Most favorite Honorverse tech

Relax wrote:

cthia wrote:As I said, it seems relationships can begin and end on Honorverse elevators.

Best quip I have read in quite some time.

Think that's something. People in the Honorverse don't even enquire where you were born anymore because the answer is always the same...

"Why, in an elevator. Weren't you?"

"Yep, conceived in one two."

"By the way, I'm pregnant."

"You're pregnant?! How'd that happen, when?"

"Last time we were in this very elevator!"

SWM wrote:

cthia wrote:Ok. Grav plates work by altering the effect of gravity to lessen the effect of g-forces. The only way I can imagine the mechanics of that is by literally altering local gravity - gravity inside the elevator.

Problem is, when you alter -- lessen -- local gravity you also alter the corresponding effect of local gravity - you will free fall at a much lower rate directly proportional to the gravity setting; and that will exacerbate the problem because the elevator itself will still need to manage normal acceleration lest it never reaches its destination.

Some sort of harness system seems inevitable. Step in, strap in. Which would seem very problematic to infants and others.

I've been in many elevator systems of High-rises and for the most part they travel noticeably faster than the average elevator - some, significantly so. When coming to a stop and accelerating you have to hold on. (grab holds are found in all elevators) Oftentimes you are thrown off-balance or have to catch someone who isn't braced. And those elevators achieve nowhere near the acceleration as would an Honorverse elevator.

I'd propose that elevator systems are configured to serve no more than ten floors.

Elevator A: Floors 1-10
Elevator B: Floors 11-20
...

And of course, for the physically fit and correct age there are express elevators - a safe way to fly.

Actually, grav plates are used to increase the gravity, not decrease it. Or, more precisely, grav plates pull, not push or merely cancel gravity. You can put grav plates on the ceiling, and use that to effectively decrease gravity. That is what spider ships do. Apparently you can also adjust the direction of the gravity, somewhat. When Honor used her trick with thrusters, she probably had the grav plates in the floor pulling at a steep angle which partially offset the acceleration from the thrusters.

In an elevator, you could have grav plates in both ceiling and floor. When accelerating upward, the plates in the ceiling would pull upward to counter some of the apparent g-force downward. When accelerating downward, the plates in the floor would pull downward to counter some of the apparent g-force upward.

*It does work, if you accept the ability to build grav plates in the first place. Think about Einstein's elevator model. If you are enclosed in an elevator room and feel 1 g downward, you cannot tell whether the room is accelerating at 1 g in the absence of gravity, or the room is stationary and there is a gravitational field pulling you down to the floor. This situation with grav plates is the same. If you feel 1 g downward, you cannot tell whether you are stationary on a planet, or accelerating upward at 10 gees in a 1 g gravitational field while a grav plate in the ceiling pulls upward with 10 gees. It all feels the same, and you still stay on the floor, feeling 1 gee.

*That's the rub isn't it?

Well, I just don't do that. If you remember a time back, I posted at RFC that I just don't immerse myself in a sci-fi world and question whether premises are sound. I don't know how people enjoy sci-fi in that mode or even how authors can ever get their works published trying not to offend some readers' sensibilities. What I will do, however, is try and figure out a way something can work instead of slamming my fist on the gong button. I truly believe that if man can conceive of it he can eventually realize it.

Having said that, I was trying to figure out a way that this elevator could function. Very interesting that I came up with pretty much your same scenario (almost) - but with plenty of reservations and caveats.

I propose that grav plates would actually have to surround the elevator completely, instead of your proposed top and bottom. I'm a Civil Engineer - bridges are my specialty. In designing, the average layman never considers lateral forces and the average design must take into consideration these forces, especially as a contingency to structural failure. Structural integrity must take into account the lost of load-bearing elements in design due to unforeseen failures - mitigating and aggravating circumstances. Earthquakes. Tornados. Hurricanes. Floods. Incendiary devices, etc. The more elaborate the design, the more that design must consider structural integrity. You must have the ability to foresee. It comes natural after awhile and the cutting edge engineers and architects have a third eye.

Applying it to the problem of the elevators, all is well until even a simple failure and the entire design can go to hell in a handbasket. First of all, this entire design has to be controlled by very powerful redundant computer systems. Lateral grav plates would be incorporated into any design of mine - as a stabilizing safety contingency system in case normal design parameters malfunction then lateral forces will need managing. Etc. etc. etc. ... ...

