Information I'd love to know

You may have forgotten that both Klaus and Honor have controlling interest in their respective companies. Klaus owns 65% of the Hauptman Cartel and Honor controls 50% of Skydomes.

Does anyone know what type engines the generational ships were... or where the info can be found? I can't imagine that many of those ships didn't meet with navigational disasters. How were they steered? Since automation isn't RFC's cup-o-tea.

What were their complement - number of passengers?

cthia wrote:Does anyone know what type engines the generational ships were... or where the info can be found? I can't imagine that many of those ships didn't meet with navigational disasters. How were they steered? Since automation isn't RFC's cup-o-tea.

What were their complement - number of passengers?

The 6th Anthology, Beginnings, has a short story By the Book set in the Earth system during the colonization days.

The colony ships mentioned in it use a "fusion drive"; and use fuel produced in a deuterium refinery. But In the roughly 30 years between the invention of the impeller drive (1246 pd) and the invention of the Warshawski grav-wave detector (1273 pd) there may have been a few Impeller driven sub-light colony ships.

However a quick look did not turn up the number of passengers. Though there was a passing mention of their "robotics and automated systems".


I don't have time to dig for more, but there might be more details about the colony ship to Grayson in HotQ.

cthia wrote:Does anyone know what type engines the generational ships were... or where the info can be found? I can't imagine that many of those ships didn't meet with navigational disasters. How were they steered? Since automation isn't RFC's cup-o-tea.

What were their complement - number of passengers?

I think complements varied on every colony ship. Grayson, being what amounted to persecuted religious refugees, doubtfully numbered more than a small handful of thousands. Manticore by contrast, probably had a double handful but no more than 50,000 I'd think?

Automation-wise, again would probably depend on the ship. Early ships, like say Beowulf which launched fairly early but weren't going far were pretty simplistic.

In all probablity, most colony ships probably launched before warshawski's were invented, let alone impellers. So they were likely just launched, and [i]'hope for the best'/[i]. If they arrived, they arrived, if they didn't then they didn't.

There was some reference of the back of the book wikis, that even after the discovery and development of warshawski sensors and sails, that colony ships continued their STL trips rather than risk riding the waves.

it is still a very large blank spot in honorverse history.

pretty much anything before about 30 years before OBS is still fairly vague.

we had small snatches but most of the really early stuff is seen either via stephanie harrington a 10 year old, (super smart but still only bout 10) or travis long.

travis' adventures probably give us the most info but even that is pretty anaemic compared to the info on the last half of the 19th century post dispora and the first couple of decades of the 20th

Somtaaw wrote:

cthia wrote:Does anyone know what type engines the generational ships were... or where the info can be found? I can't imagine that many of those ships didn't meet with navigational disasters. How were they steered? Since automation isn't RFC's cup-o-tea.

What were their complement - number of passengers?

I think complements varied on every colony ship. Grayson, being what amounted to persecuted religious refugees, doubtfully numbered more than a small handful of thousands. Manticore by contrast, probably had a double handful but no more than 50,000 I'd think?

Automation-wise, again would probably depend on the ship. Early ships, like say Beowulf which launched fairly early but weren't going far were pretty simplistic.

In all probablity, most colony ships probably launched before warshawski's were invented, let alone impellers. So they were likely just launched, and [i]'hope for the best'/[i]. If they arrived, they arrived, if they didn't then they didn't.

There was some reference of the back of the book wikis, that even after the discovery and development of warshawski sensors and sails, that colony ships continued their STL trips rather than risk riding the waves.

If my data is correct then you are pretty much on the money, give or take 10k. More give.

I haven't read it yet but I remembered a glossary in the back of the last story of the More Than Honor anthology. It states that 36,000 of the initial settlers died of a deadly virus which amounted to 60 %. Which computes to 60,000 passengers.

Somtaaw wrote:In all probablity, most colony ships probably launched before warshawski's were invented, let alone impellers. So they were likely just launched, and 'hope for the best'/[i]. If they arrived, they arrived, if they didn't then they didn't.

There was some reference of the back of the book wikis, that even after the discovery and development of warshawski sensors and sails, that colony ships continued their STL trips rather than risk riding the waves.

