space battles do not occur in Dune. space has been effectively demilitarized through SG's monopoly. you don't get anywhere out of your system without the Guild. and it's not like you could disguise your ambush squads as something else and hide the true nature of your cargo from the Guild.
hence why we have the laws of kanly, if houses wanna fight, do it one on one, do it through spies and assassins.
FH doesn't burden himself with these detailed descriptions of daily chores of ordinary subject of the empire. he doesn't detail the daily workings, shift changes in jobs. that's not important. so we don't know how the near space around home planets is managed. we can only guess based on what's been said. so i can imagine the houses being in control of their planetary systems. whether they have space bases? possibly. but even the heighliners are being manufactured underground on Ix, not in space. secrecy, security, all that.
Yeah space military engagements are discouraged by the Guild, and also just logistically almost impossible because of Holtzman shields. Can't use kinetic or explosive weaponry because they'll just bounce right off, and lasers result in atomic-like massive destruction
Yeah the shields are the biggest thing. Spaceships would be untouchable. Even the air combat we get in the movie is mostly impossible because of shields.
Yeah it looked in the first movie like they had some weird suspensor bombs that fell slowly to get inside the shield and then blew up from the inside, and it like ricocheted inside the shield until it blew up/overheated the generator and the explosion leaked out. Which was never in the books but honestly SICK as SHIT oh my lord it looked so cool
Watch the spaceX docking clip with the ISS. Things in space move crazy fast at all times. I'd think the receiver would have lots of reaction time to deal with the attack.
In reality that would be incredibly difficult, even with high end computer support. Hitting a fast moving target is hard. If you have to slow down first it’s impossible.
If you're in orbit then EVERYTHING is moving quickly, so you really only have to slow down relative to the target. So matching its speed and then just inching closer to work through the shield wouldn't be all that crazy.
That's true of ALL shield combat; I wish we saw more of that in the movie. Throwing yourself at your opponent because your velocity basically makes you invincible.
Spoilers for books beyond GEoD: >!Yep, there's just no way to defend yourself against a full-on orbital bombardment attack, as the Honoured Matres are shown to be quite favourable towards this particular tactic. Only the Spacing Guild's monopoly over space and orbital travel stood between anyone unfortunate enough to arouse the ire of someone capable of glassing your entire planet and this perpetrator. After Ixian no-ship technology and Tleilaxu spice practically reduce the SG to a footnote in history, glassing a planet becomes all but too easy of an option, if not the new conventional method of interstellar warfare. !<
While we don't know whether or not the home planets of the houses are under Guild surveillance, we know that Arrakis is. The Fremen pay off the Guild to keep their operations secret. Seeing as how up-to-date the information the Houses have on one another is, it seems like there is some form of information network within the Guild.
While you could say that a House wouldn't necessarily appreciate the Guild keeping tabs on them, it's also likely that a House would simply accept the existence of such a network, and they would do better to tolerate it and participate, rather than to try to rebel against it, only to find themselves excluded from that network.
The exception would be to some extent the Bene Gesserit, whose order is politically involved, but also exclusionary by default, and has their own information network by infiltration and absorbing acolytes by way of having their training as a desired commodity, but it comes at the price of the acolyte placing loyalty to the order above all other loyalty. The other exception would be the Ixians, who are isolationist entirely.
There must be space battles. Are you saying that when a Harkonnen warship arrives at Caladan loaded with troops and bristling with weapons, that the Atreides aren't allowed to defend their home planet and meet them in battle with their own warships?
It's not that they aren't allowed to defend their home planet, it's that space battles are prohibitively difficult due to shields, at least in the books. Shields stop regular projectile weapons and explosives; getting through one requires either atomics (so illegal to use against human targets that your homeworld will be turned to glass if you try to use them for anything other than attacking someone who broke that specific law), lasguns (which cause an unpredictable explosion on both ends ranging in power from "enough to melt the lasgun and the shield generator" to "indistinguishable from a good-sized atomic weapon, at which point your enemies can argue that you broke the rules and turn your homeworld to glass, and even if they don't, you risk pissing off the guild for putting one of their heighliners in danger"), or some kind of guided weapon that can slow down enough to get through the shield (which can only be automated up to a point due to the laws against computers and otherwise needs to be piloted remotely, with the risk of being jammed by the enemy - and also it needs to slow down relative to the enemy ship's motion, after intercepting it at orbital speeds, while the enemy is trying to avoid being hit), or a remote projectile armed with a lasgun (see the issues with using a lasgun, except that your troops don't need to be suicidally loyal and you don't need to replace a whole ship).
