Jonathan_S wrote:locarno24 wrote:At the same time, not having access to Grav Waves does mean you're slow as [swearwords] when trying to get anywhere.
Just a nitpick. Dodging grav waves delays you because you have to detour. And dodging rogue ones is worse because you have to slow down enough to have reaction time once they pop up on your sensors.
But covering clear straightline paths having a grav wave saves you no more than a couple days regardless of the length of the trip. Sure you get roughly 10x the accel - but that just means you reach your max cruising speed a bit sooner. You spend most of the weeks long trip at full speed; limited by your particle shielding.
Somtaaw wrote:Just a nit, there cant possibly be a grav wave between Masada and Grayson. Remember, they've had several wars back and forth, and they didn't even have sail technology when they sent the original Masadan 'settlers' across.
If there were a grav wave, the Masadan's would have been wiped out without ever arriving, which clearly they have.
That means the distance between Masada and Yeltsin's Star is almost certainly "clear" and you can simply run yourself upto a c-fractional speed, and simply coast between systems, albeit you'd probably want to be going into cryogenic stasis for the trip since it'll take years even subjectively.
But the Thunder of God/Saladin was the only critical part at the hyper entry and hyper exit, from the way hyper has slowly changed and evolved with the books. The Battle of Selker shows us that after getting into hyper, LAC's can pilot themselves around they're just stuck in whatever particular band they were deployed in.
Well grav waves don't screw up n-space (except arguably for a few dozen km or less just past the 'doorway' of a wormhole terminus. So even if there was a grav wave all the way down to the Alpha bands it wouldn't have screwed up the sub-light colony ship from Grayson to Masada.
HotQ does seem to make it clear that there's no low band grav wave between Grayson and Manticore because with broken sails they talked about one of honor's ships being able to go no higher than the Gamma bands (which, along with the convoy description) leads me to suspect that Grayson is in, or very near, a grav wave that goes no lower than the Delta bands).
But that information doesn't seem to preclude Masada from being in a 'wave, or a 'wave being in the little bit of space hyper between those systems...
Having gone back and rereading the sections in question, there seem to be some interesting conundrums.
Facts from The Honor of the Queen:
1) Yeltsin's Star lays less than 30 light years to the galactic northeast of the Manticore binary system.
2) Honor's convoy enroute to the Yeltsin system was cruising in the mid-delta bands at .5 C because of the merchant freighters' limitations.
3) One of the merchant freighters in the convoy was (sort of) mentioned as 5 megatons.
4) Upon arrival in normal space at the Yeltsin system, the convoy was to accelerate at 200 gravities under impeller drive, given by Honor's astrogator as part of the course.
5) The Graysons said their military starships were restricted to the mid-Gamma hyper bands.
6) The Graysons said they could not pull as much acceleration from a gravity wave with their Warshawski sails. I assume they are comparing GSN acceleration to RMN acceleration, given the text immediately before they said this.
7) The Graysons said they doubted they could cut more than a day off of the time it would take the freighters to arrive at Manticore.
Facts from The Universe of Honor Harrington, in More Than Honor:
1) A five megaton merchant freighter can accelerate at 207 gravities maximum under impeller drive, 1990 gravities maximum with Warshawski sails in hyper-space in a gravity wave.
2) Merchant ships use an inertial compensator safety margin as high as 35%. This works out to 134.55 gravities under impeller dirve, 1,293.5 with Warshawski sails in hyper-space in a gravity wave for a 5 megaton freighter.
3) The effective speed (times C) in the
delta bands is 1089 for a
merchantman.
4) The effective speed (times C) in the
gamma bands is 883.8 for a
warship.
Effective speed is the equivalent speed in normal space if the speed of light limit didn't exist.
Interesting conundrums:
1) The acceleration for the convoy at 200 gravities, is ridiculously high--only 7 gravities from maximum with zero safety margin on the inertial compensator--
for a 5 megaton freighter. For a freighter the next size down, the acceleration is still too high--only 15 gravities from maximum. Even a dispatch boat size yacht with civilian impeller nodes and compensator could only achieve a maximum acceleration of 253 gravities, and using a naval acceleration safety margin on the civilian inertial compensator of 20%, just 202.4 gravities.
Using the normal
naval acceleration safety margin of 20%, instead of the
merchant safety margin of 30-35%,
merchant drive and compensated freighters could achieve an acceleration of:
0-79,999 tons (FG/DD size) - 202.4 gravities.
80-499,999 tons (CL/CA size) - 192 gravities.
500,000-1,499,999 tons (BC size) - 184 gravities.
1,500,000-4,999,999 tons (BB size) - 172 gravities.
5,000,000-6,999,999 tons (DN size)- 165.6 gravities.
7,000,000-8,499,999 (SD size) - 152 gravities.
2) The Graysons said it was doubtful they could cut off more than a day from the arrival time of the freighters sent back to Manticore with the Manticoran personnel evacuated from Yeltsin.
Assumptions:
1) The distance from Yeltsin's to Manticore's hyper limit = 30 light years in normal space, and the course in hyper-space is a straight line. (The distance given in text is less than 30 light years, but an exact figure is not specified.)
2) The Graysons (or
Troubadour, if sent instead) start out at the same time as the freighters from Yeltsin's hyper limit, at a zero initial velocity. (It is implied, but not stated in text, that the freighters had already left for Manticore when Honor asked if the Graysons could send one of their naval starships.)
3) All the ships don't begin acceleration until they reach the highest hyper band they can achieve (the gamma bands for the the Graysons and
Troubadour, and the delta bands for the freighters. (Effectively translating into hyper starting with a zero normal space velocity, relative to Yeltsin's Star. Done to simplify calculations.)
A 5 megaton freighter with a 35% safety margin takes 1.315731241606829 days to accelerate to .5 C under impeller drive. Using Warshawski sails to accelerate to .5 C takes 0.1368624959862384 days. It takes 10.06198347107438 days for it to travel 30 light years in the delta bands at .5 C (ignoring the need to accelerate to .5 C).
Troubadour with a zero safety margin takes 0.3862508477633449 days to accelerate to .6 C under impeller drive. Using
Troubadour to stand in for the Graysons (since we don't know how much less acceleration they have under Warshawski sail), it takes 0.0402344633086817 days to accelerate to .6 C with Warshawski sails with zero safety margin. It takes 12.39816700610998 days to travel 30 light years in the gamma bands at .6 C (ignoring the need to accelerate to .6 C).
Even if you figure in the time and distance it would take to for the ships to accelerate (with the naval ships at zero safety margin and the freighters at a 35% safety margin on their inertial compensators, I don't see how either
Troubadour or the Graysons, traveling in the gamma bands at .6 C, could beat the freighters, traveling in the delta bands at .5 C, to Manticore. If the freighters start shaving the safety margin from civilian standards more toward military standards, if just gets worse.