Even your design asks quite a bit of control out of the grav plates. In the scenario of Honor using them in an immobile gym requires design elements much simpler in nature. It is a closed system for one. In the case of the elevator there's some sort of propulsion system that's a separate design element. I can't even imagine that system. A system of pulleys? IMO, no. A traditional pulley system of weights and counterweights and balances isn't necessary or feasible. Too much friction at Honorverse speeds for one, but not least. Possible, but adds even more to complexity and design considerations. I would imagine a more modern form of propulsion. The grav plates themselves could be incorporated into the propulsion system. Albeit, adding more complexity. Too much complexity in a moving system begs for disaster.

At any rate whatever propulsion system is used has to have the ability to hold suspended a motionless car and one at speeds. Normally, an engineer will design in extra tolerances beyond even what is required. In a system like this it would be difficult to imagine every possible type of failure. It is these threats to structural integrity that kills.

Other considerations in a moving system such as an elevator using these grav plates is that these plates has to be highly configurable - extremely adjustable. You don't want any dead spots within the elevator. From ceiling to floor you want gravity to be consistent - again no dead spots, yet near the floor where people are standing you also want a consistent gravity and no dead spots. Yet, you do NOT want the floor of the elevator or any part of the elevator itself to be effected by the grav plates. If so then the forces upon the pulley/propulsion system will vary greatly. Imagine the pulley/propulsion system to be as Honor having to work harder in a dialed up gravity. Of course, the same method of grav plates may be applied to the elevator itself to counteract forces. May even be utilized to move the elevators more efficiently. Yet, much more complexity. Yet the system most likely would have to be separate and synced by the logic system. More complexity.

Sheesh, my head is aching trying to quickly conceive of the design and safety problems and considerations, to satisfactorily accept things "as is."

There is soooooo much more that should be taken into consideration. (Like the world inside the elevator shaft. Some measure of vacuum? Almost certainly. More design complexity. Though I can propose other systems, though its own complexity may rival that of a vacuum.) However, I just revert to my old standby... in the Honorverse, they've solved it. This may appear to employ handwavium. But that isn't fair to the author. Do we really want an author to lay out every technical aspect, even if he could, of every situation? I'm a Civil Engineer, it would take blueprints, equations, etc. to truly satisfy one of us regarding this elevator. Is that truly necessary? Why can't any author just wave his hand and say... trust me, it's covered?


See why I dislike reading sci-fi in this manner? Leisure reading shouldn't be this taxing.

Or how on any Earth will the elevator ever get off the ground floor?


****** *

This is put together quickly - I'm a married man now with other... responsibilities - pardon this author's many logic holes. lol

I've been on vacation close to a month now. This is my last week. I'm not used to taking so much time off. But between laying in the arms of a beautiful woman, vacationing in the Canaries and laying on the beach, I've forgotten, how do you make yourself want to return to a schedule? lol

But my biggest question is why is vacation ultimately a punishment? -- your work just piles up on you awaiting your return. $#%@% %$@#!n%$#$% $%#$z2#$% $&%$#%& #$%&!

.

Now, can someone brief me on the trick SWM is referring to that Honor did with the thrusters? I think I have proper clearance.

Weird Harold wrote:

Relax wrote:1) Pressure differential does not care which direction you are going in. Same work is applied. A leak is a leak.

If the ambient pressure is at or near zero, it's easier to maintain pressure near zero -- leaks to ambient pressure don't matter. They do matter when the ambient pressure is "sea-level."

You are correct that pressure differential is a key consideration, but the ambient pressure is what any leak will try to equalize to.

Well, on a space station, there is no way in Hades, they are going to allow leaks into the vacuum of space now is there? This would be a catastrophic space station engineering failure point. So the tubes in a space station will reside within the pressure vessel of the space station itself and even if they did not, the tubes if run on the outside of the station most certainly would not be allowed to vent to space. Air is the most precious commodity in space.

cthia wrote:Now, can someone brief me on the trick SWM is referring to that Honor did with the thrusters? I think I have proper clearance.

I was referring to the incident at Cerberus, where Honor used thrusters instead of the wedge to accelerate her ship into position to fire down the throats of the Havenite fleet coming to take Cerberus back.

The thrusters were pushing something like 300 gees, if I recall. The text says that they reconfigured the grav plates to partially offset the acceleration, bringing it down to a manageable 5 gees effective.

The grav plates are on the floor of the decks, of course. It is possible that the thrust was directed in the same direction as the grav plates, which would mean that the ship was accelerating toward the ventral surface of the ship--upward, in other words. But I have always assumed that the thrust was directed toward the stern of the ship, so that the ship was accelerating toward the bow, as usual. Assuming the crew did not actually tear the grav plates out and put them on the forward bulkheads, that would mean that the grav plates were still in the floor. If the grav force from the plates could be adjusted to pull at a steep angle to the floor, it could still offset much of the effective gee force toward the stern.

