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

darrell wrote:

I also wonder what those other projecst Simoes had "peripheral involvement in"? Possibly the torch wormhole??? Nah, probably not.

Probably yes, with one huge caveat. He's a top hyperphysicist with high security clearances, so he almost certainly knows about The Twins, and possibly what's at the other end of those two terminals. The caveat is that he may not know where they are in real space.

darrell wrote:Actually, it is clear that Simoes was not the "guy behind the theory". He was in charge of improving the streak drive, not inventing it.

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Thank you. I didn't have the text at hand, but was pretty sure the basic idea well predates Dr. Simoes involvement.

Unsure if mesa was trying to reduce the size, crack another wall, reduce the complexity, or something else entirely.

Or all of the above.

It's stated that the Streak drive was a "brute force" approach, and big. If I were them, I'd want to refine the concept and try to make it smaller. Especially in a warship, I wouldn't want to pay the space penalty if I didn't have to, as there are other things I could do with the room it would take. While I was at it, if I could climb even higher, I'd want to.

And reducing complexity is always good. The late John W. Campbell once talked about "the three stages of technology" in an editorial in Analog SF Magazine. He thought they were a crude inefficient device, based on an incomplete understanding of the underlying principles, a complicated somewhat more efficient device, attempting to improve on the original attempt, and finally a simple efficient device based on a proper understanding of the principles. I'd guess Streak drive development to be at stage two right now.

I also wonder what those other projects Simoes had "peripheral involvement in"? Possibly the torch wormhole??? Nah, probably not.

He'd doubtless be aware of it. But since his primary area of research is drives (and he's aware of the Spider, though not directly involved), it's likely projects that touch on the nature of hyperspace and how things behave it it.

Just remember, that MAlign was working on a streak drive II vessel. I don't know if they had gone to prototype stage but Simoes was the Lead on the project.

A chief guy assigned to improving your highest level of technology in a given specialty probably has extensive knowledge of the history and evolution of the technology including what was tried, what did not work, what did work and what was not tried.

Building your Level I tech is just having the tech people obtain and bench board the basics. Will power. Some money. A few long hours.

Level II is designing, testing, producing and assembling purpose built parts where off the shelf is not available. Support from authority. A budget. Resource priority. Timeline dependent upon nature of organization and urgency.

The interesting question for me is, "Can Level II tech be fitted to current designs?"

Is GA off the shelf and purpose built tech small enough in comparison to fit in the available space? Can the technology allow for a distributed architecture? Probably, auxiliary equipment is in the same compartment as the actual generator. Can some or all of the auxiliary equipment be relocated to other compartments to allow all of the space in the generator compartment to be used to accommodate a larger generator?

If so, GA ships in refit, major maintenance or construction could be months away from first generation deployed streak drives if the priority is deemed to be great enough.

Another question is how good is Simoes memory? Some brilliant people cannot remember where they parked their car. Other brilliant people remember everything they hear, even when not trying to hear it, and everything they see or read, even just a casual glance.

If Simoes is the latter, then Pat Givens' people may be able to quietly and informally 'chat' enormous amounts of info out of him without ever using any pressure at all. In fact, pressure would be counter-productive. You want him free associating, paper and calculator and whatever other useful tools convenient to hand. Just in case you hit pay dirt in his memory of something or other.

Whether this happens or not is, of course, up to RFC ... but it could, if he wants it to. And it would sure be a fun scene to read.

Theory is all well and good. Working hardware is a whole different thing. All the hardware work was done off-site by a totally different team and MA security was completely confident that he had no access to it.

My favorite example of production issues is the nuclear material code named FOGBANK. "The material is classified. Its composition is classified. Its use in the weapon is classified, and the process itself is classified."

It was made from 1975 to 1989. The production facility was torn down but the pilot facility was left up. In 2000 they decided to refurbish the warheads that had FOGBANK in it, but found they had this little minor problem - Nobody knew how to make it.

They had records of the process, but they turned out to be incomplete and the new production process didn't produce usable material.

It took about a decade for the process to be properly reconstructed and new material to be produced. It is said that a large part of the problem turned out to be an impurity in one of the ingredients was actually critical to the product working as expected, so when the more highly purified material was used in the 2000's the process failed to work.

Take for instance the sock that all amputees wear today in the USA/Europe because they are vastly more comfortable to wear. 100% of them are ALL made in a single plant in Ohio between Dayton and Columbus.

Anyone with a spectrometer will quickly know its chemical composition, but the material and how it is gelled together is TOP secret within the company and only 3 people know. 3! The other 500 employees all work and use this material on a daily basis. Maintain the equipment, but the exact gell cycle used on a common plastic is NOT recorded anywhere.

The common plastic used was brought to this companies attention via an amputee who got tired of his itching, burning, uncomfortable thigh sock, took his fishing worms, a bit gummy, not too much different in texture to a "gummy worm" you eat, melted his fishing lures down in a pot, made a cast of his leg, and poured himself a sock that fit and was Very comfortable.

