Growing the Honorverse: towards Haven as a map centerpoint?

Theemile wrote:An important point to remember about exploration in the Honorverse, ships which left earth in the final days of the cryoship era are just now passing Manticore. Cryo expeditions will be landing at their final locals for the next 1000 years. An interesting plot that we have not seen is a survey ship running into a system where the inhabitants just arrived and are still stripping the colony ship or have just stabilized their culture in the last couple years (within a generation or so of landing).

I doubt it happens that way much. Any expeditions which launched in these final days of the sublight diaspora would have been claim-jumped after Icarus-type colony ships started flying in 1284PD.

In most cases, they'd arrive to a tech base perhaps one thousand years more advanced than theirs, with a population many times their cryoship's after centuries of settlement.

tlb wrote:

Theemile wrote:An important point to remember about exploration in the Honorverse, ships which left earth in the final days of the cryoship era are just now passing Manticore. Cryo expeditions will be landing at their final locals for the next 1000 years. An interesting plot that we have not seen is a survey ship running into a system where the inhabitants just arrived and are still stripping the colony ship or have just stabilized their culture in the last couple years (within a generation or so of landing).

In the history of Manticore in House of Steel, when the colony ship arrived there was already a small settlement and a force of 4 frigates to serve as protection funded by the colony trust fund. That was 600 years ago, so do we really expect that there are still sub-light colony ships flying?

The timeline fits. Colony ships weren't usually sent via hyperspace until Adrienne Warshawski and her detectors in 1273 PD. The Jason left Earth in 775 PD. There are 500 years' worth of colony ships being sent, usually further and further away. More, even, if you consider daughter colonies from worlds before they got the news of the Warshawski detectors.

The well-known expeditions could be intercepted in interstellar space. In fact, I wonder why the Manticore Colony Trust Ltd. didn't do that for nearly 200 years.

The problem is all the ones that fell through the cracks. Those are still out there.

I don't think a wormhole connecting to a world just settled is likely. More likely is a young colony getting a visit from a sub-light colony ship that had been in transit for a couple of centuries and has now just arrived.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
The timeline fits. Colony ships weren't usually sent via hyperspace until Adrienne Warshawski and her detectors in 1273 PD. The Jason left Earth in 775 PD. There are 500 years' worth of colony ships being sent, usually further and further away. More, even, if you consider daughter colonies from worlds before they got the news of the Warshawski detectors.

The well-known expeditions could be intercepted in interstellar space. In fact, I wonder why the Manticore Colony Trust Ltd. didn't do that for nearly 200 years.

The problem is all the ones that fell through the cracks. Those are still out there.

I don't think a wormhole connecting to a world just settled is likely. More likely is a young colony getting a visit from a sub-light colony ship that had been in transit for a couple of centuries and has now just arrived.

I was meaning more general exploration running into a new colony than wormhole exploration. Besides, we don't know of a single wormhole that has unexplored termini (the math finally added up for Manticore after Lynx.)

munroburton wrote:

Theemile wrote:An important point to remember about exploration in the Honorverse, ships which left earth in the final days of the cryoship era are just now passing Manticore. Cryo expeditions will be landing at their final locals for the next 1000 years. An interesting plot that we have not seen is a survey ship running into a system where the inhabitants just arrived and are still stripping the colony ship or have just stabilized their culture in the last couple years (within a generation or so of landing).

I doubt it happens that way much. Any expeditions which launched in these final days of the sublight diaspora would have been claim-jumped after Icarus-type colony ships started flying in 1284PD.

In most cases, they'd arrive to a tech base perhaps one thousand years more advanced than theirs, with a population many times their cryoship's after centuries of settlement.

Most likely true. Still, the chances are there are still some flying about out there.

A speculation as to why the Manticore Corporation Trust didn't try to intercept the sleeper ship vs sending the frigates and other supplies and people:

What the heck were they going to do with the ship, crew, people in cold sleep etc if they found them? Waking them up X years from destination would be a major problem from standpoint of space for awakend people and food reserves etc. You would also have to essentialy try to plot an intercept basket based on what they know of the ship, it's drives and what was expected to be encountered on the way. You know, plotting a course to avoid stars/systems and their gravitational interactions (or allow from them) and when the colony ship was going to get there. There is NO indication that it was presumed to have run into any difficulties. Even if it had, just what could a searching ship do? That would be compilcated by any changes in the planned trip due to something slowing them down or otherwise extend the trip.