I though the development order was impellers first

[all from MTH anthology: [i]The Universe of Honor Harrington]
1) 2103 AD (1 PD) - manned interstellar ship departs Sol system
2) 725 PD - first hyper generator
3) 731 PD - hyper log (inertial navigation)
4) 1246 PD - Impeller drive
5) 1273 PD - Warshawski grav-wave detector [allows you to avoid grav waves]
6) ?? PD - roughly contemporaneous? - Warshawski sail [allows you to sail grav waves]
7) 1384 pd - Inertial Compensator

The Manticore Colony set up sometime (not bothering to look it up) in the roughly 500 years between the invention of hyper travel and the invention of the Warshawski detector/sail which make it safe. So reaction drive hyper-capable scout ships first surveyed the Maniticore system, then the reaction drive sub-light colony ship brought the settlers. (But by the time they arrived the Warshaskis had been invented so they were met by hyper capable frigates that were far safer than the earlier scout ships)
There was a fair period like that; where only highly paid scouts risked hyper.

But I don't remember new colony ships departing much after 1273 PD that would stick to sublight. By that point it should have been clear that it would cost less, and you'd arrive much much sooner (compared to impeller powered STL) even if you just waited a decade or so for the tech to mature before taking sail equipped colony ships. There might have been some, and certainly in-flight STL ships would continue to arrive for centuries, but I doubt once grav wave detection and travel was possible that many opted for the vastly slower STL colonization.

Ok, some answers, first Jason departed Earth in 775 PD and arrived in 1416 PD. The ship carried 38000 adults and 13000 minor children or 51000 colonists total.

STL ships used a variety of propulsion systems namely fission, fusion, ion and hybrid chemical/fusion with hydrogen capture fields.

They would most likely keep using STL tech for awhile because when any new technology comes with three problems first it's big second it's clunky and it's expensive. If you want an example look at the first cell phones they were the size and shape and weight of a brick and the battery lasted long enough for maybe 5 or 6 calls and cost about $1000.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:In all probablity, most colony ships probably launched before warshawski's were invented, let alone impellers. So they were likely just launched, and 'hope for the best'/[i]. If they arrived, they arrived, if they didn't then they didn't.

There was some reference of the back of the book wikis, that even after the discovery and development of warshawski sensors and sails, that colony ships continued their STL trips rather than risk riding the waves.

I though the development order was impellers first

My mistake, I'd meant to type something about the impeller-to-sail conversion rather than just impellers, but I think I hadn't had enough coffee at the time of posting to be clear.

But yeah, pretty sure it's in the MTH anthology stuff, or one of the others, that colony ships stayed away from the hyper and [i]wanting to use grav waves because it was still unreliable, or too risky when you're bringing a few thousand (to hundreds of thousands for really big colony attempts) of passengers.

The early scout ships, doubtfully had more crew than the modern dispatch boat. Just enough people to still feel human and sociable, but small enough that even losing them by the dozen would still be bringing back in ridiculous amounts of data to make hyper travel safe. Figure it somewhere between 20 and 50 crew, maybe as low as 10 if they made a point of hiring adrenaline junkies that were loners. Any lower and you'd have trouble fixing problems, because they didn't (or only had early generation equipment) for counter-grav to haul big assed pieces of equipment for repairs.

And I can't recall the early death rate for Grayson, but it was pretty large winnowing, so I'm torn between figuring they were a tiny colony to begin with (5,000 to 15,000 range) or they were as average as Manticore to start with (40,000-80,000). The general references I recall (believing to be a persecuted minority, the anti-techie slant of the Church, etc) make me think it was tiny, but the death rate after landing makes me think it'd have to be larger.

saber964 wrote:They would most likely keep using STL tech for awhile because when any new technology comes with three problems first it's big second it's clunky and it's expensive. If you want an example look at the first cell phones they were the size and shape and weight of a brick and the battery lasted long enough for maybe 5 or 6 calls and cost about $1000.

OTOH it might well be be big, clunky, expensive, but it's also a few hundred times shorter transit time (Beta bands).

That's a hell of an incentive to go with the new tech (once detectors and sails make it safe to use) rather than sending an STL slow-boat. (Especially since its a big enough win you can wait for the tech to mature and still arrive centuries earlier than with STL)