Manticore-Haven distance IEH Ch2(mid point)

I am going to presume that the Manticore-Haven-Earth-Beowulf map has been retconned from the statements of In Enemy Hands? I just can't find a post about it? By actual paper map at front of book:

Manticore--> Haven distance looks ~360LY

IEH by written statement in ch: 2 mid point has Haven 1800 LY from Earth in text! (Why do I not remember reading this before?)

Manticore is 475LY from Beowulf
Beowulf is on Sigma Draconis
Sigma Draconis is ~19LY from Earth
Even if a straight line between Earth->Manticore->Haven this makes distance between Manticore/Haven a ***tidy*** ~1300Ly Realspace Geometry makes this probably ~1500LY, yet paper map at front of book shows ~360LY or so.

Anyway. Just a ... SAY WHAT??? in text. Only way one could POSSIBLY square this is if the author meant ROUND TRIP distance but simply never put it in text or it got edited into oblivion.

Of course next paragraph says 1200LY between Haven-->Erewhon so

Where is the retcon or has this just been swept under the rug over time and I just never noticed?

Considering the published maps I'll attribute these errors do brainfarts, missing context, speech2text misinterpretation and editors.

There is one caveat though, sometimes the distance mentioned can include wormhole-travel which inflates the numbers significantly compared to the actual direct distance. When it comes to the distance mentioned between Manticore - Haven it doesn't make any sense unless they for example used a route like this: Manticore -(w)-> Hennesy --> Terra Hautue -(w)-> Erewhon --> Haven.

Can't rely on the maps for accuracy; they lack a third dimension.

Further complicating any distance-based reverse-engineering is that ships could be taking less direct routes to avoid dangerous areas of hyperspace or to take advantage of grav waves as well as the wormholes Joat42 mentioned. After all, we don't actually know where all of those are.

It's a bit like how the distance between New York and LA is 2475 miles for a bird, but for a car it's more like 2800 miles. Either figure is more accurate depending on the context.

I looked up the numbers in IEH ch2 and when it comes to the 1200ly number it references the fact that Manticore controls all wormholes connecting to the League within a 1200ly distance from Haven.

My interpretation of White Haven's musing here is that it's the sum of the real-space distances between systems the PRH has to travel through to get to League-space, ie he uses the actual distance between wormholes as part of the sum. It would have made more sense to mention the distance you had to travel instead, which would better confer the communications-lag.

So that means that the 1800ly number is the total real-space distance between the systems that has the quickest route to the League from Haven, but it doesn't actually tell us which systems they are and what wormholes are used to shorten the actual travel distance.

In short, the numbers aren't actually very relevant and doesn't confer to the reader what the communication-lag is for Haven which is the single important part here for the story.

Relax wrote:I am going to presume that the Manticore-Haven-Earth-Beowulf map has been retconned from the statements of In Enemy Hands? I just can't find a post about it? By actual paper map at front of book:

Manticore--> Haven distance looks ~360LY

IEH by written statement in ch: 2 mid point has Haven 1800 LY from Earth in text! (Why do I not remember reading this before?)

Manticore is 475LY from Beowulf
Beowulf is on Sigma Draconis
Sigma Draconis is ~19LY from Earth
Even if a straight line between Earth->Manticore->Haven this makes distance between Manticore/Haven a ***tidy*** ~1300Ly Realspace Geometry makes this probably ~1500LY, yet paper map at front of book shows ~360LY or so.

The distance to Sigma Draconis is canonically 62 light-years in the Honorverse. We can't use the real-world number of 18.8 light-years, even though that's one of the best measured distances (our error bar is 0.008 ly) because it's so close.

Manticore is also canonically 512 light-years from Sol. That is also only possible if Sigma Draconis is at least 37 light-years from here.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The distance to Sigma Draconis is canonically 62 light-years in the Honorverse. We can't use the real-world number of 18.8 light-years, even though that's one of the best measured distances (our error bar is 0.008 ly) because it's so close.

Manticore is also canonically 512 light-years from Sol. That is also only possible if Sigma Draconis is at least 37 light-years from here.

Using all the official published maps and measuring the distance between Sol and Sigma Draconis we get ~37ly, and from Sigma Draconis to Manticore we get ~475ly which nicely adds up to 512ly which corresponds to the canonical distance.

