Living spaces in Honorverse

Grashtel wrote:

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.

Right. When you build a tower, you build a mountain with a very convenient set of tunnels and caves. Only this thing is tougher than any real mountain, despite all the convenient spacing inside.

Towers are for keeps.

Put me down as another who doesn't think they need countergrav to stay up. What they need countergrav for is to be really useful living spaces: you need it to get from floor to floor practically, and to use the exits on the top and sides. Countergrav makes every floor effectively the ground floor, or rooftop, for accessibility, and means the elevator rides are safe, cheap, and fast.

It probably has a central role in the construction, as well, but it's in the use that it's the real kicker.

On the other lifestyle side, countergrav and really fast, affordable, long-lasting, and environmentally friendly aircars may make that suburban model in fact sustainable. In addition, if you have more of your workplace in the home or near it, there's less of the commuting and parking nightmare.

For that matter, it could well be that the two lifestyle models persist side-by-side. Urban tower residents can include both people who cannot afford their own aircar and private patch of land and people who can afford both of those but prefer to spend their money elsewhere and enjoy opulent tower accommodations. Think of New Yorkers that way. Meanwhile, you can have people of modest incomes who invest just about all they can into that patch of rural land and some aircar or home office so they can work from there, alongside people who live out there with only a fraction of their wealth tied up in an excellent aircar or several and their immediate homestead, surrounded by even more land they own and enjoy without even needing.

Rural poverty would probably be much less "affordable" than it is now: you'd almost have to move to a tower in the city, unless you're on a planet with very low land values still and you've got some sort of job that doesn't require you to get around far or fast, perhaps on some antique ground car or a piece of farm equipment.

How big are towers in the Honorverse. Pretty darn big, is the answer. From all the Honorverse books tower's have been described as 1km on a side and 200 or more stories tall. To give you an idea, the Hancock and Sears buildings in Chicago are 100 and 110 stories.

Just wondering a bit, (always suspect with me!) if it would also be possible to burrow underground and have entire huge cities ... but deep into the earth and rock?

One could over fly several in your private air car and never even see big population centers except possibly as just hidden air ducts, both intake and exhaust.

Imagine beautiful forest land with lakes, rivers, creeks, animals; all of it seemingly non touched by man but having huge populations ... all deep underground?

Just an idle though. Some folks see beauty in big cities. I see the opposite. Would technology allow deep buried stuff? Of course, where would you put all the dirt?

HB of CJ (oldest coot) I love this Excellent Forum.

HB of CJ wrote:Just wondering a bit, (always suspect with me!) if it would also be possible to burrow underground and have entire huge cities ... but deep into the earth and rock?

One could over fly several in your private air car and never even see big population centers except possibly as just hidden air ducts, both intake and exhaust.

Imagine beautiful forest land with lakes, rivers, creeks, animals; all of it seemingly non touched by man but having huge populations ... all deep underground?

Just an idle though. Some folks see beauty in big cities. I see the opposite. Would technology allow deep buried stuff? Of course, where would you put all the dirt?

HB of CJ (oldest coot) I love this Excellent Forum.

It should definitely be possible to build down into the ground rather than up. The main reasons that its not done are psychological and that its much easier (and therefore cheaper) to move air out of the way than dirt or rock.

the early Hauptmann Cartel built down, only because grandpa Hauptmann wanted a rural 'hunting lodge' rather than a

properly designed tower, that didn't require the servants to walk kilometers

Most other nobles, where we've gotten to read about their actual homes, either build sprawling homes, tall tower homes, or a mix of the two.

North Hollow - had a mix of the two
Alexanders - sprawling
Honor's Duchy home on the Bay was a quasi sprawl, but large (meaning tall I think)

The only people, that we've read about, that are crazy enough to build down, rather than up, was the MAlign Gamma Center. And that was hidden below 'proper towers'. And they made extensive usage of holograms, tall ceilings, and other tricks to give the illusion they weren't deep underground.

And since Gamma isn't the first in that particular alphabet, we can guess there's at least two, perhaps more MAlign research centers that are also sneakily hidden below ground across Mesa.