He took said material to said company and they came to an agreement and viola as said guy had no production know how, nor the market reach as this company was already in the prosthetic limb industry, socks for amputees limbs that go between their amputeed limb and their new prosthetic that are vastly better than anything anyone had before. With these socks you now see amputees doing marathons. Something you would NEVER see somene doing before as their simply was not enough(right density/tenacity) cushion between the prosthetic and the amputation creating massive amounts of friction and pain.

I picked this story up from a hired engineer who did quite a bit of CAD work for them and even had 2 patents in said company. Even he who had worked for them for 15 years and was nearly at the top never knew. He moved as his wife got a very lucrative head nursing job and their kids had grown up pretty much by then.

Its one of those many things, you can have in your hand, but you would be 100% impossible to duplicate unless you literally stumbled upon the correct chemical gelling process to recreate the product in question. A process in which NO ONE ever wrote down how to do it as some unscrupulous greedy selfish bastard would steal it and go to their rivals for a quick easy payday.

Nearly every product out there and its components are all easily seen, but hard to duplicate unless one can figure out the exact method in which to create said product. Just ask the Chinese and their lack of turbine engine knowledge and why the Russians are still more than willing to sell them their engines. The Russians know full well the Chinese are trying to duplicate their engine turbine blades but do not know how to create the process needed to make good enough turbine blades. When the Chinese do, they will never buy another Russian Turbine engine for their top fighter aircraft unless once again turbine engines take another leap forward as yet another brand spanking new process for growing higher temperature turbine blades is created and therefore vastly superior power to weight ratio and the more important specific fuel consumption to power ratio.

kzt wrote:Theory is all well and good. Working hardware is a whole different thing. All the hardware work was done off-site by a totally different team and MA security was completely confident that he had no access to it.

My favorite example of production issues is the nuclear material code named FOGBANK. "The material is classified. Its composition is classified. Its use in the weapon is classified, and the process itself is classified."

It was made from 1975 to 1989. The production facility was torn down but the pilot facility was left up. In 2000 they decided to refurbish the warheads that had FOGBANK in it, but found they had this little minor problem - Nobody knew how to make it.

They had records of the process, but they turned out to be incomplete and the new production process didn't produce usable material.

It took about a decade for the process to be properly reconstructed and new material to be produced. It is said that a large part of the problem turned out to be an impurity in one of the ingredients was actually critical to the product working as expected, so when the more highly purified material was used in the 2000's the process failed to work.

I just read an article on Fogbank.

the scientists involved to seemed very embarrassed that they realized they never even knew how to make a product in the first place. Apparently it was the modern cleaning process of the feed metal that was interfering with the final manufacture.

it's an excellent cautionary tale for people trying to replicate the work that someone else has done even when they know all of this theory and math find final product. Something so simple as a different cleaning process for the feedstock at the initial stages of the process can have a dramatic effects on the final materials.

just because this story takes place so far in the future, iit would be the height of arrogance to assume that such a situation could not occur when the Republic of Haven or Beowulf manufacturing facility attemps to produce Manticorian designed weapon...

Some things are likely going to be fine, but others are probably going to be dependant on the original and possibly outdated furnaces or nanotechnologies manticore was using before the space stations were destroyed.

kzt wrote:Theory is all well and good. Working hardware is a whole different thing. All the hardware work was done off-site by a totally different team and MA security was completely confident that he had no access to it.

My favorite example of production issues is the nuclear material code named FOGBANK. "The material is classified. Its composition is classified. Its use in the weapon is classified, and the process itself is classified."

It was made from 1975 to 1989. The production facility was torn down but the pilot facility was left up. In 2000 they decided to refurbish the warheads that had FOGBANK in it, but found they had this little minor problem - Nobody knew how to make it.

They had records of the process, but they turned out to be incomplete and the new production process didn't produce usable material.

It took about a decade for the process to be properly reconstructed and new material to be produced. It is said that a large part of the problem turned out to be an impurity in one of the ingredients was actually critical to the product working as expected, so when the more highly purified material was used in the 2000's the process failed to work.

Relying on an unknown impurity would be probably slip by the logical hand-off procedure; and it's complicated by the classification anyway.

But the only way to be sure your written procedures are sufficiently complete and understandable is to hand them to a new crew to use as part of the original shutdown. And the new group only gets the written procedures - no interaction with the not yet disbanded production group.

The only interactions are the established group reviews the output of the test group and submitted updated written procedures. Repeat until the new group performs acceptably - then shelve the now correct procedure document and disband / reassign both groups.


But that's expensive, and in the case of classified materials increases the number of people who know the material (and hence increases the chances of leaks or exposure to spies)


In the situation you described it still likely wouldn't have caught the dependency on the impurity because the contemporaneous test group would have been using the same materials with the same critical impurity - which would have been missing upon later restart of the process.

JohnRoth wrote:

darrell wrote:

I also wonder what those other projecst Simoes had "peripheral involvement in"? Possibly the torch wormhole??? Nah, probably not.

Probably yes, with one huge caveat. He's a top hyperphysicist with high security clearances, so he almost certainly knows about The Twins, and possibly what's at the other end of those two terminals. The caveat is that he may not know where they are in real space.

Even if he doesn't know the location, knowing The Twins and the general make up of them, would be a huge help.