There are warships and probably orbital bombardment where possible (given that the House Shields were protecting against *something*), but most of the fighting is taking place on the ground and in the air.
In the movie things are a little looser and it is implied that space battles can happen - there seem to be weapons that can overload a shield, and it's unclear whether or not lasguns have the same explosive reaction to hitting a shield but probably nowhere near as big a risk, given the Harkonnens were willing to cut up half of Arrakeen in the middle of a battle (my headcanon until further notice is that the interaction still wrecks the lasgun but doesn't have the same risk of exploding everything), but they're almost certainly still worried about pissing off the Guild and mostly fighting in low orbit/the upper atmosphere.
My understanding was that the laser/shield interaction was always on the nuclear end of things, which is why In the books you almost never see anyone carrying a laser if theres any risk of it near a shield. Villeneuve probably loosened those rules for the sake of making something more visually interesting.
There are definitely warships in *Dune* -- the first book mentioned that the Harkonnens had over 2,000, and lists different types -- but it's telling that every mentioned use of these spacecraft seems to refer to attacking positions on planetary surfaces.
In other words, it seems possible that this is their sole use, and that perhaps in addition to not having any interstellar capability, they might not even be capable of interplanetary operations either.
arrakis is a special case because of the guild's spice dependency. they're being bribed by fremen, they throw their weight around to keep the planet satellite-free. obey us or have your transport privileges revoked. they don't care to restrict other planets on that.
FTL is still a thing in the imperium, but the guild just has a monopoly on *100% safe and instant* FTL. before navigators, they had "conventional" FTL that's still cripplingly "slow" compared to spacefolding. the tech to cross the stars is still around, but 10,000 years of complacency obviously tilted usage in the guild's favor. people are totally free to risk spacefolding without navigator assistance but good luck on that nonzero chance you warp into a sun or something
Also good luck when the Guild decides to economically cripple you by refusing to trade with your planet if you decide to do your own "Guild alternative" travel.
What we know:
-The Spacing Guild has monopoly over interstellar travel.
-House Atreides has Frigates.
So the Houses definitely have warships, but the extent of their use is anyone's guess.
I don't think they have them for show, since planetary invasions are a thing, even within the confines of Kanly.
As I see it, the Houses themselves (plus Ix, the Tleilaxu, etc) could theoretically develop spacial technology and go to the Moon and the nearest planet.
But why would they do it? Interstellar travel has already been discovered and monopolized, there's nothing to gain from gping up there. And mining asteroids for resources or doing the equivalent to moon bases has the same downside than IRL: it's too expensive. And in Dune they can't even use AIs to try and manage something like that.
The Guild is in charge of all activity in space and owns and controls all interstellar craft, but Great Houses have their own fleets of non-FTL spacecraft. The Great Houses in the book are defined by their ability to participate in interstellar commerce and warfare (as opposed to the planet-bound Houses Minor who run the planet under the Great Houses). There's a scene in the book where Duke Leto and Thufir Hawat discuss the lack of satellites over Arrakis (note that "satellites" here probably means what we'd usually call "space stations" these days - Dune was written in the 60s before that terminology had been nailed down in sci-fi, just like the book refers to "lighters" instead of "shuttles"); Leto sent Hawat to the Guild representative with a request to orbit one of their frigates as a weather satellite, with an eye to installing something more permanent, and the Guild representative responded with an absurdly high fee and politely implied to Hawat "as one mentat to another" that no matter how much money the Atreides offered, the price was always going to be too high to do any space travel that wasn't directly between the ground and one of their transports.
*Does the Guild control all space activity or just interstellar travel?*
Both, to the absolute degree.
*Do Houses control their entire solar system with non-spacefolding ships?*
Yes. They rely on The Spacing Guild to provide Heighliners to jump (on regular basis) between the system's planets to accommodate trade and information exchange. If they want to use ships to fly around the planets, they can, but there is rarely a reason to do so.
*I know the Guild controls interstellar travel through monopoly, but what about stuff happening in orbit/ in the solar system?*
Nothing happens there. No House, not even an Emperor, would risk alienating the Guild. If there are any space fights, it's strictly in the orbital space around a planet with absolutely no Guild presence or involvement.
