?

It took me a while to find it. Actually I only found it while searching for something else, but way back in the thread I remembered RFC copping to (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.

The thread is only 19 pages and he makes an appearance no less than 20 times, for an average of at least one post per page. 5 posts on one page. I actually counted 21 posts but I can't wrap my head around the math, and Honor didn't even have anything to do with it. It's chock-full of technical stuff. No wonder I can't get a date with Jayne, she's always hanging out with David.

Dunno why he made so many appearances in that thread, but we are all the more enlightened and thankful for it. If I had to guess, it's because I asked what was in everyone's medicine cabinet.

Apparently David peeks into medicine cabinets too. LOL

At any rate, if there is something you remembered David saying but couldn't locate it, there's a good chance it's found here.

Anyway, I remember being personally appeased that he formally admitted to ignoring relativity.

Disclaimer: We just as well may owe kzt's fascination with extension cords to runsforcelery's many appearances.

Altogether now ... "Thanks KZT! and RFC!"

cthia wrote:I was simply taking a stab at WHY RFC said no.

As I posted somewhere above, even the slightest delay in the backup activating would hurl the entire crew at the nearest bulkhead aft of them at 200 km/h - the equivalent of free-falling from 176 meters up in Earth gravity. That's 0.01 second at 600g.

As for running in parallel, it depends entirely on how many are running parallel. One of two failing would still give you 300g of uncompensated acceleration. Not survivable. One of 20 failing would still give you a brief window of 3g acceleration for the crew. Probably survivable for most, but you're having to haul around 19 more compensators to make it work. That's got to cut into the tonnage for weapons and armor. It's probably better to accept the very small chance of a one-hit ship loss than making all of your ships so handicapped by tonnage they can't fight effectively anyway.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:They had a lot of space-based industry too, because of the conditions on their planet. With that tradition and a workforce ready to work in space (and aware of the dangers!), they could very quickly build and expand the Blackbird yards.

And because their tech base was more manpower intensive - so despite the smaller size of their pre-alliance space industry they had a relatively large number of well educated people trained in space habitat and ship construction. So once the Manticoran tech infusion let them retrain those experienced you suddenly needed a lot less of them for each project.

In the face of fixed demand or resources this would be a major economic disruption; as you suddenly render a large fraction of your existing space trained workers unemployed. But the economy was obviously there to keep that many people employed, and the needs of the war drove a massive spike in demand - so instead of laying off a bunch of people to keep output the same they were instead able to multiple the amount of output for the same number of workers. (And then, as their economy grew, where able to train additional workers - and do so fairly quickly given their good baseline education - allowing them to push their production levels even higher). Still they initially had a lot of Manticoran loaned personnel in the yards and in their new ships, helping them make the transitions to this new equipment and new doctrine and capabilities. Then as they got fully up to speed a lot of that loaned personnel could return to Manticore.

Without their baseline capabilities Grayson couldn't have been so quick or able to take advantage of Manticore's infusion of help. But even with those starting advantages it would have been a much slower road if Manticore had provided less of a helping hand to get them going.

Jonathan_S wrote:Without their baseline capabilities Grayson couldn't have been so quick or able to take advantage of Manticore's infusion of help. But even with those starting advantages it would have been a much slower road if Manticore had provided less of a helping hand to get them going.

Take other systems that were ahead of Grayson at the start of the war, like Alizon and Zanzibar. I'm sure that Manticoran help moved them further, but it was nowhere near as far as it was for Grayson.

Marsh and Idaho were the next two in terms of benefiting from Manticoran help and Idaho has a wormhole.

Galactic Sapper wrote:

cthia wrote:I was simply taking a stab at WHY RFC said no.

As I posted somewhere above, even the slightest delay in the backup activating would hurl the entire crew at the nearest bulkhead aft of them at 200 km/h - the equivalent of free-falling from 176 meters up in Earth gravity. That's 0.01 second at 600g.

As for running in parallel, it depends entirely on how many are running parallel. One of two failing would still give you 300g of uncompensated acceleration. Not survivable. One of 20 failing would still give you a brief window of 3g acceleration for the crew. Probably survivable for most, but you're having to haul around 19 more compensators to make it work. That's got to cut into the tonnage for weapons and armor. It's probably better to accept the very small chance of a one-hit ship loss than making all of your ships so handicapped by tonnage they can't fight effectively anyway.

Certainly. But my notion of the problems encountered if they are run in parallel is a bit different. Probably wrong, but different. I see a need to sync all parallel systems, or you'd have opposing fields interfering with each other. If the system falls out of sync for even the slightest amount of time...bulk-head goo. And, if running parallel, I see no need for more than a second compensator. Compensators are simply well built designs cutting no corners. As I imagine them.

tlb wrote:PS. It appears that Honor regularly loses to her mother in chess, but that is not the same thing as being terrible.

I wonder if Alison can still beat Honor in chess, now that Honor has a special insight into her opponents who are close at hand.

tlb wrote:PS. It appears that Honor regularly loses to her mother in chess, but that is not the same thing as being terrible.

cthia wrote:I wonder if Alison can still beat Honor in chess, now that Honor has a special insight into her opponents who are close at hand.

It was still true as of chapter 20 in Ashes of Victory, which is after Honor had the big boost in empathetic power. But Honor reads emotions, not thoughts; so that power might not work in the detail needed to deduce strategy.

tlb wrote:It was still true as of chapter 20 in Ashes of Victory, which is after Honor had the big boost in empathetic power. But Honor reads emotions, not thoughts; so that power might not work in the detail needed to deduce strategy.

All she's probably getting is "she's having too much fun at my expense."

cthia wrote:

tlb wrote:PS. It appears that Honor regularly loses to her mother in chess, but that is not the same thing as being terrible.

I wonder if Alison can still beat Honor in chess, now that Honor has a special insight into her opponents who are close at hand.

I suspect they would both consider that to be cheating.

I wonder how much of Honor's talent is due to Alison and Alfred's link, and how much to hanging around with tree cats for most of her life.

cthia wrote:

tlb wrote:PS. It appears that Honor regularly loses to her mother in chess, but that is not the same thing as being terrible.

I wonder if Alison can still beat Honor in chess, now that Honor has a special insight into her opponents who are close at hand.

Fox2! wrote:I suspect they would both consider that to be cheating.

I wonder how much of Honor's talent is due to Alison and Alfred's link, and how much to hanging around with tree cats for most of her life.

It WOULD be cheating. But I don't think Honor has control over it. But surely Alison is aware of her abilities. And, I won't automatically count Alison out. She may be cool under pressure, camouflaging her true emotions.

I would certainly attribute Honor's ability to her multifaceted inheritance - her mother, father, and Treecats. A notion carried across the board to Raoul.

Poor Raoul. As a mother, Honor will have eyes in the back of her head, and inside Raoul's head. Then again, Raoul may be able to get inside of Honor's head when he shouldn't be there. I wonder if the range (distance) between Honor and Raoul's connection will be equal to the Cats. Currently, Honor has to be near the subject to work her magic. She has to be relatively close to Nimitz as well to communicate with him.

It would be nice if Raoul and Honor will be able to communicate ship to ship. In case communications go down in the middle of a battle.