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David Sooby
01-24-2015
05:58 UT
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On 1/22/2015 11:14 PM, QT - Jackson Russell wrote:
> Merlin's main
defense was that most people either didn't know, or believe that it
existed. What I don't get is how they were able to build it in enemy
territory in the first place. That is a bit like running the Manhattan
Project in downtown Berlin.
> Jack
Perhaps you're
making too much of the Union vs. Confederate analogy in the System
States War. Let's keep in mind the cargo cult analogy which is the
basis of THE COSMIC COMPUTER. The cargo cults developed on South
Pacific islands used as distribution points by the U.S. military. An
analogy would be Poictesme being used by the Federation for the same
purpose... which means that it never would have been taken over by the
System States alliance.
Quoting from Chapter I of THE COSMIC COMPUTER:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
...a
vast desert of crumbling concrete—landing fields and parade grounds,
empty barracks and toppling sheds, airship docks, stripped gun
emplacements and missile-launching sites. These... dated from
Poictesme's
second hectic prosperity, when the Gartner Trisystem had been the
advance base for the Third Fleet-Army Force, during the System States
War.
It had lasted twelve years. Millions of troops were
stationed on or routed through Poictesme. The mines and factories
reopened for war production. The Federation spent trillions on
trillions of sols, piled up mountains of supplies and equipment, left
the face of the world cluttered with installations.
Then, without warning, the System States Alliance collapsed, the rebellion ended, and the scourge of peace fell on Poictesme.
The
Federation armies departed. They took the clothes they stood in, their
personal weapons, and a few souvenirs. Everything else was abandoned.
Even the most expensive equipment had been worth less than the cost of
removal.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Merlin was built as a secret project by the Federation military. It never was in "enemy territory".
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clear ether!
Lensman (aka David Sooby)
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David Sooby
01-24-2015
05:37 UT
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On 1/22/2015 10:11 PM, QT - Jonathan Crocker wrote:
> I found the
line about the transport cruisers in A Slave is a Slave at 3000 feet,
0.568 of a mile - and then a few pages on, "An Empire ship-of-the-line
was almost a mile in diameter."
Ah! Thanks for the citation, and the correction. Mea culpa.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clear ether!
Lensman (aka David Sooby)
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David Sooby
01-24-2015
05:34 UT
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On 1/21/2015 10:53 PM, QT - Jackson Russell wrote:
> I have my
doubts about a mile in diameter. Can anybody site the largest
hyperspace ship? Mike Robertson had one in his Space Viking books that
was around 1/3 to 1/2 that size, but it is up to the individual reader
to decide if that is in canon or not.
If it wasn't in a
story that Piper himself wrote or co-wrote, then it ain't canon. I
personally would dispute that even Kurland's FIRST CYCLE is canon, but I
can see there may be some legitimate disagreement on that point.
So far as I know, the largest hypership in any canonical THFH story is in "A Slave Is a Slave":
"...the sun glinted from the three thousand foot globes of the two transport-cruisers, /Canopus/ and /Mizar/."
No
ship of that size is mentioned in any chronologically earlier story,
and I think the implication is that in the Federation era, ships never
did get that large. In the Imperial era, I think, the largest were
larger, and the ships traveled faster thru hyperspace. But the "two
thousand-foot globe" of a Space Viking battleship certainly does qualify
as more than 1/3 of a mile in diameter. Since several of those were
mentioned, it may not be "coloring too far outside the lines" of canon
to suggest there might have been a few that were 1/2 mile, or ~2600', in
diameter. My guess is that "two thousand foot" is just an
approximation anyway, and isn't intended to be the -precise- size.
Ships were built on a variety of planets, and there's no reason to
think that they were all built to the same exact plan, or that the ship
builders on every planet had an obsession with large round numbers...
or even that they all used the British Imperial standard yardstick.
2000 feet is 609.6 meters... which isn't a round number at all.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clear ether!
Lensman (aka David Sooby)
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Jackson Russell
01-23-2015
05:14 UT
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Agreed. An we should never underestimate the value of mobility.
