"What if" after HH09

Jonathan_S wrote:

Theemile wrote:
Right - Cryosleep slowboat. the religion was an anti-technical one, so they set out specifically with a limited technology set. So the fact they developed the viral DNA update that saved the colony with what they had on hand was close to miraculous.

To be fair - RFC said they were very favorable to technology used for health and medical; so they brought a lot of that along. (Hence having the tools to create the DNA update to try to adapt to an environment with so much ambient heavy metals)

But anti-tech isn't why they came via slowboat. The timeline points out that they left Earth about 4 centuries before the first hyper-drive was invented. Slowboat was the only boat back then.

(In contrast, the timeline shows Manticore's slowboat colonization left about 4.5 centuries after Grayson's -- just late enough for the early (extremely risky) hyper-capable scouts to check out the system and bring back first-hand survey results)

I didn't mean to construe that the ship was intentionally crippled by the Grayson's Techno-fears. Only their colony hardware was intentionally techno limited.

Jonathan_S wrote:And they wouldn't want to waste the residual velocity they carried into hyper; so they'd almost certainly aim for their destination before beginning their run up to 0.23c and initial transition.

They wouldn't do an upwards transition at speed at all. 92% of 0 is zero. But they would do a downwards transition at the speed they were in, because that means they would need to decelerate nearly nothing.

Without impellers, those ships would have a total amount of delta-v that they could achieve. For a 0.5 top speed in a given hyperspace band, they need a delta-v total of just over 1.0 c: 0.5 to get up to speed in their cruise band in each direction (outbound and return trip), plus a little bit for manoeuvring in-system, decelerating from the downwards translation speed at the hyperlimit to orbital speeds, etc. Do note that this "little bit" that is in the noise is actually far more delta-v than any spacecraft we currently posses can generate.

Actually, the best way to make this trip is to not have a 2x delta-v on-board, but to be accelerated by a ship that doesn't make the full journey. That way, they can load up only half as much. On the outbound trip, they have the support from the industrialised Sol System, so a tug can translate with the survey ship into the cruise band, accelerate up to speed, then crash translate down.

Let's see how long that would take. Let's assume that they can generate 1.5 gravities of acceleration. To go from effectively 0 to 0.5c, they'd need to accelerate for nearly 120 days, thus would have covered 30 light-days. So I suppose those tugs wouldn't be manned... or they aren't tugs, just strap-on rocket boosters.

We're also told that the Suffren, the survey ship that went to the MBS in the 8th century PD, took 10 years. It isn't clear if that's one-way or the round-trip.

Given that Manticore is 512 light-years from Earth, 10 years in a one-way trip would be an average pseudo-velocity of 51.2c. For a trip in Alpha, that would be 0.82c, which is not possible. That also rules out a 10-year round-trip.

For the Beta, that's merely 0.06c or just 20,000 km/s. If it's a 10-year round-trip, multiply that by 2. For Gamma, that's 0.035c.

So scratch the discussion above about 0.5c delta-v. The ship doesn't need more than 0.1c delta-v even if it carries all its fuel for both directions. But getting a lift on the way out of the system still makes sense.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:They wouldn't do an upwards transition at speed at all. 92% of 0 is zero. But they would do a downwards transition at the speed they were in, because that means they would need to decelerate nearly nothing.

Without impellers, those ships would have a total amount of delta-v that they could achieve.

Except, as I mentioned, in normal space they can use hydrogen ramscoops to fuel themselves as they accelerate -- so they aren't limited to their onboard fuel reserves.

That's the only reason (other than actually having to get themselves outside the hyper limit) it makes any sense to accelerate before the hyper transition.


So they shouldn't need tugs because RFC gave them tech that allows them to accelerate while refilling their hydrogen fuel tanks (presumably, once they reach some critical velocity)

Here's OBS's mention of the early hyper ships

On Basilisk Station wrote:It had been discovered early on that translating into the alpha band, the lowest of the hyper bands, at a velocity greater than thirty percent that of light was suicide, yet people had continued to kill themselves for centuries in efforts to translate at speeds higher than that. Not because they were suicidal, but because such a low velocity had severely limited the usefulness of hyper travel.
The translation into or out of any given band of hyper-space was a complex energy transfer that cost the translating vessel most of its original velocity-as much as ninety-two percent of it, in the case of the alpha band. The energy loss dropped slightly with each "higher" hyper band, but its presence remained a constant, and for over five standard centuries, all hyper ships had relied on reaction drives.
There were limits to the amount of reaction mass a ship could carry, and hydrogen catcher fields didn't work in the extreme conditions of hyper-space.

