SLN, and MAlign playing catch up with Manticoran superiority

Just upstream this thread Thinksmarkedly suggested a way that repulser or tractor beams could be made. Electricity is definitely one of those ways.

The alpha wall is a concentrated band of gravity encompassing a concentrated region of gravity which conspire to form a barrier. Concentrated barriers of gravity cannot be easily traversed. If imprisoned inside of a black hole, you will not be getting a parole.

We must not get caught up in the terminology of an alpha “wall.” The only thing the alpha wall has in common with the physical construct of the same name is that it is a barrier. But not a container. Although it performs as a container would perform, I posit the alpha wall is comprised of the same construct of that which it holds at bay. Concentrated gravity. What else could contain very powerful gravity waves from bleeding out of one band into the other. The wall itself is the beginning of the highly concentrated gravity. It is difficult to cross. In storyline, we hear about “bouncing off of the various walls” all the time. The ships are bouncing off highly concentrated regions of space; represser regions if you will. Gigantic represser beams in space. Space-time is stitched together with gravity. Alpha, beta, theta and delta "walls" are kept apart by these stitches. Inasmuch as thread uses the same material as clothing.

Consider a black hole which is the most concentrated region of gravity we know of. The point where that concentrated region of gravity begins is referred to as the event horizon. The Schwarzschild radius. The Schwarzschild radius is also a very powerful region of gravity. It is also interesting to note that the farther one ventures away from the event horizon the stronger the gravity becomes. Likewise, in the HV the higher one goes up a band (away from the wall) the more powerful the gravity waves become.

Visualize a warship's wedge. The outermost layer of the wedge would be its event horizon. Is that horizon any less gravitic?

An LD uses its tractors to create intensely focused tunnels of gravity to lock onto highly focused regions of gravity waves.

Gravity waves interact with gravity

Some of the results are theoretical. The "theory," or uncertainty of it all, very well might be the resultant gravity behind the varying authors' opinions of what might happen if hyperspace meets the intense gravity well inside the hyper limit.

I'll probably upset some on here, but do you see the correlation of medieval scholars debating furiously on how many angels can dance on a pin head?
This universe is whatever RFC says it is.

Daryl wrote:I'll probably upset some on here, but do you see the correlation of medieval scholars debating furiously on how many angels can dance on a pin head?
This universe is whatever RFC says it is.

The Humpty Dumpty drive works exactly like it says, no more and no less.

penny wrote:We must not get caught up in the terminology of an alpha “wall.” The only thing the alpha wall has in common with the physical construct of the same name is that it is a barrier.

An LD uses its tractors to create intensely focused tunnels of gravity to lock onto highly focused regions of gravity waves.

You give very good advice when you seem to say that we should not to get caught up in what the wall is, the important thing is what it does. But then you descend into trying to explain what it is. The only important "facts" about the alpha wall are that the spider drive can grab onto it and the very much stronger wedge can bend it to the point that energy from the Alpha band can flow though to help power that wedge.

For the purposes of this discussion, you should forget about gravity waves, because the author uses that concept to describe things that only appear in certain areas of hyperspace. When present sails MUST be used to move in hyperspace and when not present then the wedge or the spider drive can be used to move. In particular the tractor beams grab the alpha wall and not any gravity wave. Are the tractor beams really "intensely focused tunnels of gravity", if they do NOT create an optical distortion?

I always try to answer the many questions in all of the posts directed at me. It takes time "fighting battles" on all fronts. For once I would like to get an answer to one of the questions I have directed to all of you.

What construct do you suppose the alpha wall is made of? Is it gravitational in nature?

STOP! Don't go around it.

penny wrote:I always try to answer the many questions in all of the posts directed at me. It takes time "fighting battles" on all fronts. For once I would like to get an answer to one of the questions I have directed to all of you.

What construct do you suppose the alpha wall is made of? Is it gravitational in nature?

STOP! Don't go around it.

