Post League Eridani

runsforcelery wrote:Parts might be different sizes, but everyone uses the same measurement system. Well, except for Grayson baseball diamonds.)

Don't forget that the Sol system still uses the archaic "League" - of unextraordinary gentlemen. And League of arrogant wholeasses. And, of course, since Honor's visit, the Sol system is now 20,000 Leagues under seige.

Joat42 wrote:Take for example metallurgy. You can know the exact ratios that goes into an alloy - that doesn't necessarily you can just throw everything into a smelter and get a alloy with the exact same properties, you will get an alloy just not the one you wanted.

Even with nanites for example, you can not just mash atoms together to get the preferred crystalline structure that has an inherent strength magnitudes bigger than normal. You could probably use the nanites as helpers in growing the structure - which mean we end up with what rfc told us, ie. programming is needed to get what you want.

That's my understanding on how it works anyway.

You can place atoms exactly where you want them. That's how this works. So once you have the structure you first precisely disassemble it, then directly reproduce it. It's a vastly more sophisticated form of the technique of destructively examining a chip with an electron microscope.

"In this article, a methodology to extract Flash EEPROM memory contents is presented. Samples are first backside prepared to expose the tunnel oxide of floating gate transistors. Then, a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) in the so called Passive Voltage Contrast (PVC) mode allows distinguishing ‘0’ and ‘1’ bit values stored in individual memory cell. Using SEM operator-free acquisition and standard image processing technique we demonstrate the possible automating of such technique over a full memory. The presented fast, efficient and low cost technique is successfully implemented on 0.35μm technology node microcontrollers and on a 0.21μm smart card type integrated circuit. The technique is at least two orders of magnitude faster than state-of-the-art Scanning Probe Microscopy (SPM) methods. Without adequate protection an adversary could obtain the full memory array content within minutes. The technique is a first step for reverse engineering secure embedded systems."

You aren't building sub-assemblies, you are pouring elements and power in one end and getting finished goods out the other. You don't even have to understand how the device works or even what it does to mass produce exact copies that will work just like the original.

tlb wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:You really don't understand how industrial processes work in the Honorverse. We're talking here about, for example, molecular circuitry, which is identical in essentially every star nation; what matters is how you program the matrix in your individual molycircs. The basic sinews of industry are orbital refineries that produce bulk raw materials which then go to nanotech farms and "foundries" which are actually massive printers. What comes out of either of those processes depends solely on the blueprints you program into them. You need fittings in centimeters and meters? Fine, program your printers to produce them in metrics. You need them in imperial measure? Fine, program your printers to produce them in inches and feet. (Of course, that particular problem doesn't exist. Parts might be different sizes, but everyone uses the same measurement system. Well, except for Grayson baseball diamonds.) You need molycirc spares for your existing starships? Fine, tell the nannie farm what you need and churn them out.

Manticore's refineries weren't touched. Neither was the SEM's resource gathering infrastructure. What they lost were the fabrication platforms and the assembly platforms, where it all came together. That's what they're in the process of replacing using the basic processors being shipped in from Beowulf and even Haven. Where they can use Beowulfan-produced bits and pieces, like structural girders, of course they're doing just that. Wherever it comes to "Manticore-centric" parts, they just program the printers and the farms and churn them out as new.

We did postulate that this was how manufacturing worked:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=9838&start=100

But that cannot be the complete answer because we still have construction crew in spacesuits working shipyards and you cannot do maintenance that way. In both On Basilisk Station and The Short Victorious War we have examples of ships being worked on by construction crews.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:I still favor adopting the intentions of Haven in Flag in Exile.

You may be the only one that believes that Manticore and Grayson should turn to piracy and extortion.

After the SLN genocidal attack on Beawulf?

Oh Hell Yes!

kzt wrote:

Joat42 wrote:Take for example metallurgy. You can know the exact ratios that goes into an alloy - that doesn't necessarily you can just throw everything into a smelter and get a alloy with the exact same properties, you will get an alloy just not the one you wanted.

Even with nanites for example, you can not just mash atoms together to get the preferred crystalline structure that has an inherent strength magnitudes bigger than normal. You could probably use the nanites as helpers in growing the structure - which mean we end up with what rfc told us, ie. programming is needed to get what you want.

That's my understanding on how it works anyway.

