ARTICLE 37 FREE ZONE - WARNING ENTER HERE ONLY AFTER LISTENING TO EPI 30

[nlowell]

Hi, I am jumping in with both feet here as the new member of the forum.  Why have a forum if nobody yaks, right?
 
I was amazed at the dichotomy of Ish wondering so much about the bodyguard issue and the results of article 37.  The thing is, he was right.  It sounds like a setup to make Mr. Simpson money and keep the "need" high.  Chief Bailey exempified this, but it took someone getting killed in an attack to prove this as it came out as a result of the investigation of the death.  Talking about irony.....

There was a not-so-subtle comment about living in fear. Having body guards didn't make them secure. Living in fear put them at risk because it predisposed them to frame their decisions improperly and let them put too much reliance on their guards. Sound familiar? Flown anywhere lately?

My next observation is the little discussed fact that the Chernyakova issue is not resolved.  Who owns her really?  Wasn't she claimed as salvage in the name of DST?  Hmmm.  A lot could be done with that with Nate's twisty mind chewing on it.  Wouldn't it be really ironic if Ish ends up in charge of the Chernyakova?  Just thinkin' here. 

That's a good question and I need to research that. My thought is that it was turned over to the salvage arbitration authority -- the equivalent of the maritime board -- but the insurance company probably has a large claim. This needs some research because .. um .. yeah .. it's possible he might see the Chernyakova again.
 
Maybe.

This brings me to something I have sort of said before, Ish's skills are as a charismatic, caring, shaman-like people person.  Several folks have commented on that.  Also, however, he tends to gravitate to the top as he is also efficient (although a little "off" right now--he IS mourning).  He is a CAPTAIN.  The possibility is recognized throughout his career, starting with Annie and Cpt Giggone.  When he becomes a captain,  it is a mantle he dons, unknowingly at first, but that he recognizes when it is pointed out to him as he recognized Cassandra and others and knew when it was missing, ie, Rossett.  (I wonder how much moolah that guy made writing romance novels?)      The thing is, whatever he does, it must be under that banner, not necessarily AS captain, but in charge.  That doesn't mean he can't have colleagues, bosses, or whatever, but he has to be in charge of his part of the whatever. I wouldn't think he could go backwards.  What went wrong with Icarus was on the financial end.  He was out of his area of expertise and knew it, but latched on to the bad guy for help.  Talk about unlucky for your first foray into business, that took the cake.  Actually he got two advisors and the first one was worse to him (wandering around on a yacht) , but more right that the 2nd, that's for sure.

 Anyway, my thoughts.  I can't wait to see what Nate does with this guy.  There are so many great possibilities and we all love this character and wish him well.  Go Nate!

I can't either. wonder what I'll do with him.

[JRandolph]

These are in fact concerns, and part of the Cargo Master's job - remember when Pip was taking his Cargo Handler (which got upgraded to Cargoman) test, and he mentioned finding a strap that wasn't properly tightened?  As well, mention is made of possible rough handling by the tugs - I'm sure the tugs are indemnified against damage, and only attach at designated hard points (though it's at least suggested that the tugs use some kind of gravitic tractor beam, or *possibly* electromagnetic grapples.  I'm pretty sure it's tractor beams, though, as attaching grapples on a ship coming inwards to be docked would be an incredibly tricky maneuver.

Still, I'm sure the ships are engineered with quite a bit of safety leeway.  I suspect the cargo containers for the Lois are considered part of the ship, and are pulled, emptied, refilled, and replaced, rather than just being swapped around, as is the impression of the cans that the Agamemnon pulls.  However, if there's enough of that type of ship flying around, then perhaps they do have spares to fill while waiting for the ship to come in, and they just swap an empty for a full.

Much like sea sailing, work on the solar clippers is potentially very dangerous, and not for the faint of heart.

I would doubt that the cargo containers would be part of the ship.  It's easier to simply leave the cargo containerized and swap out the containers.  I'd expect that there is a cargo storage area stored outside the station, and it'd just be kept in the bin it was in whenever possible.  I would expect most cargo in containers to be loose/bulk goods as much as possible.  The container shapes aren't friendly to palatalized Cargos space-wise.  The loose cargo strap bit.  Well, they never said where it was.  There could have been a palletized cargo section on the Lois that isn't a part of the container cargo.  For all we know the strap was holding down some sort of forklift.

Obviously there was really a good deal of "handwavium" used conceptually, and really I applaud that.  I don't need to know that Wesley realigned the phase emitters to simulate an anti-tachyon burst from the main deflector array so that his girlfriend saw fireworks on her birthday.

One thing I am curious about though is how the jump drive works.  It's been mentioned that the wormhole is created in front of the ship, and yadda.  Wouldn't it be more cost effective to leave that off of the ship and just build Wormholes as jump points using a stationary generator that creates the wormhole just before the ship passes through?  It's make sense if the stations were able to be built somewhere and then towed/jumped into position rather than built in orbit.  If they are really that cookie cutter one would think the CPJCT would attempt to help fund itself via station sales/leases.