Collapsium is very sturdy stuff, but it has its limits. A direct hit
with an A-bomb would have sent Merlin strait to MC sq. A battle
cruiser has the (limited) ability to dodge incoming nukes while
shooting back. Of course, in Junkyard Planet (or The Cosmic Computer,
if you prefer) Merlin's main defense was that most people either didn't
know, or believe that it existed. What I don't get is how they were
able to build it in enemy territory in the first place. That is a bit
like running the Manhattan Project in downtown Berlin.
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
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Jonathan Crocker
01-23-2015
04:11 UT
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I always enjoy a chance to hunt things down in Piper stories...
In Four Day Planet, the Peenemunde was a two-thousand-foot diameter ship, so just under half a mile.
In
Federation, the line about the ship said "even a battle cruiser almost
half a mile in diameter" - I must have misremembered that, I thought it
was a mile. I should re-read these more often.
Nemesis in Space
Viking is a two-thousand footer. At various places it lists the
complement of 'most' ships to be 800 men, and the ground-fighter
compliment about five hundred, which doesn't seem to be a lot of people
to fly such a large ship.
I found the line about the transport
cruisers in A Slave is a Slave at 3000 feet, 0.568 of a mile - and then a
few pages on, "An Empire ship-of-the-line was almost a mile in
diameter."
I'm guessing there weren't many of those, but even a
ship that was 'merely' half a mile in diameter should have a lot of
volume to build portable Merlins in.
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Mark Graves
01-23-2015
01:02 UT
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I remembered the Empress Eulalie in A Slave is a Slave as a 5,000
footer, but a quick look on Gutenberg doesn't show a size. It does show
the two transport-cruisers at 3,000 ft though, and a ship of the line
would certainly be bigger. I'm almost convinced I've read a slightly
different version somewhere that did give a size, but I don't have time
to sort through ebooks at this second. Pretty sure that story has the
biggest ships Piper wrote about though.
On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 10:53 PM, QT - Jackson Russell <
qtopic-42-tnfVKeAH3s4T@quicktopic.com> wrote:
>
< replied-to message removed by QT >
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Jackson Russell
01-22-2015
04:53 UT
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I have my doubts about a mile in diameter. Can anybody site the largest
hyperspace ship? Mike Robertson had one in his Space Viking books
that was around 1/3 to 1/2 that size, but it is up to the individual
reader to decide if that is in canon or not.
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
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Jonathan Crocker
01-22-2015
04:32 UT
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You're right about there being a lot of potential for Paratime stories there.
If
they had decided to built Merlin in a ship, I don't think they would
have had to bother going for a 'super-size' one, the regular ships could
run about a mile in diameter, that would give a whole lot of volume to
work with
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Jackson Russell
01-22-2015
03:58 UT
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Which is probably what happened to cause the Collapse a few centuries
later. Frankly, the System States never had a chance. It was like the
Confederacy verses the Union. The Union had manufacturing and industry
on its side while the Confederacy was hoping to get the British to
back them up. Sadly, for them, they overestimated the value of their
cotton on the European market. The same with the System States. They
were up against a superior technological force. They did have to
advantages, though; the home ground advantage, knowing the local
terrain and such, and the vast distances the Federation had to bring
the troops through. However, it is always more desirable to fight a
war on the other guys real estate so as to not damage your own, and
they could pack a helluva lot of troop in the hyperspace ships. And,
of course, they had Merlin.
The odd thing about Merlin is that
they built it on Poictesme instead of making it mobile, like in a
super-size hyperspace ship. One shouldn't leave advanced weaponry
where the enemy can grab it if the tide of battle goes against them.
If they do, they should destroy it, not box it up and hide it.
As for the "What If?" well, somebody couls always write a Paratime story that covered these events.
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
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Jonathan Crocker
01-22-2015
03:03 UT
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There are so many variables to that. Would it have been a "what if the
SSA won the equivalent to the Battle of Gettysburg?" A successful
decapitation raids on Terra and Poictesme? A pyrrhic victory, that left
the SSA still existing, but the space fleets of both sides decimated
and commerce almost impossible? A war not so much won by the SSA, but
lost by the Federation through mismanagement?
All would leave very different 'game worlds'.
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George J. Rowe
01-21-2015
04:07 UT
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Has anyone done any "what if" writing concerning the System States
War...like what if the SSA had won the war? What if the TF had stopped
the formation of the SSA? Just curious.
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