Advanced tech without electricity/internal combustion?

Keith_w wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:Personal transportation:

FFT didn't say anything about personal transportation, he just specified "transportation."

That would include rail (light and heavy), maritime, canals, etc. Currently on Safehold, personal transport (as we know it in the US) is a foreign concept. If it is never introduced, it will never be missed.

US cities used to, and many European cities still do, rely on light rail, subways, and other mass-transit options for personal travel.

Personal land transportation on Safehold includes carriages and horses, currently limited to the wealthy and for the non-wealthy, their feet. Does anyone think that the non-wealthy do not aspire to getting somewhere where only personal transportation of the not-feet variety can take them?

Are there snowshoes and skis on Safehold?
I know of the ice-ship, but has the idea of a ski patrol been thought of?
Old Charis probably wouldn't think of it due to the lack of snow, but The Raven Lords and others?

TN4994 wrote:
Are there snowshoes and skis on Safehold?
I know of the ice-ship, but has the idea of a ski patrol been thought of?
Old Charis probably wouldn't think of it due to the lack of snow, but The Raven Lords and others?

See snippet 10 paragraph 2 for BGV's troops using both.

Yes there are for both military and civilian use. One of the recent snippets spoke of the ICA traveling in the winter on snowshoes, the Glacierheart trappers engage in winter travel, and since they have skis on sledges, I imagine any reasonably intelligent person would recognise their usefulness as personal transportation.

Keith_w wrote:Personal land transportation on Safehold includes carriages and horses, currently limited to the wealthy and for the non-wealthy, their feet. Does anyone think that the non-wealthy do not aspire to getting somewhere where only personal transportation of the not-feet variety can take them?

Yes, actually, I do. In the first place there are very few places that 'only personal transportation of the not-feet variety can take' you, that you can't get to on your feet. (We're not mainly talking about boats, right?) All the transport does is get you there easier and/or quicker. Lots of people might like a horse but, if they are poor, they probably have a lot of other things to do with any extra money first. Nobody dreams of living in the country a 20 or 30 mile commute from their work because no one imagines such a thing could ever be possible. Similarly, no one imagines weekends 30 miles away or a week's holiday a couple of hundred miles away, because such things are just physically impossible with Safehold technology.

Once railways come in all sorts of people may think of travelling more, and will use them to do so. But right now most people are content to live their lives within a few miles of their home with rare major trips further off because it's what all their ancestors have done right back to the Creation. There will be a few travelling professions, seamen, merchants soldiers, some churchmen but the majority of the population will be very settled just because travel is so difficult, time-consuming and expensive.

Most people in Safehold long for personal transportation the way I long for a "Jetson's" style space car, which is to say not at all, because I know it isn't a credible reality in my universe.

Keith_w wrote:Personal land transportation on Safehold includes carriages and horses, currently limited to the wealthy and for the non-wealthy, their feet. Does anyone think that the non-wealthy do not aspire to getting somewhere where only personal transportation of the not-feet variety can take them?

Given that Safehold has good roads, no sprawl development (they haven't even got to streetcars yet, never mind car suburbs), that cars are going to be brutally expensive for a good long while -- industrialization is just starting! think 100,000 USD equivalent for the basic model when production starts ten years from now -- and that the Empire's rulers are sneaky populists, I'm expecting a mass outbreak of bicycles. Howsmyn already has at least one built, it's just a matter of getting the things into mass production.

(Our history had a lot of bicycle infantry. I won't be the least surprised if the Empire fields some.)

Oh, and watch the mainland realms have to figure out brazed steel tubing, wire spokes, freewheels, cutting consistent chain rings and sprockets, pneumatic tires, small fasteners, fine steel cable, and making consistent drive chain; that process had a lot to do with the industrialization of Japan. It'd function as an excellent on-ramp to making more complex machinery.

This has been kind of a fun conversation. There are ways, I suppose, in which I've been making a bit of fun of Harold, but really I agree with most of his argumentation. (By the way, Harold still hasn't taken me up on my bet. ) It would be nice to skip over the unpleasant aspects of the IC engine. I don't think it's going to happen that way, but it would be nice.

