Most favorite Honorverse tech

I am also partial to the scene changing technology used by Dempseys Restaurant that was able to alter the ambiance at will from a winter or summer or other scene from any planet. Very cool!

With 100 stories on an average High-rise considered to be small, can you imagine the elevators? They probably feel like Amusement Park rides pulling g-forces. Better brush up on your elevator chitchat. Heck, there's plenty of time to fall in love or even add to the family in an elevator. lol

cthia wrote:With 100 stories on an average High-rise considered to be small, can you imagine the elevators? They probably feel like Amusement Park rides pulling g-forces. Better brush up on your elevator chitchat. Heck, there's plenty of time to fall in love or even add to the family in an elevator. lol

They'd have to be using counter-grav in the elevators as well, I'd expect, so the elevators/lifts would move at subsonic speeds while still feeling like a regular elevator ride - i.e., way too long and boring.

cthia wrote:With 100 stories on an average High-rise considered to be small, can you imagine the elevators? They probably feel like Amusement Park rides pulling g-forces. Better brush up on your elevator chitchat. Heck, there's plenty of time to fall in love or even add to the family in an elevator. lol

With grav plates and contragrav technology, the felt g-force is probably about 1/10th the actual G forces. Express elevators probably run at 20-30 Gs with no more felt acceleration than real-world express elevators.

Weird Harold wrote:

cthia wrote:With 100 stories on an average High-rise considered to be small, can you imagine the elevators? They probably feel like Amusement Park rides pulling g-forces. Better brush up on your elevator chitchat. Heck, there's plenty of time to fall in love or even add to the family in an elevator. lol

With grav plates and contragrav technology, the felt g-force is probably about 1/10th the actual G forces. Express elevators probably run at 20-30 Gs with no more felt acceleration than real-world express elevators.

If that's true, sounds like there may even be a need for inertial compensators on elevators as well. And OSHA better not slack on inspection, or some elevator rides are going to be fatal.

More people die in car accidents than elevator rides?

Elevators, still the safest way to fly.

If I remember right, compensators need a wedge or grav wave to dump the intertia into. That's why the Sharks and Ghosts were so slow, because they relied on grav plates to counteract acceleration instead of a compensator.

TheGlyphstone wrote:If I remember right, compensators need a wedge or grav wave to dump the intertia into. That's why the Sharks and Ghosts were so slow, because they relied on grav plates to counteract acceleration instead of a compensator.

Thanks for that info. I wasn't aware. I suppose Harold imparted the info in his post.

A thought. What about the elevator's descent? Since the elevator's acceleration greatly exceeds gravity does occupants need to be in harnesses to keep one's foot firmly planted and to prevent one's head from being smashed by the elevator's roof or does this grav plate tech circumvent that somehow?

:head&arse scratch:

cthia wrote:I suppose Harold imparted the info in his post.

No, I thought that compensators require a "gravity sump" was common knowledge. It is a somewhat basic concept of the Honorverse.

cthia wrote:A thought. What about the elevator's descent?

I would expect that an Honorverse elevator would be no more hazardous or exciting than a real-world express elevator -- where actual elevators are used, that is. There is textev of "parking garages" at various levels where one can simply fly into the building and park only a couple dozen floors from your destination.

There is also the Science Fiction Standby of a "Lift/Drop Tube" system; no physical elevator, just gravity control to lift or drop whoever or whatever steps into the tube; No waiting for an elevator involved.

I doubt that RFC has given much though or written much detail about internal transportation within "contra-grav towers." Real Life towers use a combination of fast(express) and slow(local) elevators, escalators, and stairs.

Weird Harold wrote:

cthia wrote:
I suppose Harold imparted the info in his post.

No, I thought that compensators require a "gravity sump" was common knowledge. It is a somewhat basic concept of the Honorverse.

Probably is common knowledge. Since common knowledge means known by everyone or nearly everyone - I represented the nearly part. My bad. Johnny come lately always does.

cthia wrote:A thought. What about the elevator's descent?

Weird Harold wrote:I would expect that an Honorverse elevator would be no more hazardous or exciting than a real-world express elevator -- where actual elevators are used, that is. There is textev of "parking garages" at various levels where one can simply fly into the building and park only a couple dozen floors from your destination.

There is also the Science Fiction Standby of a "Lift/Drop Tube" system; no physical elevator, just gravity control to lift or drop whoever or whatever steps into the tube; No waiting for an elevator involved.

I doubt that RFC has given much though or written much detail about internal transportation within "contra-grav towers." Real Life towers use a combination of fast(express) and slow(local) elevators, escalators, and stairs.

Which implies that the power systems have serious backups. Ever been stuck in a New York elevator for hours? It's an arduous ordeal that isn't anything near a New York minute. lol

Seriously, backup systems would have to be a well designed and maintained piece of technology. And I assume that they operate off of an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) as switching times could be fatal.

I would imagine that pregnant women and inebriated riders would be very "sensitive" to any perceived changes in gravity with... expected results.

We won't even mention the elderly.

I suppose they have elevator attendants to keep bored kids from constantly riding them all day long for a thrill -- built-in Disney rides -- as they do now.

cthia wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:With grav plates and contragrav technology, the felt g-force is probably about 1/10th the actual G forces. Express elevators probably run at 20-30 Gs with no more felt acceleration than real-world express elevators.

If that's true, sounds like there may even be a need for inertial compensators on elevators as well. And OSHA better not slack on inspection, or some elevator rides are going to be fatal.

More people die in car accidents than elevator rides?

Elevators, still the safest way to fly.

Nope, grav plates alone can 'sink' at least 50 g (not counting the MAlign super-grav plates) No compensator needed. (plus without a wedge or sail there's no place for a compensator to 'sink' the accel; so it can't function)

Still even in a 200 story tall building I doubt they'd run the elevators at more than maybe 1.75g accel - that's enough to run to the top floor in about 12 seconds (and your top speed hits 230 mph). And if the grav plate lost power the ~2.75g you felt (because of the ~1g normal gravity added to the 1.75g of additional accel) would be survivable.


Grav plates have enough extra capability that you could do silly things with them like unlinking the actual elevator motion from the motion you felt in the car. Feels like you're descending slowely while you're rocketing up. Or you're floating in 0g while moving. Of just feel as if you aren't moving at all. But I suspect the user experience is better when you do let the felt motion mirror the actual motion; just at reduced intensity. (Though for amusement park rides...)