There is textev of being able to adjust the direction of the grav plate force--if you accept A Ship Named Francis as canon. (Some people don't think the story fits canon very well.) In that story, the crew of the Francis occasionally adjusts the grav plates on the central access tunnel to turn it into a giant slide.

cthia wrote:

SWM wrote:Actually, grav plates are used to increase the gravity, not decrease it. Or, more precisely, grav plates pull, not push or merely cancel gravity. You can put grav plates on the ceiling, and use that to effectively decrease gravity. That is what spider ships do. Apparently you can also adjust the direction of the gravity, somewhat. When Honor used her trick with thrusters, she probably had the grav plates in the floor pulling at a steep angle which partially offset the acceleration from the thrusters.

Actually it appears that grav plates can provide a push.
In Field of Dishonor, chapter 28, when Honor is dining with Neufsteiler at the Italian resteraunt Regiano's there's this tidbit

Field of Dishonor: Ch 28 wrote:She and her companions sat on a platform of polished golden oak that floated eight meters above the floor. She couldn't decide whether the architect had used grav plates under the platform or corner tractors from the overhead. It could have been either, for there were no other platforms directly above or beneath, but it didn't really matter. The hovering effect was pleasant, and its position gave them both the privacy of isolation and a commanding lookout post for Andrew LaFollet.

If they can suspend a platform midair from beneath then they must be able to push.

cthia wrote:

SWM wrote:In an elevator, you could have grav plates in both ceiling and floor. When accelerating upward, the plates in the ceiling would pull upward to counter some of the apparent g-force downward. When accelerating downward, the plates in the floor would pull downward to counter some of the apparent g-force upward.

*It does work, if you accept the ability to build grav plates in the first place. Think about Einstein's elevator model. If you are enclosed in an elevator room and feel 1 g downward, you cannot tell whether the room is accelerating at 1 g in the absence of gravity, or the room is stationary and there is a gravitational field pulling you down to the floor. This situation with grav plates is the same. If you feel 1 g downward, you cannot tell whether you are stationary on a planet, or accelerating upward at 10 gees in a 1 g gravitational field while a grav plate in the ceiling pulls upward with 10 gees. It all feels the same, and you still stay on the floor, feeling 1 gee.

*That's the rub isn't it?

Well, I just don't do that. If you remember a time back, I posted at RFC that I just don't immerse myself in a sci-fi world and question whether premises are sound. I don't know how people enjoy sci-fi in that mode or even how authors can ever get their works published trying not to offend some readers' sensibilities. What I will do, however, is try and figure out a way something can work instead of slamming my fist on the gong button. I truly believe that if man can conceive of it he can eventually realize it.

Having said that, I was trying to figure out a way that this elevator could function. Very interesting that I came up with pretty much your same scenario (almost) - but with plenty of reservations and caveats.

I propose that grav plates would actually have to surround the elevator completely, instead of your proposed top and bottom. I'm a Civil Engineer - bridges are my specialty. In designing, the average layman never considers lateral forces and the average design must take into consideration these forces, especially as a contingency to structural failure. Structural integrity must take into account the lost of load-bearing elements in design due to unforeseen failures - mitigating and aggravating circumstances. Earthquakes. Tornados. Hurricanes. Floods. Incendiary devices, etc. The more elaborate the design, the more that design must consider structural integrity. You must have the ability to foresee. It comes natural after awhile and the cutting edge engineers and architects have a third eye.

Applying it to the problem of the elevators, all is well until even a simple failure and the entire design can go to hell in a handbasket. First of all, this entire design has to be controlled by very powerful redundant computer systems. Lateral grav plates would be incorporated into any design of mine - as a stabilizing safety contingency system in case normal design parameters malfunction then lateral forces will need managing. Etc. etc. etc. ... ...

Even your design asks quite a bit of control out of the grav plates. In the scenario of Honor using them in an immobile gym requires design elements much simpler in nature. It is a closed system for one. In the case of the elevator there's some sort of propulsion system that's a separate design element. I can't even imagine that system. A system of pulleys? IMO, no. A traditional pulley system of weights and counterweights and balances isn't necessary or feasible. Too much friction at Honorverse speeds for one, but not least. Possible, but adds even more to complexity and design considerations. I would imagine a more modern form of propulsion. The grav plates themselves could be incorporated into the propulsion system. Albeit, adding more complexity. Too much complexity in a moving system begs for disaster.

At any rate whatever propulsion system is used has to have the ability to hold suspended a motionless car and one at speeds. Normally, an engineer will design extra tolerances beyond that what even OSHA requires. In a system like this it would be difficult to imagine every possible type of failure. It is these threats to structural integrity that kills.