You're not saving much reaction mass by transitioning at speed. But you're saving a little; and I guess that was worth it to them.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:We're also told that the Suffren, the survey ship that went to the MBS in the 8th century PD, took 10 years. It isn't clear if that's one-way or the round-trip.

Given that Manticore is 512 light-years from Earth, 10 years in a one-way trip would be an average pseudo-velocity of 51.2c. For a trip in Alpha, that would be 0.82c, which is not possible. That also rules out a 10-year round-trip.

For the Beta, that's merely 0.06c or just 20,000 km/s. If it's a 10-year round-trip, multiply that by 2. For Gamma, that's 0.035c.

So scratch the discussion above about 0.5c delta-v. The ship doesn't need more than 0.1c delta-v even if it carries all its fuel for both directions. But getting a lift on the way out of the system still makes sense.

Several items that will probably mess that calculation are 1)
The time to survey a system, and 2) how many systems surveyed.

They probably spent several months on Sphinx, Manticore and Gryphon each, and travel between Manticorian stellar components probably took at least a month on it's own. In addition, we don't know how through of a survey they do of a system's other resources and how long that takes.

And lastly, What are the chances that Manticore was the first system surveyed? They might have spent 3 years in other systems before finding Manticore - with 3 habitable planets needing little to no terraforming in 2 adjacent mineral rich systems, this is the goldmine you run back with, so we know it was the last on the survey. But how much time did they spend finding it?

Theemile wrote:Several items that will probably mess that calculation are 1)
The time to survey a system, and 2) how many systems surveyed.

They probably spent several months on Sphinx, Manticore and Gryphon each, and travel between Manticorian stellar components probably took at least a month on it's own. In addition, we don't know how through of a survey they do of a system's other resources and how long that takes.

We know that they missed the treecats. So not a completely thorough survey... but then the settlers also missed them for over half a century, so not a black mark on Franchot et Fils' book.

And lastly, What are the chances that Manticore was the first system surveyed? They might have spent 3 years in other systems before finding Manticore - with 3 habitable planets needing little to no terraforming in 2 adjacent mineral rich systems, this is the goldmine you run back with, so we know it was the last on the survey. But how much time did they spend finding it?

Not "finding" because Manticore' was well-known before this. They knew they were going to Manticore before leaving Earth.

But I agree we have no reason to believe it was the only system visited and all the reasons to believe they visited a few others, especially because of that 10-year trip. If they were going to run up to 0.2c and spend 39 months in hyper to get to the region, they may as well survey every system they could.

I don't think they would have returned immediately. This was a very lengthy trip that few -- if any other! -- survey company would have come to. It was probably commissioned too, so whoever paid for it wouldn't have paid for two companies to go and the others wouldn't go if they weren't being paid for it.

The chance of lightening striking twice in the same trip would be too low, but even if they didn't find other MBSes out there, we know there are lots of other systems with inhabitable planets in the region, like Alizon, Casca, Zanzibar, etc.. Franchot et Fils might have been the initial surveyors of those. Maybe even Kuan Yin (future New Berlin system).

Though... I don't think there's enough time for the Kuan Yin colony expedition to get organised, launched, arrive, then run into famine before Gustav Anderman took over in 1512 PD. The wiki says "settled centuries earlier."

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Though... I don't think there's enough time for the Kuan Yin colony expedition to get organised, launched, arrive, then run into famine before Gustav Anderman took over in 1512 PD. The wiki says "settled centuries earlier."

Hmm. Now that you mention it I agree.
EOH says

Echoes of Honor wrote:Like the original Manticoran settlers, Kuan Yin's colonists set out from Old Earth before the Warshawski sail had made hyper-space safe enough for colony vessels. They'd made the centuries-long voyage sublight, in cryo, only to discover that the original survey had missed a minor point about their new home's ecosystem. Specifically, about its microbiology.

However, what I'm not finding is anything that states that Kuan Yin was settled for centuries before Gustav showed up; nor how long they'd waged their "ultimately hopeless war against their own planet's microbiology". And the wiki entry for the Andermani Empire doesn't list any source for that "centuries" statement.



But let's crunch some numbers.
That quote indicates that they had on-site survey results before they left. So, like Manticore, a hyperscout must have visited the system and returned.

I also didn't notice a stated distance between New Berlin and Earth; but eyeballing the maps (a risky approach) it looks to be about 15% further from Earth than Manticore. So instead of the ~10 years each way the survey ship visiting Manticore took let's call it about 12 years each way.