Mostly I think I'm just kind of shocked that the entire cargo section is towed into the station without a harbor-pilot at the helm.  That much mass slamming into a lock a little too fast could ruin a lot of people's day in a hurry.  If you detached the cargo before docking you could have a completely separate freight yard.  I only say this because they're always talking about the scrubbers.  Anyone who's ever had to crawl around a warehouse installing electronics can tell you that a warehouse is damn filthy.  I mean no way you don't come out of there with grease on you.

Logistics wise it'd make sense for the ship to load up supplies and arrange departure time from the system based on cargo loading crew timing.  

Also, is it more efficient to make the carriers power all the way into the system, or would it be better to put the station just inside the Burleson Limit and arrange for cargo trains to/from planet?

(This is why I never end up actually writing the book.  I get too lost in the minutiae of how something works...)

[Tara_Li]

These are in fact concerns, and part of the Cargo Master's job - remember when Pip was taking his Cargo Handler (which got upgraded to Cargoman) test, and he mentioned finding a strap that wasn't properly tightened?  As well, mention is made of possible rough handling by the tugs - I'm sure the tugs are indemnified against damage, and only attach at designated hard points (though it's at least suggested that the tugs use some kind of gravitic tractor beam, or *possibly* electromagnetic grapples.  I'm pretty sure it's tractor beams, though, as attaching grapples on a ship coming inwards to be docked would be an incredibly tricky maneuver.

Still, I'm sure the ships are engineered with quite a bit of safety leeway.  I suspect the cargo containers for the Lois are considered part of the ship, and are pulled, emptied, refilled, and replaced, rather than just being swapped around, as is the impression of the cans that the Agamemnon pulls.  However, if there's enough of that type of ship flying around, then perhaps they do have spares to fill while waiting for the ship to come in, and they just swap an empty for a full.

Much like sea sailing, work on the solar clippers is potentially very dangerous, and not for the faint of heart.

I would doubt that the cargo containers would be part of the ship.  It's easier to simply leave the cargo containerized and swap out the containers.  I'd expect that there is a cargo storage area stored outside the station, and it'd just be kept in the bin it was in whenever possible.  I would expect most cargo in containers to be loose/bulk goods as much as possible.  The container shapes aren't friendly to palatalized Cargos space-wise.  The loose cargo strap bit.  Well, they never said where it was.  There could have been a palletized cargo section on the Lois that isn't a part of the container cargo.  For all we know the strap was holding down some sort of forklift.

Well, the Lois is of one particular design of ship, and the wedge-shaped sections are, to some extent, structural.  There is a core spine that runs all the way down them, but it seems relatively thin.  No, the wedge shapes are not that friendly to cargo cubes, but for the very large bulk cargos, that's not that much of an issue - the contents would be poured in to fill.

Obviously there was really a good deal of "handwavium" used conceptually, and really I applaud that.  I don't need to know that Wesley realigned the phase emitters to simulate an anti-tachyon burst from the main deflector array so that his girlfriend saw fireworks on her birthday.

Actually, over all, I'd say Dr. Lowell avoided handwavium pretty well.  Most of the stuff he mentions is fairly standard SciFi stuff, with plenty of analysis in other sources to show its current RL possibilities.  The most handwavium item, I think, was the gravity generators on the ship, which served the purpose of preventing needing to explain how things worked because the G varied on different runs, and why nobody was floating while docked to the orbitals, and he didn't ignore them when it mattered, during the CME event, when the ship *would* be in freefall because without sail, there'd be no acceleration, and there was no power to keep the grav generators going.

One thing I am curious about though is how the jump drive works.  It's been mentioned that the wormhole is created in front of the ship, and yadda.  Wouldn't it be more cost effective to leave that off of the ship and just build Wormholes as jump points using a stationary generator that creates the wormhole just before the ship passes through?  It's make sense if the stations were able to be built somewhere and then towed/jumped into position rather than built in orbit.  If they are really that cookie cutter one would think the CPJCT would attempt to help fund itself via station sales/leases.

Actually, it really doesn't form a wormhole - it folds space.  Subtle, but somewhat important, really, as it means that there isn't a way as far as we can tell to form a permanent fold - and if we could, it might well be a Very Bad Thing (tm)(c)(Pat Pending).  It's more of a triggered effect - the jump engines store energy, then release it in a compressed burst that creates a ripple that almost instantly travels through the ship.  It might actually be more correct to say it stretches the ship out several light-years long, but that would be a philosophical question for the physicists to ponder.  However, remember that momentum is conserved through the jump - and for that matter, a station large enough to serve as the end point that far out would likely have enough gravity to limit jumping anywhere near it.

And yes, the CP Joint Committees do fund themselves with docking fees, orbital facilities leases, and so forth - that's their major source of funding, from what Dr. Lowell has said.  Well, that, and the leases on the planets themselves.

Mostly I think I'm just kind of shocked that the entire cargo section is towed into the station without a harbor-pilot at the helm.  That much mass slamming into a lock a little too fast could ruin a lot of people's day in a hurry.  If you detached the cargo before docking you could have a completely separate freight yard.  I only say this because they're always talking about the scrubbers.  Anyone who's ever had to crawl around a warehouse installing electronics can tell you that a warehouse is damn filthy.  I mean no way you don't come out of there with grease on you.

