases, I presume that aircar parking is as much as of hassle in the city as parking an ordinary car today. The mitigating factor might be 'cheap' high rise construction (counter-grav) means every building can afford to have 1/4-1/3 of its levels dedicated to parking.

While I can accept that counter-grav construction does make many elements cheaper (raising structural elements or construction materials, not having to pump concrete up tens/hundreds of meters etc.) it does not remove the requirements in terms of materials, manpower, design and management. Construction would still be an expensive industry, just like it is today. Everything would still have to be done competently and safely, which will require some degree of skilled workforce, which is never cheap.

The other thing I wonder about counter-grav buildings is do they require 'active' counter-grav technology to stay upright? Something like that sounds extremely unsafe and unsound - what if there is a disruption to the power supply?

JeffEngel:
I think 'The Dream' is a composite beast of marketing and social reaction to poor urban planning. It seems quite clear that the concept of having everyone living in suburbs is not environmentally sustainable. I'm not sure it is socially sustainable or functional in terms of transport and travel. In Sydney suburban sprawl has moved so far west that commuters are starting to look at 2+ hour peak hour commutes (one way) to get from the western suburbs to the city centre. New suburb developments are taking over fertile agricultural land in the west. This is not sensible over the long term. Also all the additional travel will increase the carbon footprint - also bad.

BobfromSydney wrote:Unless aircars can be folded into suitcases, I presume that aircar parking is as much as of hassle in the city as parking an ordinary car today. The mitigating factor might be 'cheap' high rise construction (counter-grav) means every building can afford to have 1/4-1/3 of its levels dedicated to parking.

With the right floor plan, an Honorverse sky scraper could have a personal garage included with every apartment suite. The only question is if the apartment in question is at a high enough altitude that it needs an airlock.

Regarding buildings requiring their own interial intregrety fields to remain standing, was there not a hint of this in QOGs when all the good guys hole up in that one big mega building on Mesa for the final stand? Some comment was made that the building had its own reactor power source ...which the aforementioned white hats used their good advantage?

Then Admiral Henke Gold Peak saves the day? I think that is her name.

I think the statement saying that transit is not being where you need to be or something like that should and could also be said to mean that the right of liberty, (the right to come and go as you please) also should inter into it. One should have the absolute right to move around as one sees fit. Just the opposite side. It may not be efficient or easy, just available. HB

HB of CJ wrote:Regarding buildings requiring their own interial intregrety fields to remain standing, was there not a hint of this in QOGs when all the good guys hole up in that one big mega building on Mesa for the final stand? Some comment was made that the building had its own reactor power source ...which the aforementioned white hats used their good advantage?

Yeah, I'd be shocked in buildings required active counter-grav to remain safe after construction.

Though I wouldn't be too surprised if some of their elevators "cheated" and were only safe to move when using countergrav. For safety they'd have brakes strong enough to stop and hold the elevator's full weight, but countergrav would allow a much lighter cable (so you don't need massive thickness or super exotic material for a multi-km vertical cable - especially on freight elevators)
There are other ways to handle this, and manybe they don't do this approach. But it's an example of employing countergrav (after construction) is a way that doesn't compromise building safety.

Iirc, a major limiting factor in modern building height is elevators. If you can cheat and have multiple cars per shaft etc then things get interesting.

In one of the early books, tHotQ or FoD I think, when Honor first goes to the King Michaels tower, she observed the towers elevator was so old it didn't even have counter-grav, or move sideways.

So we can infer from that, that the typical counter-grav super-skyscrapers of the Honorverse elevator have no cables at all.

Although like HB pointed out, it's very likely they have what amounts to a set of "super brakes" that can hold the full weight of the elevator, exactly like current elevators do.

I think they do the same in their ships, multi-cars can travel down the same shafts, with points they can be shunted around unmoving cars.

We have evidence of parking garages in towers - when Allison met the armsmen at a commercial tower, IIRC.

Towers must also be pretty sturdy, since the Nouveau Paris ones survived quite a bit of abuse and neglect all through the series. The one from SVW and its neglect, the Leveler uprising, the assault on Pierre's tower, the towers that took the brunt of the Octagon nuke, the hotel from MoH all point to some pretty tough buildings.

jchilds wrote:We have evidence of parking garages in towers - when Allison met the armsmen at a commercial tower, IIRC.

Towers must also be pretty sturdy, since the Nouveau Paris ones survived quite a bit of abuse and neglect all through the series. The one from SVW and its neglect, the Leveler uprising, the assault on Pierre's tower, the towers that took the brunt of the Octagon nuke, the hotel from MoH all point to some pretty tough buildings.

And you haven't read "Cauldron of Ghosts" yet apparently, it shows off just how tough an Honorverse tower made out of cermacrete is with examples of them surviving tactical level nukes (in one case actually inside the lower levels of the tower, despite which it remains structurally stable) and kinetic strikes, with the only way to quickly destroy one being a strategic level kinetic strike that would result in widespread collateral damage.