And if their colony ship was as capable as Jason then instead of the 641 years it took the colonists to cover the 512 LY to Manticore (~0.8c) you'd expect the Kuan Yin expedition's ship to take about 740 years to cover ~589 LY. (And I doubt the sublight ships would be much exceeding 0.8c)

Manticore's expedition took less than 2 years from gaining rights to the system to actually departing -- so they clearly were well advanced in having their expedition organized, their ship ready and largely stockpiled. They were just waiting to win the rights to a suitable system before completing loading and departing. So lets assume the Kuan Yin could also depart the year after the survey results returned.

Given those numbers, and the invention of the first hyperdrive in 725 the very earliest you could expect them to arrive is:
725 PD
+ 24 years hyper survey round trip
+ 1 year survey time
+ 1 year pre-departure
+ 740 years sublight transit
------
= 1503 PD

Oops. Not only is that not "centuries" before Gustav arrived; but in fact is only 9 years before Gustav rescued the colony and founded his empire (1512 PD - per MA4; and I verified that citation)


The only way they could have arrived "centuries" earlier would have been if, like the Grayson colony expedition, they left long before hyperscouts were a thing.
But then the mention of the survey missing the microbiology makes no sense because you wouldn't expect a telescopic survey to tell you anything about microbiology.

So I think we can dismiss the wiki's unsourced claim of arriving centuries earlier. However I also think that just 9 years of survival, even assuming that the survey ship left the same year hyperdrives were invented (unlike the Manticore survey that didn't leave for 28 years after that) isn't all that plausible either.

So I think the map probably needs to be corrected to pull New Berlin a little closer to Earth.


By my calculations if Potsdam/New Berlin was only 573 LY from Earth (12.1% further than Manticore; rather than 15%), then we could have the survey ship leave just a few years before Manticore's and still have the Chinese colonists arriving in Kuan Yin by 1492 PD; giving then a generation (20 years) of struggle against the microbiology before gratefully being rescued by Gustav.

Jonathan_S wrote:I also didn't notice a stated distance between New Berlin and Earth; but eyeballing the maps (a risky approach) it looks to be about 15% further from Earth than Manticore. So instead of the ~10 years each way the survey ship visiting Manticore took let's call it about 12 years each way.

I agree we can't tell the exact distance from those maps alone, but we do have evidence from the books it is further away from Earth, meaningfully so because the travel in hyper from Manticore to it is a great deal of time for Travis.

However, the figure of 10 or 12 years isn't good for the travel time itself. As Theemile pointed out above, it's very likely those expeditions spent a lot of time in the actual act of surveying the system and others nearby. The Suffren couldn't have gone to Manticore and back in the Alpha band in less than 27.5 years, so necessarily they used the Beta band. But if they did so, then a 0.2c trip in the Beta band would only take 6.67 years round-trip.

And if their colony ship was as capable as Jason then instead of the 641 years it took the colonists to cover the 512 LY to Manticore (~0.8c) you'd expect the Kuan Yin expedition's ship to take about 740 years to cover ~589 LY. (And I doubt the sublight ships would be much exceeding 0.8c)

Manticore's expedition took less than 2 years from gaining rights to the system to actually departing -- so they clearly were well advanced in having their expedition organized, their ship ready and largely stockpiled. They were just waiting to win the rights to a suitable system before completing loading and departing. So lets assume the Kuan Yin could also depart the year after the survey results returned.

Given those numbers, and the invention of the first hyperdrive in 725 the very earliest you could expect them to arrive is:
725 PD
+ 24 years hyper survey round trip
+ 1 year survey time
+ 1 year pre-departure
+ 740 years sublight transit
------
= 1503 PD

Oops. Not only is that not "centuries" before Gustav arrived; but in fact is only 9 years before Gustav rescued the colony and founded his empire (1512 PD - per MA4; and I verified that citation)
[snip]
So I think we can dismiss the wiki's unsourced claim of arriving centuries earlier. However I also think that just 9 years of survival, even assuming that the survey ship left the same year hyperdrives were invented (unlike the Manticore survey that didn't leave for 28 years after that) isn't all that plausible either.

Agreed on both counts.

So I think the map probably needs to be corrected to pull New Berlin a little closer to Earth.

Yes. Even if we place the survey there-and-back-again at only 10 years, that would place the Kuan Yin colonists arriving only in 1490 PD. That's still too close for the famine to have developed and Anderman to arrive and found his empire.

BTW, it wasn't an Empire until Kuan Yin (now named Potsdam) was attacked and he was forced to retaliate, thereby conquering the nearby system. We have this from "Traitor" in What Price Victory?

Traitor; Ch. I wrote:Seven T-years after Anderman's arrival, Ronald Devane of Nimbalkar had allowed one of his vassals, Baron Sigismund, to raid the New Berlin system. [...]
Devane should also have looked into the tales of Gustav's fighting skills and checked out Leignitz's success rate. He hadn't, and as a result was forced to watch as his world was annexed barely a T-year later. Three years after that, New Berlin and Nimbalkar were formally redesignated as the Andermani Empire, with King Gustav now as Emperor Gustav.

