When I see a new Nerd Cookie Dune video I drop a teaspoon of cinnamon in my coffee and pretend I am drinking melange while viewing. You are an enriching part of the Known Universe.
@@Aaron-zu3xn And who doesn't have a little crush on Posh Spice? ;-) Seriously though, I think it is pretty clear that if the planet is Arrack ( aka, Iraq) then spice is oil. Nobody ever said that the saffron must flow, but they sure do for oil.
I tend toward the cylinder concept myself, you don't want any more complications than absolutely necessary on something that astronomical in size. As long as they don't go for a cube...
I like to think that the cylindrical form is somewat obligatory due to the form of the Holtzmann field. You must need a void in the middle for the field's force lines pass by, like those bar magnets in the physics books...
I always liked the spherical heighliner of the Encyclopedia. I don't think it would work on film at all, but in a book I really liked the idea of this utterly boring, drab, utilitarian globe being what kept the rich, flamboyant Empire going.
Love the concept of the heighliners so much, in the book I am writing now I use a similar craft for intergalactic travel. As the distance between galaxies is so vast.
Love that video. It's definitely something wildly thought-provoking from an engineering standpoint-the sort of thing that provokes in one a desire to try and wrap one's head around the idea and see what happens-to see if the thing works. The results of even a cursory examination are, well, just...awesome. As a first-novel snob who first read the book as a teenager, the highliner was just a device that allowed the plot to go forward by allowing house Atreides to move all its resources to Arakis in what we assume was all in one go, and you ask yourself, "is that possible-does it make sense?" and the answer is, "Oh yes," because, with a length of 20Km, depending on its diameter, a cylindrical guild highliner suspended above a few hundred feet above the Island of Manhattan at noon would cause a localized eclipse of the entire Island with its shadow. That would be just the beginning of the things that made your jaw drop. If the ship was built as it is often depicted, as a latticework of plates surrounding an inner core of drive machinery, its inner surface area would be more than three times that of the island of Manhattan which, at weekday peak times, supports a population of over four million people. Essentially, if you could pressurize that space, you could transport three times the current population of all of New York City-8.5 million people-with ample room to spare. You almost wonder if they were evenly distributed across that vast a surface if they would be within shouting distance of one another. When you consider the feudal structure of a planetary government in Dune, a house would not be the population of a planet-essentially a peasantry-but only the part of the population which was attached to its military/police forces and their equipment and its administrative personnel, including the head of a household and his staff. To understand the scale of that, you need only look to a 2017 piece in the New York Times that examines the question of whether or not the U.S. military is large enough. The figures show that the U.S. Military consisted of 1.3 million active-duty personnel with a reserve of 865,00 to fulfill an ambitious global military mission that stations troops 170 different countries. Assuming that few if any planets in the human empire have anything like the population of the earth, one would expect the whole of House Atreide's actual personnel to be much smaller than that, making Leto's comment about fitting his entire house and all its ships into a tiny part of a single highliner seem absolutely plausible. Thanks for the video with all its food for thought.
Very interesting reading. Thank you. I would just like to point out though that House Atreides did not transport all its personnel and equipment at one go. Duncan Idaho went ahead with one of the earlier waves, as did Thrufir Hawat. I think transporting everybody and everything at one go would've been militarily very risky. One of the 'Dune' chapter preambles reads: 'Yueh, Yueh, a million deaths were not enough for Yueh.' This might be taken literally or metaphorically, but when balanced against the fact that many Atreides personal also probably transported their wives and dependents (there were water riots in Arakeen at the number of people the Duke was adding to the population and also, see the chapter when Thrufir and the remnant of the Duke's men are in the desert are attemption to join up with the Fremen: 'Thrufir, some of the men left wives in Arrakeen. You know how it is at a time like this...' So I completely agree with you that House Atreides fitting his people and ships into a tiny part of a single heighliner is very plausible.
Well, yeah. If you look at Lynch's film, the tracking shot from Leto's statement that they will soon fold space to the Navigator doing their thing, there's a bit where the camera moves through what looks like a city street of some kind.
yes instead of moving it "blinks" into existence in the location you want to navigate to so you can have the extra weight of entire cities as well as a full military fleet of ships along with resource gathering ships and such
Type "spacing guild navigator folds space". Click to the end and you will see the ship spinning in two half's, in alternate directions exactly as O'Neil cylinder would. Proof I would say.
Norma was also the creator of the body control techniques of the Bene Geserit. One of her sons was the first ever guild navigator, and she was (in theory) the first Bene Gerserit EVER.
I think a 8km wide by 20km long ship makes the most design sense. Loading by having the ends left open would be more efficient than ports in the side. The ship would not be just a plain cylinder though it would be likely covered in advancement solar panels turning to track the sun. As it spends most of it's time in high orbit, and nothing beats free energy to a transport guild.
What would be the rough size estimate for the 1984 Dune Heighliner? Off-hand you'd need to compare sizes of a person to the sizes of the landers, then the landers to the entrance of the Heighliner, then the size of the entrance to the overall Heighliner
@@toddkes5890 It is extremely difficult to judge scale using a person for a large object. Doing multiple estimations on top of each other leads to massive compounding errors, and 1980's special effects where rarely even similar between shots let alone to measurements.
A cylinder, station keeping thrusters all over it to adjust it's attitude and hold it steady, engines to help it maintain orbital velocity. I would say it has a crew area near the end opposite the engines, from the first book, Paul gets a short glimpse of this as well as the interior hold on the trip from Caladan to Arrakis. ( that is from a sentence or two only and is my thoughts from them )
it could be better to add spacing guild “navigator” as part of documentary. holtzmann engine & navigator are what trully made a highliner what it is in the dune universs
I've seen the new Dune yesterday, and I found the design used by Villeneuve to be a clever compromise between the cylinder and spherical shapes. Seen from the front, they really look like a sphere with a dent or hole in it, just like the no-ships I saw in the illustrations of one of FHs Dune books. And their shape is rounded, without any visible sharp edges- But you're also right, Lonita; when I saw the film yesterday, they did remind me a bit of the worms also, an impression which I did not get either from the David Lynch or the Sci-Fi Channel designs.
