What's the chance of a Streek Drive Super Dreadnought?

psy9o wrote:The question that has been bothering me is whether or not a strike drive is simply a new type of hyper generators. Remember that in the books streak drive is simply a term used by Mesans to describe their new hyper capabilities. The "streak drive" probably also consists of upgrades in sensor capabilities and particle shielding. It is said numerous times in the HH and spin-offs that safe hyper capable ship were not possible for a long time because of the limited sensor range in hyper that lead to a lot of ships being lost to simple navigational errors. Since everything gets closer together the higher you go in the hyper bands it is reasonable that particle density and limited sensor range was also a big factor in ships being unable to travel in hyperspace. I mean it is pointless to have a hyper generator that can take you into the higher hyper bands if you can only stay there for a limited time because of the particle density since your ship is going to need to much time back in the docks for refits to be effective, and if you don't upgrade your sensor range you are going to lose to much ships to navigational errors.

Yes, the text specifically states that particle densities are higher in hyperspace than in normal space. That is why the maximum relative velocity within hyperspace is 0.6 c instead of the 0.8 c possible in normal space. But the (average) particle density is the same in every band of hyperspace. We know this because the 0.6 c speed limit is the same in every hyper band. Similarly, the sensor range is the same in every band in hyperspace. Thus there is no reason for improvements in sensors or particle shields to have anything to do with the streak drive. The text makes it pretty clear that it is simply a larger improved hyper generator.

drothgery wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:The interesting thing will be the effect on civilian shipping. If the Mesan version gives them the ability to go two levels higher, then possibly they could make one that would let commercial shipping go one level higher. Allowing new freighers to cut around 20% off their transit times is another one of those game changers: that 20% will more than make up for having slightly less cargo carrying capacity.

Not really. The streak drive hyper generator is definitely more volume and mass intensive than a standard military-grade hyper generator, and military-grade hyper generators are rarely used for commercial shipping even though they're well-understood and quite safe. Unless there prove to be economies in the mass-produced version of streak drive hyper generators that don't exist with military-grade ones, I can't see them used much in commercial shipping (of passengers or freight). It's more likley that streak drive equipped commercial ships will replace military hyper-generator equipped commercial ships for time-critical passengers and cargo eventually.

Although the streak generator is bigger than a military hyper generator, it is not bigger simply because it requires "more power". If it was just needing more power, the solution would have been solved centuries ago. There is a lot of science and research involved.

Mission of Honor wrote: But the Mesan Alignment hadn’t abandoned it, and finally, after the better part of a hundred T-years of dogged research, they’d found the answer. It was, in many ways, a brute force approach, and it wouldn’t have been possible even now without relatively recent advances (whose potential no one else seemed to have noticed) in related fields. And even with those other advances, it had almost doubled the size of conventional hyper generators. But it worked. Indeed, they’d broken not simply the iota wall, but the kappa wall, as well.

I don't see a reason that the technology for the streak boat can't be applied to merchant hyper generators. This being the case, I don't see a reason that a delta band merchant hyper generator couldn't be make smaller (allowing more cargo space) or a hyper generator the same merchant size reaching a higher band. (Epsilon? Zeta?)

What kind of competitive edge would manticoran merchant ships have if a merchant quality streak hyper generator could reach the Theta bands?

darrell wrote:I don't see a reason that the technology for the streak boat can't be applied to merchant hyper generators. This being the case, I don't see a reason that a delta band merchant hyper generator couldn't be make smaller (allowing more cargo space) or a hyper generator the same merchant size reaching a higher band. (Epsilon? Zeta?)

What kind of competitive edge would manticoran merchant ships have if a merchant quality streak hyper generator could reach the Theta bands?

I guess I think that since we know merchants very rarely use military-grade hyper generators (hence why they're called military-grade), it's clear that standard commercial hyperdrives are 'fast enough' that the tradeoffs in cost, mass, and volume are usually not worth it for commercial shipping. And that's a mass-produced, well-understood, mature technology. So I think your hypothetical streak-influenced commercial hyperdrive would need to be substantially smaller and/or cheaper than a military hyperdrive to see much use (outside of the niche markets that use military hyperdrives 'now'), and I don't think that's likely.

Duckk wrote:

Wodan wrote:We should keep in mind that the current streak drive is developed without benefit of the Manticoran micro fusion bottle (etc) technology.