Harbor pilots are really only needed if there are shoals and such in the area - in this respect, solar clippers are more akin to airplanes, as evidenced by Orbital Control acting like the modern Air Traffic Controllers.  The tugs do most of the close maneuvering, with the final docking done by the ship itself, using the smallest bursts of its kicker engines.  With laser beacons and laser ranging, it's likely mostly automated, in fact, for the last half-kilometer of flight.  Once the ship is docked, smaller craft and powered hard suits are used to move the containers out of their bays and into bays on the Orbitals, assuming those particular containers aren't to just be attached to a shuttle and landed on the planet immediately.

We really don't get to see that much of Orbital-side working man viewpoint - that's an area widely available for stories in the Kufari sector.

Logistics wise it'd make sense for the ship to load up supplies and arrange departure time from the system based on cargo loading crew timing.  

Also, is it more efficient to make the carriers power all the way into the system, or would it be better to put the station just inside the Burleson Limit and arrange for cargo trains to/from planet?

(This is why I never end up actually writing the book.  I get too lost in the minutiae of how something works...)

But cargo loading and ship resupply *is* what controls departure timing.  Then, the ship has to travel and line itself up so it's far enough out, and travelling in the appropriate direction to get to its next destination.  As far as we can tell, the ship cannot jump *through* a star system, so from where it hits the Burleson Limit, it's limited to a hemisphere tangential to the Burleson Limit sphere, and with inner system planets fudging that sphere some, likely not quite that.

One thing suggested by the double-jump the Agamemnon took, and by the distance the Iris could jump, is that to some degree, distance and direction jumped is influenced by the vector the ship is on, because the Agamemnon had to re-align itself after the first jump to a minor degree to get it aimed more precisely at the final destination.  We don't know for sure, as we never passed the CPJCT 2nd Mate's License exam.

However, it is well to remember that Dr. Lowell was *not* writing a Ship Handling Manual, but a story about a Man and His Ship, and in that respect, he did a magnificent job!  (Even if I was too much of a dullard to catch the hints he left.)

[nlowell]

I double checked the dates and looks like a continuity error that will have to be repaired for the text edit. I had it backwards in my brain.

The company formed on December 21st but wasn't incorporated until Dec 25th. Ms Malloney signed aboard on the 26th. The story ended on January 1st, when in theory, the deeds had been done. Now it could have happened when they docked, but you're right, there's no mention of it. 

[nlowell]

The pie shaped containers are "hot swapped" not reloaded.

Think of today's cargo containers but instead of being oblong, they're pie shaped. I had to take the diagram down because it didn't match the book and too many people were bitching about it. I haven't had a chance to redraw it yet but the documents from the yard identify them as "standard 12 meter containers."

[Tara_Li]

The pie shaped containers are "hot swapped" not reloaded.

Think of today's cargo containers but instead of being oblong, they're pie shaped. I had to take the diagram down because it didn't match the book and too many people were bitching about it. I haven't had a chance to redraw it yet but the documents from the yard identify them as "standard 12 meter containers."

So all ships look alike, save for minor variations in internal arrangements, and maybe length?  I had the impression there was more variation in ship designs, and in containers - do six of those containers form a "can" for the Agamemnon to tow?

[Richard]

Obviously there was really a good deal of "handwavium" used conceptually, and really I applaud that.

Logistics wise it'd make sense for the ship to load up supplies and arrange departure time from the system based on cargo loading crew timing.  

Also, is it more efficient to make the carriers power all the way into the system, or would it be better to put the station just inside the Burleson Limit and arrange for cargo trains to/from planet?

One thing that was hit with a heavy dose of "handwavium" is what the cargo section of the crew did. In port while everyone else was off, they'd be working, and while they were underway, most of their time would be free, or loaned out to other departments.

With several types of containers in use, the shipper would have to contract for a cargo, and then have it stuffed into a compatible container, unless they were willing to gamble that the right kind of ship would be available in time. This could delay loading, but we usually didn't see that because Ish tried to grab cargos before docking, which gave the shippers time to fill containers.

I believe it would be cheaper to send the big ships into the gravity well. With the station out at the limit, the only people to benefit would be the clippers. The planet would need short haul ships to move cargo between the limit & orbit, & extra crews to load & unload the short haulers.

Remember, money drives almost everything when it comes to commerce.

[Richard]

So all ships look alike, save for minor variations in internal arrangements, and maybe length?  I had the impression there was more variation in ship designs, and in containers - do six of those containers form a "can" for the Agamemnon to tow?

I counted three different types of containers in the six books: the pie wedges that the Lois carried, the cylinders the Agamemnon towed, and the big cylinder that the Billy carried.

Lois' pie wedges were the smallest,
Agamemnon's cylinders were mid sized,
Billy's cylinder was bigger than all 72 of Lois' containers combined.

See "Tech of The Solar Clipper Era" <http://durandus.org/fans/index.php?topic=190.0> under "General Discussion"

[Richard]

I double checked the dates and looks like a continuity error that will have to be repaired for the text edit. I had it backwards in my brain.