(emphasis mine)

Even with the rounding in those numbers, that's a 10-year gap, so Gustav Anderman must have landed in Kuan Yin in 1502.

So:
a) I don't think Potsdam can be 740 light-years from Sol; 573 by your calculations is far more likely, but one would need to calculate the travel times that Travis and Lisa had to undertake when visiting New Berlin in ACTI while in a warship in the Delta band to confirm the possibilities

b) I think it is still possible that the system was surveyed by Suffren herself. It's way too far from any colonisation expansion wave for there to have been a commissioned expedition at that point in time. Manticore was a known binary system and must have shown signs of habitability, so commissioning a survey there is an acceptable theory. But if the ship did go all the way, it might as well survey other options, and sell the data on the return.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:I also didn't notice a stated distance between New Berlin and Earth; but eyeballing the maps (a risky approach) it looks to be about 15% further from Earth than Manticore. So instead of the ~10 years each way the survey ship visiting Manticore took let's call it about 12 years each way.

I agree we can't tell the exact distance from those maps alone, but we do have evidence from the books it is further away from Earth, meaningfully so because the travel in hyper from Manticore to it is a great deal of time for Travis.

However, the figure of 10 or 12 years isn't good for the travel time itself. As Theemile pointed out above, it's very likely those expeditions spent a lot of time in the actual act of surveying the system and others nearby. The Suffren couldn't have gone to Manticore and back in the Alpha band in less than 27.5 years, so necessarily they used the Beta band. But if they did so, then a 0.2c trip in the Beta band would only take 6.67 years round-trip.

First, the maps do make clear that Earth, Manticore, and New Berlin form a triangle, not a line. New Berlin is shown to be a bit further out than Manticore, but it's also significantly off to the side (Basically in the top of the map is north, it'd be west-northwest of Manticore). That makes it infeasible to attempt to use Travis's transit time to cross-check New Berlin's distance from Earth. Even if we know its distance from Manticore, that generates many possible distances from Earth (basically how far North of Manticore it is vs how far West), as we still don't know the exact heading from Manticore to New Berlin.



As for surveying other systems while you're in the area. I agree that logistically that makes sense. However the text is quite explicit that those early hyperscouts could only managed about 50c effective -- which means cruising at just 0.06c in the Beta bands; a far cry from the 0.2c you were postulating.

And at 50c Suffren just barely has time to make the run to Manticore and back plus several months of surveying while fitting within the known dates surrounding its survey. So, as bizarre as it seems to spend 20 years in transit for no more than a year or so surveying a single system that's what the numbers RFC laid out appear to back up...

BTW, it wasn't an Empire until Kuan Yin (now named Potsdam) was attacked and he was forced to retaliate, thereby conquering the nearby system. We have this from "Traitor" in What Price Victory?
Traitor; Ch. I wrote:
Seven T-years after Anderman's arrival, Ronald Devane of Nimbalkar had allowed one of his vassals, Baron Sigismund, to raid the New Berlin system. [...]
Devane should also have looked into the tales of Gustav's fighting skills and checked out Leignitz's success rate. He hadn't, and as a result was forced to watch as his world was annexed barely a T-year later. Three years after that, New Berlin and Nimbalkar were formally redesignated as the Andermani Empire, with King Gustav now as Emperor Gustav.

(emphasis mine)

Even with the rounding in those numbers, that's a 10-year gap, so Gustav Anderman must have landed in Kuan Yin in 1502.

Actually, the date that you can get from MA4 is for his arrival -- it was the wiki editor who called that arrival the founding on the Empire..

A Call to Insurrection wrote:"BOOK TWO
1546 PD
[...]
It had only been thirty-four T-years ago that Gustav Anderman and the mercenaries of Liegnitz, Ltd., descended on the Old Chinese-founded world of Kuan Yin and rescued the colonists from slow starvation."

1546 PD - 34 years = 1512 PD.
So that is clearly when he arrived; and we'd then use your text to place the formal designation of the Empire as around 1522 PD.

Jonathan_S wrote:1546 PD - 34 years = 1512 PD.
So that is clearly when he arrived; and we'd then use your text to place the formal designation of the Empire as around 1522 PD.

That's possible too, though a reread of "Traitor" for internal chronology is required. I think I posted something earlier in the year when the anthology came out that included dates. In particular, that the main story takes place barely before the Secour Conference, something around 1530 PD. Is there enough time between the founding of the Empire and the events of the first MA books, and for Cutler "Jen's Son" von Tischendorf to have reached the necessary age?