I have not the faintest idea; it obviously cannot be made of matter. But how can it be made of gravity without mass to cause it? What else is there? What separates the multiverses?

This is simply one of the meta-problems of science fiction: the author can describe an effect that we cannot explain nor replicate. At that point, if you like the story, you accept the effect exists in the story without worrying how it could be produced. Accept the Zen of what does, without trying to pierce the illusion of how it came about.

Some time ago in this forum I stated that the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen in a movie occurs in Star Wars when an oxen like creature is pulling a zero gravity wagon. The combination of beast power and high science was ludicrous and I could not accept it. Perhaps that helps to explain why I only liked the original three movies, so it wasn't just the fault of Jar Jar Binks. On the other hand there are many things I dislike about the way starships work in David Drake's RCN Series; but I like the societies and interpersonal interactions that he creates so much, that I am willing to suppress my disagreements and enjoy the stories.

penny wrote:I always try to answer the many questions in all of the posts directed at me. It takes time "fighting battles" on all fronts. For once I would like to get an answer to one of the questions I have directed to all of you.

What construct do you suppose the alpha wall is made of? Is it gravitational in nature?

STOP! Don't go around it.

We do not know, but there's no particular reason to think that the barrier between different "levels" of spacetime must be gravitational in character.

penny wrote:

It would be enough energy to destroy the ship if the ship is actually in hyper where there is no wedge to protect it. The danger is actually from the grav waves that are found in hyperspace. Enter the Warshawski sail to tame the grav waves.

I expect when something that holds a lot of energy is pierced, that energy will flow through the bridge (piercing). Entropy. The powerful wedge absorbs this energy. From where does this energy flow? Is the wedge siphoning energy from hyperspace alone or from a grav wave?

Jonathan_S wrote:

Where does it say that the energy siphoned off by an active wedge would be enough to destroy the ship?

See below.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Though even if true it seem irrelevant. Ships can only access it by having their wedge active, and the siphoned power is less than the wedge needs to maintain itself -- so there's no net flow of energy towards the ship. Instead the wedge drains power from both the ship's reactor and hyperspace.

However, that amount of energy is not irrelevant as far as the LD is concerned. I do not consider that 60% of the energy needed to maintain a wedge is a trivial amount of energy. Do you believe an LD would survive contact with a wedge that was only at 60% power? Neither do I. Nor do I think any other ship would survive without a wedge to protect it.

Jonathan_S wrote:

(And a ship doesn't need a wedge to protect it in hyper -- as the early hyper-capable exploration ships used reaction drives (and more recently we've see ships lose or shut down their drive in hyper and be fine)

But a ship does need something to protect it if it comes into contact with a gravity wave, a much more concentrated source of energy. That something is the sails. I suspect the sails in hyper act the same as the sails on the sea. It catches and spreads the energy (winds) along the width of the sails. I suspect the wedge does the same thing from n-space. And I suspect it safely accomplishes this feat via taming the energy by using a “phased” array. The phased-array manages the chaotic frequencies of energy caused by the unpredictable interaction between gravity and gravity waves.

Jonathan wrote:

I'm extra confused by suddenly pulling grav waves and sails into this. Yes running into a grav wave without an active sail is very dangerous -- inability to detect and avoid them was fatal to all early hyper ships (whether reaction drive or impeller powered). But you go on to speculate that because (you claim) drawing power from hyper is dangerous and grav waves are dangerous that likely you're drawing power from grav waves -- which seems fallacious logic.

No, I do not claim that power is being drawn from gravity waves. I do ask where the energy is coming from and if gravity waves are a possibility. It is obvious the energy has to at least partly originate from hyper as far as the LD is concerned. Well… (muttering under my breath).

The LD does not pierce the alpha wall. And neither does a wedge.