I prefer the Scifi miniseries version of the ships. The one thing that nobody has really covered was how the ships were docked inside the massive heighliner, it always seemed like the ships were freely moving within it's spacious interior. The novel Winds of Dune explained how the ships had communal areas kind of like a cruise ship's main promenade and the heighliners also had a race of people who could only live on the ships and because of exile status could not set foot on any of the worlds in the Imperium.
I also tend to think of the Heighliners as very long and large cylindrical structures. It just seems like it makes sense to make them that way. Just my take on it.
I used to live in San Francisco, and that's where I read all the Dune books. I've never seen the entire movie or the mini series. I so far am impressed with the development of the new movie. Your show is interesting, as are you. I'm glad I've subscribed💙
The cylindrical design comes from the idea of using centrifugal forces around a single axis to create artificial gravity. So the Cylinder is not a superior (or inferior) design. In terms of freight, a long rectangle could make more sense if gravity is created through some type of energy field instead mechanical, as it has the least amount of wasted space. It also allows highliners to be built modularly instead of the monolith build. The most likely design would be a type of "Russian Doll" of rectangular or cylindrical design, where the ship components could telescope apart to facilitate much faster loading / disembarking, or possibly the layered the cake, with space between each level. We really have no idea though, as the Holtzman drives are never described in terms of function, beyond that we know they fold through different types of space in order to move quickly (not instantly!), akin to worm hole physics (in hypothesis). Think Star Trek, but you cannot see the universe around you in "normal" space while moving FTL. This is why you needed a Navigator, since you could not see where you would enter "normal" space without being able to see the future. All of this is part of the mystique that keeps Dune alive: by not defining future science, Frank Herbert has given us a tale that survives our evolving understanding of space :) So yeah, any ship will do for a Highliner, as long as the shape facilitates loading/unloading of payload, as well as protecting your Navigator.
More like BSG jump drive - you don't see universe outside as there's no universe outside for brief moment of transition. Perhaps' there's no YOU as well and Navigators do not 'guide' through, but just manage boundary conditions that ensure exit and reemergence inside normal universe at intended time and place.
Another wonderful video. Still loving your Dune content. As far as the design…. While any shape will do, this is one of those things I imagine the production crew using the tried and true cylinder. Mainly because that is what has been previously used both on screen and in artwork, and fans have started to view it as canon, whether it is or not.
The first thing that comes to mind are the enormous tankers and cargo ships in use today, which keep growing ever more with each iteration. It's not impossible that these symbols of global capitalism inspired Frank Herbert to envision the most extreme use-case in the form of Heighliners.
At first, after reading your note, I thought, "nah," that's not possible because container ships are a too recent an inovation for Herbert to have been aware of them, but after a quick browse of a source or two, I found that the first one sailed in 1956. You might be right about his source (not that we can ask him) considering the sheer enormity of modern container ships. You can check out one source here. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ship
The first time I saw one was in David Lynch's 1983 film and has always represented what a heighliner looks like, for me. The 2000 mini series would be a close second. It will be interesting to see what Denis Vileneuve's people came up with
Do we know anything about the naming, either in-universe or out, of the Heighliners? For some reason I always thought it was an homage to science fiction author Robert Heinlein, but aside from this assumption causing many spelling mistakes I don't actually KNOW this! Ooh, and speaking of normal things in the Dune universe that it seems we know very little about, what descriptions do we have of "thopters" and carry-alls? They are HUGELY important vehicles in the videogame, but every incarnation of the franchise seems to have varied adaptations of them!
Hi there, the highliners that were featured on the Sci Fi channel two part mini series were very unique and cool in design. The ship was comprised of multiple elongated habits that were in continuous rotation, like a spin section, held together by an advanced gravity field. Certainly was different from other interpret designs. Thanks for sharing, content is always awesome. Have a very geek ish day.😁👽👽🤓🤓👍👍
Another fine video that reminds me how much I can't wait to see the upcoming film. Denis Villeneuve should be paying you something for the excellent marketing.
@@NerdCookies More than I few. I first read Dune when I was about 10. That was 44yrs ago. I am rereading the entire series which includes the books from Brian Herbert. You do excellent work.
I never realized how well done the Heighliners were in the new movie. There isn’t a lot of fanfare, and the ship doesn’t actually move. But when looking _through_ it, you can see a different planet than the one on the other side. The Heighliner stays in one place, but connects two different places in space, like an interstellar bridge. It’s so cool.
The David Lynch version may not be the best Dune movie, but it had the best Heighlinger hands down. At least externally. The interior shots, what few their were, were dark, and frankly, rather confusing and didnt make a whole lot of sense, but I attribute this to lack of attention and care on the part of the filmmakers. The Mini gave us an inferior exterior design, but more glimpses of the interior, however brief. I too hope, the new movie gives us a sensible and not-over-the top design, preferably, one based on the DL design.
@@NerdCookies PD now i ended the vid: i always imagine the guild ships more organic like: the CCS heavy Cruisers from the covenant from halo... or the super big MC 80 mon calamari cruisers from star wars..... more like manta rays... and fishes like the warhammer tau ships too... Idk why but always i imagine the big machinnery of dune similar to real beings (you have the worms, then the spice harvesters look like scarabs or spiders....) so i always imagine the guild ships like golden ultra over charged "in details" mega ships like earth whales..... as a kind of relative to the whales being the biggest fish in the ocean and a spanish galieon, super ornamented.... and then the "small ships" like dreadnoughts, carriers, destroyers of the houses like: A caladan destroyer being curved and aerodinamic.. and harkonen being like ww2 space panzers/kilzone hellghast ships. But of course thats my opinion!
