Spacing Guild Heighliners Explained | Dune Lore 

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Frank Herbert’s Dune saga is built around human archetypes throughout history. From ancient Civilizations to modern times it’s amazing how relevant those concepts continue to be.

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.

I like the cylindrical designs as there is something about symmetry with the sandworms that seems meaningful.

dune 2021 nailed the design of these things

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 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.

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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.

It would be more in-keeping with the story, methinks, to have them be cylindrical, echoing the shape of the worms on Dune.

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.

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Much like the spice, I'm addicted to this content.

One of my new favourite channels. Found it today and been binging the content. Love it!

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

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 )

I love these videos! Thank you!!!

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💙

Well done!!! Very informative & enjoyable! Thanks for your efforts!

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 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.

The Dune videos are always interesting, keep up the great work!

Video itself is great, but your very pleasant voice is making it much better.

Herbert was a man of the sixties. The Interstellar pilots (Guild Navigators) were all the time stoned.

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.

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.

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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 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.

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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.

love your dune eps, i just saw the movie and the info helps alot to understand it better

I always envisioned them looking like a giant mechanical sand worm. With its mouth open wide to "swallow" all the cargo before folding space.

When I read the first book, I pictured them as a sphere. The drawings you showed looked really nice.

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.

That was fascinating. Thank you. It helped me better understand the book.

Love these videos

The bigger one with the large throat seems to be the most logical. Thank you for these. Very nice.

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...)

Very interesting!

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.

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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.

It's interesting when they're shown as a thin shell, a scaffold to simply hold the passenger vessels onboard during the folding.

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

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.

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.

2:25 looks like a bunch of coliseums stacked on top of each other.

The smooth female narration makes me think of the Adjutant from Starcraft. I love the content, very nice overview of the lore.

Great video as always…🖖🏽

The SyFy channel adaptation was a good example of the Highliners.

You helped me understanding

Thanks guys

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.

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.😁👽👽🤓🤓👍👍

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!

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?*

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.

My favorite part about the Highliners are how most artist renderings look so much like the Sand Worms

I estimate that a Guild Heighlner can easily transport 3 Million+ people & all their equipment.

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 see the guild taking a more utilitarian role in transport, such as the Greyhound bus.

The highlighters in the OG doom are very reminiscent of a giant attack starship from Star Trek.

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!

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.

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.

I'm sure it's a total coincidence that the interior of the Guild's highliners look like those of the sand worms.

I see you are doing videos about spaceships from the galactica list and now from dune..... You are officially now one of my deities!

Impressive ships. I would like to know more about the IX who build them.

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

The Spacing Guild was a nasty bunch!!

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 always wanted a Spacing Guild Heighliner..

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.

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 (?)

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

The Guild (except for the ti.e covered in the novel) prevented war between the great houses.

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?

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.

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!

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.

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.

I believe there is a big gaping hole in Herbert's work, and it involves these ships and the navigators. When space is folded, you essentially make it so your start and end points take up the same spot in 3D space. Any objects between the two points are completely irrelevant. This makes the Navigators' prescience completely unnecessary.

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.

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.

i totally love your voice

You should do arrakeen ✨

#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.

Good morning (-7hrsGMT)💙

I would like to see a battle between the Romulan Dederadex and the Klingon D7

I'm eager to see how this is portrayed in the 2021 film.

Traveling without moving is a strange concept to me

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 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.

DANG

I've always wondered if the padisha empire had a space fleet, like battleships and starfighters