The Alamo Contingency has already failed

wyrm wrote:From Cauldron of Ghosts (and several other books) …

In Chapter 19, we have the scene where Benjamin tells Albrecht about Zilwicki and Cachet’s revelations, specifically – “They’re talking about virus-based nanotech assassinations, the streak drive and the spider drive …”

Each of these are important, if not essential, tools for the Alignment, and the Alamo Contingency must address the existence of each of these.

I hear you and agree with you even, but we really don't know what's going to happen because Galton was such an unexpected development in the storyline that we can't fathom why it was inserted in the first place. As I outlined in the 'Alternative theory to "Why Galton?"' thread, it looks like this is a retcon.

Anyway, to repeat, there are three possible outcomes of all those clues you've pointed out:

First, that they are indeed clues that will lead the GA Intelligence and governments to conclude the MAlign is not dead and that Galton was just a red herring. They may influence galactic public opinion and possibly even the voting population of the GA members, but the top leadership will know better. They may need to fight an uphill battle to keep the search going, but they will do so.

Second, that those are red herrings and David will explain all of them away one by one. I think this is the least likely scenario because the evidence is just too strong. That will need Galton to have some sort of plans to be discovered for each and every of the technologies, such that knowledge that Simões brought be explained or dismissed as false rumour. Beyond that, even, because there are more data points besides Simões, like Jessica Miliken, the Houdini evacuees who did not make it to Galton, the active stealth technology found on Mesa. I think we'll find that the Streak Drive did exist at Galton (it sounds like evolutionary development that would have been happening there anyway, not at Darius); I think we'll find absolutely nothing about the Spider Drive at Galton but the explanation may be that Simões was misled about its existence as misinformation. The one I can't find a good excuse for are the nanovirus, which are incontrovertible and will need to be found at Galton.

Third, it's that this is a retcon and they will not be explained away. I would usually not bring this option up for David, because we know he plans several books ahead and fleshes out the story to reach those goals. But as I said, Galton came out of the blue with no hints, which he would usually have dropped, so he must have felt a need for such a radical departure. And yet we have no clue why that was, so I can't discount the need for major retcon. Moreover, kzt says "the RMN has clearly demonstrated they do not believe that the spide drive" and he has a point that the demonstrated behaviour of the fleet during the attack at Galton does not show anything even pretending to be a defence against whatever may have attacked the MBS and Blackbird. This may be explained away, but it's a supporting point to the theory that it's a retcon. I'd like to be proven wrong.

I am personally in favour of the first option, that the Alamo Contingency failed to cover all tracks. I just can't come to a conclusion why Galton was necessary in the first place.

Yeah, David put a lot of effort into this, so he had to have a good reason. But I have no idea what it is other than ‘Yeah, the war is over, we can all go home.’

Which makes sense if the next book is 30 years in the future. But if people are going to keep looking and find out that this wasn’t the real thing, why bother? It’s functionally the same as if Galton never existed.

kzt wrote:Yeah, David put a lot of effort into this, so he had to have a good reason. But I have no idea what it is other than ‘Yeah, the war is over, we can all go home.’

Which makes sense if the next book is 30 years in the future. But if people are going to keep looking and find out that this wasn’t the real thing, why bother? It’s functionally the same as if Galton never existed.

I think it's a retcon to put things back on the original timeline. Most of the problems that have been exposed are going to take a long time to prove because they're the dog that didn't bark in the night type clues.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Which is what may have been avoided. We know it was a close call, but we don't know why or if the GT was manoeuvring. It's entirely possible it did, but trying to evade something at relativistic speeds, or even half-light, is very difficult. We know (even if the RMN doesn't) that the spider drive's acceleration is limited by the number of tractors and thus it's limited by the length of the object in question upon which to mount tractor heads. So by what we've been told, the GT has low acceleration. At 30 gravities, it would be sluggish in evading the Bernike.

It's sluggish for a weapon. But it's not 30g sluggish.

