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kzt wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:Velcro would work fine to hold the pods on under main drive. It would be totally useless against holding the pods on when the attitude thrusters fire.

Nope
http://www.metaklett.de/en/downloads/da ... amingo.pdf

35N per cm^2 in shear. 7 if you are managing to go exactly sideways and exactly perpendicular the surface.

So why would a ship be maneuvering using plasma thrusters at 7m/sec^2 sideways with pods mounted? That's a LOT of energy being emitted. I suspect this is more akin to a giant industrial plasma cutter than a attitude thruster.

Think of the battle of Cerebrus. The thrusters on Honorverse ships make that giant industrial plasma cutter look like a puny candle. Or consider the fact that you're not allowed anywhere near major stations on wedge, yet don't have to move at a snail's pace in such environments.

Disclaimer. I love this series, fuses my long term love of wet navy warfare stories, to high tech military science fiction, has great characters, and most importantly RFC has the storyteller's art of just roping you in until you say "Shit is that dawn already?". But a few technical things necessitate turning a blind eye to, in order to enjoy the stories.
1. The sheer energy involved in accelerating a 6MT SD at 500g for hours on end.
2. The generally ignoring of tau effects as that acceleration takes the SD up to a significant fraction of C. How heavy is it at that point?
3. The waste heat issues seem to be solved with the same handwavium.
4. I know that Moore's law must eventually be defeated, but after thousands of years I'd expect computing to have progressed further.
5. The Malign seems dim for supposed genetically designed superhumans.

Now please RFC, don't blacklist me. I really love your writing, and enjoy it immensely, and don't regard these as flaws just bits that I skim over.

Daryl wrote:Disclaimer. I love this series, fuses my long term love of wet navy warfare stories, to high tech military science fiction, has great characters, and most importantly RFC has the storyteller's art of just roping you in until you say "Shit is that dawn already?". But a few technical things necessitate turning a blind eye to, in order to enjoy the stories.
1. The sheer energy involved in accelerating a 6MT SD at 500g for hours on end.
2. The generally ignoring of tau effects as that acceleration takes the SD up to a significant fraction of C. How heavy is it at that point?
3. The waste heat issues seem to be solved with the same handwavium.
4. I know that Moore's law must eventually be defeated, but after thousands of years I'd expect computing to have progressed further.
5. The Malign seems dim for supposed genetically designed superhumans.

Now please RFC, don't blacklist me. I really love your writing, and enjoy it immensely, and don't regard these as flaws just bits that I skim over.

Fair enough. I would point out:

(1) No ship in the Honorverse has the ability to accelerate for hours on end under impeller drive out of its onboard energy generation. Under acceleration in a hyper wave, a starship draws its entire energy budget out of the “siphoning” effect where the hyper sail interacts with the wave. In n-space, the impeller wedge creates a local distortion/interface across the hyper wall that permits most of the energy needed to generate the wedge and hence the vessel’s acceleration. The source of the power may be "handwavium," but the need for the power is clearly acknowledged.

(2) I’ve never made any secret out of the fact that I’m ignoring relativistic effects on mass when I calculate acceleration times. I figure I’m ahead of the game for worrying about them at all, compared to a lot of writers, and the increases in mass — as opposed to time dilation — have a negligible effect on the characters’ working environment and perceptions.

(3) In books set earlier in the Honorverse timeline — for example, in the Travis Long novels — waste heat is very much an issue in ship design. By the time we get to Honor’s time, I am assuming (not totally irrationally, I think, but admittedly for storytelling purposes) that the technology has evolved to a point at which waste heat can be recaptured for the enormous energy budgets of the ships and that what isn't recaptured can be disposed of into the wedge. That is, when a ship’s impeller wedge isn’t up, it has to radiate all of that un-recaptured heat anyway.

(4) You are not alone, believe me, in feeling that I paid insufficient attention to Moore’s law. It’s not because I didn’t figure that computer capabilities wouldn’t continue to climb. A lot of it goes back to the fact that I started these books after doing Mutineers’ Moon and Path of the Fury, actually. Both of those assume enormous increases in computer capability (in rather a shorter time period, in Path), and I wanted a completely different environment for the Honor Harrington novels. One way that I created that was to move away from the direct neural interfacing, everybody carries his own wetware around with him, etc. So in this case, story did trump more “realistic” fictional computing.

(5) I’ve said all along that the Alignment’s fundamental goals and worldview are irrational. I don’t think they’re “dim.” I think they are, perhaps, willfully blind, but the real problem is that they suffer from True Believer Syndrome. History is replete with people who “ought to have known better” or “should have been able to see” that what they were doing was fundamentally self-destructive, unnecessary, or stupid but didn’t. Some of the smartest people in history have embraced idiotic philosophies or ideologies and/or simply ignored facts that would have gotten in the way of those ideologies. The Alignment definitely falls into that category, and I’ve never pretended that it doesn’t. I think that within the constraints of that self-deception-in-the-pursuit-of-ideology the Alignment operates with at least a modicum of intelligence.

For the first one: The wedges are reactionless drives. Or at least something close to it. A reactionless drive takes the concept of energy and murders it.