I like the most recent film adaptation of these. Especially because the folding of space is presented in a much different way than before. The heigliners are now not just cylindrical, but actual hollowed out cylinders. Like gigantic space straws. And instead of the entire ship *poof* appearing wherever it’s going with everyone on board, these heighliners go for a much more interesting concept: The folded space is inside of that hollowed out space within the ship. Sure the ships are also absolutely massive and can be used for transport of goods or people by itself, and as such also fold space in the more classical way of just *poof*-ing its way across the cosmos. But it’d be much more cost effective, and thus much more profitable, if all they had to do is open up a path through foldspace for smalller ships to go ahead and fly through. In those kinds of folds, the ship exists practically in two places at once. Or so it would appear, at least. But to those flying through it, it would just seem as though they traveled to a different star system using a wormhole-like giant metal tube.
While reading Dune as a book I figured the Holtzman drive provided protection for the ship rather than propulsion while Navigators carefully plotted the ships through wormholes. Since black holes /worm holes emit massive amounts of radiation from their accretion disks I imagine any external sensors/cameras might get destroyed by the radiation so navigating through them without computers might look like magic. I know I’m “wrong” by canon standards but I like keeping my science hard, even if it’s only in my mind. It makes the story more believable for me. The cylinder design will always be the favorite of hard scifi aficionados as it provides simulated gravity (when spinning) using the currently known laws of physics. The standard swarmy know-it-all response would be to say: “key word there being ‘known’” but the know-it-alls miss the point: making a fantastic situation more believable for current audiences is why they are valued by us.
Do you think Spice was an analogy for Oil? Considering… they get it from a desert planet, and in 65 we were just starting to really lean in to foreign oil and in the late 70’s the “spice ran out?” And Arrakis kinda sounds like Iraq? Might be a stretch.
If you look at one of the more recent Dune trailers there is a quick flash of Gurney Halleck looking into the sky and he says somthing like 'oh no'. I think this is where the ambush begins. he sees what looks possibly to ba a Highliner. It looks spherical in shape with a huge port in once side. You only see it in a very quick flash.
didn't saw new film yet, but originally that was just a "little" transport ship, one of many) object of 20 km length will cover significant part of observable sky, if it would be that close. but Heighliners could not land or even come close to planets because of gravitational effects, that will arise in case of such event. it is not mentioned clearly in books, but ships of the Heighliner class must have been built on orbit, not on planet.
Here's one of my problems with Frank Herbert's Dune Universe set up: *Given the Spacing Guild absolute dependence on the Spice melange (required by its Navigators not just to operate their heighliners, but also to CONTINUE LIVING), and coupled with their "invulnerable monopoly on interstellar travel", why didn't they assert direct possession of Dune - the only place where the Spice can be found in the entire known Universe, over any other parties?*
I like the idea the ships are most likely boring cylinders. one good thing about not harking on the design of the ship is that other franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek, and Star Gate seem to be distracted by the details and fanciful ships to a puff of the weak, uneven writing in parts of more recent stories.
@Intergalactic Dust Bunny The Holtzmann engines don't provide propulsion, they 'fold space' and allow the ship to 'jump' from one point in space to another. But apart from it's location changing the highliners don't move around.
1:22 - I had actually been wondering this lately - why exactly were the guild navigators necessary? What was the hazard that they protected against? Now I know - they simply got lost and never showed up on the other side lol. 1/10 ships lost seems like pretty bad odds, especially given the size and cost of the heighliners.
Its rad that an interstellar travel concept from the late 50s still holds water If you want to move at the speed of light, how do you see where youre going? You have to know and see the future!
Excellent video !! I think with a lot of hard sci-fi, suggesting visual depictions is very helpful. It doesn't spoil the books but enhances their clarity. At least for me that's the case. I've come across some sci-fi that's so ambiguous, it's more difficult to appreciate. (in the latter case, I'm thinking of when I read Alastair Reynold's Revelation Space the first time...)
Thanks for the awesome content! The history behind Norma Cenva's contributions and her attitudes towards progress instead of being complacent and wallowing in the potential fame her inventions could have gained her makes me think of a Nikola Tesla / Albert Einstein amalgamation. I hope the Dune universe takes off and we get a series on her. Heighliner orbital stations that fold into existence is a great concept, yet the slow march to mechanization via Ix is an ominous inevitability.
I think the key with Ix and the Butlerin Jihad is to avoid making machines that do everything. So you can have automated robots building a ship in orbit, but their results are overseen by humans. You can make machines that store and display data, but humans work to identify patterns in the data. Basically you avoid thinking machines, rather than all machines
I found that scene in the 1984 Dune so chilling when you could take a good look at the heighliner, how huge those things are. That´s something i miss in the new Dune movie.
The new Movie gives a good reference of the size when the Harkonnen attack Arrakis. You see all those "small" ships coming out and then realize they are huge drop ships.
I always loved that they were just depicted as massive tubes. The design makes sense as tubular ships make the most sense for producing artificial gravity
I don't have the books ready to hand, but I seem to recall that before their planet was invaded and conquered by the Bene Tlielax, House Vernius and House Richese of Ix are mentioned at different times as being involved in building ever-larger highliners for the Spacing Guild. There is (at least) one mention of a new Highlineer being twice the size of a previous series, and also that some of the early Highliners had come to grief, which forced the Spacing Guild to work with the Ix - masters of technology - to develop larger and more reliable ships. A cylinder would be a logical shape for a vessel where large numbers of smaller vessels were entering, leaving, and being parked or stowed on board. A spherical ship would not be ideal in that respect. We also have to consider the sheer mass of a Highliner, and the basic engineering principles of it's structure and form. Even though Highliners stay in high planetary orbits between transitions, forces on them would be an important consideration in the ship's design.
No one exactly owns a space fleet, but the guild is capitalistic. Since they owe no loyalty to any house or planet.”, one can pay for guild fleets to invade worlds, hench why boots to ground is the method of choice.
It is considered dishonorable to blame the guild for doing what it does. Plus any retaliation can make a world subject to trade band. Making it impossible to sale or buy needed material.
i always had the idea that they were massive tubes that were like the anchor points of "folded space", a wormhole, and only the stuff inside the highliner actually moved . The new movie has it right.