Other considerations in a moving system such as an elevator using these grav plates is that these plates has to be highly configurable - extremely adjustable. You don't want any dead spots within the elevator. From ceiling to floor you want gravity to be consistent - again no dead spots, yet near the floor where people are standing you also want a consistent gravity and no dead spots. Yet, you do NOT want the floor of the elevator or any part of the elevator itself to be effected by the grav plates. If so then the forces upon the pulley/propulsion system will vary greatly. Imagine the pulley/propulsion system to be as Honor having to work harder in a dialed up gravity. Of course, the same method of grav plates may be applied to the elevator itself to counteract forces. May even be utilized to move the elevators more efficiently. Yet, much more complexity. Yet the system most likely would have to be separate and synced by the logic system. More complexity.

Sheesh, my head is aching trying to quickly conceive of the design and safety problems and considerations, to satisfactorily accept things "as is."

There is soooooo much more that should be taken into consideration. (Like the world inside the elevator shaft. Some measure of vacuum? Almost certainly. More design complexity. Though I can propose other systems, though its own complexity may rival that of a vacuum.) However, I just revert to my old standby... in the Honorverse, they've solved it. This may appear to employ handwavium. But that isn't fair to the author. Do we really want an author to lay out every technical aspect, even if he could, of every situation? I'm a Civil Engineer, it would take blueprints, equations, etc. to truly satisfy one of us regarding this elevator. Is that truly necessary? Why can't any author just wave his hand and say... trust me, it's covered?

I agree that it must be a somewhat complex control system to handle gravity in a varably accelerating vehicle. OTOH I think your last point is correct, in the Honorverse they've definitely solved it. After all they're willing to trust grav plates to dial back 150g of warship acceleration to 5g, without squashing people when the warship maneuvers, while the thrusters ramp up or down, or presumably if it took impact damage while thrusting. [Echoes of Honor; the wedgeless acceleration of Honor's Elysian Space Navy during the Battle of Cerberus]

Any control system that can handle (however it does it) that should be more than capable of handling the interactions in an lift car pulling less than 10gs.

@Johnathan

Agreed. But knowing what all has to work together flawlessly inside, unless I'm particularly lonely wink I'd just prefer to walk. Just take a cab to the top of the bldg and walk down. Much easier.

Ouch! An epiphany just hit me aback the head! Why can't grav plates be utilized within the stairwells? Near zero g would make 200 floors fun! Taking 20 - 30 stairs or several floors at a time!



Hmm, maybe I should even rethink that entire elevator problem.

cthia wrote:@Johnathan

Agreed. But knowing what all has to work together flawlessly inside, unless I'm particularly lonely wink I'd just prefer to walk. Just take a cab to the top of the bldg and walk down. Much easier.

Ouch! An epiphany just hit me aback the head! Why can't grav plates be utilized within the stairwells? Near zero g would make 200 floors fun! Taking 20 - 30 stairs or several floors at a time!



Hmm, maybe I should even rethink that entire elevator problem.

Ouch! Can you imagine a herd of twenty teenagers barreling down the stairs (or perhaps zero-gee shaft) at the same time that ten business people are going up sedately chatting, while someone in between is trying to juggle his groceries and keep the bananas from flying free?

cthia wrote:@Johnathan

Agreed. But knowing what all has to work together flawlessly inside, unless I'm particularly lonely wink I'd just prefer to walk. Just take a cab to the top of the bldg and walk down. Much easier.

You're trusting the cab in that case. The elevator car is basically just a cab on tracks, a cab surrounded by guard rails except in two narrow directions. If you're afraid of it, you should be at least as scared of the cab.

Ouch! An epiphany just hit me aback the head! Why can't grav plates be utilized within the stairwells? Near zero g would make 200 floors fun! Taking 20 - 30 stairs or several floors at a time!



Hmm, maybe I should even rethink that entire elevator problem.

You've still got inertia, and in microgravity, you haven't much friction to count on to keep you from accelerating right off the surfaces - at considerable velocity, ballisticly, in the direction of the next solid object. Splat. The fun, healthy, "safe" stair jog ends horribly.

cthia wrote:Ouch! An epiphany just hit me aback the head! Why can't grav plates be utilized within the stairwells? Near zero g would make 200 floors fun! Taking 20 - 30 stairs or several floors at a time!

On a more personal note, time for a stupid college story.

I lived at the top of a five story dorm. I got very proficient at speeding down the stairs. I would lean forward and leap out, catch the railings on either side, and swing down to the landing. I could make it from the top to the bottom in ten jumps. As long as I didn't land badly and twist my ankle. Geeze, that was a stupid trick . . .

That's what made me think of the crowd of teenagers in the low-gee stairwell.