Mission of Honor wrote:“For all its size, it was also a slow weapon. It was simply impossible to fit a spider drive capable of more than a few hundred gravities’ acceleration into something small enough to make a practical weapon

That "few hundred gravities" should give it a higher accel than a merchant freighter, and 50-66% the accel of a military fast freighter or Q-ship (assuming pre-Grayson compensators)

It should be able to see a freighter coming far enough away to avoid overtaking it and flying through its wedge. (Though I guess, the torp's sensors presumably are primarily focused forward -- it might not be impossible for a wedge powered ship to come up from the aft quarter and overtake it without being noticed. Though that would require the torp to be sneaking along at well below the common intra-system speed of an impeller ship)

Jonathan_S wrote:

Mission of Honor wrote:“For all its size, it was also a slow weapon. It was simply impossible to fit a spider drive capable of more than a few hundred gravities’ acceleration into something small enough to make a practical weapon

That "few hundred gravities" should give it a higher accel than a merchant freighter, and 50-66% the accel of a military fast freighter or Q-ship (assuming pre-Grayson compensators)

Okay... but that seems to be in contradiction with the discussion about the number of tractors on the hull.

If a weapon can do a few hundred gravities, then so could any ship, which must necessarily be larger. It's limited by its lack of a wedge and thus a gravity sump to accommodate squishy humans and other sensitive components, but if it weren't for that, they'd would have more acceleration. More importantly, ships wouldn't need more tractors, besides those needed for redundancy. And yet we're told that they need lots of them.

David explained that the ships are limited by crew g-loading and the torps by physical ability to put enough drives on it.

Luckily nobody in the honorvese is aware of liquid suspension g-tollerance, which is somewhere in excess of 40g in liquid suspension along and estimated to be at least 150g if you use liquid breathing,

Maybe, how in our universe we can't use wedges for free energy, in the Honorverse the liquid g counter doesn't work?

kzt wrote:David explained that the ships are limited by crew g-loading and the torps by physical ability to put enough drives on it.

Luckily nobody in the honorvese is aware of liquid suspension g-tollerance, which is somewhere in excess of 40g in liquid suspension along and estimated to be at least 150g if you use liquid breathing,

Daryl wrote:Maybe, how in our universe we can't use wedges for free energy, in the Honorverse the liquid g counter doesn't work?

kzt wrote:David explained that the ships are limited by crew g-loading and the torps by physical ability to put enough drives on it.

Luckily nobody in the honorvese is aware of liquid suspension g-tollerance, which is somewhere in excess of 40g in liquid suspension along and estimated to be at least 150g if you use liquid breathing,

Nah, David plans to have the MA ships at 3000g.

“We have searched the entire volume where they can be and can’t find them!”

ThinksMarkedly wrote:If a weapon can do a few hundred gravities, then so could any ship, which must necessarily be larger. It's limited by its lack of a wedge and thus a gravity sump to accommodate squishy humans and other sensitive components, but if it weren't for that, they'd would have more acceleration. More importantly, ships wouldn't need more tractors, besides those needed for redundancy. And yet we're told that they need lots of them.

Pure speculation, but it's possible that ships need extra tractors to spread the load. After all, those tractors are moving something with vastly higher mass than a graser torp.

You might need to use 3, 5, or more times as many tractor emitters at a time to move a Shark (much less a LennyDet) at the same accel as a graser torp. I'd guess there are limits on how much force you can put through any single tractor emitter of a spider drive, and also limits on how the strength of the connection between an emitter and the ship's structure.

But even so, spider ships probably do have drives overpowered enough to accelerate them well above what their crews can survive.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

kzt wrote:Yeah, David put a lot of effort into this, so he had to have a good reason. But I have no idea what it is other than ‘Yeah, the war is over, we can all go home.’

Which makes sense if the next book is 30 years in the future. But if people are going to keep looking and find out that this wasn’t the real thing, why bother? It’s functionally the same as if Galton never existed.

I think it's a retcon to put things back on the original timeline. Most of the problems that have been exposed are going to take a long time to prove because they're the dog that didn't bark in the night type clues.

That explains things well!