Non-weapons of war, weapons of war

laz wrote:

Chief-CWH wrote:
Fiber needs repeater and a very bright light source to go any distance. We use repeater to boost the light signal (A repeater is a light detector/receiver and laser transmitter) about ever 10 miles or so powered by electricity. Fiber like copper has attenuation and the light signal will go below detection level if not boosted. (Fiber works by bouncing the light signal off the sides of the fiber like a mirror so that the light stays in the fiber and travel down it. Glass is not 100% transparent so the signal loses a little energy as it bounces it way towards the other end.) Plus how bright of a light was you going to use to send your message. We use lasers and still have to have repeater for long distance.

But safehold doesn't need high bandwidth low error (well sort of since they
would be using eyeballs to decode). Anyway to re-open a can of worms:

magnesium flash bulbs. back when they existed i loved buying some, taking them to school, setting them off with a 9v battery while the bulb was "hidden".
so could magnesium in a pure oxygen environment be set off somehow? frankly
i dunno how to get magnesium other then the store or if its possible to get pure enough oxygen without electricity.

Limelight (Calcium Oxide in Hydrogen Flame) would be a more realistic option. A chemical laser may be another possible option.
Gradient index fiber would be a better option than step index (gradient index bends the light back to the center of the fiber, step index reflects it (with higher losses)). Light amplification is more difficult and laser excitation would definitely be required - but development of these technologies would be hard to explain without reference to OWL.

I mentioned zippers previously. Scratch might also be a good idea. If I remember correctly it comes from biomimetics, so it wouldn't be too difficult to explain.

I didn't go back through the thread to see if it had already been suggested, but I just watched a British documentary about Steam Ploughs. According to the documentary, steam ploughing could plough twenty acres in the time a horse teams could plough one acre.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxhV0J8MdVk

Weird Harold wrote:I didn't go back through the thread to see if it had already been suggested, but I just watched a British documentary about Steam Ploughs. According to the documentary, steam ploughing could plough twenty acres in the time a horse teams could plough one acre.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxhV0J8MdVk

Indeed, it is however not a completely unambigious picture.

1st of all, you use vastly more energy to plow that same area. IIRC it´s something on the level of 100 times more.

Meaning, that you either need good infrastructure delivering fuel, or lots of local sources that those doing the plowing can exploit themselves in their added free time.

2nd, a steamplow is a fairly high-maintenance piece of machinery, requiring skills that is usually outside of the average farmers knowledge.

3rd, it´s expensive. No single farmer is likely to afford either buying one or keeping it running.


Overall, it is something that could be quite beneficial, but it is something that will NOT just happen by itself or easily, and it requires quite a lot of secondary work as well as lots of investments.

I see in the future that trellheim and the lands to the west of south harchong, the imperium helps people escape from the mainland to build a new future.
That way they can build up new territories and assets. use them as a filter for undesirabless, and allow those territories to be provitable. new lands open to all will cause a migration, of people from the mainland.

Tenshinai wrote:2nd, a steamplow is a fairly high-maintenance piece of machinery, requiring skills that is usually outside of the average farmers knowledge.

3rd, it´s expensive. No single farmer is likely to afford either buying one or keeping it running.

That is probably why "steam plowing" companies hired out engines to plow fields.

The same economic forces drive the big combine harvesting companies and/or co-op ownership of combine harvesters and other big-ticket items beyond the reach of (most) individual farmers.

In Charis' case, a royal commission/company would probably front the cost of the first dozen or so and subsidize plowing for a season or two to prove the benefits. Then turn over the steam plows to private industry.

In the real world, steam plowing was state of the art for close to a century. Internal combustion engines' advantages eventually put them out of business, but Charis' tech base isn't up to the operating pressures of an efficient internal combustion engine; Steam Plows and Steam Tractors are withing the existing tech-base's capability.

Weird Harold wrote:That is probably why "steam plowing" companies hired out engines to plow fields.

Yes, and they were able to do so because at that point there already existed a very strong steambased infrastructure thanks to the rapidly expanding railroads(and shipping, and industrial steam power).

The pricetag on the surrounding infrastructure without starting up other steambased business first is going to be extremely excessive.

Build hundreds of steamships, thousands of industrial and mining steamengines as well as hundreds of steam railroad engines first and doing steamtractors becomes realistic.

Without that first, either forget it or be prepared to pay the price. And at that point, the price just isn´t worth it.

Weird Harold wrote:In Charis' case, a royal commission/company would probably front the cost of the first dozen or so and subsidize plowing for a season or two to prove the benefits. Then turn over the steam plows to private industry.

Private ownership would likely be far too expensive.

Weird Harold wrote:In the real world, steam plowing was state of the art for close to a century.

A century... No they were not.

Shall we check what is said on the subject?
http://historylink101.com/lessons/farm- ... engine.htm
"The steam plough, although able to plough ten times the area that horses could plough in a day, was cumbersome and costly, and had only a limited impact on farming in either Europe or the United States. Thus the horse remained the mains source of power until the early twentieth century."

