When you're a hammer: MAlign blind spots

cthia wrote:Snippage ...

Some foster parents are simply glorified baby sitters collecting a government check for incentive. I wonder if Herlander's family was receiving some sort of incentive.

.../snippage

Weren't the Herlander's going to be moved up on the list to have a child of their own?

What ever happened to Herlander's wife? Was she moved to Darius? Or was she part of the breakage?

Fox2! wrote:

cthia wrote:Snippage ...

Some foster parents are simply glorified baby sitters collecting a government check for incentive. I wonder if Herlander's family was receiving some sort of incentive.

.../snippage

Weren't the Herlander's going to be moved up on the list to have a child of their own?

What ever happened to Herlander's wife? Was she moved to Darius? Or was she part of the breakage?

She essentially left Simoes AFAIR, what happened with her after that we don't know.

Jonathan_S wrote:So there must have been slave lines that got the life extension genetic mods trialed and perfected within them before those were ever spliced into even a Gamma line.

Not necessarily. Yes, it's likely they tested the earliest versions in slaves and probably built in some other termination trigger instead. They monitored the ageing via other biological processes than when death occurred -- no one is going to wait 120 years to see if they were successful.

But it may not have been in slaves. There may have been plenty of volunteers for that. I mean, parents volunteering their upcoming children. Or just more Francescas.

cthia wrote:Holy crankshaft Batman! Does anyone else have a problem with the inhumanity of it all? Planned obsolescence is fine for products, but when you characterize people as product you cross the line into megalomania. There is no way the galaxy at large will accept this. Not only is it slavery. It is customized slavery. The galaxy will piss its pants at the sheer shock of it all. Just think if the South could have done that to its slaves.

You may have a point there. Left unchecked, those megalomaniacs may think of themselves as better than everyone else and, through their arrogance, think they deserve to rule the Galaxy. And when humanity doesn't suddenly bend to their will, they may try to take over by force, by unleashing death and destruction until they have their way...

There may be a story to tell there.

We have gotten a lot of small and not-so-small looks at what the Alignment (either itself or via Manpower and affiliated companies) have done in their experimentation and trials of various modifications to human genetics.

I can't recall any mention of either the Alignment or Manpower genetically coding a cloned or genetically modified human to die at a set age. That does not mean they may not have tried it but so far the only invasive "kill switch" (other than the killer nanotech injections) have been giving individuals something that has to be "reset", or possibly it was they have to have checked in physical with their control, or they die. Like that agent who discovered Jack McBride was dealing with Zilwicki and later dies when he is being questioned by in the middle of the fighting with Thandy in charge.

My guess would be that "failed" experiments would be culled. Any PROBLEM personnel could be terminated- we see a bit of that like the micro nuke in the flyer as part of Houdini etc- but setting a genetic deadline (shades of Blade Runner) doesn't seem to be part of the planning. That various slaves or slave lines might be "enhanced" for certain strengths or expected work needs and are not expected to last for more than X years doing it is a differnt story. On the job hazards in dangerous conditions or environments to which the slaves have been modified at a genetic level to do better in than normal humans are also going to take a toll, probably a major one.
The other question is IF a slave or seccie would be given any version of Prolong rather than more or less only letting them have up to 50 or 60 years (without Prolong) and just letting them wear/age out. That does cut down on some potential problem and -this is Manpower/Alignment thinking- it's a cost/benefit thing. Prolong vs how long a given line/individual is expected to last and/or be useful.

The Alpha, Beta, Gamma etc lines....well, they would want to extend their useful lives to take advanced of all that superiority and increased "alphness" etc- right up to the point where an individual becomes unstable or otherwise a liability and will then be (quietly or not- depends if an object lesson is needed) removed from their position and retired to a Dirt Nap or the recycling center, which ever is the then-current mode of disposition.
Cynical.....the Alignment is nothing if not practical and cynical.

Brigade XO wrote:Cynical.....the Alignment is nothing if not practical and cynical.

My suspicion is that they look as practical and efficient as the Nazis looked, and in reality will be as chaotic and inefficient as the Nazis really were.

kzt wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:Cynical.....the Alignment is nothing if not practical and cynical.

My suspicion is that they look as practical and efficient as the Nazis looked, and in reality will be as chaotic and inefficient as the Nazis really were.

The Alignment looks fairly practical from what we have seen so far. Also a bunch of murderous, apparently mostly at least amoral when it comes to dealing with everything as long as it furthers their grand plan. Quite willing to kill millions just to misdirect any adversary. Of course they also appear to be only one step short of the personality of a rabid wolverine crossed with a spider on crack. But that is just one opinion. Make's Start Trek's Kahn look like a cuddly bunny.

Brigade XO wrote:

kzt wrote:
The Alignment looks fairly practical from what we have seen so far. Also a bunch of murderous, apparently mostly at least amoral when it comes to dealing with everything as long as it furthers their grand plan. Quite willing to kill millions just to misdirect any adversary. ...

Gangsters are ALWAYS "practical". And the Malignment is a pure gangster setup.

Many extreme ideologues end up that way. Even among "enlightened, educated" societies. I fear it's endemic to the human condition as we've seen demonstrated repeatedly recently.

kzt wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:But remember that single-ring wedges are susceptible to harmonic stresses (the case of sloop HMS Phobos in Travis' era) and single-band wedges are vulnerable to the Crippler.

Could it be that Charles will make a come back to save some system's bacon with the Crippler against an LD?

You know missiles are single ring too?

Hence why David never references anything in those stories.

Which would mean the crippler could be used for missile defense.

Joat42 wrote:My take on the trilateral design is that the tractors try to pull the ship while the pressors push, and to balance the forces the simplest geometry is trilateral. And as you say, it's probably possible to perhaps have other multilateral designs but there are physics/engineering constraints that preclude them.

What would be the point? The spider is limited by the crew, not by the power of the drive. There's no point to building a better spider other than for a drone. (Although I could see value in a hexagonal one being more able to take battle damage and still work. Probably not worth it, though.)