The video game "Crying Suns" portrayed a very Dune-like universe immediately following the collapse of interstellar travel. The game has a terrific narrative, but it's a big hard to get through due to requiring a particular set of skills. I recommend watching a Let's Play of it, at the very least, just to get the story.
Curious on how the Heighliners were initially described as globular. However; they’re also described as 20k long. I’m quite certain that Hebert would have used diameter as their measurement if they were not cylindrical (?)
New to the discord. Been a fan of Frank Herbert's work since I was in high school. I remember eagerly anticipating the first theatrical release of Dune only to find that there were only about 15 or 20 of us in my city that really wanted to see that movie. Then to find out later that it bombed at the box office. I was confused. I thought this would be bigger than Star Wars. Sadly, I was mistaken.
I think a Heighliner would make more sense being a Huge Sphere or Ovoid . Since they Travel through Null-space directly from one point to the next . Fold your Destination to where you are , then stay THERE while you unfold space again .
I agree. A sphere would provide maximum volume for maximum covering material - like a mini-Death Star. Transport is business, as someone on here has written. So is engineering and all material to construct a heighliner would first have to be purchased and transported into space.
Denis Villeneuve's iteration of Frank Herbert's Heighliners should not be explained as a space portal or stargate. They do fold space, and the Guild Navigators do prevent them from colliding with everything from asteroids to stars. We are told that large FTL ships are routinely carried from star system to star system. The large Heighliners measure more than 12 miles long. The inner bulkhead of the 2021 giants must be covered with thousands of hatches of various sizes. ARRIVAL left no doubt of Denis Villenueve's mastery of direction and uncanny ability to instill mystery in the minds of his audiences. His DUNE is science fiction masterpiece. I'm not a DUNE fan. I'm a student of Frank Herbert. After teaching literature and film for 30 years, I recognize quality when I see it.
Nerd Cookies 37.5K subscribers Excellent! Could you please one day do video's on these ships I've listed? 1. Dalek Saucer (Doctor Who) 2. Ori Warship/Mothership (Stargate: SG-1) 3. Romulan D'Deridex Warbird (Star Trek: TNG) 4. Shadow Vessel (Babylon 5) 5. Sovereign Reaper Vessel (Mass Effect)
So couldn't the Houses fire on each other once they leave the transport? Is there a no-fire zone or something? What's stopping a "navigation accident" (see- RAMMING SPEED!) from happening?
The picture of the ship at 2:35 is funny im looking at ut saying i know that design from some where and then it hit me it's the Roman coliseum stacked about 20 high with a ring around the mid ship
#1:40 I'm pretty sure navigators and steersman are *not* the same people. Can't quote a line from the books, but I do remember that navigators are a more senior "rank" in the guild than steersman.
I'm still trying to figure out how the space guild developed space travel through the use of spice but yet the people on Dune, born into it, it was in the air, food, water, etc. Yet, they didn't develop any powers like space travel or telepathy.
I’m interested in the fact that this is all a metaphor for oil in our modern world will we be diversified enough to avoid hackers and terrorists disrupting our supply lines
Ms I've recently seen Dune. I was interested in the explanation of travel and their interpretation.. As we know the universe is large and complex the Duke and Paul had other pressing issues. Looking forward to your videos Be well Lol
If you compare the size of Atreides ships flying into the Heighliner in thousands in Lynch movie, this ship appears to be much, much bigger than just 20km long. Hundreds, I would say.
Thankyou so much for featuring my work in your great videos! I really appreciate it!
You do such beautiful work! It's inspirational! ❤❤❤
What is in the large orange like cube? If its the navigators, are they human? Im new to Dune so forgive my ignorance please
@@guaguancos.montunodcubop8923 yes they’re humans which evolved quickly through spice.
@@LoLFilmStudios
Thank u!
When I see a new Nerd Cookie Dune video I drop a teaspoon of cinnamon in my coffee and pretend I am drinking melange while viewing. You are an enriching part of the Known Universe.
Cafe de Olla! ;-)
oh my God I stuck a cinnamon stick in my coffee when I was in Middle School never did it again.
your a dune addict. congratulations
saffron is what it's based on actually
@@Aaron-zu3xn And who doesn't have a little crush on Posh Spice? ;-) Seriously though, I think it is pretty clear that if the planet is Arrack ( aka, Iraq) then spice is oil. Nobody ever said that the saffron must flow, but they sure do for oil.
I appreciate that, but the spice melange in real life is turmeric.
I like the cylindrical designs as there is something about symmetry with the sandworms that seems meaningful.
I tend toward the cylinder concept myself, you don't want any more complications than absolutely necessary on something that astronomical in size. As long as they don't go for a cube...
I dunno, the globular idea is a neat idea to me
lol - yeah, no cubes. We already had the Borg
I like to think that the cylindrical form is somewat obligatory due to the form of the Holtzmann field. You must need a void in the middle for the field's force lines pass by, like those bar magnets in the physics books...
I always liked the spherical heighliner of the Encyclopedia. I don't think it would work on film at all, but in a book I really liked the idea of this utterly boring, drab, utilitarian globe being what kept the rich, flamboyant Empire going.
Welp it's in the new Dune movie and it looks pretty damn cool imo.
Love the concept of the heighliners so much, in the book I am writing now I use a similar craft for intergalactic travel. As the distance between galaxies is so vast.
Love that video. It's definitely something wildly thought-provoking from an engineering standpoint-the sort of thing that provokes in one a desire to try and wrap one's head around the idea and see what happens-to see if the thing works. The results of even a cursory examination are, well, just...awesome.
As a first-novel snob who first read the book as a teenager, the highliner was just a device that allowed the plot to go forward by allowing house Atreides to move all its resources to Arakis in what we assume was all in one go, and you ask yourself, "is that possible-does it make sense?" and the answer is, "Oh yes," because, with a length of 20Km, depending on its diameter, a cylindrical guild highliner suspended above a few hundred feet above the Island of Manhattan at noon would cause a localized eclipse of the entire Island with its shadow.
That would be just the beginning of the things that made your jaw drop.