But let's shift the discussion a bit from this indulgence in fantasy and try some real speculating here. How do you think RFC is going to play the subject we are discussing in future books? Does Harold get to avoid the IC engines he has been preaching against? Yes or no and what is the basis of your speculation?

My own guess is no. The line of progress on Safehold has been too much like Earth so far. And once things get started in a real big way, it's going to spin out of Merlin's control. In addition to that the human race seems to have a pronounced aversion to learning from past mistakes.

Don

n7axw wrote:The line of progress on Safehold has been too much like Earth so far.

I beg to differ.

We've seen four warships deployed, each with two of the first hundred, maybe the first fifty, steam engines ever built on Safehold. They've steamed tens of thousands of continuous miles without a major engineering breakdown. That would be very good performance in 1900. In 1800? In the first hundred years of maritime steam engines? (Which starts back in 1770 or so.) Couldn't possibly.

So far as I recall, there hasn't been a single boiler explosion. If they have boiler suits, it's because Higher Authority (probably Father Paitr) insisted, not because we've had any text evidence of live steam leaks flaying the flesh off a stoker's limbs. These are amazingly good steam engines.

And they have steam turbines. That work; we haven't met the turbine, but they're powering the air compressors of the successful air tool assembly lines. It's very likely they've got steam turbines in series production. (I'm kinda expecting steam-jet throttling, as per LMS Turbomotive, for the first mobile steam turbines.) And none of those have had boiler explosions, bad leaks, or performed the unique-to-turbine tantrum of hurling a few blades through the casing, or at least not so far as the author has mentioned. This is not at all reflective of our actual history. It's the technical development equivalent of seven league boots.

So I don't think I'd care to try predicting what is going to happen; it's not very likely to follow our timeline because it can't, they "should" -- if they were generally equivalent to the steam engine tech they do have -- have established railways, electrochemistry in the lab, trans-Atlantic telegraph cables, and Maxwell's Equations.

Safehold can have the railways before the archangels get back. The other stuff, no, so it's going to cause all sorts of distortion -- how do you control your railway with no telegraph for signalling? Your fastest communication is still the train. So Safehold development can't be all that analogous to the historical pattern of development.

Graydon wrote:

Keith_w wrote:Personal land transportation on Safehold includes carriages and horses, currently limited to the wealthy and for the non-wealthy, their feet. Does anyone think that the non-wealthy do not aspire to getting somewhere where only personal transportation of the not-feet variety can take them?

Given that Safehold has good roads, no sprawl development (they haven't even got to streetcars yet, never mind car suburbs), that cars are going to be brutally expensive for a good long while -- industrialization is just starting! think 100,000 USD equivalent for the basic model when production starts ten years from now -- and that the Empire's rulers are sneaky populists, I'm expecting a mass outbreak of bicycles. Howsmyn already has at least one built, it's just a matter of getting the things into mass production.

(Our history had a lot of bicycle infantry. I won't be the least surprised if the Empire fields some.)

Oh, and watch the mainland realms have to figure out brazed steel tubing, wire spokes, freewheels, cutting consistent chain rings and sprockets, pneumatic tires, small fasteners, fine steel cable, and making consistent drive chain; that process had a lot to do with the industrialization of Japan. It'd function as an excellent on-ramp to making more complex machinery.

I take your point that at this point in time on Safehold there are none of the drivers that encourage personal vehicles, but how long did it take for us to go from horse and wagon, to railroad to automobile? Just because at this time there is no where to go and nothing to do once you get there doesn't mean that in the not so distant future there won't be. At the rate of change that Chris is embracing, it'd bet that it won't be a week after the war is over before someone is building his first Howsman Steamer.

Graydon wrote:

n7axw wrote:The line of progress on Safehold has been too much like Earth so far.

I beg to differ.

We've seen four warships deployed, each with two of the first hundred, maybe the first fifty, steam engines ever built on Safehold. They've steamed tens of thousands of continuous miles without a major engineering breakdown. That would be very good performance in 1900. In 1800? In the first hundred years of maritime steam engines? (Which starts back in 1770 or so.) Couldn't possibly.

