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Pearls of Weber

A collection of posts by David Weber containing background information for his stories, collected and generously made available Joe Buckley.

Grav pulse comm and the detection of hyper footprints

The Manticoran FTL com and, for that matter, gravitic sensors in general, do not function solely in normal-space. Or, to put it more precisely, they do not detect solely n-space phenomena. The grav pulses of an FTL com, like an impeller wedge, distort local n-space. They also produce an echo in hyper-space--a sort of ripple or cascade effect--which is what the gravitics actually detect and measure. In theory, any gravity field--even that of an itty-bitty meteor--produces the same sort of ripple or cascade; in practice, only a very powerful gravity field produces on which present-generations gravitics can detect and/or measure. A hyper footprint, on the other hand, is detectable at far greater distances than any impeller wedge simply because the "ripple" a starship produces as it actually enters or leaves hyper is much more of a roaring cataract. The real trick for the FTL com was developing the ability to produce finely controlled pulses (ripples), and the RMN has been steadily improving that ability.