You can place atoms exactly where you want them. That's how this works. So once you have the structure you first precisely disassemble it, then directly reproduce it. It's a vastly more sophisticated form of the technique of destructively examining a chip with an electron microscope.

You are missing the point, you can place an atom precisely but will it bond to the correct atoms near it so you get the result you want? It's not just moving stuff around hoping no unforeseen chemical reactions happens because you did it in the wrong order.

kzt wrote:"In this article, a methodology to extract Flash EEPROM memory contents is presented. Samples are first backside prepared to expose the tunnel oxide of floating gate transistors. Then, a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) in the so called Passive Voltage Contrast (PVC) mode allows distinguishing ‘0’ and ‘1’ bit values stored in individual memory cell. Using SEM operator-free acquisition and standard image processing technique we demonstrate the possible automating of such technique over a full memory. The presented fast, efficient and low cost technique is successfully implemented on 0.35μm technology node microcontrollers and on a 0.21μm smart card type integrated circuit. The technique is at least two orders of magnitude faster than state-of-the-art Scanning Probe Microscopy (SPM) methods. Without adequate protection an adversary could obtain the full memory array content within minutes. The technique is a first step for reverse engineering secure embedded systems."

I'm familiar with the method. Now, if the EEPROM is built using a technique you aren't familiar with and the act of using PVC destroys the information content - what then?

kzt wrote:You aren't building sub-assemblies, you are pouring elements and power in one end and getting finished goods out the other. You don't even have to understand how the device works or even what it does to mass produce exact copies that will work just like the original.

You can't build exact copies of complex items if you don't know how the original was put together even though you may have a scan of each and every atom in it. Does the original device use quantum processes on some levels, for example storing information as spin? Then you will have a copy that will never work. Is the original built using a seed-scaffolding that is later removed? Does the device need to be built in separate stages with programming in-between? Does the alloy need to be gravity-forged to produce the right ratio of crystalline formations because the formations can't be produced in zero-g with nanites?

Building an exact working replica means you need to measure every property of every atom at the same time and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle says that's not possible.

You can just deposit atoms from a scan and hope you will get it working. Just look at the problems everyone had with duplicating Manticores microfusion-bottles. If it is as you say; scan and copy, anyone with a comparable level of technology would be able to duplicate it at will.

Joat42 wrote:Just look at the problems everyone had with duplicating Manticores microfusion-bottles. If it is as you say; scan and copy, anyone with a comparable level of technology would be able to duplicate it at will.

I don't believe anyone had a copy of one of those.

David was absolutely insistent that the self-destruction systems were totally reliable and foolproof when I suggested that the MA should chase down the missiles that missed at BoM.

Other navies are sure that there is a fusion reactor on those missiles, for various reasons, but they don't have a sample.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:After the SLN genocidal attack on Beawulf?

Oh Hell Yes!

There was NO genocidal attack on Beowulf by the SLN; the SLN attack killed about 5000 people and destroyed part of a missile assembly line.

(original post deleted, because I am interested in only part of Weber's reply)

runsforcelery wrote:
You really don't understand how industrial processes work in the Honorverse. We're talking here about, for example, molecular circuitry, which is identical in essentially every star nation; what matters is how you program the matrix in your individual molycircs. The basic sinews of industry are orbital refineries that produce bulk raw materials which then go to nanotech farms and "foundries" which are actually massive printers.

Is the reason that Haven couldn't duplicate SKM hardware is because its "printers" weren't precise enough?

tlb wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:After the SLN genocidal attack on Beawulf?

Oh Hell Yes!

There was NO genocidal attack on Beowulf by the SLN; the SLN attack killed about 5000 people and destroyed part of a missile assembly line.

Many would submit, I think, that accomplices--even somewhat unwitting ones--shouldn't get nor even deserve the Eridani break you seem to be implying here.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:After the SLN genocidal attack on Beawulf?

Oh Hell Yes!

tlb wrote:There was NO genocidal attack on Beowulf by the SLN; the SLN attack killed about 5000 people and destroyed part of a missile assembly line.

jgnfld wrote:Many would submit, I think, that accomplices--even somewhat unwitting ones--shouldn't get nor even deserve the Eridani break you seem to be implying here.