If the ship was built as it is often depicted, as a latticework of plates surrounding an inner core of drive machinery, its inner surface area would be more than three times that of the island of Manhattan which, at weekday peak times, supports a population of over four million people. Essentially, if you could pressurize that space, you could transport three times the current population of all of New York City-8.5 million people-with ample room to spare.
You almost wonder if they were evenly distributed across that vast a surface if they would be within shouting distance of one another.
When you consider the feudal structure of a planetary government in Dune, a house would not be the population of a planet-essentially a peasantry-but only the part of the population which was attached to its military/police forces and their equipment and its administrative personnel, including the head of a household and his staff. To understand the scale of that, you need only look to a 2017 piece in the New York Times that examines the question of whether or not the U.S. military is large enough. The figures show that the U.S. Military consisted of 1.3 million active-duty personnel with a reserve of 865,00 to fulfill an ambitious global military mission that stations troops 170 different countries. Assuming that few if any planets in the human empire have anything like the population of the earth, one would expect the whole of House Atreide's actual personnel to be much smaller than that, making Leto's comment about fitting his entire house and all its ships into a tiny part of a single highliner seem absolutely plausible.
Thanks for the video with all its food for thought.
Very interesting reading. Thank you. I would just like to point out though that House Atreides did not transport all its personnel and equipment at one go. Duncan Idaho went ahead with one of the earlier waves, as did Thrufir Hawat. I think transporting everybody and everything at one go would've been militarily very risky.
One of the 'Dune' chapter preambles reads: 'Yueh, Yueh, a million deaths were not enough for Yueh.' This might be taken literally or metaphorically, but when balanced against the fact that many Atreides personal also probably transported their wives and dependents (there were water riots in Arakeen at the number of people the Duke was adding to the population and also, see the chapter when Thrufir and the remnant of the Duke's men are in the desert are attemption to join up with the Fremen: 'Thrufir, some of the men left wives in Arrakeen. You know how it is at a time like this...'
So I completely agree with you that House Atreides fitting his people and ships into a tiny part of a single heighliner is very plausible.
dune 2021 nailed the design of these things
So, it is an O'Neil cylinder. I'm sure it will have a living area or a small city on board to meet the needs of the guild members.
It has, but "normal" people have to stay on their ships. And any fight among ships will revoke shipping privilege toward the instigator.
Well, yeah. If you look at Lynch's film, the tracking shot from Leto's statement that they will soon fold space to the Navigator doing their thing, there's a bit where the camera moves through what looks like a city street of some kind.
yes instead of moving it "blinks" into existence in the location you want to navigate to so you can have the extra weight of entire cities as well as a full military fleet of ships along with resource gathering ships and such
It must spin, I don't think these spin? No description about synthesised gravity
Type "spacing guild navigator folds space". Click to the end and you will see the ship spinning in two half's, in alternate directions exactly as O'Neil cylinder would. Proof I would say.
Amidst the slog of Saturday overtime comes a new dune lore video. Thanks!
Norma was also the creator of the body control techniques of the Bene Geserit. One of her sons was the first ever guild navigator, and she was (in theory) the first Bene Gerserit EVER.
Busy woman!
I think a 8km wide by 20km long ship makes the most design sense. Loading by having the ends left open would be more efficient than ports in the side. The ship would not be just a plain cylinder though it would be likely covered in advancement solar panels turning to track the sun. As it spends most of it's time in high orbit, and nothing beats free energy to a transport guild.
What would be the rough size estimate for the 1984 Dune Heighliner? Off-hand you'd need to compare sizes of a person to the sizes of the landers, then the landers to the entrance of the Heighliner, then the size of the entrance to the overall Heighliner
@@toddkes5890 It is extremely difficult to judge scale using a person for a large object. Doing multiple estimations on top of each other leads to massive compounding errors, and 1980's special effects where rarely even similar between shots let alone to measurements.
A cylinder, station keeping thrusters all over it to adjust it's attitude and hold it steady, engines to help it maintain orbital velocity. I would say it has a crew area near the end opposite the engines, from the first book, Paul gets a short glimpse of this as well as the interior hold on the trip from Caladan to Arrakis. ( that is from a sentence or two only and is my thoughts from them )
it could be better to add spacing guild “navigator” as part of documentary. holtzmann engine & navigator are what trully made a highliner what it is in the dune universs
It would be more in-keeping with the story, methinks, to have them be cylindrical, echoing the shape of the worms on Dune.
The 1984 "Dune" film had the best Heighliner design so far. I hope the new movie keeps it!
I've seen the new Dune yesterday, and I found the design used by Villeneuve to be a clever compromise between the cylinder and spherical shapes. Seen from the front, they really look like a sphere with a dent or hole in it, just like the no-ships I saw in the illustrations of one of FHs Dune books. And their shape is rounded, without any visible sharp edges- But you're also right, Lonita; when I saw the film yesterday, they did remind me a bit of the worms also, an impression which I did not get either from the David Lynch or the Sci-Fi Channel designs.
I prefer the Scifi miniseries version of the ships. The one thing that nobody has really covered was how the ships were docked inside the massive heighliner, it always seemed like the ships were freely moving within it's spacious interior. The novel Winds of Dune explained how the ships had communal areas kind of like a cruise ship's main promenade and the heighliners also had a race of people who could only live on the ships and because of exile status could not set foot on any of the worlds in the Imperium.
Much like the spice, I'm addicted to this content.
The sleeper has liked, shared, and subscribed.
I also tend to think of the Heighliners as very long and large cylindrical structures. It just seems like it makes sense to make them that way.
Just my take on it.