So far as I recall, there hasn't been a single boiler explosion. If they have boiler suits, it's because Higher Authority (probably Father Paitr) insisted, not because we've had any text evidence of live steam leaks flaying the flesh off a stoker's limbs. These are amazingly good steam engines.

And they have steam turbines. That work; we haven't met the turbine, but they're powering the air compressors of the successful air tool assembly lines. It's very likely they've got steam turbines in series production. (I'm kinda expecting steam-jet throttling, as per LMS Turbomotive, for the first mobile steam turbines.) And none of those have had boiler explosions, bad leaks, or performed the unique-to-turbine tantrum of hurling a few blades through the casing, or at least not so far as the author has mentioned. This is not at all reflective of our actual history. It's the technical development equivalent of seven league boots.

So I don't think I'd care to try predicting what is going to happen; it's not very likely to follow our timeline because it can't, they "should" -- if they were generally equivalent to the steam engine tech they do have -- have established railways, electrochemistry in the lab, trans-Atlantic telegraph cables, and Maxwell's Equations.

Safehold can have the railways before the archangels get back. The other stuff, no, so it's going to cause all sorts of distortion -- how do you control your railway with no telegraph for signalling? Your fastest communication is still the train. So Safehold development can't be all that analogous to the historical pattern of development.

I'm not suggesting that things are going to be identical, Graydon. Especially with Merlin in the mix there are going to be shortcuts that wouldn't otherwise possible along with other variance. I do believe though, that the progression will be from water to steam to oil as in our own time line, however the details might vary.

Don

Keith_w wrote:I take your point that at this point in time on Safehold there are none of the drivers that encourage personal vehicles, but how long did it take for us to go from horse and wagon, to railroad to automobile? Just because at this time there is no where to go and nothing to do once you get there doesn't mean that in the not so distant future there won't be. At the rate of change that Chris is embracing, it'd bet that it won't be a week after the war is over before someone is building his first Howsman Steamer.

Stephenson's Rocket is 1829. Model T Ford is 1908. That looks like 81 years; three whole human generations.

There's a limit to how much change people can cope with, even with the prospect of being destroyed by the Church to concentrate their attention; people can only learn stuff so fast. (Anybody who has ever done support for the second major critical software upgrade in a single year will know this...) You've only got so many people available to teach, too; we get texev of this as the Delthak works is having serious, serious trouble replicating their QA genius clockmaker into enough inspectors fast enough. If it takes two years to train one of those guys (which is pretty good for stuffing a mech eng degree into somebody), and then another two years paired with an experienced guy before you dare let them off on their own, you're going to have trouble creating enough inspectors for a generation because you're starting with fifty. If fifty doubles every year, in ten years you've trained fifty thousand. Given populations in the millions that's not enough; Siddarmark needs some, too.

The economy can only grow so fast because you've got to make all the bits that make the bits. What's happened so far is a narrow, narrow focus on marine steam engines, steel plate, and gun barrels. No one has, for example, had to figure out how to make automotive brakes or steel-rod spoked wheels or pneumatic tires -- pretty sure the bicycle doesn't have those, it has a sprung seat -- or better glue for the carriage work or paint or a small engine with good power-to-weight. Even if you can make a relatively cheap car, you have to expand the economy enough for people to afford it; average US wage in 1908 is between 200 and 400 dollars a year. A Model T was sold for 500 dollars.

Average US per-capita GDP in 1860 was somewhere around 160 dollars. (Wage figures a problematic for that period.) I'd say Charis is somewhere between 1860 and 1908, economically; they're just starting their industrial revolution (1800!) but are pre-conditioned for growth by a much more capable incumbent economy than the economy of 1800. Even at steady 5% growth, it takes 14 years to double the value of the economy. 5% growth is hard to sustain when your overseas markets may not be willing to trade with you, you filthy heretics, are having economic convulsions, and there's the devastation of war everywhere. (The Empire is a nice big internal market with much growth potential. Sustaining 5% growth is still hard. The control problem -- are we adding enough capital to the economy in the right places? Are we training enough chemists in Corisande? -- is very hard.)