?

penny wrote:What would be interesting is if the MAN develops quantum communication which allows them to communicate through a WH.

Impossible to say if it can happen in the HV at all.

But it's unlikely this is something the MAlign may have been researching because it would have required them to put a lot of scientific equipment on the Felix side of the Junction, which is not something they want people to notice.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:What would be interesting is if the MAN develops quantum communication which allows them to communicate through a WH.

Impossible to say if it can happen in the HV at all.

But it's unlikely this is something the MAlign may have been researching because it would have required them to put a lot of scientific equipment on the Felix side of the Junction, which is not something they want people to notice.

Well, we know it can happen as god is his own governor.

But it would help the MAN to determine whether the GA has seized an end of the terminus without transiting, by communicating with stealthy systems that were always watching the watchers. Those possibly armed systems could also be ordered to attack, at the right time.

penny wrote:But it would help the MAN to determine whether the GA has seized an end of the terminus without transiting, by communicating with stealthy systems that were always watching the watchers. Those possibly armed systems could also be ordered to attack, at the right time.

Yes, that could help. But so could a stealthed scout that is probably always there. It would notice a fleet arriving hours ahead of time.

The problem though is that the transition is not stealthy, so anything making a transit will be seen by the invaders and they will know someone has been using that wormhole, as opposed to it just being a speculation.

I thought the spider drive needed a certain minimum dimension. Akin to a V-12 engine being too big to fit inside the engine compartment of a Volkswagen Beetle. That is why I thought the Ghost is the smallest ship possible which sports a spider drive. If the Silver Bullets can sport a spider drive it seems as if at least a single occupancy ship would be possible which should be much smaller than a Ghost.

It doesn't really need to have the compensator and all the other support systems for a low, limited use.

Now I can see a very small spider drive manned sting ship operating down on the planet. Can spider drives operate in atmosphere? Unlike wedges?

penny wrote:I thought the spider drive needed a certain minimum dimension. Akin to a V-12 engine being too big to fit inside the engine compartment of a Volkswagen Beetle. That is why I thought the Ghost is the smallest ship possible which sports a spider drive. If the Silver Bullets can sport a spider drive it seems as if at least a single occupancy ship would be possible which should be much smaller than a Ghost.

It doesn't really need to have the compensator and all the other support systems for a low, limited use.

Now I can see a very small spider drive manned sting ship operating down on the planet. Can spider drives operate in atmosphere? Unlike wedges?

A Ghost might be the minimum Spider drive ship that was also hyperspace capable. The spider drive can not use a compensator, so one might only be there for hyperspace travel.

We know that shoulder fired missiles have a wedge in the atmosphere, but wedge driven ships are excluded because of the damage that they would cause. I expect that spider drives would cause similar damage.

penny wrote:I thought the spider drive needed a certain minimum dimension. Akin to a V-12 engine being too big to fit inside the engine compartment of a Volkswagen Beetle. That is why I thought the Ghost is the smallest ship possible which sports a spider drive. If the Silver Bullets can sport a spider drive it seems as if at least a single occupancy ship would be possible which should be much smaller than a Ghost.

It doesn't really need to have the compensator and all the other support systems for a low, limited use.

Now I can see a very small spider drive manned sting ship operating down on the planet. Can spider drives operate in atmosphere? Unlike wedges?

Um, did you forget that that the graser torp also uses a spider drive?

Mission of Honor wrote:The first wave of each attack consisted of a weapon which was as much a fundamental breakthrough, in its own way, as the Manticoran introduction of the multidrive missile: a graser torpedo which used its own variant of the spider drive. It was a large and cumbersome weapon, with the same trilateral symmetry as the Shark-class ships which had launched it, and for the same reasons.
[...]
it was also a slow weapon. It was simply impossible to fit a spider drive capable of more than a few hundred gravities’ acceleration into something small enough to make a practical weapon

And, as established by the earlier quotes from UC, the g-torp is about twice the size of an MDM. It is the smallest device that we know of that mounts a Spider Drive.

Prior to UC we only knew of 4 spider powered devices:
1) Shark-class podlaying test-bed ships
2) Ghost-class recon / forward fire control ships
3) Lenard Detweiler-class giant warships
4) Graser Torpedoes

And then UC told us of 2 more:
5) Silver Bullet - graser armed, extended endurance, recon drone.
6) Wraith - recon drone

And here's where it lays out the Wraith and its spider drive

Uncompromising Honor wrote:The Wraith was the Mesan Alignment Navy’s equivalent of the Manty Ghost Rider recon platforms, and without Manticore’s new stealth systems—and their damned thumbnail fusion plants—building something equally hard to see had been a challenge. The good news was that the spider drive’s gravitic signature was incredibly faint compared to conventional impellers, so it didn’t require as much stealthing in the first place. The bad news was that the drive itself took up a lot of space and its plasma-charged accumulators took up almost as much. From the sketchy information they’d been able to assemble on Ghost Rider, a Wraith was probably at least seventy percent bigger than a current generation Manticoran recon drone. It was also much slower and lacked Ghost Rider’s FTL capability

Thanks for the post, it is very informative!