What they did do was to send warships (the frigates) to keep anybody else from showing up before the colony ship got there and claim possession. They also sent "staff" and employees of the Trust with at least one cargo ship (I didn't go back for the exact composition) with more modern equipment, advances in knowledge and start doing a current survey of the planet and system with a nascent ground base to bootstrap the colony. I don't recall what if anything was said about the rights and status of the crews of th frigates and the people on whatever transport would have been sent as opposed to the people on the colony ship. Clearly, whatever it was or might have been, there wasn't a mention of difficulties. I suspect they were intergrated into the colony with the original colony management/government structure intact and the Trust people as some level of senior experienced staff. You have a modern and fairly well equiped SDF, a bunch of people who have been studying the planet and system and you have people with much more modern tech and experinece with that tech and Manticore. Clealry whatever they worked out did, in fact, work out. Big planet, tiny population, and a major jump for the people on the colony ship in what they needed to know (and practical applicaitons of that in place) versus what they would have had when they arrvied and were going to start from scratch.

I suspect that in saying "Harvest Joy class" ship, the implication was dedicated wormhole surveyer/explorer class of new design rather than reconfiguring an existing older warship- or ships- for the work. It also implies this is a SEM project as it is unlikely that Haven would pick a SEM lost ship as a class type.

Haven may want to start looking outward from Bolthole but that causes a seperate set of problems. Anything you find is nessisarly going to have a link back TO Bolthole so it is frought with security problems.

The Harvest Joy had been specificaly modified to extend her range significantly because of the potential problems of getting to the other end of a wormhole and -for whatever reasons- not be able to make a reciprical transit. That does, apparently, happen in wormhole explorations and while it seems to normaly be some level of engieering casualty related to the sails and using wormholes, your options are then limited. The "killer wormhole" seems to be very rare occrance (the Torch problem is not the wormhole, it's the Alignment). So once you sucessfuly transit a new wormhole and while part of your crew is busy mapping this terminus, another part is doing really intense Stellar Cartography to see if they can determine two things. 1) what stars and hopefully usefull systems are "close" to here and 2) Where the hell are we in relation to anything we know about. [If we can't go back through the wormhole where can we go to reach "civilization" and how long is it going to take- hopefully in hyperspace.

Not clear what current civilian/private wormhole survey ships are like but for Manticore, converting an older (at time of conversion) light cruiser makes a lot of practical sence. It should already have a good capasity for life support of the required crew and it is certainly going to be more robustly built with engines, shielding, scanning capability and redundencies. That it is amplified by being fairly well armed and (presumably) has former and/or transfered for special duty naval personel to be able to fight her at need. Not sure they would have had Marines- but there would have been ship's security and at least former Marines would have made a good candidate source. The sensors would have had to have been expanded with specialty equipment for wormhole study and a whole range of other labs and things added to support the primary mission. Larger scientific staff but just as much vessel support crew (including what you need to run the weapons/defence/tactical and communications)
A light cruiser, even an older one as the Harvest Joy is represented to be, is still a significant platform in terms of both defense, offence and the ability to get the hell out of Dodge if there is a problem. The likelyhood of running into something her equal when she comes out of a 1st transit was vastly remote.....a squadron of crusiers with weapons hot sitting actaly on top of the exit for the wormhole was planned enemy action-

It is POSSIBLE that new construction on behalf of SEM (since they don't have any now and "stuff" is comming from Beowulf and Haven (build at Bolthole) in non-warfighter design could be adapted for a few ships to produce a modern military auxullary wormhole explorers type and put it into service. Getting the specialzed people for the wormhole resarch is another matter.