The company formed on December 21st but wasn't incorporated until Dec 25th. Ms Malloney signed aboard on the 26th. The story ended on January 1st, when in theory, the deeds had been done. Now it could have happened when they docked, but you're right, there's no mention of it. 

@nlowell - In one of the forums, you were asked about who the new board member was, and you said that you knew, but had set aside that info because it wasn't time to introduce him yet, and I think you ended with an evil laugh. So that's still something to look forward to.

[JRandolph]

Well, the Lois is of one particular design of ship, and the wedge-shaped sections are, to some extent, structural.  There is a core spine that runs all the way down them, but it seems relatively thin.  No, the wedge shapes are not that friendly to cargo cubes, but for the very large bulk cargos, that's not that much of an issue - the contents would be poured in to fill.

Right, I did say bulk cargo would work better in that case.  However even FedEx containerizes its freight before flight.  All those small packages etc.  So, it could work I suppose.  Just a lot of work to sort out on the warehouse side.

Actually, over all, I'd say Dr. Lowell avoided handwavium pretty well.  Most of the stuff he mentions is fairly standard SciFi stuff, with plenty of analysis in other sources to show its current RL possibilities.  The most handwavium item, I think, was the gravity generators on the ship, which served the purpose of preventing needing to explain how things worked because the G varied on different runs, and why nobody was floating while docked to the orbitals, and he didn't ignore them when it mattered, during the CME event, when the ship *would* be in freefall because without sail, there'd be no acceleration, and there was no power to keep the grav generators going.

Right, I wasn't insulting the hand wavium.  I liked that he only used it where necessary.

However, a ship would never be in freefall unless there was a gravitational field acting upon it.  During the CME event the ship still had its own momentum (Newton's first law here) and the ship did slew when it was hit.  However it was still traveling forward via its own energy.  One does not need to be accelerating, and without the sail there's less surface for the sun's solar winds to bite.  The ship would slow, but not stop instantly.  Do you mean coasting?  And I kind of just ignore people even using gravity generators.  Why?  Because it's probably one of the least understood concepts.  Is it an energy force, or subatomic pressure, or...  Does it push or does it pull?  Kind of crazy to think that the apple falling from a tree story is with us from an early age, but not why.  Then there's gravitational lensing and the idea that hypothetically gravitons may exist, or...  So, I just don't worry about that part.

Actually, it really doesn't form a wormhole - it folds space.  Subtle, but somewhat important, really, as it means that there isn't a way as far as we can tell to form a permanent fold - and if we could, it might well be a Very Bad Thing (tm)(c)(Pat Pending).  It's more of a triggered effect - the jump engines store energy, then release it in a compressed burst that creates a ripple that almost instantly travels through the ship.  It might actually be more correct to say it stretches the ship out several light-years long, but that would be a philosophical question for the physicists to ponder.  However, remember that momentum is conserved through the jump - and for that matter, a station large enough to serve as the end point that far out would likely have enough gravity to limit jumping anywhere near it.

A wormhole is a fold in space.  By definition that is what a wormhole is.  Just because Stargate or Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (Wormhole theory also applies to bending time here, and I kept expecting to see Rufus go floating by in an episode...) shows you whipping through happy bendy space tubes in an artist's conception (let's face it here, without the bendy tube effect it'd be slightly anticlimactic wouldn't it?) on movie/tv show doesn't make it real.  There's nothing anywhere states that a wormhole is a tunnel, but it IS a tunnel.  Merely a shortcut between here and there by folding space between those two points.

The other catch here is if the ripple moves through the ship.  Either it begins bending matter in the middle of the ship (or centering wherever the drive emitter is) or it projects it in front of the ship, the ship passes through, and suddenly the stars change...  A projected wormhole that you can pass through (just not see visually) would make more sense.  We can't see a black hole, but we can prove that it is there.

And yes, the CP Joint Committees do fund themselves with docking fees, orbital facilities leases, and so forth - that's their major source of funding, from what Dr. Lowell has said.  Well, that, and the leases on the planets themselves.

That makes sense to some extent.

Harbor pilots are really only needed if there are shoals and such in the area - in this respect, solar clippers are more akin to airplanes, as evidenced by Orbital Control acting like the modern Air Traffic Controllers.  The tugs do most of the close maneuvering, with the final docking done by the ship itself, using the smallest bursts of its kicker engines.  With laser beacons and laser ranging, it's likely mostly automated, in fact, for the last half-kilometer of flight.  Once the ship is docked, smaller craft and powered hard suits are used to move the containers out of their bays and into bays on the Orbitals, assuming those particular containers aren't to just be attached to a shuttle and landed on the planet immediately.

Planes don't really have the mass involved.  If the difference between 1 meter per second and 10 cm per second is a hole in the station, why wouldn't you have a harbor pilot?    Sure, cruise ships can spin around on a dime.  Freighters still use a lot of tugs coming into and leaving port.  So, either the tugs would dock and undock, or tugs wouldn't really be used.  If your cargo didn't need gravity, why would you expose it to gravity?  Small cargo sure.  But 50 metric tons of sand?  Why deal with the extra energy expenditure and wear from friction?

