SLN, and MAlign playing catch up with Manticoran superiority

tlb wrote:If we don't accept that it just works and begin to ask why does it work, then we could also ask how a gravity beam could work as either a tractor or a pressor beam. A tractor beam can hold something at a fixed distance and a pressor beam can push things away, but gravity only wants to pull things together. So in what way can a gravity beam push something away or hold it at a fixed distance without using additional beams?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Countergrav.

That is one possibility, but can you create anti-gravity with gravity? One way that you could would be to mount a gravity plate above, so its pull upwards counters the planet's gravity pull downward (but still that is purely attractive and requires additional structure for the mount). Another is some other (possibly unknown) force that works in opposition to gravity. Consider "The Billiard Ball", a short story by Isaac Asimov.

Daryl wrote:A somewhat serious comment.
We all postulate this and that in RFC's fictional universe. Ever consider the old saw that in an infinite universe anything that can be concieved will eventually happen? The example is that a troop of monkeys randomly typing on typewriters will at some point print out every one of Shakespeare's plays perfectly?
Another is that a group identical to your family will be picknicing on a verdant hillside, that will suddenly collapse exposing a tunnel full of hungry tigers. In infinity it will occur infinite times.
So Honor lives somewhere, having the same adventures as we are reading about.

But we can conceive of things that are physically impossible, so that they could not occur in our universe (even if it were infinite). So if there are things in the books that are impossible, then the Honor Harrington of the books does not live in our universe.

The infinite monkey and typewriter combination is fun to think about (turning out such things as "To be or not to be, that is the banana"), but it tends to be another physical impossibility. What is the infinite system that produces food and distributes it to these monkeys, and why?

tlb wrote:That is one possibility, but can you create anti-gravity with gravity? One way that you could would be to mount a gravity plate above, so its pull upwards counters the planet's gravity pull downward (but still that is purely attractive and requires additional structure for the mount). Another is some other (possibly unknown) force that works in opposition to gravity. Consider "The Billiard Ball", a short story by Isaac Asimov.

RFC's grav plates can reduces, as well as add gravity -- yet I'd assumed they always mount to the floor. (Yet now that I look the only place I can find grav plates being in the floor being explicitly mentioned is in Timothy Zahn's 'With One Stone' short story).


I got the impression counter-grav went on the bottom of things; though we know that people can wear counter-grav belts or harnesses and there are counter-grav collars you can wrap around things and counter-grav pallets for moving things around. The belt and harness at least aren't on the bottom of the people wearing them - so couner-grav doesn't have to go on the bottom.
Oh, than then there's the special counter-grav generator on a deployable tether that Hexapuma's Marines used for high altitude jumps.
But it clearly is reducing the effect of the planet's gravity (or a grav plate) on objects within its field - or physically connected to the generator - and doesn't seem to do so by applying an upwards pull. (Because what would be keeping the generator from being pulled down instead of the object being pulled up? -- it's not like it's mounted to some overhead structure).


In short RFC's gravity doesn't work like our understanding of gravity

Jonathan_S wrote:In short RFC's gravity doesn't work like our understanding of gravity

Agreed.

PS: It will be much quieter with Penny gone, which may be something to be sorry about. But I will not comment directly in the other thread, because I consider the following to be both true and extremely passive-aggressive: "I spend too much time arguing over the silly, the mundane and the obvious".

tlb wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:In short RFC's gravity doesn't work like our understanding of gravity

Agreed.

PS: It will be much quieter with Penny gone, which may be something to be sorry about. But I will not comment directly in the other thread, because I consider the following to be both true and extremely passive-aggressive: "I spend too much time arguing over the silly, the mundane and the obvious".

I feel the same way. The question is, was that statement an acknowledgement or a complaint.

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 don't know what it's made of. But I'm convinced it's neither gravity (although it interacts with gravity), nor matter. It's some kind of barrier outside of our 3 dimensions of space, or 4 of spacetime, so there clearly is some interdimensional thingy involved, or other "layers of existence".

ThinksMarkedly wrote:But the tractors can grab onto it, so it has to be something physical.

Maybe not even physical in the sense of our 3d space / 4d space-time continuum. I'd also argue that the "tractors" used in the spider drive may work in a completely different way than the normal traktors used to tow other space ships or pods.

As it has been quoted from "Mission of Honor" earlier in this thread (emphasis added by me):

Chapter 28 wrote:The spider used literally dozens of nodes to project spurs or spikes of intensely focused gravity. For all intents and purposes, each of those spurs was almost like generating a tractor or a presser beam, except that no one in his right mind had ever imagined tractors or pressers that powerful.

My understanding of this is: Comparing the spider spikes to tractor and presser beams is an analogy, used because it is helpful when trying to explan it to non-experts, but they're not the same (and most possibly not even working on the same principle) as conventional tractor and presser beams.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:I can't find any place in the books where it explicitely says regular tractor (or presser) beams are gravity based -- though it does seem logical. And they probably are because the MoH goes on to say "For all intents and purposes, each of those spurs was almost like generating a tractor or a presser beam"

It seems like the only possible answer because the only other force we know of that can act at a distance is electromagnetism (the weak and strong nuclear forces only really act in ranges comparable to an atomic nucleus, though some sci-fi settings have used long-ranged weak nuclear force disruption as a weapon principle).

In a fictional universe which adds hyperspace, faster-than-light grav waves, and telepathy, why shouldn't there be one or more additional kinds of forces in addition to the 4 basic powers we know from our own universe? Forces able to interact with hyper walls outside our 3dimensional space, or to create artificial gravity (artificial in the sense that it's not created by the presence of mass)? One whose interaction with normal matter in 3d space is normally small enough that it's neglibile (so Newton and Einstein still give good enough approximations), but in specially crafted circumstances (like a hyper generator or impeller node), the interaction is strong enough to cause said effects?

@ markusschaber. Agree, his universe, his rules.
An additional perspective is to consider the time period. Looking back as far as the Honorverse is forward, we come to the Ancient Greeks.
How would they consider our science? From the only electricity being lightning or static (rubbing fabric and such) to what we now have. As they say (Dunning Kruger) we don't know what we don't know.

I have decided to finish up my thoughts in this thread. Unfinished business. I have several pages of notes, and I was working on an upcoming post or two, or three, in this thread.

Anyway, I don't think we disagree that a tractor beam is gravity based. Gravity has already been mastered enough in the HV to do so. In the HV, gravity is utilized in reactors as containment fields. Containment fields have to be very focused. How they work without ripping apart the "container" is beyond me. But a very focused beam of gravity is definitely going to attract any object that has mass.

But it seems logical that presser beams would be made from electricity. I remembered seeing this illustrated using a Van de Graaff generator. Although the aluminum pie pans in the video are metal and aluminum does conduct electricity. Anyway, presser beams might have a limitation of having to operate on some form of metal or the metal content in an object. Warships, asteroids, meteors and the like all contain metal.

https://youtu.be/rNEY3Yv9kC8?feature=shared

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