Growing the Honorverse: towards Haven as a map centerpoint?

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?

Space is huge and even minor deviations in course and speed will generate a ludicrous search space. And I tend to doubt that frigates of that era could jump an entire colony ship into hyper with them; so you likely can't get the colony ship there any sooner. (I guess you could use frigates to shuttle handfuls of its crew and minuscule amounts of cargo ahead)

But also, there's a time factor involved. Jason arrives at Manticore in 1416 PD. It wasn't until 1273 PD that – Adrienne Warshawski invents the technologies that make hyperspace travel fairly safe. And House of Steel tells us that the frigates were "built in the Sol System for the Manticore Colony Trust of Zurich in 1389 PD". And even a century later, during the Manticore Ascendant series it appears even warships can go no higher than the Gamma bands. So if they could go that high it'd take the frigates at over 4 months to get from Earth to Manticore; but even if they could didn't they escort a freighter? That'd probably be restricted to the Beta bands; so double that transit time.


It seems to have taken about a century for the invention of the warshawski detector and sail to go from initial prototypes to relatively widespread. (And the technology is so new I seriously doubt there are enough hyper capable passenger liners running around that one could be chartered for what's probably a multi-year mission)

But that means that even if the frigates found Jason immediately and were somehow able to shortcut her flight to Manticore they'd have saved her less than 27 years...


At that point it's probably better to keep the frigates concentrated to defend Manticore's claim from the possibility of newly build hyper-capable colony ships and to focus on building the seed colony to help jump-start things upon Jason's arrival.

The source material mentioned the surprize (and initial consternation) when the Jason got close enough to Manticor and realized there were miltuple ships in the system. And then the found out that the Trust had done the kind of thing is was created to do- future support of the colony at Manticor
Hi.... technology had advanced since you left Earth. The Colony Trust sent us. We were are here to protect the claim, to bring updated tech and information and all sorts of new stuff. We have been here for X time, have done a lot of surveys and ground explorations and been studying the local flora and fauna. Preliminary base set up at the best found location under the local conditions and it matches as close as possible the criteria you had when you set out. Will attach the information. Welcome to your new home.

I know that Honor grounded the SLN. But I find it curious indeed that nobody ever gives the SL a part in searching for the MA, when they have so many ships lying around, and since the only leads lay with their ghost hunters. Surely the author isn't using the ghost hunters as filler.

cthia wrote:I know that Honor grounded the SLN. But I find it curious indeed that nobody ever gives the SL a part in searching for the MA, when they have so many ships lying around, and since the only leads lay with their ghost hunters. Surely the author isn't using the ghost hunters as filler.

Do we expect the MA to be found by ships? Personally I expect the ghost hunters and the Cachet - Zilwicki - Harahap trio (or quartet with the cat) to be more effective.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:I know that Honor grounded the SLN. But I find it curious indeed that nobody ever gives the SL a part in searching for the MA, when they have so many ships lying around, and since the only leads lay with their ghost hunters. Surely the author isn't using the ghost hunters as filler.

Do we expect the MA to be found by ships? Personally I expect the ghost hunters and the Cachet - Zilwicki - Harahap trio (or quartet with the cat) to be more effective.

You've got a point, but searching the thicket often flushes out the prey.

cthia wrote:I know that Honor grounded the SLN. But I find it curious indeed that nobody ever gives the SL a part in searching for the MA, when they have so many ships lying around, and since the only leads lay with their ghost hunters. Surely the author isn't using the ghost hunters as filler.

tlb wrote:Do we expect the MA to be found by ships? Personally I expect the ghost hunters and the Cachet - Zilwicki - Harahap trio (or quartet with the cat) to be more effective.

cthia wrote:You've got a point, but searching the thicket often flushes out the prey.

Space is huge, hard enough to even find a thicket; much less the right one.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:I know that Honor grounded the SLN. But I find it curious indeed that nobody ever gives the SL a part in searching for the MA, when they have so many ships lying around, and since the only leads lay with their ghost hunters. Surely the author isn't using the ghost hunters as filler.

tlb wrote:Do we expect the MA to be found by ships? Personally I expect the ghost hunters and the Cachet - Zilwicki - Harahap trio (or quartet with the cat) to be more effective.

cthia wrote:You've got a point, but searching the thicket often flushes out the prey.

Space is huge, hard enough to even find a thicket; much less the right one.