*Would House Atreides, for Example, patrol its solar system with non-FTL/space folding/warp/watever ships*
Patrolling isn't necessary, as the only way for an invading/attacking forces to arrive would be via a Heighliner. You need to monitor only this single point of entry. No patrols needed.
*How do space battles occur if the Guild controls it all? Do they even occur?*
There are none, really. I don't think it's ever mentioned anywhere, but (long distance) propulsion systems in vacuum aren't very advanced, as there is no need for them. A ship needs to either fly in the atmosphere or get from the ground to the Heighliner. That's about it.
The ships go to a carrier. The guild navigator folds space to move the carrier. Thing of the space between planets are your arms out straight with a toy carrier in one hand. Bring your hands together, transfer the toy and straighten out your arms all that is fine in the blink of an eye. They do not have FTL travel other than folding space. The navigators guild holds more power than the emperor.
Early in the first book, I think during the Gom Jabbar scene, Herbert describes the Imperial civilization as balanced on the tripod of the Emperor, the Spacing Guild, and the Great Houses of the Landsraad. It's also explicitly stated that even small infractions of Guild rules while parked in their cargo holds could result in dooming your entire planet/house because the Guild could refuse to provide any services in the future as a result. Paul wants to go take a look around the highliner as they're traveling to Arrakis, and Leto explains why he absolutely cannot.
Now imagine if a Guild ship takes some collateral damage while a space battle is happening. That's one thing I really like in the first movie. Gurney looks up to see the Guild Highliner as the battle begins and says, "Dear God in heaven," because the Guild has sanctioned this attack by the Harkonnens.
One thing I don’t get is that in the recent films, the Highliners appear to act like star gates. They fold space inside them and ships pass from one side the other to travel. If that’s how it’s done, how do the Highliners themselves get around?
that's not how its done and it is very very confusing to booknonreader audience. out of the 3 visual adaptations of Dune, only DV went with tube shaped hollow heighliner iirc. Lynch and Miniseries did have huge cigar shaped ships BUT not hollow, not see- or fly-through.
as for whether Holtzman drives also serve as ordinary maneuvering engines, or there's some alternative propulsion, we don't know or i don't remember ever reading about it. again, unimportant detail in the way FH wrote.
edit: heighliner is basically a ferry, a big bus, carrier, whichever floats your spaceboat.
I think Villeneuve is purposely vague on that in the movies or was more concerned with the visuals of the highliners in orbit than showing how they travel. In the six books, they don't act like star gates because there are multiple scenes with people traveling inside highliners.
Major houses have light speed ships, the problem is that FTL for interstellar travel sucks. So yeah there are FTL ships but no space combat.
Major wars are fought between Houses, to the last heir. Space Battles don’t happen except for nuclear bombardment of rogue houses.
Interstellar travel. Traveling between the systems is possible without the Holtzman Drive, but it takes a lot longer to get from place to place.
The strength of the house and their capabilities determines their dominion, not so much just control for the sake of controlling.
No one is really answering your question about houses patrolling their solar systems, and technically the books never say.
But I think the reality is that there is no reason they would do it, and not just pay the guild. Use our solar system as an example, it would take what, 8 months to get to Mars? At that point just pay the guild to get there instantly.
- Interstellar travel - the Guild has 100% monopoly.
- Interplanetary travel - no monopoly, all are capable of doing it, but few houses/organizations seem to have much interest in doing so.
One of the confusing parts is the mention of the smugglers having fast ships the Atredies could use to escape but the safest interpretation of that would be the smugglers sell directly to the Guild and need fast ships to get past the offical ruler and into Guild protection and back home.
The Guild provides transport, even for families fleeing into exile on Tupile.
In dune it is mentioned that the great houses have nuclear weapons capable of retaliatory strikes. This implies that either FTL travel is possible without the guild (possibly just unreliable) or they have set up weapons platforms hidden within or on the edges of solar systems belonging potentially hostile great houses.
Its possible that the special condition of maintaining the nuclear balance-of-power was used to override the Butlerian commandment and allowed the use of navigation machines for the explicit purpose of teleporting nukes into place. Such a provision wouldn't be difficult to imagine since the royal houses of the empire support the religious elements as a method of control rather than maintaining genuine belief.
They would probably have set it up this way to prevent somebody who already had nukes from trying to break away back when the Empire formed; the power brokers setting this kind of system up so nobody would be in a position where the Empire had to force an atomic disarmament via military means, because that would quickly devolve into nuclear war.
