The Manpower Files

cthia wrote:I thought it was textev. I distinctly remember text stating that development had hit a few snags. Although, I could be remembering facts regarding the spyder drive. At any rate, I won't easily accept that mankind nailed such an unprecedented project first attempt, even with someone else's notes.

I still think it is unprecedented at least in its accomplishment. If not in its overall conception. (Although, that might be argued as well since no one thought of applying it to the theta wall.) Indeed, I wasn't aware of the fact that work had been previously effected. Can you remember that reference? The sleuth in me eyes have furled.

Here's what the text says, bolding added by me:

Mission of Honor wrote:In the last few centuries, efforts to beat the iota barrier had waned, until the goal had been pretty much abandoned as one of those theoretically possible but practically unobtainable concepts.

But the Mesan Alignment hadn't abandoned it, and finally, after the better part of a hundred T-years of dogged research, they'd found the answer. It was, in many ways, a brute force approach, and it wouldn't have been possible even now without relatively recent advances (whose potential no one else seemed to have noticed) in related fields. And even with those other advances, it had almost doubled the size of conventional hyper generators.

I do indeed think that the streak drive is a big deal. It was instrumental in allowing the MAlign to achieve what they did.

Oh, I agree that it is a breakthrough, and provides an enormous advantage if most people don't have it. All I'm saying is that the theoretical aspect of the system is not revolutionary. The Spider drive is revolutionary--it is radically different from previous drive systems. The Streak drive is not revolutionary--it is an incremental improvement on an existing system. And the theory had always said that it was possible. It was just the practical application that was a problem. Yes, that improvement was hard to achieve, but high difficulty is not the same as revolutionary.

And I don't think you understand the definition of unprecedented. The streak drive most certainly had precedents. There have been previous incremental improvements of hyper generators; for a long time, they were limited to the Delta bands, if I recall correctly. This is just another incremental improvement; hard won, but still merely an increment.

The text actually does not say that Simoes was part of the breakthrough to achieve the Streak Drive. What the text says is that he has been working on improving the streak drive further. We don't know what improvement that refers to--size? efficiency? new bands? We also don't know how long the Alignment has had the Streak Drive. For all we know, they may have had the drive for decades. But this does support your thought that a long communication lag between Mesa and Darius would hinder development.

SWM wrote:Oh, I agree that it is a breakthrough, and provides an enormous advantage if most people don't have it. All I'm saying is that the theoretical aspect of the system is not revolutionary. The Spider drive is revolutionary--it is radically different from previous drive systems. The Streak drive is not revolutionary--it is an incremental improvement on an existing system. And the theory had always said that it was possible. It was just the practical application that was a problem. Yes, that improvement was hard to achieve, but high difficulty is not the same as revolutionary. <snip>

I think you mean to say that the Streak drive in not necessarily revolutionary. The Grayson compensator IS revolutionary - why? - it achieves the same results as traditional compensators AND more, in a different manner than traditional compensators. It was not an evolution on earlier tech, but a totally different (and ultimately superior) technology.

If the streak drive is a "tweak" on current Hyper technology using new found modeling techniques it is an evolutionary advance; better, but using the same fundamental technologies to achieve the improved goal. Not Revolutionary.

But, if this is a totally new technology, and still creates the Hyper field - it is revolutionary.

SWM wrote:Oh, I agree that it is a breakthrough, and provides an enormous advantage if most people don't have it. All I'm saying is that the theoretical aspect of the system is not revolutionary. The Spider drive is revolutionary--it is radically different from previous drive systems. The Streak drive is not revolutionary--it is an incremental improvement on an existing system. And the theory had always said that it was possible. It was just the practical application that was a problem. Yes, that improvement was hard to achieve, but high difficulty is not the same as revolutionary.

And I don't think you understand the definition of unprecedented. The streak drive most certainly had precedents. There have been previous incremental improvements of hyper generators; for a long time, they were limited to the Delta bands, if I recall correctly. This is just another incremental improvement; hard won, but still merely an increment.

And if you go back to the Manticore Ascendant novels you find this tidbit

A Call to Duty-eARC: Ch 19 wrote:Hyperdrive technology and capabilities are being improved every day. It may not be long before ships will be able to access bands above Beta and Gamma

[The copy I have handy was the eARC; apparently I failed to grab the final or at least failed to put it on this device]

So 400-ish years ago even warships couldn't reach the Delta bands. So as you indicate there has clearly been a process of breakthroughs in hyper generators that pushed the maximum military bands from Gamma through Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, Eta, and into Theta; where they were sat at the beginning of the series.
The streak drive is a major engineering achievement, pushing that boundary out into the Iota and Kappa bands; but it looks to be one in a line of such breakthroughs.

