Hunting the MAlignment: MWW Clue's

SharkHunter wrote:Resurrecting a bit of an old thread, but it seemed to fit better here than elsewhere, tied into the "Laccoon" + Erewhon's concern that Mesa was like a thief's fence selling the backdoor's key combination to the highest bidder.

Knowing that the Harvest Joy was lost, yada yada yada, but the Torchese gov't wants to know what's on the other side of that wormhole, not for commercial purposes but out of sheer caution Obviously, they are not in the "send someone on a possible suicide mission to figure it out" mood, because the possible loss of those lives at gains them nothing.

So here's the thought... Could the GA program an unmanned dispatch/courier boat to go through the wormhole, Sarnow deployment style, basically to go through, reset it's hyper generator, immediately turn around and come back in X seconds with a sensor picture of whatever it could find. Obviously the Mannerheim forces are going to blow it away, but a couple of those attempts ought to up the paranoia factor a ways,enough or them to really put alot of protection in place, or if the MSDF kinda gets wise or thinks moree ships or coming through and the boat comes back and then they get REALLY protective.

yes/no maybe?

SharkHunter wrote:Resurrecting a bit of an old thread, but it seemed to fit better here than elsewhere, tied into the "Laccoon" + Erewhon's concern that Mesa was like a thief's fence selling the backdoor's key combination to the highest bidder.

Knowing that the Harvest Joy was lost, yada yada yada, but the Torchese gov't wants to know what's on the other side of that wormhole, not for commercial purposes but out of sheer caution Obviously, they are not in the "send someone on a possible suicide mission to figure it out" mood, because the possible loss of those lives at gains them nothing.

So here's the thought... Could the GA program an unmanned dispatch/courier boat to go through the wormhole, Sarnow deployment style, basically to go through, reset it's hyper generator, immediately turn around and come back in X seconds with a sensor picture of whatever it could find. Obviously the Mannerheim forces are going to blow it away, but a couple of those attempts ought to up the paranoia factor a ways,enough or them to really put alot of protection in place, or if the MSDF kinda gets wise or thinks moree ships or coming through and the boat comes back and then they get REALLY protective.

yes/no maybe?

SWM wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:Resurrecting a bit of an old thread, but it seemed to fit better here than elsewhere, tied into the "Laccoon" + Erewhon's concern that Mesa was like a thief's fence selling the backdoor's key combination to the highest bidder.

Knowing that the Harvest Joy was lost, yada yada yada, but the Torchese gov't wants to know what's on the other side of that wormhole, not for commercial purposes but out of sheer caution Obviously, they are not in the "send someone on a possible suicide mission to figure it out" mood, because the possible loss of those lives at gains them nothing.

So here's the thought... Could the GA program an unmanned dispatch/courier boat to go through the wormhole, Sarnow deployment style, basically to go through, reset it's hyper generator, immediately turn around and come back in X seconds with a sensor picture of whatever it could find. Obviously the Mannerheim forces are going to blow it away, but a couple of those attempts ought to up the paranoia factor a ways,enough or them to really put alot of protection in place, or if the MSDF kinda gets wise or thinks moree ships or coming through and the boat comes back and then they get REALLY protective.

yes/no maybe?

The biggest problem is that Torch doesn't know the proper coordinates to use for the return trip. Recall the exploration of the Lynx terminus. After they passed through the wormhole, they said it would take extensive observations and at least a day's analysis before the wormhole physicists could determine the proper vectors for the return trip. They can't simply turn around and go back the way they came--the entering and exiting vectors are different.

Another variation people came up with was for the probe (manned or unmanned, both were suggested) to immediately jump into hyperspace and plot a course home the long way. David shot this down thoroughly. Here is the discussion--read the whole thing; the topic was thoroughly discussed and David posted at least 8 times: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3107&hilit=wormhole+torch

This Pearl also has some useful information:
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/279/1

fallsfromtrees wrote:"SWM"]"SharkHunter"]

Resurrecting a bit of an old thread, but it seemed to fit better here than elsewhere, tied into the "Laccoon" + Erewhon's concern that Mesa was like a thief's fence selling the backdoor's key combination to the highest bidder.

Knowing that the Harvest Joy was lost, yada yada yada, but the Torchese gov't wants to know what's on the other side of that wormhole, not for commercial purposes but out of sheer caution Obviously, they are not in the "send someone on a possible suicide mission to figure it out" mood, because the possible loss of those lives at gains them nothing.

So here's the thought... Could the GA program an unmanned dispatch/courier boat to go through the wormhole, Sarnow deployment style, basically to go through, reset it's hyper generator, immediately turn around and come back in X seconds with a sensor picture of whatever it could find. Obviously the Mannerheim forces are going to blow it away, but a couple of those attempts ought to up the paranoia factor a ways,enough or them to really put alot of protection in place, or if the MSDF kinda gets wise or thinks moree ships or coming through and the boat comes back and then they get REALLY protective.

yes/no maybe?

fallsfromtrees wrote:This implies that it is not a death trap wormhole, but rather that fact that someone hostile is on the other side. The problem is that it takes a real stretch of the imagination to reach this conclusion without the secret background knowledge that the readers have been gifted with.

stewart wrote:

fallsfromtrees wrote:"SWM"]"SharkHunter"]

Resurrecting a bit of an old thread, but it seemed to fit better here than elsewhere, tied into the "Laccoon" + Erewhon's concern that Mesa was like a thief's fence selling the backdoor's key combination to the highest bidder.