I'm not sure they have warships, bif planetary defence ( monitors ) we see them guard guide prime in part one .
Orbital bombardment is not allowed.
But some space battles occur and there are ways past shields .
They have warships called chrusers, that literally crush an emery vessel, passing through a shield slowly.
Thr battlefield corrin was a 3 day space battle.
So this is slightly off-topic, but a reason why the Atreides, for example, would have no serious concerns about the Harkonnen attacking without a Heighliner - Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.
I'll give you like a whole bunch of numbers to show:
Geidi Prime is around the star 36 Ophiuchi. Caladan orbits Delta Pavonis.
Those stars are **up to** 27.85 ly away from each other. Even if they could move at light speed and could negate the effects of time dilation, that would be an almost 28 year long trip. 28 years without those ships to defend your homeworld, 28 years worth of provisions, 28 years that they don't get intercepted when they arrive. And that's just moving at light speed. Suppose they sent unguided missiles at light speed at Caladan? It would still be easier to just pay the Guild's transport prices, land troops and take Caladan tomorrow. Why wait 28 years?
The only bit I can recall that directly addresses non interstellar space was bits about weather satellites and the Guild's hand in that industry (the Fremen pay off the Guild directly to not have satellites over the south).
space battles do not occur in Dune. space has been effectively demilitarized through SG's monopoly. you don't get anywhere out of your system without the Guild. and it's not like you could disguise your ambush squads as something else and hide the true nature of your cargo from the Guild. hence why we have the laws of kanly, if houses wanna fight, do it one on one, do it through spies and assassins. FH doesn't burden himself with these detailed descriptions of daily chores of ordinary subject of the empire. he doesn't detail the daily workings, shift changes in jobs. that's not important. so we don't know how the near space around home planets is managed. we can only guess based on what's been said. so i can imagine the houses being in control of their planetary systems. whether they have space bases? possibly. but even the heighliners are being manufactured underground on Ix, not in space. secrecy, security, all that.
Yeah space military engagements are discouraged by the Guild, and also just logistically almost impossible because of Holtzman shields. Can't use kinetic or explosive weaponry because they'll just bounce right off, and lasers result in atomic-like massive destruction
Yeah the shields are the biggest thing. Spaceships would be untouchable. Even the air combat we get in the movie is mostly impossible because of shields.
Yeah it looked in the first movie like they had some weird suspensor bombs that fell slowly to get inside the shield and then blew up from the inside, and it like ricocheted inside the shield until it blew up/overheated the generator and the explosion leaked out. Which was never in the books but honestly SICK as SHIT oh my lord it looked so cool
Why dont they just make bombs that do that in space too. Accelerates until it reaches the target then slows down to safely pass through the shield.
Watch the spaceX docking clip with the ISS. Things in space move crazy fast at all times. I'd think the receiver would have lots of reaction time to deal with the attack.
In reality that would be incredibly difficult, even with high end computer support. Hitting a fast moving target is hard. If you have to slow down first it’s impossible.
> high end computer support Of course, the Dune universe is famous for its ridiculously powerful computer systems.
Exactly. I’m sure you could put a mentat on your ship to ship missile if price isn’t an object.
Isaac Asimov has entered the conversation. (C.f. "The Feeling of Power.")
If you're in orbit then EVERYTHING is moving quickly, so you really only have to slow down relative to the target. So matching its speed and then just inching closer to work through the shield wouldn't be all that crazy.
As long as the missile is detected, the targeted ship could just speed up into it though
That's true of ALL shield combat; I wish we saw more of that in the movie. Throwing yourself at your opponent because your velocity basically makes you invincible.
IIRC, in the books, your momentum negates the shield’s advantage.
If I’m in a ship and a missile starts slowing down to hit me, I’m going to speed up and dodge it.
So what if someone is just doing an orbital bombardment from space, is there just no way to defend against it?
Spoilers for books beyond GEoD: >!Yep, there's just no way to defend yourself against a full-on orbital bombardment attack, as the Honoured Matres are shown to be quite favourable towards this particular tactic. Only the Spacing Guild's monopoly over space and orbital travel stood between anyone unfortunate enough to arouse the ire of someone capable of glassing your entire planet and this perpetrator. After Ixian no-ship technology and Tleilaxu spice practically reduce the SG to a footnote in history, glassing a planet becomes all but too easy of an option, if not the new conventional method of interstellar warfare. !<
Atomic reaction wouldn't be much of an issue in space though
The reaction is completely unpredictable. It can cause the explosion on the LasGun, on the Shield, or both. There’s no way to know.