To see this let's do a thought experiment: Suppose a reactionless drive applies a 1N force to an object for a second (of the object's subjective time). How much kinetic energy is imparted to this object? Well, that depends on the arbitrary frame of reference since Energy=Force*Distance. Distance is arbitrary so energy is too.

With a reaction drive the energy balances out because of the reaction mass.

Although in the Honorverse there is the energy from the Hyperwall to let energy be conserved.

For the second: I have no idea how much of relativity gets taken into account by Mr. Weber.

Third: Okay to start with basically every scifi series ever ignore heat. Secondly, yeah handwavium. Its basically the same Handwavium that is used everywhere. Contra-grav, tractors, grav lens, side walls etc.

Fourth: They have plenty of processing power. That said, the Honorverse seems to have some level of automation phobia. Its been changing recently. However, processing power can only do so much without the programming to go along with it. Now maybe you could get better AI by taking apart a few brains, but no one we've seen has been extreme enough to program an AI by disassembling and modelling a brain.

Five: The MAlign right now seems poised on victory. The Solarian League is about to disintegrate. Manticore/Haven are primed to get labeled as the Butchers of Mesa. The RF is totally unknown, and the galaxy is ripe for them to appear. Darius is ramping up hard. Its the Fourth Quarter of the Superbowl and the MAlign is up 20 points.

I was ninja'd by RFC

quite possibly a cat wrote:For the first one: The wedges are reactionless drives. Or at least something close to it. A reactionless drive takes the concept of energy and murders it.

To see this let's do a thought experiment: Suppose a reactionless drive applies a 1N force to an object for a second (of the object's subjective time). How much kinetic energy is imparted to this object? Well, that depends on the arbitrary frame of reference since Energy=Force*Distance. Distance is arbitrary so energy is too.

With a reaction drive the energy balances out because of the reaction mass.

Although in the Honorverse there is the energy from the Hyperwall to let energy be conserved.

For the second: I have no idea how much of relativity gets taken into account by Mr. Weber.

Third: Okay to start with basically every scifi series ever ignore heat. Secondly, yeah handwavium. Its basically the same Handwavium that is used everywhere. Contra-grav, tractors, grav lens, side walls etc.

Fourth: They have plenty of processing power. That said, the Honorverse seems to have some level of automation phobia. Its been changing recently. However, processing power can only do so much without the programming to go along with it. Now maybe you could get better AI by taking apart a few brains, but no one we've seen has been extreme enough to program an AI by disassembling and modelling a brain.

Five: The MAlign right now seems poised on victory. The Solarian League is about to disintegrate. Manticore/Haven are primed to get labeled as the Butchers of Mesa. The RF is totally unknown, and the galaxy is ripe for them to appear. Darius is ramping up hard. Its the Fourth Quarter of the Superbowl and the MAlign is up 20 points.

I was ninja'd by RFC

RFC handled most of the issues. The simple thing is that we have
no idea what progress would be made over the next 2000 years. Scientific progress has been accelerating.

Yes, perhaps RFC could spend loads of time going into all the
scientific details but that would get in the way of the story.

I have written several times on the anachronistic nature of the computers. He has people handling chores that MUST have been handled by computers. How can a small TAC team on a ship deal with waves of missiles? The clear answer is that computers are pre-programmed to deal with this and humans just sort of pick out what game they will play. Why not do it that way? Well, there's not much story.

There are loads of anachronisms. There are far too many astrogators. In a fleet of 100 ships you would have more than 200 of them to set one course. But you have to give people something to do. And what do they do all day when assigned to Home Fleet?

The same for communications. As part of engineering it is vital. But ships going through space for long periods of time may not pick up many messages at all. Note that on Star Trek, communications officer Uhura was a key person. On the Next Generation, they didn't have a noticeable communications officer.

The story is the key element, not the details. RFC knows this.
So relax and assume that the problems brought up have been solved one way or another.

Once in a while I get stuck in this sort of thing. But for me the solution is to remember that what we have is science fiction. So as long as its reasonably consistent, bring on the hand wavium...

Don

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ldwechsler wrote:There are loads of anachronisms. There are far too many astrogators. In a fleet of 100 ships you would have more than 200 of them to set one course. But you have to give people something to do. And what do they do all day when assigned to Home Fleet?

The same for communications. As part of engineering it is vital. But ships going through space for long periods of time may not pick up many messages at all. Note that on Star Trek, communications officer Uhura was a key person. On the Next Generation, they didn't have a noticeable communications officer.

The story is the key element, not the details. RFC knows this.
So relax and assume that the problems brought up have been solved one way or another.

The thing is that each ship needs provision for an astrogator (probably more than one, if only as backups) in case it functions independently. So yes, most of them are redundant for a fleet, but they still need to be there in case the ship is split off.