However! A wedge draws its energy from the much more concentrated energy contained on the other side of the “wall” as witnessed by god ...

runsforcelery wrote:

Whenever an impeller drive vessel activates its wedge, whether in normal-space or hyper-space, it "bends" space around itself. [...] It is the "bending" effect on the Alpha wall, for example, which makes it possible to detect and track impeller footprints in real-time at ranges of up to several light-minutes. The same phenomenon operates in hyper- space, except that the hyper-wall being bent isn't necessarily the Alpha wall; it's whatever the next higher hyper-wall may be.

When the wall is bent, energy is siphoned across it from the "higher" hyper band on its other side. Hyper-space is an area of inherently higher energy levels, and the siphon effect could be considered a sort of strictly limited, primitive ancestor of the "core tap" in the Mutineers' Moon Universe. The initial power for the wedge has to come from internal sources -- current generation and stored power. Once the initial energy investment is made, something like 60% of the energy necessary to maintain and power the wedge is drawn through the "siphon" effect.

And to think I almost used the term “tap” but instead went with bridge. A few clicks upstream, I actually posited the wall was being pierced by the implication of siphon. To siphon from something, that something has to be pierced. But from the post Jonathan included of runsforcelery’s explanation, the alpha wall is not being pierced. It simply goes about the energy drain in another manner. This author knows there is more than one way to skin a cat. From the explanation, space-time is being bent, warped. One result of bending space-time is faster apparent velocity. Another result of bending space-time, apparently says the author, is it enables a siphoning effect of energy from the higher bands.

Let's visualize this in another manner. Energy is powerful enough that it can jump barriers if the barriers are small enough and the energy is powerful enough. I found out the hard way that it is not enough to simply unplug the old television sets before a major electrical storm. My mother instructed her naive kid to unplug the TV set and move the cord far away from the outlet. “But Mom, I unplugged it. The electricity cannot jump into the TV if it is not connected by the cord," a tap, a bridge. Oh, but it can! Lightning struck the transformer next to our home and the energy traveled into our home and jumped the distance between the no longer existing bridge, tap (the plug) which was lying on the floor.

Result = BOOM. Flaming datum. It appears as if that is what happens with the bending of space-time here. Space is being warped so much that the higher energy from the other side of the wall is being siphoned off as it is now close enough to bleed through.

But! Is the wall itself a gravity construct of energy? I do believe so, as well as hyper space itself. But I do not believe that hyperspace and perhaps the wall itself holds enough energy for the wedge’s requirement. The wedge needs the more concentrated energy on the other side. Do consider, the higher one moves up in a given band the higher the acceleration. Siphoning energy from beyond the wall is from a more powerful energy source.

But an LD might not get its energy from beyond the wall, it seems. But it does grab onto the alpha wall. The wall has to have gravitational potential that exceeds the intense gravitational beams from the tractor beam of intense gravity that has attached to it, by the nature of electricity and physics, or the energy absorbed from simply the hyper band would flow into the wall. If a tap is made from the LD to the Alpha wall which passes through the energy contained in hyper and simply dangles there catching energy like a fisherman's net catching salmon, if the energy potential of the wall isn't higher than the energy potential from the tractor beam, any energy absorbed by the tap wound flow into the direction of the hyper wall, which has no resistance. Entropy insists the flow of energy would follow the path of least resistance. That isn't in the direction of a powerful gravity beam that has attached itself.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Plus we know that ships wedges work anywhere in normal space -- not just within systems that lie within a grav wave. How could their wedge be siphoning power from a grav wave when the nearest wave is many lightyears away?

I do not know for a fact that it is. But if it is, one explanation would be the result of the wedge bending space-time itself. What makes FTL travel possible is the old explanation of folding space onto itself bringing greatly separated regions of space closer together. Could the bending of hyper space bring the gravity waves within that space closer?

