The Manpower Files

dscott8 wrote:Herlander Simoes ought to be able to give enough of a description of a streak drive's physical plant that it could be identified during an on-board inspection of a space craft.

kzt wrote:

dscott8 wrote:Herlander Simoes ought to be able to give enough of a description of a streak drive's physical plant that it could be identified during an on-board inspection of a space craft.

And he's seen one when? Please provide a text reference.

kzt wrote:

dscott8 wrote:Herlander Simoes ought to be able to give enough of a description of a streak drive's physical plant that it could be identified during an on-board inspection of a space craft.

And he's seen one when? Please provide a text reference.

JohnRoth wrote:There's no textev that he has, but then, there's no textev that he hasn't. I used to think that the comment when Jack and Zack were talking about people in the Gamma Center not having any operational experience meant that they didn't have any contact with the actual hardware, but now I think it's more that they didn't have any experience with actual Alignment operations - all the black ops, wet work and other assorted skulduggery.

Absent that, though, it's probably a reasonable assumption that a hyper drive that can do what everyone assumed was impossible - go up two more hyper bands safely - might look just a bit different to a knowledgeable eye.

Also, the notion that a physicist can work without actual access to hardware to do experiments is more a myth than an actuality. Granted, there are examples, but these days most physicists build their own experimental hardware. I seriously doubt that it's different in the Honorverse.

Relax wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:There's no textev that he has, but then, there's no textev that he hasn't. I used to think that the comment when Jack and Zack were talking about people in the Gamma Center not having any operational experience meant that they didn't have any contact with the actual hardware, but now I think it's more that they didn't have any experience with actual Alignment operations - all the black ops, wet work and other assorted skulduggery.

Absent that, though, it's probably a reasonable assumption that a hyper drive that can do what everyone assumed was impossible - go up two more hyper bands safely - might look just a bit different to a knowledgeable eye.

Also, the notion that a physicist can work without actual access to hardware to do experiments is more a myth than an actuality. Granted, there are examples, but these days most physicists build their own experimental hardware. I seriously doubt that it's different in the Honorverse.

Reality dictates you are correct.

Besides, the "theory" of going above the Iota wall has been around going on near 1000 years.

HOW to accomplish it in physical actuality, has been the problem.

This requires hands on understanding of the physical plants implementation limitations and which parts must be redesigned to accomplish the desired objective. There ain't much "theory" in this aspect. Rather there must be an immense amount of material properties understanding etc.

Of course this is MWW, an author without an engineering/physicist background, not an engineer writing the books, so, all bets are off. After all he does have pods dying due to "proximity kills" thousands of km distant...

cthia a post ago:

Now I don't doubt SWM's reasoning. In fact, because of the security clearance that Simoes had, or lacked, it makes sense. But something seems off to me. A hair seems to be dangling here.

Consider the nature of the beast -- unprecedented theoretical physics development. It is a completely brave new world the MAlign has conquered. But in considering the nature of that kind of development, one would think would require some intimate discussions amongst the scientists. Textev says ixnay on all of those thoughts.

Yet, developing a streak drive wasn't something that went according to first plans. Or second. Or third ...

So, as SWM says, the theoretical work happened at the Gamma Center and results, recommendations, afterthoughts, late epiphanies, you name it was hypered out to Darius. Solutions tested. Some found to be viable. Some not so. Wash, Rinse, Repeat.

Even with the streak drive it would seem to be a very inefficient and very time consuming way to develop. And the streak drive wasn't available to assist in developing itself. It could also be rather critical to the project's failure with both ends awaiting results. The point in all this is to suggest that Darius must certainly be within a practical radius of Mesa.

"Let's get these latest results, recommendations and changes out to Darius and see how it goes. We'll be back in a few months to let you know if your present course and experiments should be canned."

Reminds me of trying to play chess by mail. "Now where was my thought process? What was I thinking last month? Doh!"

Considering the nature of this type of development, I stand by the guestimate that Darius is in relatively close proximity to Mesa.

cthia wrote:Double ditto - one to each of you. This mirrors my sentiment of a post a while back. Instead of cueing the post, I'll just transplant the relevant paragraph.

cthia wrote:I'd still like to know whether the inner Onion has truly gone into hiding, living exclusively in Darius space -- totally in solitary from the outside world?

It seems someone would have to have contact somewhere if only to receive the Daily News -- how would the MAlign keep abreast of current news -- which is a dangerous link.

JohnRoth wrote:

cthia wrote:Double ditto - one to each of you. This mirrors my sentiment of a post a while back. Instead of cueing the post, I'll just transplant the relevant paragraph.

*snip*

You're missing one connection between puzzle pieces here. First, in the description of the Streak Drive, it's said that it was the result of recent developments in several apparently unrelated fields. Second, there's a player on the board who is said to be a synthesizer - someone who can take developments in several unrelated fields and make something of them.

Will the real inventor of the Streak Drive come out and take a bow. Now, don't be bashful, Zack.

cthia wrote:I'd still like to know whether the inner Onion has truly gone into hiding, living exclusively in Darius space -- totally in solitary from the outside world?

It seems someone would have to have contact somewhere if only to receive the Daily News -- how would the MAlign keep abreast of current news -- which is a dangerous link.

Um, no. The Onion didn't go into hiding - it simply moved its hiding place somewhere else by executing a plan that had been in place a long time. While we haven't seen it in text, that plan undoubtedly included shifting all of its intelligence, command and control linkages to wherever they moved to. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if a lot of those links weren't already in place, feeding duplicate information to "Headquarters Beta" and running some operations out of it.

If it moved to Darius, a lot of those links will be going through Felix, except for those that are closer to Darius. If it moved somewhere else, we don't know where their intelligence, C&C links go through.

cthia wrote:Wherever the MAlign is still communicating with the outside world is a potential weak link to them. It's hard to imagine that they would completely go off the grid -- no contact with the outside world to keep abreast of the rest -- which implies that somewhere they've what amounts to an RFE (Radio Free Europe).

cthia wrote:Herlander Simoes wasn't in the inner onion, but is it fair to say that he was at least on the outer? Is it too far a stretch to think that some of the others with his level of 'security clearance' are aware of Simoes' defection -- thus having tested the tepid waters of their own defection?

It isn't clear - were there other family members of his? Cousins? Nieces? Grand nieces, etc.?