I used to live in San Francisco, and that's where I read all the Dune books. I've never seen the entire movie or the mini series. I so far am impressed with the development of the new movie. Your show is interesting, as are you. I'm glad I've subscribed💙
The Best Dune Content On TH-cam
The cylindrical design comes from the idea of using centrifugal forces around a single axis to create artificial gravity. So the Cylinder is not a superior (or inferior) design. In terms of freight, a long rectangle could make more sense if gravity is created through some type of energy field instead mechanical, as it has the least amount of wasted space. It also allows highliners to be built modularly instead of the monolith build. The most likely design would be a type of "Russian Doll" of rectangular or cylindrical design, where the ship components could telescope apart to facilitate much faster loading / disembarking, or possibly the layered the cake, with space between each level. We really have no idea though, as the Holtzman drives are never described in terms of function, beyond that we know they fold through different types of space in order to move quickly (not instantly!), akin to worm hole physics (in hypothesis). Think Star Trek, but you cannot see the universe around you in "normal" space while moving FTL. This is why you needed a Navigator, since you could not see where you would enter "normal" space without being able to see the future. All of this is part of the mystique that keeps Dune alive: by not defining future science, Frank Herbert has given us a tale that survives our evolving understanding of space :) So yeah, any ship will do for a Highliner, as long as the shape facilitates loading/unloading of payload, as well as protecting your Navigator.
More like BSG jump drive - you don't see universe outside as there's no universe outside for brief moment of transition. Perhaps' there's no YOU as well and Navigators do not 'guide' through, but just manage boundary conditions that ensure exit and reemergence inside normal universe at intended time and place.
Another wonderful video. Still loving your Dune content. As far as the design…. While any shape will do, this is one of those things I imagine the production crew using the tried and true cylinder. Mainly because that is what has been previously used both on screen and in artwork, and fans have started to view it as canon, whether it is or not.
The first thing that comes to mind are the enormous tankers and cargo ships in use today, which keep growing ever more with each iteration. It's not impossible that these symbols of global capitalism inspired Frank Herbert to envision the most extreme use-case in the form of Heighliners.
At first, after reading your note, I thought, "nah," that's not possible because container ships are a too recent an inovation for Herbert to have been aware of them, but after a quick browse of a source or two, I found that the first one sailed in 1956. You might be right about his source (not that we can ask him) considering the sheer enormity of modern container ships.
You can check out one source here.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ship
The first time I saw one was in David Lynch's 1983 film and has always represented what a heighliner looks like, for me.
The 2000 mini series would be a close second.
It will be interesting to see what Denis Vileneuve's people came up with
Do we know anything about the naming, either in-universe or out, of the Heighliners? For some reason I always thought it was an homage to science fiction author Robert Heinlein, but aside from this assumption causing many spelling mistakes I don't actually KNOW this!
Ooh, and speaking of normal things in the Dune universe that it seems we know very little about, what descriptions do we have of "thopters" and carry-alls? They are HUGELY important vehicles in the videogame, but every incarnation of the franchise seems to have varied adaptations of them!
The bigger one with the large throat seems to be the most logical. Thank you for these. Very nice.
Hi there, the highliners that were featured on the Sci Fi channel two part mini series were very unique and cool in design. The ship was comprised of multiple elongated habits that were in continuous rotation, like a spin section, held together by an advanced gravity field. Certainly was different from other interpret designs. Thanks for sharing, content is always awesome. Have a very geek ish day.😁👽👽🤓🤓👍👍
I always envisioned them looking like a giant mechanical sand worm. With its mouth open wide to "swallow" all the cargo before folding space.
Another fine video that reminds me how much I can't wait to see the upcoming film. Denis Villeneuve should be paying you something for the excellent marketing.
I'm excited for the film as well!!! The fact that there are a few Dune fans who enjoy my content is payment enough 😊
@@NerdCookies More than I few. I first read Dune when I was about 10. That was 44yrs ago. I am rereading the entire series which includes the books from Brian Herbert. You do excellent work.
It's interesting when they're shown as a thin shell, a scaffold to simply hold the passenger vessels onboard during the folding.
I never realized how well done the Heighliners were in the new movie.
There isn’t a lot of fanfare, and the ship doesn’t actually move. But when looking _through_ it, you can see a different planet than the one on the other side. The Heighliner stays in one place, but connects two different places in space, like an interstellar bridge. It’s so cool.
The ships in the new Dune movie might pay some homage to the old 1984 movie and the 2000 miniseries at the same time. Only time will tell I guess.
When I read the first book, I pictured them as a sphere. The drawings you showed looked really nice.
The smooth female narration makes me think of the Adjutant from Starcraft. I love the content, very nice overview of the lore.
Video itself is great, but your very pleasant voice is making it much better.
The David Lynch version may not be the best Dune movie, but it had the best Heighlinger hands down. At least externally. The interior shots, what few their were, were dark, and frankly, rather confusing and didnt make a whole lot of sense, but I attribute this to lack of attention and care on the part of the filmmakers. The Mini gave us an inferior exterior design, but more glimpses of the interior, however brief.
I too hope, the new movie gives us a sensible and not-over-the top design, preferably, one based on the DL design.
I see you are doing videos about spaceships from the galactica list and now from dune.....
You are officially now one of my deities!
😄 ❤
@@NerdCookies PD now i ended the vid: i always imagine the guild ships more organic like: the CCS heavy Cruisers from the covenant from halo... or the super big MC 80 mon calamari cruisers from star wars..... more like manta rays... and fishes like the warhammer tau ships too...
Idk why but always i imagine the big machinnery of dune similar to real beings (you have the worms, then the spice harvesters look like scarabs or spiders....) so i always imagine the guild ships like golden ultra over charged "in details" mega ships like earth whales..... as a kind of relative to the whales being the biggest fish in the ocean and a spanish galieon, super ornamented.... and then the "small ships" like dreadnoughts, carriers, destroyers of the houses like:
A caladan destroyer being curved and aerodinamic.. and harkonen being like ww2 space panzers/kilzone hellghast ships.
But of course thats my opinion!
I like the most recent film adaptation of these. Especially because the folding of space is presented in a much different way than before. The heigliners are now not just cylindrical, but actual hollowed out cylinders. Like gigantic space straws. And instead of the entire ship *poof* appearing wherever it’s going with everyone on board, these heighliners go for a much more interesting concept:
The folded space is inside of that hollowed out space within the ship. Sure the ships are also absolutely massive and can be used for transport of goods or people by itself, and as such also fold space in the more classical way of just *poof*-ing its way across the cosmos. But it’d be much more cost effective, and thus much more profitable, if all they had to do is open up a path through foldspace for smalller ships to go ahead and fly through.
