Oh, what the heck . . .

Fox2! wrote:

kzt wrote:I just saw a presentation on YouTube by the guy who was the PM for what became the Ford carrier. He mentioned that the Enterprise had 180 watchstanders and something like over 4000 steam valves, the Nimitz had maybe half those and the Ford had 25 watchstanders and 400 some valves.

Don't forget that all they did was replace the steam generators from a Forrestal on a one for one basis on Enterprise, oil for neutrons. There are going to be a lot of valves for watchstanders to watch.

Actually the Enterprise was a nuke version of the Kitty Hawk class.

saber964 wrote:

Fox2! wrote:Don't forget that all they did was replace the steam generators from a Forrestal on a one for one basis on Enterprise, oil for neutrons. There are going to be a lot of valves for watchstanders to watch.

Actually the Enterprise was a nuke version of the Kitty Hawk class.

It certainly has the aircraft elevators arranged as per Kitty Hawk (port elevator moved from the forward end of the angled flight deck rearward)

But the Enterprise's engineering plant shares the 600-psi steam of the USS Forrestal (though as noted above at lower temperature).
Oddly the rest of the Forrestal class got 1200-psi steam plants; which the Kitty Hawks retained)

PeterZ wrote:All this speculation leads me to ask; will those nations we read about in Shadow of Victory organize themselves into another Quadrant and seek SEM membership?

I doubt all of these systems would join, but quite a few would. If there is enough to form a union, would they join the Empire? Or would the seek membership in the Grand Alliance as independent entities?

I am curious where folks thinks the politics of the region will take the story.

The usual answer to that kind of question is: wherever the author wants to take it. Given that Uncompromising Honor is probably the last book that advances the timeline significantly, the story isn't going anywhere.

Fox2! wrote:Don't forget that all they did was replace the steam generators from a Forrestal on a one for one basis on Enterprise, oil for neutrons. There are going to be a lot of valves for watchstanders to watch.

Actually the Enterprise was a nuke version of the Kitty Hawk class.

It certainly has the aircraft elevators arranged as per Kitty Hawk (port elevator moved from the forward end of the angled flight deck rearward)

But the Enterprise's engineering plant shares the 600-psi steam of the USS Forrestal (though as noted above at lower temperature).
Oddly the rest of the Forrestal class got 1200-psi steam plants; which the Kitty Hawks retained)

Enterprise's hull was a modification (one off) of the Kitty Hawk, a bit longer and wider providing a "finer" hydrodynamic outline which equated to a higher top speed. At the time of her retirement the 50 year old girl was still reputed to be the fastest carrier in the Atlantic Fleet if not the whole USN and still capable of outrunning the gas turbine powered cruisers and destroyers of her escort which she did during exercises off the North Carolina coast just prior to her "retirement" just to prove she still "had it."

Her powerplant limitations came from the necessity of having to mount 8 of the same reactors that went into the first generation SSNs like Nautilus.

All those reactors amounted to a more complex plant than the later Nimitz and Ford needed and required more watchstanding personnel.

As for the design of the flight deck and elevators, it was found that the 4 elevators of the Kitty Hawk made for faster aircraft handling times than the 3 found in the earlier Forrestals so we see that arrangement continued in the Nimitz class. The Ford design reverted back to 3 elevators, two forward of the island on the starboard side with the 3rd on the port side opposite the island.

Ford is still undergoing acceptance trials but should finish those shortly to be followed by her formal commissioning ceremony.

Enterprise herself is now a dead hulk, still moored at Newport News shipbuilding while the Navy tries to figure out whether or not to tow her to Bremerton Washington or get NNSB to remove the rest of the nuclear hardware and tow what's left to the shipbreakers in Brownsville Texas.

Its the end of the overall story arc started in OBS. i do imagine at least a couple of years at least before other books in the honorverse show up, David is a story teller after all.
However i would expect a time lapse of 20 to 60 years before any new stories take place (full novels and perhaps a second series) it might even be the same universe but all the way on the otherside of known space with minimal referance to people and places we know. or it might be set around Honors kids and dealing with the renessance factor and the finishing of the MA

JohnRoth wrote:

PeterZ wrote:All this speculation leads me to ask; will those nations we read about in Shadow of Victory organize themselves into another Quadrant and seek SEM membership?

I doubt all of these systems would join, but quite a few would. If there is enough to form a union, would they join the Empire? Or would the seek membership in the Grand Alliance as independent entities?

I am curious where folks thinks the politics of the region will take the story.

The usual answer to that kind of question is: wherever the author wants to take it. Given that Uncompromising Honor is probably the last book that advances the timeline significantly, the story isn't going anywhere.

robert132 wrote:

Fox2! wrote:Don't forget that all they did was replace the steam generators from a Forrestal on a one for one basis on Enterprise, oil for neutrons. There are going to be a lot of valves for watchstanders to watch.

Actually the Enterprise was a nuke version of the Kitty Hawk class.

It certainly has the aircraft elevators arranged as per Kitty Hawk (port elevator moved from the forward end of the angled flight deck rearward)

But the Enterprise's engineering plant shares the 600-psi steam of the USS Forrestal (though as noted above at lower temperature).
Oddly the rest of the Forrestal class got 1200-psi steam plants; which the Kitty Hawks retained)

Enterprise's hull was a modification (one off) of the Kitty Hawk, a bit longer and wider providing a "finer" hydrodynamic outline which equated to a higher top speed. At the time of her retirement the 50 year old girl was still reputed to be the fastest carrier in the Atlantic Fleet if not the whole USN and still capable of outrunning the gas turbine powered cruisers and destroyers of her escort which she did during exercises off the North Carolina coast just prior to her "retirement" just to prove she still "had it."

