Hyper Ships As Generation Ships

cthia wrote:

RedBaron wrote:cthia, That's it! a perfect use for at least some of the captured Sollie SDs!

Darn, you see there! This is a perfect example of how a patent can be stolen right out from under someone. Because they fail to "see" exactly what they've found. And now you've beat me to the punch to the resolution of the captured Solly junk. Hyper Capable Generational Survey Ships.

Stolen right out from under me.

I'm gonna get you Red Baron!

Perhaps even the MAlign used the concept to find Darius.

<sigh>
Come on, this has all the old problems as any other use for the SDs.
1) they need to be EXTENSIVEALLY refitted at a ship yard to be used as a cryo or generation ship.
2) they are already an average of 125 years old - do you want to be going out to nowhere on an old, outdated bucket of bolts?
3) They need a crew of over 1000 to ferry them from one place to another - for long term voyages, the crew size (with support personnel and maintenance personnel) would be between 2000 and 2500, with limited ability to fight the ship (if any weapons were left.)

And what is the point of a generation ship or cryo ship - those were used when voyages were marked in decades or centuries. To cross the diameter of all the known human space would take a warship less than a year and a half in hyper. If you are looking for a planet out in the middle of nowhere, just take the Mattapan wormhole terminus and go for about a month away from Sol. No generation or Cryo systems needed.

Besides, some freighters (with a crew of less then 40) are made specifically for this - no heavily modified warship needed.

Once again, this is another solution is vain search for a problem.

As mentioned above, there is a constant, if slow, colonization effort and there is an existing industry that supports that. In addition, there is still ~600 years worth of slower than light cryo ships making their journey from the pre-Warshawski era.

cthia wrote:Yet, Haven was an expansionist society. They needed to conquer to survive. Yet why hasn't Haven and the rest of humanity continued to look for new worlds?

I meant to respond to this as well in my earlier post, yet given that it was already a wall of text maybe it's better it temporarily slipped my mind.

Haven was expanding to loot economies for quick cash and trade to prop up it's failed economy. It was a short term win, long term problem issue because they were infecting those newly conquered planets with some form of the overgrown dolist state Haven had fallen into, plus damaging their internal economies by sucking away the ready cash - starving them of the investment money needed to keep their economy healthy and growing.

Colonizing new planets is kind of exactly the opposite of what they were trying to do by turning conquistador. Setting up a new colony is a short term economic cost (and a big one) followed - hopefully - by a long term economic payback (once they get established to the point of being a viable trading partner with you - or at least a viable resource producer). If Haven had been able to hold off BLS increases long enough to come up with some medium to long term investment money there are probably better places to have spent it (bigger economic returns sooner) than in setting up a new colony. But they went to war as the only way they could see to pause the increase in BLS spending. I don't think they'd have had any luck trying to sell the same freeze to support a new colonization effort. (And they certainly didn't seem to have lots of people eager to move out of their comfortable urban lifestyle to be pioneers on some brand new planet - so finding willing and skilled people might have been just as hard as finding the money)

cthia wrote:

RedBaron wrote:cthia, That's it! a perfect use for at least some of the captured Sollie SDs!

Darn, you see there! This is a perfect example of how a patent can be stolen right out from under someone. Because they fail to "see" exactly what they've found. And now you've beat me to the punch to the resolution of the captured Solly junk. Hyper Capable Generational Survey Ships.

Stolen right out from under me.

I'm gonna get you Red Baron!

Perhaps even the MAlign used the concept to find Darius.

Theemile wrote:<sigh>
Come on, this has all the old problems as any other use for the SDs.
1) they need to be EXTENSIVEALLY refitted at a ship yard to be used as a cryo or generation ship.
2) they are already an average of 125 years old - do you want to be going out to nowhere on an old, outdated bucket of bolts?
3) They need a crew of over 1000 to ferry them from one place to another - for long term voyages, the crew size (with support personnel and maintenance personnel) would be between 2000 and 2500, with limited ability to fight the ship (if any weapons were left.)

And what is the point of a generation ship or cryo ship - those were used when voyages were marked in decades or centuries. To cross the diameter of all the known human space would take a warship less than a year and a half in hyper. If you are looking for a planet out in the middle of nowhere, just take the Mattapan wormhole terminus and go for about a month away from Sol. No generation or Cryo systems needed.

Besides, some freighters (with a crew of less then 40) are made specifically for this - no heavily modified warship needed.

Once again, this is another solution is vain search for a problem.

As mentioned above, there is a constant, if slow, colonization effort and there is an existing industry that supports that. In addition, there is still ~600 years worth of slower than light cryo ships making their journey from the pre-Warshawski era.

Holy Moly! Someone just turned and launched a full double broadside!

Just as I was about to redeem my "captured silly junk" lottery ticket. I would have had to share the winnings with the RedBaron anyways. Some crazy rule of the lotto folks when someone else happen to have looked over your shoulders when you picked your lotto numbers.



Though my notion still stands. "To boldly Go Where None Has Thought To Go Before."

These things were akin to Noah's Arks weren't they?

cthia wrote:These things were akin to Noah's Arks weren't they?

The original slower than light cryo ships? yes, they packed everything in that 50,000+ people would need to build a colony - and the entire ship was designed to be cannibalized to build the colony.