Theemile wrote:If the streak drive is a "tweak" on current Hyper technology using new found modeling techniques it is an evolutionary advance; better, but using the same fundamental technologies to achieve the improved goal. Not Revolutionary.

But, if this is a totally new technology, and still creates the Hyper field - it is revolutionary.

A palpable hit.

Yes, you are correct. It is possible that the Streak Drive uses some previously unknown method of generating hyper fields, which would make it revolutionary. We have no indication that this is the case. The description of it as a "brute force approach" leads me to conclude that it is not, but it is possible.

There is one point that has occurred to me.

Whilst the Alignment has been using Houdini to obliterate all traces or memory of it & the people they evacuated from Mesa there are going to be a load of Dispatch Boats (including those equipped with the Streak Drive)still in transit. It would be virtually impossible to have warned all of them & with Michelle Henke & Tenth Fleet's arrival at Mesa they will have sewn it up tighter so that no news will have gotten out.

That means there will be an indeterminate number of Mesan Alignment Dispatch Boats falling into Manticoran hands... & with the quality of analysts Manticore has got they should be at least able to glean something from them.

Rincewind wrote:There is one point that has occurred to me.

Whilst the Alignment has been using Houdini to obliterate all traces or memory of it & the people they evacuated from Mesa there are going to be a load of Dispatch Boats (including those equipped with the Streak Drive)still in transit. It would be virtually impossible to have warned all of them & with Michelle Henke & Tenth Fleet's arrival at Mesa they will have sewn it up tighter so that no news will have gotten out.

That means there will be an indeterminate number of Mesan Alignment Dispatch Boats falling into Manticoran hands... & with the quality of analysts Manticore has got they should be at least able to glean something from them.

There's a three week gap between when the last MAlign agents left to the thunder of exploding atomic bombs and when Tenth Fleet arrived.

Also, they undoubtedly started shifting their intelligence and C&C network to their new headquarters, wherever it is, when they started Houdini, rather than waiting until it was all over.

We know that eventually they will become deeply suspicious about the torch wormhole, about why why it was never used. Even if they do, it will be dangerous to scout it. They can guess it is guarded from the missing survey ship. They could go for a full assualt fleet, but still very risky. The only advantage, the enemy won't know their exact arrival time, so a slight sunrise advantage.

Having just re-read Crown of Slaves, I ust realized that there is another leak in the MAlign veil of secrecy: textev as follows:

"Ringstorff was essentially in charge of all Mesan security operations in and around Erewhonese space"...

Seems like there was also a reference to the exact interstellar distance from Erewhon, etc. to the "big secret" reason that Mesa wanted the Verdant Vista/Congo/Torch wormhole to begin with, but I didn't find that on a quick lookup just now.

It also seems unlikely that he's got the "mention anything and your brain turns to mush" implant or he'd have been dead before Gauntlet reached Torch in the same book. Thoughts?

SharkHunter wrote:Having just re-read Crown of Slaves, I ust realized that there is another leak in the MAlign veil of secrecy: textev as follows:

"Ringstorff was essentially in charge of all Mesan security operations in and around Erewhonese space"...

Seems like there was also a reference to the exact interstellar distance from Erewhon, etc. to the "big secret" reason that Mesa wanted the Verdant Vista/Congo/Torch wormhole to begin with, but I didn't find that on a quick lookup just now.

It also seems unlikely that he's got the "mention anything and your brain turns to mush" implant or he'd have been dead before Gauntlet reached Torch in the same book. Thoughts?

At this point in the story, "Mesan" means he's part of the Mesan government, such as it is and what there is of it, or else it's a synonym for "Manpower and Jessyk." The MAlign hasn't been introduced yet.

There's apparently a super-secret Manpower operation going on that the four battlecruisers are backup for. That operation has never been described. It may also be the reason that the Mesan SDF is conducting operations in that volume of space, which is otherwise incomprehensible.

The "big secret" is the (fictitious) 3-terminus junction that's supposed to be in the Congo system. Someone apparently deliberately "leaked" that bit of bad information to put a fire under Erewhon. Presumably, that person didn't know there really was a hyperspace terminus in the system, since that fact is buried inside the MAlign's Onion.

Rincewind wrote:There is one point that has occurred to me.

Whilst the Alignment has been using Houdini to obliterate all traces or memory of it & the people they evacuated from Mesa there are going to be a load of Dispatch Boats (including those equipped with the Streak Drive)still in transit. It would be virtually impossible to have warned all of them & with Michelle Henke & Tenth Fleet's arrival at Mesa they will have sewn it up tighter so that no news will have gotten out.

That means there will be an indeterminate number of Mesan Alignment Dispatch Boats falling into Manticoran hands... & with the quality of analysts Manticore has got they should be at least able to glean something from them.

We have seen the alignment has suicide agents to protect valuable assets. I would expect all the streak-drive craft to have them.