To even call the SLN unwitting accomplices is going too far. The Malign knew that the SLN attack, with Hasta, would occur, because they instigated it. They prepositioned the bombs in the orbitals and the Silver Bullets to eliminate Mycroft. It seems to me that the message of the Silver Bullets was to expose the puppeteer's hands and so crank up the paranoia among everyone who would survive the subsequent bombing. The same message was delivered by the bombs.

But importantly, the bombs did not need the SLN attack; so the SLN attack did not facilitate the bombing. A simple change of instructions to their dupe could have had the bombs go off while the leader of Beowulf was addressing the conference. The SLN is not the Malign's accomplice, it is another of their dupes.

But the SLN does not get an Eridani "break", because of the Case Buccaneer actions against defenseless planet systems.

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:(original post deleted, because I am interested in only part of Weber's reply)

runsforcelery wrote:
You really don't understand how industrial processes work in the Honorverse. We're talking here about, for example, molecular circuitry, which is identical in essentially every star nation; what matters is how you program the matrix in your individual molycircs. The basic sinews of industry are orbital refineries that produce bulk raw materials which then go to nanotech farms and "foundries" which are actually massive printers.

Is the reason that Haven couldn't duplicate SKM hardware is because its "printers" weren't precise enough?

What part of the SKM's hardware are you talking about duplicating? Generally speaking, you're manufacturing components that then are assembled, not just pressing a button and watching completed missiles, for example, emerge from the hopper at the other end of the queue. Well, actually you are but that's because the components are being assembled en route to the other end of the queue, if you see what I mean.

You could, in theory, capture an SKM MDM intact, take it apart, measure all its bits and pieces, and then duplicate it by printing out the components and assembling them. First, though, you have to capture the missile, or the other bit of hardware. And the molecular circuitry, which is where the real "magic" happens in a lot of the SEM's hardware, is a lot more problematic. There are multiple layers of redundant security built into milspec molycircs to prevent unauthorized access or scanning. Without entering the authorized access code, you can't access or scan it without it wiping its basic matrix. Are the protections absolutely foolproof and infallible? No, but they're pretty darn close. Can the access code be captured as well? Yes, it can, and that's one reason captains are traditionally expected to dump their data cores before they surrender.

Manticore is/was ahead of the rest of the galaxy in tweaking its printer and nanotech efficiency and substantially ahead in terms of its assembly techniques and the scale of both its fabrication and its assembly industries. This was largely a result of the SKM's (and later the SEM's) awareness that it couldn't compete in terms of sheer size with its inevitable opponent. It started as a natural result of the size (and expansion) of the Manty merchant marine coupled with a mindset (begun during the Travis Long era, actually) that was constantly looking for more efficiency tweaks that could be borrowed from anyone else with whom they came into contact. King Roger got behind that mindset and pushed it to new heights as part of his long range strategic plan for the war against Haven, and the Crown used a substantial slice of Junction revenues to subsidize the process.

There's nothing really magical about what the Manties have done, and their allies are going to be duplicating a lot of what they've accomplished, and then the lot of them are going to be looking at ways to tweak it still further. At the moment, Manticore's going to have an edge even over its pre-Yawata Strike industry because it's rebuilding to a new, completely rationalized format. Any legacy bottlenecks that had been accepted because it would have been to expensive in terms of resources or time to rebuild were wiped out along with the previous industrial base and are being rebuilt to the newest and best levels.

Honorverse industry isn't as hard to update as terrestrial industry has been, but there are certain parallels. For example, the British steel and shipbuilding industries suffered badly after WWI because they had such an enormous existing capacity in both fields. They couldn't/were unwilling to shut down existing foundries and fabrication sites that were still producing in order to replace them with plant that would produce more quickly, efficiently, and cheaply. Could argue that the same thing happened to the US steel industry in the last few decades of the 20th century. In the Honorverse, you can simply reprogram the printer, so tweaks are both easier to make and less frequently imposed by the tyranny of outside competition. There are always ways in which the process can be made more efficient, however, including matters of scale, flow mapping, even printer efficiency upgrades. The reason that doesn't happen more often than it does is more inertia than anything else. The tech we have is working fine, our needs are met, and it would cost more to improve it than we'd lose in lost production time. The SKM didn't have the luxury of that sort of inertia in its ramp up to meet the PRH and, fortunately, it hadn't invested in the mindset which produced that inertia before Roger got involved in actively driving the process as far and as quickly as he possibly could. And I trust I don't have to say that Elizabeth has followed her father's example in that respect.