I’m rereading Contact Harvest for funsies and I’m enjoying it so far, apart from some stuff that has had some HUGE retcon treatment (i.e. Harvest was the 17th colony world, LOL), but I’m wondering if the slipspace travel times in Harvest have been retconned or not.
According to Harvest, “A short, intrasystem slip between two planets took less than an hour. A journey between star systems many light years apart took a few months. With sufficient fuel, a Sha-Fujikawa-equipped ship could traverse the volume of space containing all of humanity’s colonized systems in less than a year” (24).
But in Hunt the Truth, it feels like Ben and others are jumping all over human-controlled space in a matter of days. Is this because our ability to travel space efficiently has just jumped that much in 30+ years (thanks to access to lots of Forerunner goodies), or because Joe Staten was off his rocker when he decided it would take a little under a year to go from Earth to our furthest colony? I’m assuming this has to have changed for it to be feasible for humans to have colonized what has been retconned to over 800 worlds, but I’m wondering if that has been officially acknowledged anywhere. Anybody know?
Also, are there updated, definitive editions for GoO, Cole Protocol, and Contact Harvest? I want to update my Halo collection if that’s the case.
Slipspace travel times don’t seem to be super consistent as of late. A lot of things are making them seem a lot faster, even when not using Covie/Forerunner tech.
But it could be attributed to increased technology after learning about Covenant systems, or upgrades with Forerunner tech or an Engineer’s new designs.
Still a little weird. Hunters in the Dark still had the travel time between Earth and the Ark through Portal as a few weeks, minus what actually happened. But then we have Nightfall, where they’re able to get to Alpha Shard from Sedra and conduct their operation all in around 16 hours. Alpha Shard could be really close, but that’s not completely likely, I don’t think.
Yeah I remember that feeling off in Nightfall as well. Hopefully we start getting some consistent information on this type of stuff. I was thinking it would be cool if 343 had, at least for internal purposes, a map of the galaxy with important locations and the times it takes for different races/factions to travel between them.
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> Joe Staten was off his rocker when he decided it would take a little under a year to go from Earth to our furthest colony?
Take a closer look at the quote you posted. He’s not saying that it would take less than a year to reach the furthest colony from Earth, but rather, it would take less than a year to travel across the ENTIRE length of human space. Or travel along the diameter. And the only real known speed we have is of a UNSC Corvette in 2552, that left Reach, and arrived at Earth 4 days later. Which would mean it traveled at about 2.65 light years per day. Since that was nearly 30 years after Johnson’s statement, it’s likely that UNSC ships and their speed were improved over the course of the war. Remember, a slipspace drive only allows the ship to enter slipspace, it does not actually propel the ship itself. Once inside slipspace, the ship’s engines are what gives it its speed. This is supported in BOTH Contact Harvest, AND First Strike. Of course, a better drive helps, but I’m mostly talking about two ships with very similar slipspace capabilities.
Though, honestly, Staten’s travel time makes more sense in the Halo Universe than others, given how some characters are supposed to appear younger than what they actually are by years, if not decades. Yet, if they were never more than two months or so from their next destination, I really do wonder how they could have spent so long in cryo.