Ashes of Victory wrote:

And not even a superdreadnought has enough onboard power generation to bring its wedge up initially without using its capacitors. Just maintaining it once it is up, even with the energy-siphon effect when it twists over into hyper, requires a huge investment in power, and initiating the impeller bands in the first place raises the power requirement exponentially. So even when they're not doing anything else, most warships tend to have at least one fusion plant on-line to charge up their capacitor rings

However RFC's old post on this was saved in the infodumps, and goes into more detail.

runsforcelery wrote:

Whenever an impeller drive vessel activates its wedge, whether in normal-space or hyper-space, it "bends" space around itself. [...] It is the "bending" effect on the Alpha wall, for example, which makes it possible to detect and track impeller footprints in real-time at ranges of up to several light-minutes. The same phenomenon operates in hyper- space, except that the hyper-wall being bent isn't necessarily the Alpha wall; it's whatever the next higher hyper-wall may be.

When the wall is bent, energy is siphoned across it from the "higher" hyper band on its other side. Hyper-space is an area of inherently higher energy levels, and the siphon effect could be considered a sort of strictly limited, primitive ancestor of the "core tap" in the Mutineers' Moon Universe. The initial power for the wedge has to come from internal sources -- current generation and stored power. Once the initial energy investment is made, something like 60% of the energy necessary to maintain and power the wedge is drawn through the "siphon" effect.
[...]
The siphon effect is operable anywhere, anytime. The ability to raise a wedge, which interacts with the hyper wall, is not the same thing as being able to translate an entire starship across that hyper wall.

This makes it clearer that he envisions it a drawing from the hyper hyper band; rather than a grav wave located within it.

And clearly he envisions it as a limited amount of power being siphoned, as it can't even fully power a wedge.

I do not think it clearly excludes being able to absorb the power of the gravity waves within the band that lie closer to the wall as a result of being packed tighter or close enough to the wall so that their energy bleeds through as well (akin to raising the pressure of a water main by reducing the diameter of the pipe forcing everything in the main closer together), as the band is distorted, bent, twisted, or warped by the bending of space by the wedge. I am not saying which of the possibilities is the case, but it is not clear. And physics acts in a way that is intuitive, for the most part.

The wedge does not siphon energy to start the wedge. Stored energy aboard the ship accomplishes that. But once the wedge (Oz’ most powerful wizard) fully awakens, the energy to maintain such a powerful Wizard of Oz is siphoned from beyond the alpha wall to the tune of 60% of the required energy. 60% of the available energy needed to feed and sustain the powerful Wizard of Oz is imported!

So yes, I will stand by own assessment that such a huge amount of energy would destroy a ship without something to protect that ship. In hyper that is the sails. In n-space the “phased array” of the wedge protects warships.

But the LD “grabs a hold” of a very powerful concentrated band of gravity with a very concentrated beam of gravity. And get this. It holds onto it!

In n-space an LD has no wedge or sails to blunt the flow of energy!


And the LD has the nerve to open this flow of energy from hyperspace from within the hyper limit, which seems to be highly frowned upon at the risk of death and dismemberment of ones members.

penny wrote:Do consider, the higher one moves up in a given band the higher the acceleration. Siphoning energy from beyond the wall is from a more powerful energy source.

I know you prefer an answer to your entire post, but I wanted to make sure this correction wasn't missed.

Acceleration does NOT differ as you move up in a given band. (Or at least the text has never said it does)

Also, it wouldn't much help if it did - because acceleration time is such a small part of the total transit time. It'd only take a pre-war CL, staying safely at 80% accel, about 12 hours to max out its safe speed - or about 1.2 hours if it's in a grav wave.
The rest of its trip is just holding steady at 0.6c (the safe speed for its rad shielding in hyper)



Instead what appears to happen is that the spatial compression must vary by some amount throughout the "height" of a given band (though the tables RFC provided just give one value for all of each band - e.g. Warship in the Theta bands is 3000.0c).


