The Manpower Files

SWM wrote:

cthia wrote:Question. The little data that Herlander was able to supply, in what form was it? All from memory or a smuggled chip? I can imagine data chips to be insanely small in the Honorverse. Thumb drives are smaller than thumb nail size now.

As I recall, Herlander himself had only his own skills and memory to supply. But while that was important, Herlander did not know all that much about the Alignment. His main contribution was technical knowledge and general information about how the Alignment works from the view of someone halfway inside the Onion.

JeffEngel wrote:Working inside the Gamma Center, there's a lot more information that Simoes could theoretically picked up, and the Alignment is working on a worst-case estimate that way. In fact, operational security within the Center was just fine, so that theoretical access would be much, much reduced in practice. On top of that, Simoes was an intensely focused geek and family man before Francesca's termination turned him intensely focused in an entirely different direction, so plenty of things even he could have picked up there he would not.

He is, on the other hand, very, very intensely motivated, able to provide that background information SWM mentions, and a very good resource for the streak drive (and possibly some of the hyperphysics relevant to the spider, but that's much more speculative). I hope they can keep him busy and able to reconstruct a life with more in it than vengeance.

cthia wrote:Question. The little data that Herlander was able to supply, in what form was it? All from memory or a smuggled chip? I can imagine data chips to be insanely small in the Honorverse. Thumb drives are smaller than thumb nail size now.

SWM wrote:As I recall, Herlander himself had only his own skills and memory to supply. But while that was important, Herlander did not know all that much about the Alignment. His main contribution was technical knowledge and general information about how the Alignment works from the view of someone halfway inside the Onion.

JeffEngel wrote:Working inside the Gamma Center, there's a lot more information that Simoes could theoretically picked up, and the Alignment is working on a worst-case estimate that way. In fact, operational security within the Center was just fine, so that theoretical access would be much, much reduced in practice. On top of that, Simoes was an intensely focused geek and family man before Francesca's termination turned him intensely focused in an entirely different direction, so plenty of things even he could have picked up there he would not.

He is, on the other hand, very, very intensely motivated, able to provide that background information SWM mentions, and a very good resource for the streak drive (and possibly some of the hyperphysics relevant to the spider, but that's much more speculative). I hope they can keep him busy and able to reconstruct a life with more in it than vengeance.

cthia wrote:Did textev mention whether he was the lead scientist on his project?

JohnRoth wrote:

cthia wrote:Question. The little data that Herlander was able to supply, in what form was it? All from memory or a smuggled chip? I can imagine data chips to be insanely small in the Honorverse. Thumb drives are smaller than thumb nail size now.

SWM wrote:As I recall, Herlander himself had only his own skills and memory to supply. But while that was important, Herlander did not know all that much about the Alignment. His main contribution was technical knowledge and general information about how the Alignment works from the view of someone halfway inside the Onion.

JeffEngel wrote:Working inside the Gamma Center, there's a lot more information that Simoes could theoretically picked up, and the Alignment is working on a worst-case estimate that way. In fact, operational security within the Center was just fine, so that theoretical access would be much, much reduced in practice. On top of that, Simoes was an intensely focused geek and family man before Francesca's termination turned him intensely focused in an entirely different direction, so plenty of things even he could have picked up there he would not.

He is, on the other hand, very, very intensely motivated, able to provide that background information SWM mentions, and a very good resource for the streak drive (and possibly some of the hyperphysics relevant to the spider, but that's much more speculative). I hope they can keep him busy and able to reconstruct a life with more in it than vengeance.

cthia wrote:Did textev mention whether he was the lead scientist on his project?

It doesn't, but it's unlikely. He's presented as being an extremely intelligent almost one-of-a-kind mathematical super-genius hyperphysicist; it's also said that he has no experience with actual hardware, which means that his results will be turned over to someone else to implement.

As far as whether he knows anything outside of his narrow specialty - of course he does. Anyone with two brain cells more than God gave a peak bear knows that you can't keep real scientists isolated and get anything good - most of them will go stale without the opportunity to talk to their peers. What RFC wants to do with that is, of course, something that only he knows.

The Gamma Center was a top secret Mesan Alignment research facility hidden deep under the city of Green Pines on the planet Mesa.

Gamma Center employed seven to eight hundred people. A number of top secret technologies were developed there, including the streak drive. In 1921 PD, it was destroyed by its own security chief, Jack McBryde, who initiated the "Scorched Earth" self-destruct program. The resulting blast left no remains of the facility or anyone inside. (CS2)

cthia wrote:And how was all of this technology developed under a city? Where was intermediate testing effected?

cthia wrote:Did textev mention whether he was the lead scientist on his project?

kzt wrote:

cthia wrote:And how was all of this technology developed under a city? Where was intermediate testing effected?

Off-planet. You do the math.

cthia wrote:And how was all of this technology developed under a city? Where was intermediate testing effected?

SWM wrote:

cthia wrote:And how was all of this technology developed under a city? Where was intermediate testing effected?

The theoretical work (at least some of it) took place at the Gamma Center. The physical development almost certainly was done at Darius. Simoes was not very deep in the Onion, and his work could take place on Mesa, so it did. That's why he worked separately from the physical development--he was not cleared to know about Darius and had no need to know as long as the compartmentalized the theoretical work from the development.

JohnRoth wrote:This is also most likely why the actual Streak Drive looks like an engineering lashup - it's said to take twice the size (volume?) as a normal hyper-drive - presumably a dispatch boat or military hyper-drive. It also makes me wonder what "streak drive improvements" means. Another hyperspace level? Some way of condensing it so it doesn't take up so much space? Adding racing stripes? Something else?