darrell wrote:[quote="Jonathan_S
Yep, Mesa put them in courier boats because, at the moment, they need speedy information transfer. But there's no reason they can't be put into warships now, and for all we know the Sharks used to carry out Oyster Bay already had streak drives. Finding room for a double sized hypergenerator in a big warship isn't really a problem. (Retrofitting one into an existing heavy warship,will take some non-trivial yard time because you'll have to cut through the (presumably armored) bulkheads of the correct hypergenerator room the enlarge it, plus find spots to relocate any and all displaced equipment to. But still well within the kind of serious refit a major naval yard fairly routinely does multiple times during a warship's service life.
But I agree streak drives, even once declassified and released for civilian uses, aren't going to get put in many merchants. If they can't make the econimics the of the current military hyperdrives work they're unlikely to spend even more to go faster yet. The only real advance I might see for freighters is if the work done to break the [edit: Iota] wall has trickle down effects that let you build a civilian generator, with the same TCO as today's Delta bands cable ones, that can reach the Eta bands. Basically if they get a band or two higher "for free" with a new civilian generator then new freighters will just start coming with that.
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quote="A Rising Thunder" ---
“Oh, it gets better, Father,” Benjamin said harshly. “I don’t know how much information McBryde actually handed Zilwicki and Cachat, or how much substantiation they’ve got for it, but they got one hell of a lot more than we’d want them to have! They’re talking about virus-based nanotech assassinations, the streak drive, and the spider drive, and they’re naming names about something called ‘the Mesan Alignment.’ In fact, they’re busy telling the Manty Parliament—and, I’m sure, the Havenite Congress and all the rest of the fucking galaxy!—all about the Mesan plan to conquer the known universe. The fact that the streak drive exists and mesa has it has been declassified, along with the spider drive. From what I understand simoens was theoretical, and it would take several months design work before the GA will have a working streak drive. I doubt that they could recreate the spider drive, since apparently simoens didn't work on it.
Quote: Mission of Honor:
"The “private yacht” was about the size of most navies’ battlecruisers, and almost as heavily armed. Which didn’t prevent it from being one of the most luxuriously appointed vessels in the galaxy . . . as well as one of the fastest. It had made the passage from the Mesa System forty percent more rapidly than anyone else’s ship could have managed it." So yes, the alignment has put the streak drive on BC sized ship, I can see no reason that they couldn't put it on SD's as well.[/quote]
I believe what Jonathan_S meant by declassifying the streak drive was not its existence, but rather, declassification of how it works, how to make and maintain one. That's probably going to be considered and stay a military secret for as long as both Manticore and the MAlign can keep it that way.
Not unlike the fact that Manticore has FTL communications, better inertial compensators, and MDMs. Sure, they're known to exist, but the details aren't public knowledge.