Our best look at this is when Alice Truman shaved 30 hours of the transit record by riding the edge of the Theta band when racing back from Grayson to summon help, in HotQ. I'm sure she did push the safety margin on her compensator to claw back some of those hours - going from 20% margin to 0% (full emergency power) would claw back 2.4 hours (though if she's in a grav wave already, it'd only claw back 15 minutes) - but she can't claw back 30 hours just from improved acceleration because it just doesn't take that long for Apollo to reach her top speed.
Alice might also have been willing to push the safety margins on her shielding too -- inching above 0.6c when possible - which'd buy you a bit. But most of the time saving must have come from going as high as possible in the Theta band "bouncing off the Iota wall" -- and that must have pushed that 3000.0 number higher. In fact it'd need to push it a lot higher. I don't think we know the previous transit record - it'd almost certainly have to be significantly longer than the simple 31 LY / 3000 / 0.6c = 150.7 hours (after all there is acceleration time if nothing else). Probably more like 165 hours. But even so trimming 30 hours off that would likely require getting that compression up to at least 3300c (which would shave 13.5 hours off the naïve 150.7 listed above)

Also, FWIW, acceleration is not said to increase in higher bands either. The only change we're told of is that the compression ratio changes.

penny wrote:

penny wrote:

It would be enough energy to destroy the ship if the ship is actually in hyper where there is no wedge to protect it. The danger is actually from the grav waves that are found in hyperspace. Enter the Warshawski sail to tame the grav waves.

I expect when something that holds a lot of energy is pierced, that energy will flow through the bridge (piercing). Entropy. The powerful wedge absorbs this energy. From where does this energy flow? Is the wedge siphoning energy from hyperspace alone or from a grav wave?

Jonathan_S wrote:

Where does it say that the energy siphoned off by an active wedge would be enough to destroy the ship?

See below.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Though even if true it seem irrelevant. Ships can only access it by having their wedge active, and the siphoned power is less than the wedge needs to maintain itself -- so there's no net flow of energy towards the ship. Instead the wedge drains power from both the ship's reactor and hyperspace.

However, that amount of energy is not irrelevant as far as the LD is concerned. I do not consider that 60% of the energy needed to maintain a wedge is a trivial amount of energy. Do you believe an LD would survive contact with a wedge that was only at 60% power? Neither do I. Nor do I think any other ship would survive without a wedge to protect it.

There's no evidence that the Spider pierces the Alpha wall, nor even that it causes the "bending" that is said to trigger the energy flow into a wedge. It's that same "bending" that causes the wedge to be detectable from FTL Warshaski sensors -- in exactly the way we're explicitly told a Spider cannot be.

The only known method to get energy from higher hyper bands is the "bend" space and we're told the Spider doesn't do that.

penny wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:

(And a ship doesn't need a wedge to protect it in hyper -- as the early hyper-capable exploration ships used reaction drives (and more recently we've see ships lose or shut down their drive in hyper and be fine)

But a ship does need something to protect it if it comes into contact with a gravity wave, a much more concentrated source of energy. That something is the sails. I suspect the sails in hyper act the same as the sails on the sea. It catches and spreads the energy (winds) along the width of the sails. I suspect the wedge does the same thing from n-space. And I suspect it safely accomplishes this feat via taming the energy by using a “phased” array. The phased-array manages the chaotic frequencies of energy caused by the unpredictable interaction between gravity and gravity waves.

Ships need sails to stabilize them in the grav turbulence and shear of a grav wave -- I don't recall the text about the need for sails saying anything about them being needed to control energy flow. And in normal space (aside from very near a wormhole -- where you do need sails) there isn't that kind of grav turbulence and shear. So I don't see the wedge managing the energy flow as being the same thing as a sail managing a grav wave.

penny wrote:

Jonathan wrote:

I'm extra confused by suddenly pulling grav waves and sails into this. Yes running into a grav wave without an active sail is very dangerous -- inability to detect and avoid them was fatal to all early hyper ships (whether reaction drive or impeller powered). But you go on to speculate that because (you claim) drawing power from hyper is dangerous and grav waves are dangerous that likely you're drawing power from grav waves -- which seems fallacious logic.

No, I do not claim that power is being drawn from gravity waves. I do ask where the energy is coming from and if gravity waves are a possibility. It is obvious the energy has to at least partly originate from hyper as far as the LD is concerned. Well… (muttering under my breath).