If 62ly is the canonical distance from Sol to Sigma Draconis it means all the published maps are wrong. According to the Honorverse wiki, the canonical distance is 40ly with a note that it's wrong and the actual distance is 18ly.

I've never seen the 62ly number before, the only system I know that has that approximate distance from Sol is Visigoth.

It's too bad rfc hasn't posted his database of the Honorverse-galaxy even if it is in an unknown format for an obsolete piece of software, I'm sure we could tickle it a bit and dump it out into something that's readable. That is, if it still exists at this point.

Joat42 wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The distance to Sigma Draconis is canonically 62 light-years in the Honorverse. We can't use the real-world number of 18.8 light-years, even though that's one of the best measured distances (our error bar is 0.008 ly) because it's so close.

Manticore is also canonically 512 light-years from Sol. That is also only possible if Sigma Draconis is at least 37 light-years from here.

Using all the official published maps and measuring the distance between Sol and Sigma Draconis we get ~37ly, and from Sigma Draconis to Manticore we get ~475ly which nicely adds up to 512ly which corresponds to the canonical distance.

If 62ly is the canonical distance from Sol to Sigma Draconis it means all the published maps are wrong. According to the Honorverse wiki, the canonical distance is 40ly with a note that it's wrong and the actual distance is 18ly.

I've never seen the 62ly number before, the only system I know that has that approximate distance from Sol is Visigoth.

It's too bad rfc hasn't posted his database of the Honorverse-galaxy even if it is in an unknown format for an obsolete piece of software, I'm sure we could tickle it a bit and dump it out into something that's readable. That is, if it still exists at this point.

I'm not sure there is actually a consistent database of where names stars are in the Honorverse.
Wasn't one of the early maps effectively sketched on a napkin and then cleaned up for inclusion in the book?

And even for things which are in the Honorverse bible the books aren't always consistent because RFC will go by memory, or make a typo/thinko, or some other writing/editing mistake and end up publishing a book with an 'incorrect' value.

So even if there was a master database of stars it would probably conflict with at least some of the direct or indirect bits in the books about distances or locations. And then we'd be arguing about whether the book or the database was canonical

Jonathan_S wrote:I'm not sure there is actually a consistent database of where names stars are in the Honorverse.
Wasn't one of the early maps effectively sketched on a napkin and then cleaned up for inclusion in the book?

And even for things which are in the Honorverse bible the books aren't always consistent because RFC will go by memory, or make a typo/thinko, or some other writing/editing mistake and end up publishing a book with an 'incorrect' value.

So even if there was a master database of stars it would probably conflict with at least some of the direct or indirect bits in the books about distances or locations. And then we'd be arguing about whether the book or the database was canonical

Is that distance Pre- or Post- "Great Re-Measuring"?

Total Side note, I don't believe we've ever see how close Zunker and Sanctuary are to each other.

It's got to be the quickest way from Manticore to Bolthole (20 LY to Idaho, wormhole to Zunker, X distance to Sanctuary, 12 LY to wormhole, wormhole to far side of Havenite space.

Will this upend traffic patterns to Haven?

Of course, Haven will want to release it's secret about Bolthole first.

Jonathan_S wrote:I'm not sure there is actually a consistent database of where names stars are in the Honorverse.

There is a database, rfc used some kind of mapping-software a very long time ago which is now defunct. If I remember correctly, they printed out a map from it which he has been using as a reference.

Jonathan_S wrote:Wasn't one of the early maps effectively sketched on a napkin and then cleaned up for inclusion in the book?

Yes, this one. You can find most of the early book maps here.

Jonathan_S wrote:And even for things which are in the Honorverse bible the books aren't always consistent because RFC will go by memory, or make a typo/thinko, or some other writing/editing mistake and end up publishing a book with an 'incorrect' value.

Well, it's better to have accurate "errata" which can then be applied on re-prints.

Jonathan_S wrote:So even if there was a master database of stars it would probably conflict with at least some of the direct or indirect bits in the books about distances or locations. And then we'd be arguing about whether the book or the database was canonical

What's correct is always author's fiat, unless we can convince him of his errors