Knowing that the Harvest Joy was lost, yada yada yada, but the Torchese gov't wants to know what's on the other side of that wormhole, not for commercial purposes but out of sheer caution Obviously, they are not in the "send someone on a possible suicide mission to figure it out" mood, because the possible loss of those lives at gains them nothing.

So here's the thought... Could the GA program an unmanned dispatch/courier boat to go through the wormhole, Sarnow deployment style, basically to go through, reset it's hyper generator, immediately turn around and come back in X seconds with a sensor picture of whatever it could find. Obviously the Mannerheim forces are going to blow it away, but a couple of those attempts ought to up the paranoia factor a ways,enough or them to really put alot of protection in place, or if the MSDF kinda gets wise or thinks moree ships or coming through and the boat comes back and then they get REALLY protective.

yes/no maybe?

The biggest problem is that Torch doesn't know the proper coordinates to use for the return trip. Recall the exploration of the Lynx terminus. After they passed through the wormhole, they said it would take extensive observations and at least a day's analysis before the wormhole physicists could determine the proper vectors for the return trip. They can't simply turn around and go back the way they came--the entering and exiting vectors are different.

Another variation people came up with was for the probe (manned or unmanned, both were suggested) to immediately jump into hyperspace and plot a course home the long way. David shot this down thoroughly. Here is the discussion--read the whole thing; the topic was thoroughly discussed and David posted at least 8 times: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3107&hilit=wormhole+torch

This Pearl also has some useful information:
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/279/1

JohnRoth wrote:It's not a junction. That was a piece of "information" the MAlign deliberately released to prod Erewhon, although I'm not certain where this bit of textev is at.

"Well," he said after a moment, "TJ and the rest of the team and I have already taken a pretty close look at the data you people have been able to provide. Obviously, you didn't begin to have the instrumentation we've brought with us, so we weren't actually in a position to reach any hard and fast conclusions about what we have here. One thing we have observed, however, is that the terminus' gravitic signature is quite low. In fact, we're a bit surprised anyone even noticed it."

"Really?" Du Havel leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. Kare looked at him, and the prime minister shrugged with a smile. "Oh, this certainly isn't my area of expertise, Doctor! I'm fully prepared to accept what you've just said, but I have to admit it piques my interest a bit. I was under the impression that ever since the existence of wormholes was first demonstrated, one of the very first things any stellar survey team's done is look very hard for them."

"That they do, Mr. Prime Minister," Kare acknowledged wryly. "Indeed, they do! But, as I'm sure all of you are aware, wormholes and their termini are usually a minimum of a couple of light-hours away from the stars with which they're associated. And what somebody who isn't a hyper-physicist may not realize is that unless they're particularly big, you also have to get within, oh, maybe four or five light-minutes before they're going to show up at all. There are certain stellar characteristics—we call them 'wormhole fingerprints'—we've learned to look for when there's a terminus in the vicinity, but they aren't always present. Again, the bigger or stronger the wormhole, the more likely the 'fingerprints' are to show up, as well.

"What we appear to have here, however, is a case of pure serendipity on someone's part. My team and I have looked very carefully at Torch, and we've determined that it really does have most of the 'fingerprints,' but they're extremely faint. In fact, it took several runs of computer enhancement before we were able to pick them out at all. That's not entirely surprising, given Torch's relative youth. Despite their mass, F-class stars are statistically less likely to possess termini at all, and when they do, the 'fingerprints' are almost invariably fainter than usual. That means nobody should have been looking for a terminus associated with this star in the first place, and, in the second place, that they shouldn't have been looking just sixty-four light-minutes from the primary. That's ridiculously close. In fact, our search of the literature indicates that it's the nearest any terminus associated with an F6 has ever been located relative to its associated primary. Coupled with how faint its Warshawski signature is, that suggests to us that whoever found it in the first place must have almost literally stubbed his toe on it. He sure shouldn't have been looking for it there, at any rate!"

"In addition to making it hard to find in the first place, the faintness of this terminus' Warshawski signature, coupled with its unusually close proximity to the primary, also indicates that it's almost certainly not especially huge. Frankly, despite the rumors to the contrary, I'll be surprised if there's more than one additional terminus associated with it—it looks a lot like one end of a two-loci system, what we call a 'wormhole bridge,' unlike the multi-loci 'junctions' like the Manticore Junction. Some of the bridges are more valuable than quite a few of the junctions we've discovered over the centuries, of course. It all depends on where the ends of the bridge are."

The Torches at the table nodded to show they were following his explanation. From their expressions—especially Du Havel's—the prediction that their wormhole was going to connect to only one other location wasn't exactly welcome, though.