The LD does not pierce the alpha wall. And neither does a wedge.

However! A wedge draws its energy from the much more concentrated energy contained on the other side of the “wall” as witnessed by god ...

runsforcelery wrote:

Whenever an impeller drive vessel activates its wedge, whether in normal-space or hyper-space, it "bends" space around itself. [...] It is the "bending" effect on the Alpha wall, for example, which makes it possible to detect and track impeller footprints in real-time at ranges of up to several light-minutes. The same phenomenon operates in hyper- space, except that the hyper-wall being bent isn't necessarily the Alpha wall; it's whatever the next higher hyper-wall may be.

When the wall is bent, energy is siphoned across it from the "higher" hyper band on its other side. Hyper-space is an area of inherently higher energy levels, and the siphon effect could be considered a sort of strictly limited, primitive ancestor of the "core tap" in the Mutineers' Moon Universe. The initial power for the wedge has to come from internal sources -- current generation and stored power. Once the initial energy investment is made, something like 60% of the energy necessary to maintain and power the wedge is drawn through the "siphon" effect.

And to think I almost used the term “tap” but instead went with bridge. A few clicks upstream, I actually posited the wall was being pierced by the implication of siphon. To siphon from something, that something has to be pierced.

Actually in normal usage a siphon is often used to create a self-sustaining flow over a barrier rather than needing to pierce through it. For example place a bucket of water on a table, stick a hose into it with the exit being below the bucket, and provide the initial impulse to get water into the hose and over the lip of the bucket -- the siphon effect keeps draining the bucket, up and over its wall, with no piercing of its bottom or side.

We could see the "bent" space doing the same thing. The wedge provides the initial energy to start the flow of energy "over" the alpha wall and then while the wedge exists to be that lower end-point the flow of energy between the different pressure environment sustains that flow.

penny wrote:
But from the post Jonathan included of runsforcelery’s explanation, the alpha wall is not being pierced. It simply goes about the energy drain in another manner. This author knows there is more than one way to skin a cat. From the explanation, space-time is being bent, warped. One result of bending space-time is faster apparent velocity. Another result of bending space-time, apparently says the author, is it enables a siphoning effect of energy from the higher bands.

Let's visualize this in another manner. Energy is powerful enough that it can jump barriers if the barriers are small enough and the energy is powerful enough. I found out the hard way that it is not enough to simply unplug the old television sets before a major electrical storm. My mother instructed her naive kid to unplug the TV set and move the cord far away from the outlet. “But Mom, I unplugged it. The electricity cannot jump into the TV if it is not connected by the cord," a tap, a bridge. Oh, but it can! Lightning struck the transformer next to our home and the energy traveled into our home and jumped the distance between the no longer existing bridge, tap (the plug) which was lying on the floor.

Result = BOOM. Flaming datum. It appears as if that is what happens with the bending of space-time here. Space is being warped so much that the higher energy from the other side of the wall is being siphoned off as it is now close enough to bleed through.

But! Is the wall itself a gravity construct of energy? I do believe so, as well as hyper space itself. But I do not believe that hyperspace and perhaps the wall itself holds enough energy for the wedge’s requirement. The wedge needs the more concentrated energy on the other side. Do consider, the higher one moves up in a given band the higher the acceleration. Siphoning energy from beyond the wall is from a more powerful energy source.

But an LD might not get its energy from beyond the wall, it seems. But it does grab onto the alpha wall. The wall has to have gravitational potential that exceeds the intense gravitational beams from the tractor beam of intense gravity that has attached to it, by the nature of electricity and physics, or the energy absorbed from simply the hyper band would flow into the wall. If a tap is made from the LD to the Alpha wall which passes through the energy contained in hyper and simply dangles there catching energy like a fisherman's net catching salmon, if the energy potential of the wall isn't higher than the energy potential from the tractor beam, any energy absorbed by the tap wound flow into the direction of the hyper wall, which has no resistance. Entropy insists the flow of energy would follow the path of least resistance. That isn't in the direction of a powerful gravity beam that has attached itself.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Plus we know that ships wedges work anywhere in normal space -- not just within systems that lie within a grav wave. How could their wedge be siphoning power from a grav wave when the nearest wave is many lightyears away?