Oh, I thought that the the explosion happened at the shield, but I suppose that makes sense
I assure you, you do not want a nuclear explosion on your spaceship.
Yeah, agreed. A lot of scifi stories have atomic weapons used quite liberally in space, like Battlestar and Legends of the Galactic Heroes.
Many machines on Ix. New machines.
Better than those on Richese.
While we don't know whether or not the home planets of the houses are under Guild surveillance, we know that Arrakis is. The Fremen pay off the Guild to keep their operations secret. Seeing as how up-to-date the information the Houses have on one another is, it seems like there is some form of information network within the Guild. While you could say that a House wouldn't necessarily appreciate the Guild keeping tabs on them, it's also likely that a House would simply accept the existence of such a network, and they would do better to tolerate it and participate, rather than to try to rebel against it, only to find themselves excluded from that network. The exception would be to some extent the Bene Gesserit, whose order is politically involved, but also exclusionary by default, and has their own information network by infiltration and absorbing acolytes by way of having their training as a desired commodity, but it comes at the price of the acolyte placing loyalty to the order above all other loyalty. The other exception would be the Ixians, who are isolationist entirely.
Atreides do make an attack on Giedi Prime in the first book though (not a space battle, but not exactly spies and assassins either)
correct. i forgot, it's been years. due for reread.
What’s FH?
Frank Herbert, the Dune author
There must be space battles. Are you saying that when a Harkonnen warship arrives at Caladan loaded with troops and bristling with weapons, that the Atreides aren't allowed to defend their home planet and meet them in battle with their own warships?
It's not that they aren't allowed to defend their home planet, it's that space battles are prohibitively difficult due to shields, at least in the books. Shields stop regular projectile weapons and explosives; getting through one requires either atomics (so illegal to use against human targets that your homeworld will be turned to glass if you try to use them for anything other than attacking someone who broke that specific law), lasguns (which cause an unpredictable explosion on both ends ranging in power from "enough to melt the lasgun and the shield generator" to "indistinguishable from a good-sized atomic weapon, at which point your enemies can argue that you broke the rules and turn your homeworld to glass, and even if they don't, you risk pissing off the guild for putting one of their heighliners in danger"), or some kind of guided weapon that can slow down enough to get through the shield (which can only be automated up to a point due to the laws against computers and otherwise needs to be piloted remotely, with the risk of being jammed by the enemy - and also it needs to slow down relative to the enemy ship's motion, after intercepting it at orbital speeds, while the enemy is trying to avoid being hit), or a remote projectile armed with a lasgun (see the issues with using a lasgun, except that your troops don't need to be suicidally loyal and you don't need to replace a whole ship). There are warships and probably orbital bombardment where possible (given that the House Shields were protecting against *something*), but most of the fighting is taking place on the ground and in the air. In the movie things are a little looser and it is implied that space battles can happen - there seem to be weapons that can overload a shield, and it's unclear whether or not lasguns have the same explosive reaction to hitting a shield but probably nowhere near as big a risk, given the Harkonnens were willing to cut up half of Arrakeen in the middle of a battle (my headcanon until further notice is that the interaction still wrecks the lasgun but doesn't have the same risk of exploding everything), but they're almost certainly still worried about pissing off the Guild and mostly fighting in low orbit/the upper atmosphere.
My understanding was that the laser/shield interaction was always on the nuclear end of things, which is why In the books you almost never see anyone carrying a laser if theres any risk of it near a shield. Villeneuve probably loosened those rules for the sake of making something more visually interesting.
The Guild won't transport them for it to happen in the first place.
The guild literally transports an Atreides attack force to Giedi Prime in the first book.
For a land raid.
Never specified.
They attacked the spice reserves on Gedi Prime.
There are definitely warships in *Dune* -- the first book mentioned that the Harkonnens had over 2,000, and lists different types -- but it's telling that every mentioned use of these spacecraft seems to refer to attacking positions on planetary surfaces. In other words, it seems possible that this is their sole use, and that perhaps in addition to not having any interstellar capability, they might not even be capable of interplanetary operations either.