The steam engine enjoyed it's largest amount of use between 1885 and 1914.

Gee, how odd, the horse is the primary source of power until the time when internal combustion engines just happen to begin becoming available en mass.

In case you missed it, steerable steam tractors was essentially a thing from the 1870s and forward.

Cablepulled plows powered by fixed steam engines was a bit more successful early on, but negates some of the advantages at the same time.

Much used in England in the 1860s and Germany a bit later to early 20th century, the concept didn´t work well in the USA, mostly just because of terrain and fieldsize.

It wasn´t until 1850s that USA even got it´s first real batch of fixed but transportable steam engines used in farming.

The US civil war saw a demand for steam engines, but they were still too expensive for common use. Or even uncommon use.

http://www.yesterdaystractors.com/artic ... int226.htm
The steam traction engine's popularity soared during the 1890s. But, so did the horse's. Just as the Eli Whitney's cotton gin needed more slaves; the steam engine required more horses. The steam traction engine could plow, haul huge loads, and power the threshing machine all day. It needed plenty of fuel and water, which was brought by horses. The increased amount of tilled land needed to be planted, and cultivated, which the steam engine was too big to do. Although the steam engine made horses unneeded for some big jobs, more horses were needed for many others.


The farmers began to realize that the steam engine, while useful, still didn't keep expenses down enough (when you add horses to the bill) to make them useful to the small farmer. Only larger farms could afford them. As the "newfangled" gasoline engines became more reliable, and smaller, they began to cut into the steam engine's market. From 1900 and on the steam engine became less popular. In 1924 came the Farmall, a gas tractor that could do all the jobs on the farm. It was the final nail in the coffin. Steam production stopped a few years later. A few steam engines worked 'till World War Two.

Effectively, the steam tractor and/or steam plowing was "state of the art" for MAYBE 50 years, if you´re extremely generous.

Calling it 20-30 years is far more realistic.

Weird Harold wrote: Internal combustion engines' advantages eventually put them out of business

No "eventually" about it, they pretty much pushed them out of business as soon as there was a direct competitor.
And this despite ICE tech being brand new stuff, while steam had ~2 centuries of development behind it.

Weird Harold wrote:but Charis' tech base isn't up to the operating pressures of an efficient internal combustion engine; Steam Plows and Steam Tractors are withing the existing tech-base's capability.

SLIGHT problem with that statement. If you want decent steam tractors, you need HIGH PRESSURE steam engines. If you can´t build ICE due to operating pressure limitations, then you probably can´t build high pressure steam engines either.

And at that point, steam tractors is mostly a pipedream.

[quote="Tenshinai"SLIGHT problem with that statement. If you want decent steam tractors, you need HIGH PRESSURE steam engines. If you can´t build ICE due to operating pressure limitations, then you probably can´t build high pressure steam engines either.[/quote]

According to the restorers of that steam plow, "High Pressure Steam" is 150 PSI for that machine. Diesels require substantially higher cylinder pressure to function and Charis needs to avoid spark plugs and glow plugs other electrical aids used in other ICE designs.

Other episodes in the Salvage Squad series dealt with another "high pressure" steam engine that operated at a whopping 250 PSI. Another series regarding early British rail engines remarked the daring required to go to "high pressure Steam" at 50 PSI.

It wasn't until the end of steam that "high pressure steam" meant 1500-2000 psi like this [url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACO-HXvrRz8"]1925 Doble Series E Steam Car - Jay Leno's Garage - YouTube[/url].

Weird Harold wrote:According to the restorers of that steam plow, "High Pressure Steam" is 150 PSI for that machine. Diesels require substantially higher cylinder pressure to function and Charis needs to avoid spark plugs and glow plugs other electrical aids used in other ICE designs.

Yes, but with an ICE, the high pressure pretty much stays in ONE place. In a steam engine, all the tubing from the boiler to the cylinder, and every joint in between must be capable of handling the max pressure.
There´s also the internal tubing of the boiler.

The welding and connections needed is NOT a small problem. Just figuring out how sharp bends(and what shape of bends) you can use at a specific pressure(without loosing too much efficiency) is a small science by itself.


Glow plugs need not be electric. I posted a link to a so called "hot bulb" engine somewhere a few months ago.


150-350 PSI is probably the most workable range. But higher is very preferable for anything that moves and isn´t on rails.

Tenshinai wrote:150-350 PSI is probably the most workable range. But higher is very preferable for anything that moves and isn´t on rails.

From the various documentaries I've been watching, the British steam industry would disagree; Steam trucks, tractors and traction engines built from 1847 through 1928 were all 150 psi or 250 psi.

Big, flashy, rock-stars like rail engines may have run at higher pressures and used double and triple expansion, but Charis' steam industry isn't ready for that level just yet. They're using triple expansion engine in ships, but ship engines are generally bigger than land engines.

Charis does have a fledgling steam industry, currently focused mostly on marine and stationary applications, but they're going to need land-based motive power and they're already using steam.