21 replies to this topic

[MeepSire]

hrmn...

[Strum Wealh]

Benjamin Emory, on 03 July 2012 - 04:17 AM, said:

I thought that ability to manufacture K-F Drives was largely lost, or was that earlier in the timeline?

From the old FedSuns book:

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Duke Michael Hasek-Davion has been pouring money into Hasek College in an effort to rival his brother-in-law’s extremely successful New Avalon Institute of Science (NAIS).
The Duke’s efforts seem to have yielded some results. Two of the college’s most prominent professors, Mitchell Colophon and Jasmine Rhinesla, have recently published a paper that explains, in theory, the workings of a key aspect of the hyperspace drive.
If their work can be translated into practical engineering, it may be possible to bring back to life many JumpShips long thought to be beyond repair.

And from Sarna:

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Unfortunately, its location along the Federated Suns-Capellan Confederation border ensured the yards were regular targets for House Liao raids after the collapse of the Star League, and by the beginning of the Third Succession War the shipyards had lost the capability to construct new K-F Drives or perform all but the most basic repairs. This changed with the Fourth Succession War pushing the Capellan border back enough that Kathil was considered safe from attack to repair and rebuild the yards.

It took the combined efforts of the Federated Suns government, Federated-Boeing, General Motors and Universal Air, but the reborn facilities, now renamed the Kathil Shipworks, was finally brought back online by the War of 3039. Jointly owned by all four parties, the yards publicly constructed DropShips and JumpShips, but secretly considerable effort was made to construct new WarShips, a fact only revealed when the first Avalon slipped its moorings.

By the Third Succession War the FedSuns (and, actually, the other Successor States as well) had lost both the ability to produce new K-F Drives and the ability to produce Transit Drives (the real-space drives necessary to complete WarShips).
It would seem, though, that at least the FedSuns had regained the ability to construct JumpShips (and DropShips) by 3039 with the restoration of the Kathil Shipworks.
(Though, the facility wasn't able to complete new WarShips until the early 3060s, as only ComStar had the ability to produce Transit Drives for the IS and didn't allow their distribution until 3056.)

Also:

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As of 3055, approximately 3,000 JumpShips operate in the Inner Sphere according to older canonical sources (up from some 2,000 in 3025).
However, this has been dismissed in recent publications as being inadequate to meet the observed shipping of bulk goods in the Inner Sphere, where there are prolific references to planets with populations of billions feeding neighboring worlds, exporting petroleum products and shipping bulk materials like iron ores. These are materials consumed in gigaton quantities on any developed planet with a population in the billions, and obviously cannot be met (for many planets) by the small cargo holds of common freighter DropShips like the Mule and the limited capacity of the Invader and Merchant JumpShips.
The actual number of JumpShips is presumably closer to 30,000.