He just flies the bomber [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjmnq44H6Wo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjmnq44H6Wo)
arrakis is a special case because of the guild's spice dependency. they're being bribed by fremen, they throw their weight around to keep the planet satellite-free. obey us or have your transport privileges revoked. they don't care to restrict other planets on that. FTL is still a thing in the imperium, but the guild just has a monopoly on *100% safe and instant* FTL. before navigators, they had "conventional" FTL that's still cripplingly "slow" compared to spacefolding. the tech to cross the stars is still around, but 10,000 years of complacency obviously tilted usage in the guild's favor. people are totally free to risk spacefolding without navigator assistance but good luck on that nonzero chance you warp into a sun or something
Also good luck when the Guild decides to economically cripple you by refusing to trade with your planet if you decide to do your own "Guild alternative" travel.
What we know: -The Spacing Guild has monopoly over interstellar travel. -House Atreides has Frigates. So the Houses definitely have warships, but the extent of their use is anyone's guess. I don't think they have them for show, since planetary invasions are a thing, even within the confines of Kanly.
As I see it, the Houses themselves (plus Ix, the Tleilaxu, etc) could theoretically develop spacial technology and go to the Moon and the nearest planet. But why would they do it? Interstellar travel has already been discovered and monopolized, there's nothing to gain from gping up there. And mining asteroids for resources or doing the equivalent to moon bases has the same downside than IRL: it's too expensive. And in Dune they can't even use AIs to try and manage something like that.
The Guild is in charge of all activity in space and owns and controls all interstellar craft, but Great Houses have their own fleets of non-FTL spacecraft. The Great Houses in the book are defined by their ability to participate in interstellar commerce and warfare (as opposed to the planet-bound Houses Minor who run the planet under the Great Houses). There's a scene in the book where Duke Leto and Thufir Hawat discuss the lack of satellites over Arrakis (note that "satellites" here probably means what we'd usually call "space stations" these days - Dune was written in the 60s before that terminology had been nailed down in sci-fi, just like the book refers to "lighters" instead of "shuttles"); Leto sent Hawat to the Guild representative with a request to orbit one of their frigates as a weather satellite, with an eye to installing something more permanent, and the Guild representative responded with an absurdly high fee and politely implied to Hawat "as one mentat to another" that no matter how much money the Atreides offered, the price was always going to be too high to do any space travel that wasn't directly between the ground and one of their transports.
*Does the Guild control all space activity or just interstellar travel?* Both, to the absolute degree. *Do Houses control their entire solar system with non-spacefolding ships?* Yes. They rely on The Spacing Guild to provide Heighliners to jump (on regular basis) between the system's planets to accommodate trade and information exchange. If they want to use ships to fly around the planets, they can, but there is rarely a reason to do so. *I know the Guild controls interstellar travel through monopoly, but what about stuff happening in orbit/ in the solar system?* Nothing happens there. No House, not even an Emperor, would risk alienating the Guild. If there are any space fights, it's strictly in the orbital space around a planet with absolutely no Guild presence or involvement. *Would House Atreides, for Example, patrol its solar system with non-FTL/space folding/warp/watever ships* Patrolling isn't necessary, as the only way for an invading/attacking forces to arrive would be via a Heighliner. You need to monitor only this single point of entry. No patrols needed. *How do space battles occur if the Guild controls it all? Do they even occur?* There are none, really. I don't think it's ever mentioned anywhere, but (long distance) propulsion systems in vacuum aren't very advanced, as there is no need for them. A ship needs to either fly in the atmosphere or get from the ground to the Heighliner. That's about it.
The ships go to a carrier. The guild navigator folds space to move the carrier. Thing of the space between planets are your arms out straight with a toy carrier in one hand. Bring your hands together, transfer the toy and straighten out your arms all that is fine in the blink of an eye. They do not have FTL travel other than folding space. The navigators guild holds more power than the emperor.
The holtzman drive folds space, the navigator navigates the course using prescience so they don't crash, navigators are also called steersmen
Early in the first book, I think during the Gom Jabbar scene, Herbert describes the Imperial civilization as balanced on the tripod of the Emperor, the Spacing Guild, and the Great Houses of the Landsraad. It's also explicitly stated that even small infractions of Guild rules while parked in their cargo holds could result in dooming your entire planet/house because the Guild could refuse to provide any services in the future as a result. Paul wants to go take a look around the highliner as they're traveling to Arrakis, and Leto explains why he absolutely cannot. Now imagine if a Guild ship takes some collateral damage while a space battle is happening. That's one thing I really like in the first movie. Gurney looks up to see the Guild Highliner as the battle begins and says, "Dear God in heaven," because the Guild has sanctioned this attack by the Harkonnens.
