That first wormhole transfer...

Manticore might conclude that knowing you have a wormhole is much more dangerous once you expose that you own it, and postpone opening it until the economy is a bit built up and drive parts can all be made locally.

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:

n7axw wrote:
What's bugging me a bit here is that Axelrod's attack is in 1543.

(snipping out spoilers for _A Call to Vengeance_)

n7axw wrote:It is not until 1585 that the first transit of the junction is made,... that seems like a long time. What was going on in the interim? How come so long?

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There is some explanation in the Honorverse article in _More than Honor_ (the first Honorverse anthology) which was repeated in _House of Steel_. Basically, nobody had surveyed a junction before and Manticore's researchers had to learn on the job.

Thanks. That was interesting. However, the story line in the article is laid out differently than in the Manticore Ascendant books which leaves us with a discontinuity that is sort of major. I suppose that the best way to deal with it is to regard the books as canon.

Don

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Robert_A_Woodward wrote:
There is some explanation in the Honorverse article in _More than Honor_ (the first Honorverse anthology) which was repeated in _House of Steel_. Basically, nobody had surveyed a junction before and Manticore's researchers had to learn on the job.

Can you imagine the guts or b@lls it would have taken to fly the first ship through a wormhole, something no one (Manty at least) had ever successfully done before, with techniques and technology that people "learning on the job" said should work?

Since a Wormhole is out beyond the hyper limit, it is probably going to be the Navy that ends up doing security.

If you presume that there are already people transiting known wormholes and the W-Sails have been invented, then, again, it's the Navy because you are going to need the rest of the equipment.

MPARs is all non-hyperspace, esentialy in-system work. Patrol and Rescue within the Manticore Systems. Sure, a MPARs ship can get from Manticore A to Manticore B but it is going to take a while since they can't use hyperspace. Putting them out in the area between the Binary System and the Terminus (only one at the start) puts them at a major disadvantage for doing anything, certainly engaging any enemy. Other than hypercapable merchant traffice to and from the Binary System there isn't anything to patrol. Breakwater has been making a giant case for PATROL and RESCUE and operating as part of a non-unified defence force and if you suddenly decide that the in-system patrol should be hyper-capable, you are now arguing it should be JUST LIKE THE NAVY except it can't do what the NAVY is supposed to be able to do and move in an interstellar enviorment.
Ok it will be politicians yammering about budgets and influence but suddenly your "less expesive and more localy valuable service for Patrol and RESCUE is going to become at least as expensive (you need to make them hypercapabled) and you have to train appropriate staff to operate the equipment and navigate in that enviornment etc. Catch-22, which, of course, doesen't bother politicians at all.

Who is going to do the searching and exploration? Well the Acadamy of Science is going to be in there but you are also going to need a robust hyper-capable starship with crew to operate it and deal with getting back from wherever the other end of that wormhole is.

Yeah, I'd like answers too.

Brigade XO wrote:Since a Wormhole is out beyond the hyper limit, it is probably going to be the Navy that ends up doing security.

If you presume that there are already people transiting known wormholes and the W-Sails have been invented, then, again, it's the Navy because you are going to need the rest of the equipment.

MPARs is all non-hyperspace, esentialy in-system work. Patrol and Rescue within the Manticore Systems. Sure, a MPARs ship can get from Manticore A to Manticore B but it is going to take a while since they can't use hyperspace.

I had to go back to the 1st book and double check, but at least one of MPAR's ships was hyper capable.

When they broke the battlecruiser HMS Mars into the sloops HMS Phobos and HMS Deimos, "Deimos, which had been built from the after half of the bisected Mars, had inherited the battlecruiser’s hyperdrive, the idea being that once both sloops were in ser-vice Deimos could hang around outside the hyper limit and render quick aid throughout that area, while Phobos could stay inside the limit and handle any trouble there."

But I don't know if any other MPARs ships had hyper generators. Certainly Breakwater would push for that capability if he could - anything to boost MPARS profile - and there probably are the beginnings of deep space mining and industrial nodes out past the hyper limit or towards the outer gas giants (certainly Gryphon's rich Unicorn belt it beyond the hyper limit) - so ability to get to a rescue faster isn't a totally insane idea; despite the cost of providing some hyper capable ships to MPARS.

Jonathan_S wrote: I had to go back to the 1st book and double check, but at least one of MPAR's ships was hyper capable.

When they broke the battlecruiser HMS Mars into the sloops HMS Phobos and HMS Deimos, "Deimos, which had been built from the after half of the bisected Mars, had inherited the battlecruiser’s hyperdrive, the idea being that once both sloops were in ser-vice Deimos could hang around outside the hyper limit and render quick aid throughout that area, while Phobos could stay inside the limit and handle any trouble there."