Theemile wrote:
<sigh>
Come on, this has all the old problems as any other use for the SDs.
1) they need to be EXTENSIVEALLY refitted at a ship yard to be used as a cryo or generation ship.
2) they are already an average of 125 years old - do you want to be going out to nowhere on an old, outdated bucket of bolts?
3) They need a crew of over 1000 to ferry them from one place to another - for long term voyages, the crew size (with support personnel and maintenance personnel) would be between 2000 and 2500, with limited ability to fight the ship (if any weapons were left.)

And what is the point of a generation ship or cryo ship - those were used when voyages were marked in decades or centuries. To cross the diameter of all the known human space would take a warship less than a year and a half in hyper. If you are looking for a planet out in the middle of nowhere, just take the Mattapan wormhole terminus and go for about a month away from Sol. No generation or Cryo systems needed.

Besides, some freighters (with a crew of less then 40) are made specifically for this - no heavily modified warship needed.

Once again, this is another solution is vain search for a problem.

As mentioned above, there is a constant, if slow, colonization effort and there is an existing industry that supports that. In addition, there is still ~600 years worth of slower than light cryo ships making their journey from the pre-Warshawski era.

So many people waste their time spouting variations on why something can't be done instead of finding a way to do it.

To use a quote seen on a fire truck....

CLIMB ON OR GET OUT OF THE WAY!

Theemile wrote:<sigh>
Come on, this has all the old problems as any other use for the SDs.
1) they need to be EXTENSIVEALLY refitted at a ship yard to be used as a cryo or generation ship.
2) they are already an average of 125 years old - do you want to be going out to nowhere on an old, outdated bucket of bolts?
3) They need a crew of over 1000 to ferry them from one place to another - for long term voyages, the crew size (with support personnel and maintenance personnel) would be between 2000 and 2500, with limited ability to fight the ship (if any weapons were left.)

And what is the point of a generation ship or cryo ship - those were used when voyages were marked in decades or centuries. To cross the diameter of all the known human space would take a warship less than a year and a half in hyper. If you are looking for a planet out in the middle of nowhere, just take the Mattapan wormhole terminus and go for about a month away from Sol. No generation or Cryo systems needed.

Besides, some freighters (with a crew of less then 40) are made specifically for this - no heavily modified warship needed.

Once again, this is another solution is vain search for a problem.

As mentioned above, there is a constant, if slow, colonization effort and there is an existing industry that supports that. In addition, there is still ~600 years worth of slower than light cryo ships making their journey from the pre-Warshawski era.

And yeah even if you wanted to fly that long in hyper you'd want low maintenance, reliable, hardware with easy access when maintenance is required; plus lots of room to store spare parts and fuel.

An SD is non of that. And it would be cheaper to design and build a long endurance colonization ship from scratch than it would be to try to turn those ex-SLN SDs into one. Their equipment is high performance military grade stuff, which is high maintenance compared to commercial grade reactors, drives, rad shielding, etc. And the massive internal armoring has to make it harder to get at much of the stuff for maintenance than a design optimized for that. Plus all those weapons and magazines, which are vast overkill for a colonization trip, also suck up space for fuel and spares.

Oh, and they wouldn't have the equipment to do field expedient fuel harvesting - something that seems critical if you're looking to operate for a decade or so without beyond the edge of settled space. (For that matter that's beyond the replacement lifetimes of even commercial drive nodes - so you're going to needs spares of those and the people and equipement to install them outside of a shipyard. And military rates nodes have (IIRC) lower endurance than the less powerful commercial ones - so with the SDs you'd need to do that even more often (requiring even more spares)

What a mess. I'm unconvinced there's significant interest in settling many years flight-time beyond the rest of explored space; but if there is I'm completely convinced that using captured SDs is about the worst way of attempting to do it.

If I remember correctly, Grayson (and a couple of those planets the Hexapuma visited in the Talbot Quadrant) KNEW the planets were there and (probably) bought the rights to them for a colony. It was only after the journey using cry that they discovered that there were PROBLEMS with the place the bought that didn't show on the surveys.

If you were going to buy the rights to an explored (and duly documented and claimed) system in the present Honorverse time frame, you would be getting information that was gathered by a ship (or two) with hyperspace capability. Heck, you could be buying a system 200 LY "beyond" the Midgard area of control and so- if you are comming from the area of the SL, you are probably going to be making 4 wormhole transits (Sigma Draconus to the Manticore Junction, Junction to Gregor B, Durandel to Asgard and finall Asgard to Midgard before you make the 200LY distance trip in hyperspace to your new home.

You probably still arn't going to get much traffic in visiting ships for quite a while unless there is a reason (like follow-on colonists and equipment that has been pre-scheduled and paid for) but that should come. With any regular traffic developing there will be communication with the rest of the Honorers (if you want it) and IF you have something that could be profitable to sell/trade, you will probably get someone interested in at least some regular trade which also boosts commuications and trade in other areas if only in being able to buy tech and equipment you can't produce to improve things for yourself.

Brigade XO wrote:If I remember correctly, Grayson (and a couple of those planets the Hexapuma visited in the Talbot Quadrant) KNEW the planets were there and (probably) bought the rights to them for a colony. It was only after the journey using cry that they discovered that there were PROBLEMS with the place the bought that didn't show on the surveys.

If I remember right Grayson had not even been surveyed.

A few questions

What is the outer limits of human occupied space?

How far beyond that has been explored and surveyed ?

How many worlds inside the limits of human space are still waiting to be colonized?

I do not think we have solid answers to any of these question.