Why should it matter? You don't put hyper generators on drones or missiles, where the micro fusion plants show up.

Duckk it matters because it's engineering, the miniaturization that manticore is capable of, the materials that they use to make the microfusion bottle could be easily stronger than those used by mesa, capacitor that are more capable, circuitry and cooling systems who are more effective, in the end all of this material differences can mean that you find another way to implement the theory.

I posted all this in a previous post in this same thread, when you try to implement a theory on the real world, specially when you need to use a machine (could be a plow or a nuclear bomb), you engineer a solution, different countries with different technologies will engineer different solutions, some more efficient than others.

Because of manticore level of miniaturization, it could be possible that they make the Streak drive hyper generator the same size as a normal hyper generator, while mesa when they found their solution is an hyper generator who is at least double the size of a normal HG.

Because of better materials and new composites used for the new grayson compensator or because they discover another set of material that make fission power plant possible in LACs, maybe they can use those material and gain even more speed from the Streak drive HG than the one made in mesa.

Like I say because manticore technologies are different from mesa's technologies they can engineer something very different to implement the theory of the streak drive, and the only person that knows exactly how this will work out is RFC with his tech bible.

So when Wodan mention that mesa's streak drive was made without the microfusion bottle technlogy and etc, the real meaning is the full set of technologies that are behind the development of those technologies, like i say better shielding materials, better capacitors, better miniaturization, better cooling systems, etc etc.

Also in the case of the Merchant Marine of Manticore there are even more reasons not to install streak drives downsized for merchant use. They already have control over the majority of the wormholes. Wormhole travel is instantaneous whether you use a Streak drive or not, so the advantage it would get is not so big as you would first think.

If they could produce an improved hyper generator without increased cost that is of course another scenario and then it is indeed the only smart thing to do.

psy9o wrote:Also in the case of the Merchant Marine of Manticore there are even more reasons not to install streak drives downsized for merchant use. They already have control over the majority of the wormholes. Wormhole travel is instantaneous whether you use a Streak drive or not, so the advantage it would get is not so big as you would first think.

If they could produce an improved hyper generator without increased cost that is of course another scenario and then it is indeed the only smart thing to do.

That's what I'm thinking. Odds of most merchant ships going with the bigger, higher maintenance military or streak generators is pretty low. But there's a decent chance that the breakthroughs that led to the streak drive generator might let Manticore or Bolthole create a better merchant grade generator.

And that improved merchant generator might not even get you as high as a 'pre-streak' military generator; but if they can add even one my hyper band without significantly impacting cost or reliability (or to a significantly lesser extent size or power) that could still benifit the GA's merchant marine.

psy9o wrote:Also in the case of the Merchant Marine of Manticore there are even more reasons not to install streak drives downsized for merchant use. They already have control over the majority of the wormholes. Wormhole travel is instantaneous whether you use a Streak drive or not, so the advantage it would get is not so big as you would first think.

If they could produce an improved hyper generator without increased cost that is of course another scenario and then it is indeed the only smart thing to do.

Most of the merchant ships in silesea will stay in silesa and won't transit a junction.

Most of the merchant ships in the Haven sector will stay in the Haven sector and won't transit a junction. Those that do, will have a multiple week trip at merchant ship speeds from haven to trevors star.

Ships in the talbot sector need to travel between planets, as well as from planets to the junction.

Planets in the original manticoran alliance (Grayson, Zanzabar, Alizon, etc.) can only be reached by normal hyperspace.

Etc....
Etc....
Etc....

Before and after transiting junctions, as well as travel between junctions, a faster speed means more profit.

There is a lot of science required to create the streak drive. Like advances in computers make calculators smaller, cheeper and better, it it probable that the technology developed for the streak drive would probably make merchant hyper generators better.

The new technology might make a merchant delta band drive smaller, or less expensive, or both. I doubt that many merchants would replace working hyperdrives, but for new construction, or if the hyperdrive is kaput and needs to be relpaced, not just repaired.

The cost of the drive is less important than the size, so a smaller drive that has the same performance is better, even if more expenses.

If the technology that made the streak drive possible makes normal hyperdrives smaller, that means that it is possible that for the same physical size, you might be able to make a drive that could go one or more hyper bands higher. The epsilon band is 33% faster than the delta band, thus an epsilon band merchant could make 4 trips for the time of three, which would be lots of profit.