I suppose that in the future Honorverse, the rich and mega rich will have many deep bolt holes. These may or may not be combined with living or working spaces. To be safe from whatever, such facilities would have to be buried deep into solid rock, set down and inside big mountains, or perhaps be deep way under the ocean seabed. Getting to them quickly might be a problem. Multiple tested methods?

Yep ... very spendy to dig deep. On Earth we can walk around naked at noon most places and nothing is going to quickly or slowly kill us. Most places. Natural things. Probably most colony planets will share a very benign environment, climate and weather. Thus building up and not down. They say we have evolved from tree dwellers who left the branches for the ground. Thus buildings.

HB of CJ (oldest coot)

Grashtel wrote:It should definitely be possible to build down into the ground rather than up. The main reasons that its not done are psychological and that its much easier (and therefore cheaper) to move air out of the way than dirt or rock.

Also given widespread counter-grav and aircars building up gives the ability to have numerous parking entrances distributed around various floors of the building - reducing congestion.

Going with a fully buried approach means the aircars have to park on the surface or use tunnels or elevators to enter - and it's a lot harder to make those so hundreds of aircars can use them simultaneously without congesting.


That's not necessarily a deal breaker - just one more way that building down is more tricky and annoying than building up (and one that's different that our current era)

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?

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

I don't think it is an infringement on liberty to place amenities and complementary zonings within easy travel distance.

You have the liberty to design a house with multiple exterior doors but no interior doors/doorways, so that every time you want to go to the toilet or kitchen you need to go outside, walk through the garden and back inside to the room you want to access (sucks if it's raining). But if you did so it would be really bad design.

Building residential spaces close to schools, hospitals, shopping districts, workplaces and recreational areas (such as parks) is not against liberty.

I think America has lost touch with the real meaning of liberty. The right to protest (peacefully) and not having alphabet agencies reading your (e)mail are real liberties that have been lost to the present day united states.

HB of CJ wrote:I suppose that in the future Honorverse, the rich and mega rich will have many deep bolt holes. These may or may not be combined with living or working spaces. To be safe from whatever, such facilities would have to be buried deep into solid rock, set down and inside big mountains, or perhaps be deep way under the ocean seabed. Getting to them quickly might be a problem. Multiple tested methods?

Yep ... very spendy to dig deep. On Earth we can walk around naked at noon most places and nothing is going to quickly or slowly kill us. Most places. Natural things. Probably most colony planets will share a very benign environment, climate and weather. Thus building up and not down. They say we have evolved from tree dwellers who left the branches for the ground. Thus buildings.

HB of CJ (oldest coot)

I'm sure they could somehow manage it using Honorverse tech, but cooling would also be a huge problem. Currently the London Underground (subway system) is having big issues with high temperatures in the tunnels. This is due to over a hundred years of waste heat seeping into the surrounding tunnel walls, which absorb the heat and basically have nowhere to release it to.

Any sizable underground building will have severe issues with waste heat from all the computers, lights, cooking devices, refrigerators, water heaters and air-conditioning machinery (apart from any other machinery) inside.

Such heat would need to be 'gathered' using some sort of mechanical refrigeration cycle and then 'pumped' aboveground. While it could be done using magical Honorverse tech the waste heat could still cause problems wherever it was released.

the biggest problems in high rises is elevators ... space. to access top floors lower floors are so much elevators that theres very litttle usable space left.

because everyone wants to have a window

towers the size of honorverse have lots of people having no view of the outside, i don t think that will acctually work

how will you convince people to be 200 meters away from an outside window ?

thats cheaper then the cheapest low income housing today, where everyone got outside windows

why would anyone want to be in an inside apartment of a megatower when you could have a nice rowhouse with a garden ?

megatowers only work in super dense planets like earth with 40 billion inhabitants

planets like manticore with 2 billion inhabitants

might use a megatower as a impressive monument

but the inside appartments would have to be social security stuff otherwise none would use them

on earth every high rise appartment builduing got outside windows + a balcony for every appartment

buildungs with appartments without outside windows ended up as slums or got destroyed, because none wanted to live there exept to comit crimes