Holy Cow. That would be SUPER-ILLEGAL under the current jump drive rules, no? Still going in my "truely unseen" list though; it would make a great "Boondoggle".
Except it wasn't a boondoggle. The ship worked and failed only because the central computer got fried in a freak accident.
One could posit the two are linked, but the canon info also seems quite clear that the triple core jumped.
Possibilities -
Alongside the IceShips, it is "evidence" that multiple jumpdrives CAN work in concert, likely with corresponding increases in jump distance or efficiency. IceShips routinely transported tens of millions of tons. It is simply that such fields need to be tightly controlled and maintained, likely with some sort of feedback mechanism to avoid the fields de-syncing and it is this control element that is difficult, possibly needing some sort of tuning
The triple core does work....but the gains were minimal or came with significant drawbacks. Yay - your ship can jump 90LYs at a time. BOOOO....your ship now takes six months to recharge as continuing flux eddies in the cores means static charges build up and these must be discharged very so often. Oh...and it costs a hundred times as much, and requires five times the maintenace crew. And that coolant needs to be replaced every ten jumps because the core makes it radioactive.
The news report is wrong, maybe part of a leaked ploy by Star League to have the Houses start a multidrive race.
Personally, I like the idea that a mutidrive vessel existed. Its the sort of project that would be followed up trying to make it feasible. The IceShip concept shows that mutliple drives do reinforce each other and the temptation to research doing so in such a manner that the JumpShip didn't end up scrambled during transit would no doubt be very tempting. Think of the megaships that the SL could have fielded if such a technology worked. They'd have been jumping entire stations.
However, while I like the idea that the concept was researched, that the tech isn't around suggests either it was lost, or there was something wrong with it. Some of the ideas floated around here are quite interesting as well, although i like the "It's a compact core with unusual architecture"
Could be that a Compact Core could be just that - some form of micro core that are hardwired together in self synchronising array....and the existing set up is the best option around.