In those kinds of folds, the ship exists practically in two places at once. Or so it would appear, at least. But to those flying through it, it would just seem as though they traveled to a different star system using a wormhole-like giant metal tube.
While reading Dune as a book I figured the Holtzman drive provided protection for the ship rather than propulsion while Navigators carefully plotted the ships through wormholes. Since black holes /worm holes emit massive amounts of radiation from their accretion disks I imagine any external sensors/cameras might get destroyed by the radiation so navigating through them without computers might look like magic.
I know I’m “wrong” by canon standards but I like keeping my science hard, even if it’s only in my mind. It makes the story more believable for me.
The cylinder design will always be the favorite of hard scifi aficionados as it provides simulated gravity (when spinning) using the currently known laws of physics. The standard swarmy know-it-all response would be to say: “key word there being ‘known’” but the know-it-alls miss the point: making a fantastic situation more believable for current audiences is why they are valued by us.
physicists have a problem with the way the worms move in the film
Do you think Spice was an analogy for Oil? Considering… they get it from a desert planet, and in 65 we were just starting to really lean in to foreign oil and in the late 70’s the “spice ran out?” And Arrakis kinda sounds like Iraq? Might be a stretch.
One of my new favourite channels. Found it today and been binging the content. Love it!
Glad you're enjoying the content!
If you look at one of the more recent Dune trailers there is a quick flash of Gurney Halleck looking into the sky and he says somthing like 'oh no'. I think this is where the ambush begins. he sees what looks possibly to ba a Highliner. It looks spherical in shape with a huge port in once side. You only see it in a very quick flash.
didn't saw new film yet, but originally that was just a "little" transport ship, one of many)
object of 20 km length will cover significant part of observable sky, if it would be that close.
but Heighliners could not land or even come close to planets because of gravitational effects, that will arise in case of such event.
it is not mentioned clearly in books, but ships of the Heighliner class must have been built on orbit, not on planet.
Here's one of my problems with Frank Herbert's Dune Universe set up:
*Given the Spacing Guild absolute dependence on the Spice melange (required by its Navigators not just to operate their heighliners, but also to CONTINUE LIVING), and coupled with their "invulnerable monopoly on interstellar travel", why didn't they assert direct possession of Dune - the only place where the Spice can be found in the entire known Universe, over any other parties?*
Ive read only the first book but maybe it’s because they dont have an army?
@@cx5870 Mercenaries are the solution to that.
Or better yet, stop the terraforming of Arrakis? The spice must flow after all.
good question. maybe because house corrino was the rival power?
I like the idea the ships are most likely boring cylinders. one good thing about not harking on the design of the ship is that other franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek, and Star Gate seem to be distracted by the details and fanciful ships to a puff of the weak, uneven writing in parts of more recent stories.
The Skyliners don't really travel anywhere. They are basically stationary space stations that get teleported around by the Navigators.
@Intergalactic Dust Bunny The Holtzmann engines don't provide propulsion, they 'fold space' and allow the ship to 'jump' from one point in space to another. But apart from it's location changing the highliners don't move around.
My favorite part about the Highliners are how most artist renderings look so much like the Sand Worms
Liked the Heighliner shown at 2:58 - (in the original Dune novel Guild Navigators were described as human)
1:22 - I had actually been wondering this lately - why exactly were the guild navigators necessary? What was the hazard that they protected against? Now I know - they simply got lost and never showed up on the other side lol.
1/10 ships lost seems like pretty bad odds, especially given the size and cost of the heighliners.
Its rad that an interstellar travel concept from the late 50s still holds water
If you want to move at the speed of light, how do you see where youre going?
You have to know and see the future!
Herbert was a man of the sixties. The Interstellar pilots (Guild Navigators) were all the time stoned.
Excellent video !! I think with a lot of hard sci-fi, suggesting visual depictions is very helpful. It doesn't spoil the books but enhances their clarity. At least for me that's the case. I've come across some sci-fi that's so ambiguous, it's more difficult to appreciate. (in the latter case, I'm thinking of when I read Alastair Reynold's Revelation Space the first time...)
Thanks for the awesome content! The history behind Norma Cenva's contributions and her attitudes towards progress instead of being complacent and wallowing in the potential fame her inventions could have gained her makes me think of a Nikola Tesla / Albert Einstein amalgamation. I hope the Dune universe takes off and we get a series on her. Heighliner orbital stations that fold into existence is a great concept, yet the slow march to mechanization via Ix is an ominous inevitability.
I think the key with Ix and the Butlerin Jihad is to avoid making machines that do everything. So you can have automated robots building a ship in orbit, but their results are overseen by humans. You can make machines that store and display data, but humans work to identify patterns in the data. Basically you avoid thinking machines, rather than all machines
I always wanted a Spacing Guild Heighliner..
I found that scene in the 1984 Dune so chilling when you could take a good look at the heighliner, how huge those things are. That´s something i miss in the new Dune movie.
The new Movie gives a good reference of the size when the Harkonnen attack Arrakis. You see all those "small" ships coming out and then realize they are huge drop ships.
The Dune videos are always interesting, keep up the great work!
I always loved that they were just depicted as massive tubes. The design makes sense as tubular ships make the most sense for producing artificial gravity
I see the guild taking a more utilitarian role in transport, such as the Greyhound bus.
I don't have the books ready to hand, but I seem to recall that before their planet was invaded and conquered by the Bene Tlielax, House Vernius and House Richese of Ix are mentioned at different times as being involved in building ever-larger highliners for the Spacing Guild. There is (at least) one mention of a new Highlineer being twice the size of a previous series, and also that some of the early Highliners had come to grief, which forced the Spacing Guild to work with the Ix - masters of technology - to develop larger and more reliable ships. A cylinder would be a logical shape for a vessel where large numbers of smaller vessels were entering, leaving, and being parked or stowed on board. A spherical ship would not be ideal in that respect. We also have to consider the sheer mass of a Highliner, and the basic engineering principles of it's structure and form. Even though Highliners stay in high planetary orbits between transitions, forces on them would be an important consideration in the ship's design.
love your dune eps, i just saw the movie and the info helps alot to understand it better
I love these videos! Thank you!!!
