Re: FT High Speed (was GenCon Review)

There was book called "Hellburner" by C.J. Cherryh (I think, I borrowed
it)
that had a strategy like this (Super high speed passes), but they kept
on
burning out crews. . .

They were using computers to assist the pilots and most of the gross
navigation and actual firing was done by the computers with the pilots
and
gunners doing little more than fine-tuning things like picking the
targets
and deciding minor cpourse changes.  The idea was that it was going so
fast
(even with computer assistance) that the reaction times efectively kept
the
crew at about 200% capacity for nothing more than about 2 minutes, but
the
crew came out of it feeling more like 2 hours.

I recall comments about hundreds of a second decisions as the sensor
data
came in too fast for virtually anyone to interpret, but it required a
human
pilot to allow for a certain level of "intuition."  Note that the crews
were specially trained and outfitted. . I think there may have been some
"cybernetics" involved (I would think there would have HAD to have been
as
I don't think that humans can react in a hundreths of seconds scale
without
it).

It been a while since I read the book, but thats the general gist of it,
I'm certain someone could find corrections, but its pertinent. . .

Later,

Ryan
voivode@io.com