Her powerplant limitations came from the necessity of having to mount 8 of the same reactors that went into the first generation SSNs like Nautilus.

All those reactors amounted to a more complex plant than the later Nimitz and Ford needed and required more watchstanding personnel.

As for the design of the flight deck and elevators, it was found that the 4 elevators of the Kitty Hawk made for faster aircraft handling times than the 3 found in the earlier Forrestals so we see that arrangement continued in the Nimitz class. The Ford design reverted back to 3 elevators, two forward of the island on the starboard side with the 3rd on the port side opposite the island.

Ford is still undergoing acceptance trials but should finish those shortly to be followed by her formal commissioning ceremony.

Enterprise herself is now a dead hulk, still moored at Newport News shipbuilding while the Navy tries to figure out whether or not to tow her to Bremerton Washington or get NNSB to remove the rest of the nuclear hardware and tow what's left to the shipbreakers in Brownsville Texas.

Enterprise was not quite a one off, at least in regard to her hull. She was to have a sister nuclear powered carrier, the John F. Kennedy (CV-67), but the cost was deemed to be too high (by Congress, IIRC) and therefore Kennedy was completed as the last conventionally powered USN carrier.

JohnRoth wrote:

PeterZ wrote:All this speculation leads me to ask; will those nations we read about in Shadow of Victory organize themselves into another Quadrant and seek SEM membership?

I doubt all of these systems would join, but quite a few would. If there is enough to form a union, would they join the Empire? Or would the seek membership in the Grand Alliance as independent entities?

I am curious where folks thinks the politics of the region will take the story.

The usual answer to that kind of question is: wherever the author wants to take it. Given that Uncompromising Honor is probably the last book that advances the timeline significantly, the story isn't going anywhere.

I agree this story arc is almost over. I doubt, however, that it will be completed with all loose ends neatly tied in elegant bows. I suspect that either the RF or Darius will survive intact. There is a good chance both survive, but is less likely. The allies will have to think they defeated something and Mesa is simply not enough to convince Honor or Mike that the MAlign has been defeated. That means the story can continue.

To continue the story, there needs to be a driver for the conflict RFC will need to keep us readers interested. The development or flowering of the Verge while the Core stagnates is a wonderful backdrop the MAlign can use to further their goals.

That makes my question pertinent to the development of the overall story. No, we won't know immediately, but we should get some clue in this last book to set up those future stories.

Vince wrote:Enterprise was not quite a one off, at least in regard to her hull. She was to have a sister nuclear powered carrier, the John F. Kennedy (CV-67), but the cost was deemed to be too high (by Congress, IIRC) and therefore Kennedy was completed as the last conventionally powered USN carrier.

Both the JFK CV-67 and America CV-66 are near sisters of Kitty Hawk CV-63 and like Constellation CV-64 are thought of as being Kitty Hawk class ships.

Your comment about CV-67 starting out as an Enterprise class is equally true of CV-66. Both contracts were modified before the keels were actually laid, to be completed instead as near sisters of CV-63, a very successful design.

I think the original thinking was to build 3 copies of CVN-65 for a class of 4 but $400 million each seemed to be too expensive for Congress to swallow at the time.

For a ship that IIRC was only to remain in service for 20 to 25 years as a development testbed I think that we got our money's worth out of Enterprise.

PeterZ wrote:All this speculation leads me to ask; will those nations we read about in Shadow of Victory organize themselves into another Quadrant and seek SEM membership?

I doubt all of these systems would join, but quite a few would. If there is enough to form a union, would they join the Empire? Or would the seek membership in the Grand Alliance as independent entities?

I am curious where folks thinks the politics of the region will take the story.

JohnRoth wrote:The usual answer to that kind of question is: wherever the author wants to take it. Given that Uncompromising Honor is probably the last book that advances the timeline significantly, the story isn't going anywhere.

PeterZ wrote:I agree this story arc is almost over. I doubt, however, that it will be completed with all loose ends neatly tied in elegant bows. I suspect that either the RF or Darius will survive intact. There is a good chance both survive, but is less likely. The allies will have to think they defeated something and Mesa is simply not enough to convince Honor or Mike that the MAlign has been defeated. That means the story can continue.

Unless David has changed his mind since the last I heard (and it's always possible) that's a given. The GA will be convinced that they vanished down a rabbit hole and pulled the hole in after them; the rest of the galaxy will think the GA is being paranoid.

PeterZ wrote:To continue the story, there needs to be a driver for the conflict RFC will need to keep us readers interested. The development or flowering of the Verge while the Core stagnates is a wonderful backdrop the MAlign can use to further their goals.

That makes my question pertinent to the development of the overall story. No, we won't know immediately, but we should get some clue in this last book to set up those future stories.

To also address Lunan's comment, David has said he's got several new stories in mind, but they're all what I think of as "backstory filler." That is, interesting things that happened at one time or another that deserve novelette or novel-length treatment, but that don't advance the timeline.

Some time ago there was an idea floated about a second series, set a couple of decades in the timeline future, that would deal with the RA, Darius, the MAlign and similar issues. The last I heard, that idea was sunk.

Again, David could change his mind, and I'm sure there are a lot of people who would love to see that story told in numerous volumes. I'm one of them. At pushing 74 though, I'm not holding my breath.

You could be right, John. I somehow interpreted recent comments he has made to mean that the series is not dead. Yes, back stories but also new stories moving forward. Not sure they will happen or that they will be nothing more than anthologies, but only that they are fermenting in his brain.

Perhaps it is more of an ongoing attempt to persuade David to continue this series in any way possible.