I might just have to build a to scale Heighliner in Minecraft.
It would be an immense project, but it'd be awesome to walk around inside one.
I've always wondered if the padisha empire had a space fleet, like battleships and starfighters
No one exactly owns a space fleet, but the guild is capitalistic. Since they owe no loyalty to any house or planet.”, one can pay for guild fleets to invade worlds, hench why boots to ground is the method of choice.
It is considered dishonorable to blame the guild for doing what it does. Plus any retaliation can make a world subject to trade band. Making it impossible to sale or buy needed material.
2:25 looks like a bunch of coliseums stacked on top of each other.
Well done!!! Very informative & enjoyable!
Thanks for your efforts!
The SyFy channel adaptation was a good example of the Highliners.
i always had the idea that they were massive tubes that were like the anchor points of "folded space", a wormhole, and only the stuff inside the highliner actually moved .
The new movie has it right.
Great video as always…🖖🏽
The video game "Crying Suns" portrayed a very Dune-like universe immediately following the collapse of interstellar travel. The game has a terrific narrative, but it's a big hard to get through due to requiring a particular set of skills. I recommend watching a Let's Play of it, at the very least, just to get the story.
Very interesting!
Curious on how the Heighliners were initially described as globular. However; they’re also described as 20k long. I’m quite certain that Hebert would have used diameter as their measurement if they were not cylindrical (?)
That was fascinating. Thank you. It helped me better understand the book.
New to the discord. Been a fan of Frank Herbert's work since I was in high school. I remember eagerly anticipating the first theatrical release of Dune only to find that there were only about 15 or 20 of us in my city that really wanted to see that movie. Then to find out later that it bombed at the box office. I was confused. I thought this would be bigger than Star Wars.
Sadly, I was mistaken.
Oh! so Romans built that Highliner at 2:05
As it is made of the Ruins of Rome shoved together in a GFX program like Bryce or 3DFX
love your content just subscribed
I think a Heighliner would make more sense being a Huge Sphere or Ovoid . Since they Travel through Null-space directly from one point to the next .
Fold your Destination to where you are , then stay THERE while you unfold space again .
I agree. A sphere would provide maximum volume for maximum covering material - like a mini-Death Star. Transport is business, as someone on here has written. So is engineering and all material to construct a heighliner would first have to be purchased and transported into space.
Thanks guys
You helped me understanding
The highlighters in the OG doom are very reminiscent of a giant attack starship from Star Trek.
Denis Villeneuve's iteration of Frank Herbert's Heighliners should not be explained as a space portal or stargate. They do fold space, and the Guild Navigators do prevent them from colliding with everything from asteroids to stars. We are told that large FTL ships are routinely carried from star system to star system. The large Heighliners measure more than 12 miles long. The inner bulkhead of the 2021 giants must be covered with thousands of hatches of various sizes. ARRIVAL left no doubt of Denis Villenueve's mastery of direction and uncanny ability to instill mystery in the minds of his audiences. His DUNE is science fiction masterpiece. I'm not a DUNE fan. I'm a student of Frank Herbert. After teaching literature and film for 30 years, I recognize quality when I see it.
Yay! Another Nerd Cookies video!
Love these videos
Hey Scott me too , great minds think alike
I'm sure it's a total coincidence that the interior of the Guild's highliners look like those of the sand worms.
I like the cylinder shaped one there's old stories in history about black cylinder shaped alien vessels stuff to do with the annunaki
Is there a compilation of all the art in your vids? a book?
The Guild (except for the ti.e covered in the novel) prevented war between the great houses.
Makes me wonder how they would scrap one considering its insane length. I guess scrapyard workers would have a job that lasts a looong time!
Nerd Cookies
37.5K subscribers Excellent! Could you please one day do video's on these ships I've listed?
1. Dalek Saucer (Doctor Who)
2. Ori Warship/Mothership (Stargate: SG-1)
3. Romulan D'Deridex Warbird (Star Trek: TNG)
4. Shadow Vessel (Babylon 5)
5. Sovereign Reaper Vessel (Mass Effect)
I would like to see a battle between the Romulan Dederadex and the Klingon D7
Impressive ships. I would like to know more about the IX who build them.
So couldn't the Houses fire on each other once they leave the transport? Is there a no-fire zone or something? What's stopping a "navigation accident" (see- RAMMING SPEED!) from happening?
The picture of the ship at 2:35 is funny im looking at ut saying i know that design from some where and then it hit me it's the Roman coliseum stacked about 20 high with a ring around the mid ship
#1:40 I'm pretty sure navigators and steersman are *not* the same people. Can't quote a line from the books, but I do remember that navigators are a more senior "rank" in the guild than steersman.
What happens to the technologically irrelevant highliners after the Ix solution takes hold?
I'm still trying to figure out how the space guild developed space travel through the use of spice but yet the people on Dune, born into it, it was in the air, food, water, etc. Yet, they didn't develop any powers like space travel or telepathy.
Or how the Fremen, who are basically addicted to the precious and hard-to-get-by spice, could leave the planet en-masse to fight in Paul's Jihad.
I’m interested in the fact that this is all a metaphor for oil in our modern world will we be diversified enough to avoid hackers and terrorists disrupting our supply lines
Ms I've recently seen Dune. I was interested in the explanation of travel and their interpretation..
As we know the universe is large and complex the Duke and Paul had other pressing issues.
Looking forward to your videos
Be well Lol
The 2021 that looks like worms make a lot of sense.
I LOVE your your channel 🖤
I estimate that a Guild Heighlner can easily transport 3 Million+ people & all their equipment.
If you compare the size of Atreides ships flying into the Heighliner in thousands in Lynch movie, this ship appears to be much, much bigger than just 20km long. Hundreds, I would say.
I'm eager to see how this is portrayed in the 2021 film.