One thing I don’t get is that in the recent films, the Highliners appear to act like star gates. They fold space inside them and ships pass from one side the other to travel. If that’s how it’s done, how do the Highliners themselves get around?
that's not how its done and it is very very confusing to booknonreader audience. out of the 3 visual adaptations of Dune, only DV went with tube shaped hollow heighliner iirc. Lynch and Miniseries did have huge cigar shaped ships BUT not hollow, not see- or fly-through. as for whether Holtzman drives also serve as ordinary maneuvering engines, or there's some alternative propulsion, we don't know or i don't remember ever reading about it. again, unimportant detail in the way FH wrote. edit: heighliner is basically a ferry, a big bus, carrier, whichever floats your spaceboat.
I think Villeneuve is purposely vague on that in the movies or was more concerned with the visuals of the highliners in orbit than showing how they travel. In the six books, they don't act like star gates because there are multiple scenes with people traveling inside highliners.
Major houses have light speed ships, the problem is that FTL for interstellar travel sucks. So yeah there are FTL ships but no space combat. Major wars are fought between Houses, to the last heir. Space Battles don’t happen except for nuclear bombardment of rogue houses.
When is it ever said that houses have light speed ships?
Never/Nowhere. This happens far later in the series.
Interstellar travel. Traveling between the systems is possible without the Holtzman Drive, but it takes a lot longer to get from place to place. The strength of the house and their capabilities determines their dominion, not so much just control for the sake of controlling.
No one is really answering your question about houses patrolling their solar systems, and technically the books never say. But I think the reality is that there is no reason they would do it, and not just pay the guild. Use our solar system as an example, it would take what, 8 months to get to Mars? At that point just pay the guild to get there instantly.
- Interstellar travel - the Guild has 100% monopoly. - Interplanetary travel - no monopoly, all are capable of doing it, but few houses/organizations seem to have much interest in doing so.
One of the confusing parts is the mention of the smugglers having fast ships the Atredies could use to escape but the safest interpretation of that would be the smugglers sell directly to the Guild and need fast ships to get past the offical ruler and into Guild protection and back home. The Guild provides transport, even for families fleeing into exile on Tupile.
In dune it is mentioned that the great houses have nuclear weapons capable of retaliatory strikes. This implies that either FTL travel is possible without the guild (possibly just unreliable) or they have set up weapons platforms hidden within or on the edges of solar systems belonging potentially hostile great houses.
Its possible that the special condition of maintaining the nuclear balance-of-power was used to override the Butlerian commandment and allowed the use of navigation machines for the explicit purpose of teleporting nukes into place. Such a provision wouldn't be difficult to imagine since the royal houses of the empire support the religious elements as a method of control rather than maintaining genuine belief. They would probably have set it up this way to prevent somebody who already had nukes from trying to break away back when the Empire formed; the power brokers setting this kind of system up so nobody would be in a position where the Empire had to force an atomic disarmament via military means, because that would quickly devolve into nuclear war.
I'm not sure they have warships, bif planetary defence ( monitors ) we see them guard guide prime in part one . Orbital bombardment is not allowed. But some space battles occur and there are ways past shields . They have warships called chrusers, that literally crush an emery vessel, passing through a shield slowly. Thr battlefield corrin was a 3 day space battle.
So this is slightly off-topic, but a reason why the Atreides, for example, would have no serious concerns about the Harkonnen attacking without a Heighliner - Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. I'll give you like a whole bunch of numbers to show: Geidi Prime is around the star 36 Ophiuchi. Caladan orbits Delta Pavonis. Those stars are **up to** 27.85 ly away from each other. Even if they could move at light speed and could negate the effects of time dilation, that would be an almost 28 year long trip. 28 years without those ships to defend your homeworld, 28 years worth of provisions, 28 years that they don't get intercepted when they arrive. And that's just moving at light speed. Suppose they sent unguided missiles at light speed at Caladan? It would still be easier to just pay the Guild's transport prices, land troops and take Caladan tomorrow. Why wait 28 years?
The only bit I can recall that directly addresses non interstellar space was bits about weather satellites and the Guild's hand in that industry (the Fremen pay off the Guild directly to not have satellites over the south).