But I don't know if any other MPARs ships had hyper generators. Certainly Breakwater would push for that capability if he could - anything to boost MPARS profile - and there probably are the beginnings of deep space mining and industrial nodes out past the hyper limit or towards the outer gas giants (certainly Gryphon's rich Unicorn belt it beyond the hyper limit) - so ability to get to a rescue faster isn't a totally insane idea; despite the cost of providing some hyper capable ships to MPARS.

Both were hyper capable, but there were instabilities which is why the one that made the jump blew up.

Breakwater has the theory that 50 or 100 frigates are better than 10 BCs because of their ability to swarm a larger ship, like bees taking down a dog.

Erls wrote:One of my great desires is to see in a future Manticore Rising book the first (and second and third) transits of the WJ. Read about the ships coming out, finding their bearings, and realizing "Holy &#*@", we are x LY closer to "THIS SYSTEM".

I can't help but wonder what that first crew experienced when it popped out of the WH, took its bearings, and realized how close it was to Beowulf, perhaps the first daughter of old Earth herself. Did they immediately start trying to find the terminus to jump back to Manticore, or did they go spend weeks on Beowulf establishing relations? How did Beowulf react when it realized they were now almost 500 LY closer to the Haven system - the crown jewel of colonies at that point in time? And, how did Manticore react when the ship finally returned to inform the Star Kingdom that their wormhole went to Beowulf itself, a couples transit from Sol and the very founding of humanity?

Going a step further - how did the parties react when the Trevor's Star terminus was discovered? That shaved another 150+ LY off the transit to Haven. How did Haven respond when it learned that over 600 LY of transit between it and the Sollies was erased due to the WJ?

What impact did this have on Manticoran politics? Was Breakwater still around fighting against the concept of Manticore building its own ships? Did he try to argue that MPARs should control the WJ? How did this permanently change SKM politics - and did it help create the ancestors of the political parties present in Honor's time?

RFC - please ensure these questions are answered (at some point)!!!

That is a wonderful thought. It is odd that I was always wanting to see the negative side of the first attempts, where the ships don't make it. How long do you wait before you realize that they are lost?

It also brings up questions as to when (and what led to) the present laws dictated the status of territorial space around junctions. At the time, I suppose the distance made sense. Does it now? What is the range stated? And of course, whoever has the power to control the junction, owns the junction?

cthia wrote: That is a wonderful thought. It is odd that I was always wanting to see the negative side of the first attempts, where the ships don't make it. How long do you wait before you realize that they are lost?

At least 2-3 years since they could possibly find themselves 150 LY away from home and have to get back "the long way." IIRC from the book where they found the WHJ leading to Spindle.

cthia wrote: It also brings up questions as to when (and what led to) the present laws dictated the status of territorial space around junctions. At the time, I suppose the distance made sense. Does it now? What is the range stated? And of course, whoever has the power to control the junction, owns the junction?

Like all laws and treaties, these things built up over time, and assuming a fairly "Common law" system of interplanetary law, precedent counts. Isn't there some part of we made first transit, we own it? I seem to remember something about that from somewhere around Lacoon 2.

pappilon wrote:Breakwater has the theory that 50 or 100 frigates are better than 10 BCs because of their ability to swarm a larger ship, like bees taking down a dog.

See Jefferson's "Gunboat Navy" which used swarms of oared vessels with one gun each to defend the harbors of late 18th/early 19th century America. Which proved difficult to man (Jefferson saw them as Naval Militia, not a regular naval service), unseaworthy, and totally unable to perform their assigned mission in the early days of the War of 1812.

pappilon wrote:

cthia wrote: That is a wonderful thought. It is odd that I was always wanting to see the negative side of the first attempts, where the ships don't make it. How long do you wait before you realize that they are lost?

At least 2-3 years since they could possibly find themselves 150 LY away from home and have to get back "the long way." IIRC from the book where they found the WHJ leading to Spindle.

cthia wrote: It also brings up questions as to when (and what led to) the present laws dictated the status of territorial space around junctions. At the time, I suppose the distance made sense. Does it now? What is the range stated? And of course, whoever has the power to control the junction, owns the junction?

Like all laws and treaties, these things built up over time, and assuming a fairly "Common law" system of interplanetary law, precedent counts. Isn't there some part of we made first transit, we own it? I seem to remember something about that from somewhere around Lacoon 2.

Until the astronomical data was refined, it probably took a bit longer to return, then.


Until the bigger err more powerful navy comes and takes it from you. Our exchange just gave an example of how over time the laws changed to face the reality of combat in space.