Hmmm.... since the streak drive is "in some ways a brute force apporach" I wonder if it might make drive activation slightly faster?

Jonathan_S wrote:

psy9o wrote:Also in the case of the Merchant Marine of Manticore there are even more reasons not to install streak drives downsized for merchant use. They already have control over the majority of the wormholes. Wormhole travel is instantaneous whether you use a Streak drive or not, so the advantage it would get is not so big as you would first think.

If they could produce an improved hyper generator without increased cost that is of course another scenario and then it is indeed the only smart thing to do.

That's what I'm thinking. Odds of most merchant ships going with the bigger, higher maintenance military or streak generators is pretty low. But there's a decent chance that the breakthroughs that led to the streak drive generator might let Manticore or Bolthole create a better merchant grade generator.

And that improved merchant generator might not even get you as high as a 'pre-streak' military generator; but if they can add even one my hyper band without significantly impacting cost or reliability (or to a significantly lesser extent size or power) that could still benifit the GA's merchant marine.

Let's put some numbers on this. According to the "Effective Speed by Hyper Band" chart, a typical merchant ship goes in the Delta band at 1089 times C. Going up one band to Epsilon makes that 1442 times C. That would cut transit times by a third. Now if we assume that there is a fixed amount of time at the beginning and end of the run before entering and exiting the Epsilon band, that still makes a merchant grade "streak drive" hyper generator extremely attractive as long as the marginal cost doesn't exceed the marginal cost of running the ship longer (wages, life support, etc.)

The Talbot Cluster is a very good example of where this would be a huge advantage. Transit times are quite long and, before the discovery of the Lynx terminus the only access we know of was via either Matapan, Mesa or a wormhole that's only appeared on the Illegible Map, M?????. Inter-cluster transit times were simply too long to let the cluster take off economically, especially for the more distant members of the cluster.

Cutting 1/3rd off the transit time puts the markets in Matapan into the same time range as Lynx without the faster drives, without the need to pay any transit fees. It would cut the cost of imported goods significantly.

Or consider Silesia. It probably wouldn't be worth it for a lot of intra-cluster trade, but once you start shipping either into the Anderman Empire or to the Basilisk terminal of the Manticore junction, the speed advantage would really start working.

JohnRoth wrote:Let's put some numbers on this. According to the "Effective Speed by Hyper Band" chart, a typical merchant ship goes in the Delta band at 1089 times C. Going up one band to Epsilon makes that 1442 times C. That would cut transit times by a third. Now if we assume that there is a fixed amount of time at the beginning and end of the run before entering and exiting the Epsilon band, that still makes a merchant grade "streak drive" hyper generator extremely attractive as long as the marginal cost doesn't exceed the marginal cost of running the ship longer (wages, life support, etc.)

I hate to beat a dead horse on this, but military grade hyper generators would let them do the same thing and merchants use them very, very rarely. So your 'civilian streak drive' doesn't just have to be better than a standard-issue military hyper generator (smaller and/or cheaper), it has to be a lot better. The evidence is that beyond what current civilian-grade hyperdrives offer, Honorverse merchants don't value speed very much.

drothgery wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:Let's put some numbers on this. According to the "Effective Speed by Hyper Band" chart, a typical merchant ship goes in the Delta band at 1089 times C. Going up one band to Epsilon makes that 1442 times C. That would cut transit times by a third. Now if we assume that there is a fixed amount of time at the beginning and end of the run before entering and exiting the Epsilon band, that still makes a merchant grade "streak drive" hyper generator extremely attractive as long as the marginal cost doesn't exceed the marginal cost of running the ship longer (wages, life support, etc.)

I hate to beat a dead horse on this, but military grade hyper generators would let them do the same thing and merchants use them very, very rarely. So your 'civilian streak drive' doesn't just have to be better than a standard-issue military hyper generator (smaller and/or cheaper), it has to be a lot better. The evidence is that beyond what current civilian-grade hyperdrives offer, Honorverse merchants don't value speed very much.

The reason they don't use military hyper generators is that they cost too much in terms of maintenance and properly trained engineering staff.

It's strictly a cost issue. If the new technology will give them another hyper band without adding significant maintenance or staffing costs, some proportion of them will go for it. Otherwise not.

Beyond that, we're simply speculating about what DW is going to declare is feasible or not feasible, and saying that something definitely won't happen before DW says it won't is just as much baseless armwaving as saying it will definitely happen.