The kicker engines only face aft.  In space if you needed to slow down you'd flip the vessel around with the engines facing the direction of movement.  However they wouldn't do final breaking.  NOBODY does final breaking with that kind of power.  They would slow themselves way down, and they'd use maneuvering thrusters to stop.  Docking would be an extremely slow and precise procedure.  This isn't aircraft.  It's aircraft carrier.  An aircraft carrier that plows into its dock, damages the dock and itself.

Your suggestion would require the Lois to do an end-over, then either super heat or irradiate the side of the station, and at the very last second flip end-over-end once more and dock just right.  Not gonna happen.  Nor would the put additional kickers on the bow.  More mass to push around, more maintenance, no real benefit.  Wonderful thing about space.  Once you're moving in a direction you can pretty much turn yourself in any direction you want and you'll still keep traveling in a straight line on your original course...unless the kickers are telling the ass end to follow the nose.

We really don't get to see that much of Orbital-side working man viewpoint - that's an area widely available for stories in the Kufari sector.

But cargo loading and ship resupply *is* what controls departure timing.  Then, the ship has to travel and line itself up so it's far enough out, and travelling in the appropriate direction to get to its next destination.  As far as we can tell, the ship cannot jump *through* a star system, so from where it hits the Burleson Limit, it's limited to a hemisphere tangential to the Burleson Limit sphere, and with inner system planets fudging that sphere some, likely not quite that.

That really makes no sense in regards to folding space.  The idea is that you're outside the limit where the masses around you (and rotation seems to be key on gravity being produced) don't interfere with the drives.  The distance probably has more to do with how long it can stably hold the wormhole open.  More mass = more energy to fold space for that mass to transit between points A & B, thus the limits on distance.  Otherwise you'd always have to have a clear shot between systems to make the jump.  That isn't really so.  Also, it's likely that a burleson limit wouldn't be spherical.  It would be misshapen based on what celestial objects were in what orbit nearby.

And, jumping through a star system wouldn't happen if you're folding space.  The idea of folding space is that you warp space so that the two locations are adjacent temporarily.  There's no line stretched, you're literally just walking out your front door and as soon as you're through you're walking in the front door of the grocery store.  There is no in between.  Which is the point.  You wouldn't pass through anything between here and there, because there is nothing between here and there once space has been folded.

If you take a strip of paper and write A on one end, and B on the other, and you fold A and B so that they're touching.  Why would you take the route all the way around to get between the two?  That's folding space.

One thing suggested by the double-jump the Agamemnon took, and by the distance the Iris could jump, is that to some degree, distance and direction jumped is influenced by the vector the ship is on, because the Agamemnon had to re-align itself after the first jump to a minor degree to get it aimed more precisely at the final destination.  We don't know for sure, as we never passed the CPJCT 2nd Mate's License exam.

That one I simply took it to mean that they passed through one wormhole, maintained their residual energy through the area, and traversed enough space to close the distance on their jump limit.  Otherwise they'd have been trying to tack upstream against the solar winds where they may be too weak to effectively move the ship.

However, it is well to remember that Dr. Lowell was *not* writing a Ship Handling Manual, but a story about a Man and His Ship, and in that respect, he did a magnificent job!  (Even if I was too much of a dullard to catch the hints he left.)

Right, I wasn't criticizing him, his writing ability, or his story.  You don't need to defend him.  I'm simply asking questions and making commentary about things that seem strange to me and wanted to know the thinking behind it.  If I didn't love the story, I wouldn't have picked up book 2, let alone book 4 or book 6 or even be writing here.  Sheesh.

[JRandolph]

@nlowell - In one of the forums, you were asked about who the new board member was, and you said that you knew, but had set aside that info because it wasn't time to introduce him yet, and I think you ended with an evil laugh. So that's still something to look forward to.

My theory?  That was where Ms Malone's remaining money really went...  It gets her foot in the door as a shareholder, and allows her to show DST she's willing to put her own money (not just DST's) into the venture.

[JRandolph]

One thing that was hit with a heavy dose of "handwavium" is what the cargo section of the crew did. In port while everyone else was off, they'd be working, and while they were underway, most of their time would be free, or loaned out to other departments.

With several types of containers in use, the shipper would have to contract for a cargo, and then have it stuffed into a compatible container, unless they were willing to gamble that the right kind of ship would be available in time. This could delay loading, but we usually didn't see that because Ish tried to grab cargos before docking, which gave the shippers time to fill containers.

I believe it would be cheaper to send the big ships into the gravity well. With the station out at the limit, the only people to benefit would be the clippers. The planet would need short haul ships to move cargo between the limit & orbit, & extra crews to load & unload the short haulers.

Remember, money drives almost everything when it comes to commerce.

Except that loaded containers were delivered, not loaded as stuff arrived.   

And in the case of in-system transport.  It'd be easier to load up a daily "cargo train" and haul it all the way in/out of the system.  Moving cargo by train is more efficient (just not as flexible) than by Semi.  If there were a way to make very very long cargo trains in/out of system that would likely be more efficient.  The reason why being that it's easier to use solar winds to push you than to tack-in into the wind.  Which is what every cargo ship would be doing on its way in-system.  The train once moving would present a very low drag-profile using kickers.  You'd have some tugs to help get it started, and a few to help stop it.