I do not know for a fact that it is. But if it is, one explanation would be the result of the wedge bending space-time itself. What makes FTL travel possible is the old explanation of folding space onto itself bringing greatly separated regions of space closer together. Could the bending of hyper space bring the gravity waves within that space closer?

Ashes of Victory wrote:

And not even a superdreadnought has enough onboard power generation to bring its wedge up initially without using its capacitors. Just maintaining it once it is up, even with the energy-siphon effect when it twists over into hyper, requires a huge investment in power, and initiating the impeller bands in the first place raises the power requirement exponentially. So even when they're not doing anything else, most warships tend to have at least one fusion plant on-line to charge up their capacitor rings

However RFC's old post on this was saved in the infodumps, and goes into more detail.

runsforcelery wrote:

Whenever an impeller drive vessel activates its wedge, whether in normal-space or hyper-space, it "bends" space around itself. [...] It is the "bending" effect on the Alpha wall, for example, which makes it possible to detect and track impeller footprints in real-time at ranges of up to several light-minutes. The same phenomenon operates in hyper- space, except that the hyper-wall being bent isn't necessarily the Alpha wall; it's whatever the next higher hyper-wall may be.

When the wall is bent, energy is siphoned across it from the "higher" hyper band on its other side. Hyper-space is an area of inherently higher energy levels, and the siphon effect could be considered a sort of strictly limited, primitive ancestor of the "core tap" in the Mutineers' Moon Universe. The initial power for the wedge has to come from internal sources -- current generation and stored power. Once the initial energy investment is made, something like 60% of the energy necessary to maintain and power the wedge is drawn through the "siphon" effect.
[...]
The siphon effect is operable anywhere, anytime. The ability to raise a wedge, which interacts with the hyper wall, is not the same thing as being able to translate an entire starship across that hyper wall.

This makes it clearer that he envisions it a drawing from the hyper hyper band; rather than a grav wave located within it.

And clearly he envisions it as a limited amount of power being siphoned, as it can't even fully power a wedge.

I do not think it clearly excludes being able to absorb the power of the gravity waves within the band that lie closer to the wall as a result of being packed tighter or close enough to the wall so that their energy bleeds through as well (akin to raising the pressure of a water main by reducing the diameter of the pipe forcing everything in the main closer together), as the band is distorted, bent, twisted, or warped by the bending of space by the wedge. I am not saying which of the possibilities is the case, but it is not clear. And physics acts in a way that is intuitive, for the most part.

The wedge does not siphon energy to start the wedge. Stored energy aboard the ship accomplishes that. But once the wedge (Oz’ most powerful wizard) fully awakens, the energy to maintain such a powerful Wizard of Oz is siphoned from beyond the alpha wall to the tune of 60% of the required energy. 60% of the available energy needed to feed and sustain the powerful Wizard of Oz is imported!

So yes, I will stand by own assessment that such a huge amount of energy would destroy a ship without something to protect that ship. In hyper that is the sails. In n-space the “phased array” of the wedge protects warships.

But the LD “grabs a hold” of a very powerful concentrated band of gravity with a very concentrated beam of gravity. And get this. It holds onto it!

In n-space an LD has no wedge or sails to blunt the flow of energy!


And the LD has the nerve to open this flow of energy from hyperspace from within the hyper limit, which seems to be highly frowned upon at the risk of death and dismemberment of ones members.

Again, the LD's drive is explicitely said not to create the "bent" space which is the only known mechanism to cause power to be siphoned from the higher hyper band -- nor are we told the form of that energy. There is, as far as I can see, no basis in the text or RFC's posts to say that the LD opens this flow of energy.