I didn't forget about the g-torps having a spider drive. They were the source of my first confusion. Recall in the Defense of Felix thread I posted this ...

penny wrote:Well, it isn't just the Silver Bullets that break with the thing I thought was written in stone.

penny wrote:Thanks for the post, it is very informative!

I didn't forget about the g-torps having a spider drive. They were the source of my first confusion. Recall in the Defense of Felix thread I posted this ...

penny wrote:Well, it isn't just the Silver Bullets that break with the thing I thought was written in stone.

Then I'm confused by your posts.

Since, like the (smaller) g-torp, the Silver Bullet also isn't a ship I don't understand why after already knowing about the smaller unmanned platform (g-torp) you'd "thought the Ghost is the smallest ship possible which sports a spider drive" but then learning about a second, larger, unmanned platform (Silver Bullet) caused you to rethink that "If the Silver Bullets can sport a spider drive it seems as if at least a single occupancy ship would be possible which should be much smaller than a Ghost".


I guess I misinterpreted that your post as you having thought, prior to learning of the Silver Bullet, that the "certain minimum dimension" of the spider drive were far larger than a Silver Bullet. (As that's the only reason I could come up with for their existence causing you to rethink those minimum dimensions)
That's is why I was wondering if you'd forgotten the smaller g-torp spider drive platform; as it would have already shown that the minimum dimensions of something carrying that drive were vastly smaller that a Ghost.

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:I thought the spider drive needed a certain minimum dimension. Akin to a V-12 engine being too big to fit inside the engine compartment of a Volkswagen Beetle. That is why I thought the Ghost is the smallest ship possible which sports a spider drive. If the Silver Bullets can sport a spider drive it seems as if at least a single occupancy ship would be possible which should be much smaller than a Ghost.

It doesn't really need to have the compensator and all the other support systems for a low, limited use.

Now I can see a very small spider drive manned sting ship operating down on the planet. Can spider drives operate in atmosphere? Unlike wedges?

Um, did you forget that that the graser torp also uses a spider drive?

Mission of Honor wrote:The first wave of each attack consisted of a weapon which was as much a fundamental breakthrough, in its own way, as the Manticoran introduction of the multidrive missile: a graser torpedo which used its own variant of the spider drive. It was a large and cumbersome weapon, with the same trilateral symmetry as the Shark-class ships which had launched it, and for the same reasons.
[...]
it was also a slow weapon. It was simply impossible to fit a spider drive capable of more than a few hundred gravities’ acceleration into something small enough to make a practical weapon

And, as established by the earlier quotes from UC, the g-torp is about twice the size of an MDM. It is the smallest device that we know of that mounts a Spider Drive.

Prior to UC we only knew of 4 spider powered devices:
1) Shark-class podlaying test-bed ships
2) Ghost-class recon / forward fire control ships
3) Lenard Detweiler-class giant warships
4) Graser Torpedoes

And then UC told us of 2 more:
5) Silver Bullet - graser armed, extended endurance, recon drone.
6) Wraith - recon drone

And here's where it lays out the Wraith and its spider drive

Uncompromising Honor wrote:The Wraith was the Mesan Alignment Navy’s equivalent of the Manty Ghost Rider recon platforms, and without Manticore’s new stealth systems—and their damned thumbnail fusion plants—building something equally hard to see had been a challenge. The good news was that the spider drive’s gravitic signature was incredibly faint compared to conventional impellers, so it didn’t require as much stealthing in the first place. The bad news was that the drive itself took up a lot of space and its plasma-charged accumulators took up almost as much. From the sketchy information they’d been able to assemble on Ghost Rider, a Wraith was probably at least seventy percent bigger than a current generation Manticoran recon drone. It was also much slower and lacked Ghost Rider’s FTL capability

There is another Spider drive ship we have seen- the BC sized Detweiler Yacht.

Theemile wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Prior to UC we only knew of 4 spider powered devices:
1) Shark-class podlaying test-bed ships
2) Ghost-class recon / forward fire control ships
3) Lenard Detweiler-class giant warships
4) Graser Torpedoes

And then UC told us of 2 more:
5) Silver Bullet - graser armed, extended endurance, recon drone.
6) Wraith - recon drone

There is another Spider drive ship we have seen- the BC sized Detweiler Yacht.

I'm not seeing anything that says his yacht, Genesis, has a spider drive. It pretty clearly has a streak drive. And it's explicitly stated that it's heavily armed. But nothing I can see about its drive system.

However, given that it took Detweiler from Mesa to Darius, I'd think they'd want a somewhat more normal looking ship to blend in around civilian traffic. And it does make a point of the yacht's speed -- and a spider drive powered ship is going to be slower than an impeller powered one (assuming both have the improved hyper generators of a streak drive). They'll have the same top speed, and be able to access the same hyper bands, but the impeller ship will be able to get out of a system and into hyper quicker, and to accelerate up to its top speed more quickly as well (either at the beginning of the journey, if forced to change hyper bands mid-journey, or if having to change heading in hyper) -- and so shave off some (usually small) fraction of the total transit time.

So lacking evidence (at least that I could find) that the yacht has a spider drive I'd assume that in fact it had a conventional impeller drive (and thus a conventional hull form)