If the station is just off of the host planet it'd probably be faster/cheaper to transport cargo/crew up from the planet via space elevator than shuttle or cargo ships capable of atmospheric flight.

[Richard]

One thing that was hit with a heavy dose of "handwavium" is what the cargo section of the crew did. In port while everyone else was off, they'd be working, and while they were underway, most of their time would be free, or loaned out to other departments.

With several types of containers in use, the shipper would have to contract for a cargo, and then have it stuffed into a compatible container, unless they were willing to gamble that the right kind of ship would be available in time. This could delay loading, but we usually didn't see that because Ish tried to grab cargos before docking, which gave the shippers time to fill containers.

Except that loaded containers were delivered, not loaded as stuff arrived.   

Correct. Containers are stuffed or filled prior to being loaded on a ship, and that's what I said. The point I was trying to make was that loading could be delayed while the right type of container gets filled.

[Tara_Li]

Actually, over all, I'd say Dr. Lowell avoided handwavium pretty well.  Most of the stuff he mentions is fairly standard SciFi stuff, with plenty of analysis in other sources to show its current RL possibilities.  The most handwavium item, I think, was the gravity generators on the ship, which served the purpose of preventing needing to explain how things worked because the G varied on different runs, and why nobody was floating while docked to the orbitals, and he didn't ignore them when it mattered, during the CME event, when the ship *would* be in freefall because without sail, there'd be no acceleration, and there was no power to keep the grav generators going.

Right, I wasn't insulting the hand wavium.  I liked that he only used it where necessary.

However, a ship would never be in freefall unless there was a gravitational field acting upon it.  During the CME event the ship still had its own momentum (Newton's first law here) and the ship did slew when it was hit.  However it was still traveling forward via its own energy.  One does not need to be accelerating, and without the sail there's less surface for the sun's solar winds to bite.  The ship would slow, but not stop instantly.  Do you mean coasting?  And I kind of just ignore people even using gravity generators.  Why?  Because it's probably one of the least understood concepts.  Is it an energy force, or subatomic pressure, or...  Does it push or does it pull?  Kind of crazy to think that the apple falling from a tree story is with us from an early age, but not why.  Then there's gravitational lensing and the idea that hypothetically gravitons may exist, or...  So, I just don't worry about that part.

You seem to be thinking that the ship is using the sails to gain speed on the inbound leg of the trip - it's not.  It's decelerating, to get rid of the velocity it built on the out-bound leg to the Burleson Limit.  So, when the CME killed the sail generators and the gravity keel, the ship was in fact free-falling within the gravitational field of that star - so no, I didn't mean just coasting - I did in fact mean that the ship and crew would experience the microgravity field condition generally called "free fall" or "zero gravity".  In fact, the ship would not slow significantly once it lost its sails - there would be the sharp jerk of the CME hitting the ship, and then that would be it.  The ship is in space - there really isn't enough gas to slow the ship down in any reasonable timeframe.

And yes, the gravity generators were hand-wavium, as the time frames indicated suggest the ships accelerate at somewhere between 0.75 and 1.0 G most of the time due to the sails.

Actually, it really doesn't form a wormhole - it folds space.  Subtle, but somewhat important, really, as it means that there isn't a way as far as we can tell to form a permanent fold - and if we could, it might well be a Very Bad Thing (tm)(c)(Pat Pending).  It's more of a triggered effect - the jump engines store energy, then release it in a compressed burst that creates a ripple that almost instantly travels through the ship.  It might actually be more correct to say it stretches the ship out several light-years long, but that would be a philosophical question for the physicists to ponder.  However, remember that momentum is conserved through the jump - and for that matter, a station large enough to serve as the end point that far out would likely have enough gravity to limit jumping anywhere near it.

A wormhole is a fold in space.  By definition that is what a wormhole is.  Just because Stargate or Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (Wormhole theory also applies to bending time here, and I kept expecting to see Rufus go floating by in an episode...) shows you whipping through happy bendy space tubes in an artist's conception (let's face it here, without the bendy tube effect it'd be slightly anticlimactic wouldn't it?) on movie/tv show doesn't make it real.  There's nothing anywhere states that a wormhole is a tunnel, but it IS a tunnel.  Merely a shortcut between here and there by folding space between those two points.

The other catch here is if the ripple moves through the ship.  Either it begins bending matter in the middle of the ship (or centering wherever the drive emitter is) or it projects it in front of the ship, the ship passes through, and suddenly the stars change...  A projected wormhole that you can pass through (just not see visually) would make more sense.  We can't see a black hole, but we can prove that it is there.

Actually, the prototypical "wormhole" - an Einstein-Rosen Bridge - is a tunnel, creating an extra hole through the higher-dimensional shape of the universe.  A fold however creates no hole.  Topologically, they're very different operations - a wormhole being created raises the genus of the spacetime, where a fold doesn't.