Not for the SLN, they have an easy time finding thickets. Every system they enter is thick with missile launches. Plus, they have a HUGE fleet.

cthia wrote:Not for the SLN, they have an easy time finding thickets. Every system they enter is thick with missile launches. Plus, they have a HUGE fleet.

Had a huge fleet.

Past tense.

Honor made a point of taking out the Reserve, remember?


Don't be surprised when the Solarians are involved with (gasp!) Black Victor and Company's continuing search. The military intel group that flushed out 'The Other Guys' aren't likely to stop any time soon. Once they get done delousing the surviving upper echelons of the reformed Solarian League, they aren't going to stop without some pay back.

jtg452 wrote:

cthia wrote:Not for the SLN, they have an easy time finding thickets. Every system they enter is thick with missile launches. Plus, they have a HUGE fleet.

Had a huge fleet.

Past tense.

Honor made a point of taking out the Reserve, remember?


Don't be surprised when the Solarians are involved with (gasp!) Black Victor and Company's continuing search. The military intel group that flushed out 'The Other Guys' aren't likely to stop any time soon. Once they get done delousing the surviving upper echelons of the reformed Solarian League, they aren't going to stop without some pay back.

Darn, I plum forgot how bad Honor went off her meds.

Jonathan_S wrote:Space is huge and even minor deviations in course and speed will generate a ludicrous search space. And I tend to doubt that frigates of that era could jump an entire colony ship into hyper with them; so you likely can't get the colony ship there any sooner. (I guess you could use frigates to shuttle handfuls of its crew and minuscule amounts of cargo ahead)

Yes, space is mind-boggling huge and minor deviations lead to hugely different outcomes. Which is why the Jason and any other colony ship is constantly correcting its own drift so it stays on course. You don't want to find out after 620 years that you were off by half a degree. That's 4.41 light-years off-target.

The ships are not going to be too far off their base course, tangentially. The error is going to be longitudinally. So the search ship would need to make multiple drops into real space to find. The only question is how far it must be from the ship (usually behind) to get a range. A 1% error in the final ship cruising speed mean 4.4 light-years error after 550 years of travel.

But if it is found, I wasn't proposing bringing the Jason into hyper. I proposed bringing the passengers and colony supplies into hyper, then ditching the ship in another centuries-long trip towards the nearest star. Not with frigates, but using one hyper-capable freighter and one hyper-capable passenger liner.

Given what you said below about civilian ship speeds at this period in time, it's likely liners were also capable of transporting people in stasis. So they'd transfer the pods without warming people.

But also, there's a time factor involved. Jason arrives at Manticore in 1416 PD. It wasn't until 1273 PD that – Adrienne Warshawski invents the technologies that make hyperspace travel fairly safe. And House of Steel tells us that the frigates were "built in the Sol System for the Manticore Colony Trust of Zurich in 1389 PD". And even a century later, during the Manticore Ascendant series it appears even warships can go no higher than the Gamma bands. So if they could go that high it'd take the frigates at over 4 months to get from Earth to Manticore; but even if they could didn't they escort a freighter? That'd probably be restricted to the Beta bands; so double that transit time.

Indeed, but we're still talking about arriving a hundred years early or more, if the MCT had begun the search for Jason a mere 25 T-years after the invention of the Warshawski.

[quoteIt seems to have taken about a century for the invention of the warshawski detector and sail to go from initial prototypes to relatively widespread. (And the technology is so new I seriously doubt there are enough hyper capable passenger liners running around that one could be chartered for what's probably a multi-year mission)

But that means that even if the frigates found Jason immediately and were somehow able to shortcut her flight to Manticore they'd have saved her less than 27 years... [/quote]

We don't have evidence that it took that long. If you're right, then I agree the Jason is probably close enough then that it's cheaper to just send the Frigates to guard the system.

But what if it only took 25 years? That means the MCT may have needed to protect the system much earlier and those 4 frigates were not the first ships they had to purchase. Or hire -- they may have paid a security company.

At that point it's probably better to keep the frigates concentrated to defend Manticore's claim from the possibility of newly build hyper-capable colony ships and to focus on building the seed colony to help jump-start things upon Jason's arrival.

I admit your theory makes more sense.

If hyper-capable colony ships didn't begin appearing until ate in the 1300s PD, then the MCT would not have had motivation to speed up the arrival. That also explains why we only know about 4 ships so late in the process.