However, consider this. Nobody outside the Alignment knows that their base is accesable only via an as yet unknown wormhole network. That's not how the first waves of scouting which will be sent out will be looking. Either way, if SEM and others need to get back to more traditional mission ships- and primarly commerce protection- then they are going to need more ships in that more traditional crusier range (light, regular, heavy) and those would be the better platform to adjust out to explorer variants as they will have the endurance, legs and power to deal with most problems they may encounter -Spyder drive stuff excepted.
The idea that the Alignment is hidden how it is now hidden will be a massive game changer. The GA is still going to have to look for it using traditional hyperspace capability as going through the not yet know about wormholes is what used to be called "A REALLY BAD IDEA".

Theemile wrote:I was meaning more general exploration running into a new colony than wormhole exploration. Besides, we don't know of a single wormhole that has unexplored termini (the math finally added up for Manticore after Lynx.)

I doubt that anyone leaves a terminus unexplored. Or vectors on known wormholes unexplored. Which is why Manpower never bothering to explore the termini from the Congo System should have made everyone frown.

The most I can see is a terminus opening to a previously-unexplored region and then be opened for colonisation, but no one taking up that offer.

Brigade XO wrote:A speculation as to why the Manticore Corporation Trust didn't try to intercept the sleeper ship vs sending the frigates and other supplies and people:

What the heck were they going to do with the ship, crew, people in cold sleep etc if they found them?

Warm the people up and load them aboard a luxury liner. Then load the supplies on Jason aboard a freighter. Then scuttle Jason and proceed to Manticore, arriving 150 years before plan. What better way to avoid claim jumpers than to have your colonists in place?

Chartering a liner must be cheaper than buying four frigates and guarding the system for 150 years. Those four ships that were in orbit may not have been the first ships the MCT had to have there.

Waking them up X years from destination would be a major problem from standpoint of space for awakend people and food reserves etc. You would also have to essentialy try to plot an intercept basket based on what they know of the ship, it's drives and what was expected to be encountered on the way. You know, plotting a course to avoid stars/systems and their gravitational interactions (or allow from them) and when the colony ship was going to get there. There is NO indication that it was presumed to have run into any difficulties. Even if it had, just what could a searching ship do? That would be compilcated by any changes in the planned trip due to something slowing them down or otherwise extend the trip.

Their trip is a straight line from Sol to Manticore, accounting for radial velocity of the systems relative to each other. In only 512 light-years, it's not likely they had to detour.

However, the problem is pinpointing them. They won't have engines on. The Jason and other colony ships would be coasting ballistically at 0.8c for centuries. If the Jason could accelerate at only 0.1 gravity, she'd need 7¾ years to reach cruising speed and would cover 3 light-years. That means 506 of the 512 light-years would be ballistic, taking 632.5 years. (Note this means a voyage of 637.5 years, but we know it took them 641, so he acceleration was even lower)

For those first 8 or so years, the Jason may have been communicating back to Earth, letting the MCT know it had reached cruising speed. With that information at hand, the MCT can calculate where exactly the Jason is, within a bounded uncertainty due to drift. Whether that's sufficient to generate an intercept is a completely different story.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Theemile wrote:I was meaning more general exploration running into a new colony than wormhole exploration. Besides, we don't know of a single wormhole that has unexplored termini (the math finally added up for Manticore after Lynx.)

I doubt that anyone leaves a terminus unexplored. Or vectors on known wormholes unexplored. Which is why Manpower never bothering to explore the termini from the Congo System should have made everyone frown.

The most I can see is a terminus opening to a previously-unexplored region and then be opened for colonisation, but no one taking up that offer.

Manticore knew it had 2 termini to find and took almost a century to find them. (The math of the power of the Wormhole didn't add up with the 5 Termini). So you can know you have another termini, but have not found it yet.

Brigade XO wrote:<snip>
Haven may want to start looking outward from Bolthole but that causes a seperate set of problems. Anything you find is nessisarly going to have a link back TO Bolthole so it is frought with security problems.

<snip>

Bolthole was actually inside the outershell, not on the outside of the Verge where further exploration would be profitable. It was just in a location wher everyone had "already looked" and was around a star that shouldn't be able to support such a planet.