As we really don't know how a Burleson Drive works, properly, I stand by my supposition that it may well be that from some analyses of the situation, it may be easier to treat the effect as the ship being stretched, than the space-time being compressed/folded.  You presume the effect must start showing itself at the emitter - but if the emitter is actually emitting two wave-forms, out of synch, with the effect occurring where the two waveforms come into phase with each other, than it's rather simple to start the effect where ever you wish, and move it however you wish simply by shaping the waveform.  Proper tuning would result in manipulation of the waveforms so fast it cannot be felt, as on the Isis, where poorer tuning could easily result in transient effects, and out-of-tolerance tuning could easily mean the destruction of the ship.

And yes, the CP Joint Committees do fund themselves with docking fees, orbital facilities leases, and so forth - that's their major source of funding, from what Dr. Lowell has said.  Well, that, and the leases on the planets themselves.

That makes sense to some extent.

I'm glad that much makes sense, as that's how it was handed down from On High!

Harbor pilots are really only needed if there are shoals and such in the area - in this respect, solar clippers are more akin to airplanes, as evidenced by Orbital Control acting like the modern Air Traffic Controllers.  The tugs do most of the close maneuvering, with the final docking done by the ship itself, using the smallest bursts of its kicker engines.  With laser beacons and laser ranging, it's likely mostly automated, in fact, for the last half-kilometer of flight.  Once the ship is docked, smaller craft and powered hard suits are used to move the containers out of their bays and into bays on the Orbitals, assuming those particular containers aren't to just be attached to a shuttle and landed on the planet immediately.

Planes don't really have the mass involved.  If the difference between 1 meter per second and 10 cm per second is a hole in the station, why wouldn't you have a harbor pilot?    Sure, cruise ships can spin around on a dime.  Freighters still use a lot of tugs coming into and leaving port.  So, either the tugs would dock and undock, or tugs wouldn't really be used.  If your cargo didn't need gravity, why would you expose it to gravity?  Small cargo sure.  But 50 metric tons of sand?  Why deal with the extra energy expenditure and wear from friction?

What would the harbor pilot be doing, that the regular pilot and ship handling systems could not do?  Harbor pilots are used only because they know the specialized conditions of a particular harbor - reefs, sand bars, wrecks shallow enough to endanger the ship, rocks, etc.  These do not apply to the area around a station - all the crew has to cope with is other ships in the area, and the station itself.

The tugs are used to impart extra momentum, or to remove excess momentum, on ships over and above that easily supplied by their kicker engines.  All of these operations occur in orbital space above a planet, so you have to consider the momentum of the ship as a whole.  Once you get the whole vehicle into a matched orbit, or docked with the orbital, then you can start messing around with the cargo containers attached.

The kicker engines only face aft.  In space if you needed to slow down you'd flip the vessel around with the engines facing the direction of movement.  However they wouldn't do final breaking.  NOBODY does final breaking with that kind of power.  They would slow themselves way down, and they'd use maneuvering thrusters to stop.  Docking would be an extremely slow and precise procedure.  This isn't aircraft.  It's aircraft carrier.  An aircraft carrier that plows into its dock, damages the dock and itself.

There's no reason to think that the kickers only face aft - they're not the primary means of propulsion, so they're relatively quite small.  Kickers *are* the maneuvering thrusters - the main propulsion is provided by the sails.  However, the sails are very large energy fields, likely as much as 100 kilometers or more in diameter, with side-effects likely detectable for quite some distance further, so said sails must be furled before final docking.  Tugs allow ships to furl those sails quite a distance away, and still be slowed down completely to where their maneuvering thrusters will allow them to finish docking safely.  Likewise, the tugs pull the ship away from the Orbital station much more quickly, allowing the ship to unfurl its sails that much sooner.  That's why there's a charge for using the tugs - in theory, the Lois could use its kickers to move to the safety limit, but it might take two or three days, during which time it's in the way of other traffic, and it's *NOT* accelerating towards the Burleson Limit.  Instead, they hire tugs to pull them away faster, offsetting that cost against the improved profit of getting to their destination sooner.

Your suggestion would require the Lois to do an end-over, then either super heat or irradiate the side of the station, and at the very last second flip end-over-end once more and dock just right.  Not gonna happen.  Nor would the put additional kickers on the bow.  More mass to push around, more maintenance, no real benefit.  Wonderful thing about space.  Once you're moving in a direction you can pretty much turn yourself in any direction you want and you'll still keep traveling in a straight line on your original course...unless the kickers are telling the ass end to follow the nose.

Listen again to the section in Captain's Share, where they double-jump.  The kickers are woefully underpowered for the degree of course change they need (which isn't that much, likely, but compared to the mass of the ship...).  It takes them about a day to make such a minor change.

We really don't get to see that much of Orbital-side working man viewpoint - that's an area widely available for stories in the Kufari sector.

But cargo loading and ship resupply *is* what controls departure timing.  Then, the ship has to travel and line itself up so it's far enough out, and travelling in the appropriate direction to get to its next destination.  As far as we can tell, the ship cannot jump *through* a star system, so from where it hits the Burleson Limit, it's limited to a hemisphere tangential to the Burleson Limit sphere, and with inner system planets fudging that sphere some, likely not quite that.

