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>From: Onno Meyer <Onno.Meyer@arbi.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de>
>Subject: cherryhlist
>Date: Fri, 28 May 1993 17:18:52 +0200 (MET DST)

> >Date: Mon, 24 May 93 11:52:59 +0200
> >From: mst@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at (Markus Stumptner)
> >Subject: Cherryhlist
> 
> Even if both types of ships use the same type of drive, this does
> not mean that all drives are powerful enough for FTL capability.
> The dfrives in the riders could still be much smaller and more
> efficient at sublight speeds if they are designed not to got to
> FTL.  Given that we know next to nothing about how the FTL drives 
> are supposed to work, this is as valid a reason as any. Do riders 
> have vanes, btw?   

Do you think FTL- and STL-engines are the same hardware operating in
different modes, or what does that mean?
I always assumed that carriers have rocket-engines and jump-engines,
while the riders have only rocket-engines.

Riderships have no vanes, according to _HB_ they are manta-shaped
to accomodate the engines and still provide one very small cross-section
to pass high-velocity chaff or dust.
Another thing I can't believe, but it sounds nice.
[...]
> 
> What book are the dartships mentioned in?  I don't recall them (I haven't
> read Hellburner yet).
> 
I think _Merchanter's Luck_, one was mentioned to be docking at Viking.

[...]
> 
> Every time a carrier is destroyed, there would be four riders
> looking for a carrier to attach to.  A possible counterargument to
> this would be that the riders would defend a carrier at all costs,
> to the point of being destroyed before it, so this would not happen 
> very often, but the same effect would be achieved if the Fleet ever 
> decommissioned a carrier to use it for replacement parts (AFAIK, a
> very common practice in comparable situations).  However, since I would 
> assume that a carrier would not usually run and leave its riders behind, 
> loss of the riders may imply loss of the carrier if it's to late to run.
> 
> Thus, the fewer carriers the fleet has, the more probable is it that
> a carrier loss without rider loss will make it possible to fill the
> gaps in the complement of the remaining carriers.
> 
> 	Markus

This assumes that a carrier with free docking ports is available.
According to _DS_, the events in _DS_ described the first 
coordinated actions of the entire remaining fleet. If a single
carrier is lost, it's riders would die, too. If riderships are lost,
the carriers might survive.
	Onno

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 	I don't think the carriers (or any of their ships) use an
> inertial based system. Their fuel, for all intents and purposes, appears
> to be water. This looks like they have hydrogen-fusion based power-plants.
> They never take on propellant which makes me argue for a inertialess
> (i.e. magic) drive.

I don't agree with this.
- Water makes a nice starship fuel, if it is broken down into hydrogen
  and oxygen. In _Rimrunner_, the Station was unable to aquire and
  _process_ enough water in time (That's from memory, I might be wrong).

- "Raw" water can be heated (for example, by a fusion plant) and then
  ejected as water vapor: a simple but efficient rocket engine.

- In _Hellburner_, the craft lost an significant part of it's mass
  in an instant because it fired and moved. The powerplant would 
  consume it's fuel in a more steady manner.

- In one of the Chanur books (I boldly assume it's the same technology)
  a docking port is hit and someone said that if the "ugly" pipes
  hadn't been outside, they would all be dead. this _might_ have been
  fuel.
  Further more, the _Legacy_ aquired speed in a gentle _burn_ due to
  it's passenger, and that sounds like a "conventional" rocket.

- If the engines were hydrogen-consuming plants, why haul all the
  unnecessary oxygen that is contained in the water.

- Why introduce another "magic" technology without compelling reason?
  Jumpdrive was necessary to mace interstellar stories possible, and
  tape-teaching was necessary to colonize Cyteen. All the plots work
  with "conventional" rockets.
> 
> > If this is correct [boosting up], why are there riderships at all?
> > Do I miss some advantage of the ridrships?
> 	Cherryh says, "[A carrier] may shed its riders, which will travel 
> at that speed, although they are not capable of FTL: they are small
> ships with a crew of about fifteen, each one equipped and
> instrumented to handle the enormous velocities of a carrier,
> up to the lightbarrier. They are very sophisticated in electronics
> and armaments and any one of them is every bit as
> much to be dreaded in attack as the carrier itself: they are _fast_
> and their firepower, while less than a carrier's, is sufficient to
> destroy a carrier's maneuvering capacity, or to wipe out a
> starstation or reduce a planet to the stone age. Riders spread
> out from a carrier, and often operate at different speeds so
> that their capacity to turn is different. This confuses the
> enemy's longscan, (more about this later). When the carrier
> is ready to leave the system, it summons its riders which 
> limpet themselves to the hull."
> 	Basically if the dump-turn-boost maneuver is possible for
> a carrier it would have to be a special maneuver, when the enemy is
> completely off guard. Whereas riders do it all the time.
> I also get the impression that dipping in and out of jump-space is 
> very noticable.

I'm not sure we're talking about the same things here :-)
When I say "dump-turn-boost", I think of a speed dump by partially
entering the interface(?), a turn with realspace engines, and a boost
with the FTL-engines.
A ship capable of doing this needs FTL-engines. If a ridership (without
a FTL-engine) dumps speed or boosts up it has to do it with realspace
engines, using reaction mass and subjecting the crew to acceleration.

A carrier may "shed its riders, which will travel at that speed". 
I read from this that a ridership is not capable of the major
speed/vector changes done with the FTL-engines.
Of course, this interpretation is not supported by the remainder of
the text (the notes about rider movement).

One more point, how old is this text? The information on rider crew
numbers contradicts the information in _HB_, and I think _HB_ is one
if the newer books.
> 				Jo
            Onno