As for communications, the inverse is true - you need more communications officers in a fleet. However, even when a ship is operating solo, that doesn't mean comm officers are not needed. With the caveat that I'm not quite familiar with military comm operations on a ship - my experience is on land - comm officers/personnel could be in charge of the following (among others):
1) Maintaining and operating external communications
2) Maintaining internal communications
3) counter-jamming

And so on. Note that comm personnel won't necessarily operate the communications gear under normal circumstances (Uhura on Star Trek was frankly greatly underutilized as far as a normal comm officer's functions are concerned).

On another note, one thing that's bothered me is the whole premise behind Fearless' modifications in the first book. There weren't any engineering problems with the refitted design, nor were any of the weapons new - the thing that was changed and was being tested was the concept. So how did BuShips approve the (presumably expensive) modifications without anyone proving it could work in simulations? Which would have rapidly shown the inherent problems in the idea (i.e. that it was largely useless unless it was a total surprise).

Eyal wrote:
On another note, one thing that's bothered me is the whole premise behind Fearless' modifications in the first book. There weren't any engineering problems with the refitted design, nor were any of the weapons new - the thing that was changed and was being tested was the concept. So how did BuShips approve the (presumably expensive) modifications without anyone proving it could work in simulations? Which would have rapidly shown the inherent problems in the idea (i.e. that it was largely useless unless it was a total surprise).

Two reasons come to my mind. 1st) Janacek was First Lord of Admiralty at that time - and Hemphill was related to him. There's textev somewhere, that Janacek was some kind of "family man" - that he cared for his relatives in the RMN; so he pushed some buttons to made it happen.
2nd) Remember - was it Admiral Adcock? - at the time the CLAC concept came into existence, who said, that the best scale to test a new weapon is 10 mm to 1 cm? The same thing could've happened here. Why not doing the livetest, if the only vessel you have to cripple for it is an old CL (which possibly was already earmarked for the crapper as soon as the next damage needs to be repaired)?

Eagleeye wrote:

Eyal wrote:
On another note, one thing that's bothered me is the whole premise behind Fearless' modifications in the first book. There weren't any engineering problems with the refitted design, nor were any of the weapons new - the thing that was changed and was being tested was the concept. So how did BuShips approve the (presumably expensive) modifications without anyone proving it could work in simulations? Which would have rapidly shown the inherent problems in the idea (i.e. that it was largely useless unless it was a total surprise).

Two reasons come to my mind. 1st) Janacek was First Lord of Admiralty at that time - and Hemphill was related to him. There's textev somewhere, that Janacek was some kind of "family man" - that he cared for his relatives in the RMN; so he pushed some buttons to made it happen.
2nd) Remember - was it Admiral Adcock? - at the time the CLAC concept came into existence, who said, that the best scale to test a new weapon is 10 mm to 1 cm? The same thing could've happened here. Why not doing the livetest, if the only vessel you have to cripple for it is an old CL (which possibly was already earmarked for the crapper as soon as the next damage needs to be repaired)?

I don't think Janacek was in at that time but it doesn't make a difference. Navies are always experimenting on ships. Quite often a ship of the same class launched ten years ago is different from one done now. There's constant tiny changes going on, sometimes because tech has progressed and sometimes because of suggestions from those on the earlier ships.

And some of the mods just do not work. That may be all this is.

Eagleeye wrote:

Eyal wrote:
On another note, one thing that's bothered me is the whole premise behind Fearless' modifications in the first book. There weren't any engineering problems with the refitted design, nor were any of the weapons new - the thing that was changed and was being tested was the concept. So how did BuShips approve the (presumably expensive) modifications without anyone proving it could work in simulations? Which would have rapidly shown the inherent problems in the idea (i.e. that it was largely useless unless it was a total surprise).

Two reasons come to my mind. 1st) Janacek was First Lord of Admiralty at that time - and Hemphill was related to him. There's textev somewhere, that Janacek was some kind of "family man" - that he cared for his relatives in the RMN; so he pushed some buttons to made it happen.
2nd) Remember - was it Admiral Adcock? - at the time the CLAC concept came into existence, who said, that the best scale to test a new weapon is 10 mm to 1 cm? The same thing could've happened here. Why not doing the livetest, if the only vessel you have to cripple for it is an old CL (which possibly was already earmarked for the crapper as soon as the next damage needs to be repaired)?

Fearless was one of the last of her class still in commission, and as you noted, already had a date with the breakers (or sitting in mothballs in a "Reserve" fleet somewhere) when her next oil change came due. Doing the experimental "All Grav Lance/All energy torpedo" refit would have taken a year, if not longer. The tactics Honor evolved - were any suggestions given to her in the data package on her new command? - involved lying doggo until a nice big juicy SD/flagship bumbled into range, bringing the wedge up, firing the GL/energy torpedoes and then (hopefully) escaping in the midst of the confusion caused by the destruction of the enemy's flag ship. Since the "jeune ecole" was positing a strategy of attrition, trading an overaged CL for a new SD would seem cheap (at least to the planners; the crew, not so much).

As Admiral D'Orvile showed, though, once the secret was out, Home Fleet spent their nights thinking up more and more outrageous ways to detect, localize and kill Fearless. Which resulted in Honor (and Fearless) being exiled to Basilisk. And where the story we have all known and loved for a quarter of a century now, begins.