That really makes no sense in regards to folding space.  The idea is that you're outside the limit where the masses around you (and rotation seems to be key on gravity being produced) don't interfere with the drives.  The distance probably has more to do with how long it can stably hold the wormhole open.  More mass = more energy to fold space for that mass to transit between points A & B, thus the limits on distance.  Otherwise you'd always have to have a clear shot between systems to make the jump.  That isn't really so.  Also, it's likely that a burleson limit wouldn't be spherical.  It would be misshapen based on what celestial objects were in what orbit nearby.

Rotation has nothing to do with gravity being produced, as far as we know (barring that rather odd derivation that James Blish used to justify SpinDizzies in the Cities In Flight novels...).    The pseudo-gravity generally displayed in spinning space stations is not gravitic in nature, but inertial, and is easily distinguished by Coriolis forces.  The Burleson Limit, as described, lies where the space-time metric is flattened enough for the Burleson engines to take effect.  (Three-dimensionally flat, not two-dimensionally flat).  Mass certainly seems to have some effect on distance that can be jumped - but it's hard to be sure, as the bigger the ship, the slower it accelerates, therefore the slower it is going when it hits the Burleson Limit.  Without access to the field equations Dr. Lowell probably didn't bother to derive, we really can't tell.  The normal descriptions of what the Burleson Engines do quite likely are relatively educated layman descriptions, and would give physicists who work on the theory fits - much like when a quantum physicist is forced to hear someone describing the path of electrons around a nucleus compared to planets orbiting the Sun.

And, jumping through a star system wouldn't happen if you're folding space.  The idea of folding space is that you warp space so that the two locations are adjacent temporarily.  There's no line stretched, you're literally just walking out your front door and as soon as you're through you're walking in the front door of the grocery store.  There is no in between.  Which is the point.  You wouldn't pass through anything between here and there, because there is nothing between here and there once space has been folded.

If you take a strip of paper and write A on one end, and B on the other, and you fold A and B so that they're touching.  Why would you take the route all the way around to get between the two?  That's folding space.

Your strip of paper analogy is weak, as it is a two-dimensional surface, instead of a three-dimensional (or higher) one.

One thing suggested by the double-jump the Agamemnon took, and by the distance the Iris could jump, is that to some degree, distance and direction jumped is influenced by the vector the ship is on, because the Agamemnon had to re-align itself after the first jump to a minor degree to get it aimed more precisely at the final destination.  We don't know for sure, as we never passed the CPJCT 2nd Mate's License exam.

That one I simply took it to mean that they passed through one wormhole, maintained their residual energy through the area, and traversed enough space to close the distance on their jump limit.  Otherwise they'd have been trying to tack upstream against the solar winds where they may be too weak to effectively move the ship.

Um - there was no star in the area near Odin.  And they generally don't tack upstream against the winds to accelerate - when they come into the system, they start shedding the velocity they gained at the other side - which basically takes as long to get rid of as it takes to gain.

However, it is well to remember that Dr. Lowell was *not* writing a Ship Handling Manual, but a story about a Man and His Ship, and in that respect, he did a magnificent job!  (Even if I was too much of a dullard to catch the hints he left.)

Right, I wasn't criticizing him, his writing ability, or his story.  You don't need to defend him.  I'm simply asking questions and making commentary about things that seem strange to me and wanted to know the thinking behind it.  If I didn't love the story, I wouldn't have picked up book 2, let alone book 4 or book 6 or even be writing here.  Sheesh.

Hey, I'm having fun here too!  I like discussions of this type - all the way back to when warp speed was the warp factor cubed times the speed of light (I really do have to curse Roddenberry for re-defining warp speed in ST:TNG - it made no sense what so ever).  This kind of stuff isn't, and shouldn't, be in the story itself - but it definitely shapes how the story can go.  That's why I like to hash it out.

[Ignatz]

Mr. Lowell,

Your explanation makes perfect sense... in hindsight.

That is not an option. Since everybody on the board of directors knows that stipulation of the will -- and presumably Maloney would have left instructions on how to deal with such an occurance -- and further, that Simpson knew of the situation and would not knowingly expose himself as the perpetrator of such a fraud, it was never a possibility.

The point bothering me about this one is that if it is implied that Aimes Jarvis would want to throw a spanner in the works for personal gain then it makes perfect sense that he might contemplate conspiring to obtain control of that single share of stock, either for himself or even for some minor functionary fall-guy working for DST.  Either way it would have been the legal nail in the coffin for Ms. Maloney's chances.  I'm sure the devious Mr. Simpson could have figured out a way to (try to) slip that share of stock through by means of some inbetween proxy buyer who immediately has some (plausible) excuse to roll the stock over to (fill in the name of any DST employee) for whatever reason (again, fill in the blank).  But this is all my conjecture... which is exactly my point.

If Ishmael and the crew could actually suspect that Mr. Jarvis is willing to play outside of the rules, then the possibility of the manipulation of that single share of stock could be a real threat.  We, the readers (er, listeners) are not privy to the information that this would have been covered in the will.  Regardless as to whether the event actually can or cannot happen, from the limited point of view of Ishmael and the crew (and we, the readers) even the fear of such an occurance would seem to be a valid bit of conjecture within the plot line of the story

   In any case, thank you for explaining that point.