Airships?

So, with the technological pushes the Inner Circle is giving Charis' military, and especially their possible move to oil in the future, hydrogen production in industrial quantities can't be too far off. With that in mind, could we expect the Empire to produce Airships sometime in the near future? They'd be incredibly valuable for scouting and bombing, so I could see it happening. And Steel Thistle Silk might be a suitable material to make the gasbags out of.

They don't even have hot air balloons yet, airships are a little out of the way in terms of tech at the moment with the 'oil guru' still being evaluated for the inner circle.

That said I'm wondering why there hasn't been a push for balloons as replacements for the lookout towers at Thesmar and attached to ICA elements in the field.

Ed130 The Vanguard wrote:They don't even have hot air balloons yet, airships are a little out of the way in terms of tech at the moment with the 'oil guru' still being evaluated for the inner circle.

That said I'm wondering why there hasn't been a push for balloons as replacements for the lookout towers at Thesmar and attached to ICA elements in the field.

What it amounted to was the good Earl Hanth going with what he knew as he came up with an adapation of the crow's nest he was familiar with from the navy where he served as a Marine. I don't think anybody's thought of balloons yet.

Don

n7axw wrote:

Ed130 The Vanguard wrote:They don't even have hot air balloons yet, airships are a little out of the way in terms of tech at the moment with the 'oil guru' still being evaluated for the inner circle.

That said I'm wondering why there hasn't been a push for balloons as replacements for the lookout towers at Thesmar and attached to ICA elements in the field.

What it amounted to was the good Earl Hanth going with what he knew as he came up with an adapation of the crow's nest he was familiar with from the navy where he served as a Marine. I don't think anybody's thought of balloons yet.

Don

As BGV clears the Sylmahn gap and heads NW to clear out whatever remains of Wyrshym's army and face the MHoG, he's going to need some method to explain how he knows where the artillery should be aimed. A hot air balloon would be perfect for the job, although it goes without saying that you have to keep it out of range of the enemy's weapons.

I'm a bit surprised that nobody has introduced the balloon yet. Safehold has used rubber for centuries, and I'm sure they use it to create rubber bladders for various uses. I'm sure somebody has blown one full of air and found it entertaining. It would make a good ball for water polo. So frankly at this point balloons or inflatable balls for sports ought to exist.

Come to think of it, various marine life have air bladders, and humans have harvested them to use as water bottles, etc. for thousands of years. I'm sure the same is true for Safehold. Somewhere along the line somebody must have blown one up with air and played around with it. Tie it off, leave it a bit too close to the fire, and it would begin to float upwards, which ought to make anyone who saw it curious... (Cue the Inquisition...)

I expect the hot air balloon has been created and squelched by the Inquisition, possibly multiple times. Paityr Wylsynn would create a convoluted explanation that it's merely another form of wind power, and voila, the ICA has observation balloons. Hanth could certainly use a few - as could everyone else once they leave the forests.

Unlikely. Speed, lifting capacity, and fuel efficiency would create some significant disadvantages with Safehold's tech base. Even today with our technology, projects for developing heavy lift capacity have hit a lot of snags despite some significant advantages for use in un/under-developed regions. The sea is still a much more efficient, and likely faster, option on Safehold. As for tactical operations, airship use in WWI was pretty limited and with almost no real consequence. Explosive shells and incendiary rounds--fire vine oil, for instance--would offer CoGA forces the weapons to repel any airship attacks.

And bombing is completely out. Airships would really only offer strategic bombing capabilities and that'd be subject to huge accuracy issues, especially limited to the sort of crude, dumb bombs that they can produce for the foreseeable future. That sort of mayhem would only hurt their ability to persuade people in the future, which is completely incompatible with their ultimate goals.

After the war? Airships are still unlikely. The Inner Circle has tried to skip as many development steps as possible while still allowing their people to keep up. That'll continue well after the war until they reach TF tech levels. Just like how they went from galleons to steamships--skipping, say, paddle steamers along the way--they'll skip bothering with airships. They'll probably skip gliders and the first few (primitive) generations of planes, too.

The fact that balloons have not made an appearance when they seem such an obvious technology has led to intense speculation about how they figure in the proscriptions in previous discussions. The suspicion is that flight may well be entirely banned for 'normal' people. (Ie except angels and possibly seijins). However there is no actual textev AFAIK

Bluestrike2 wrote:Unlikely. Speed, lifting capacity, and fuel efficiency would create some significant disadvantages with Safehold's tech base. Even today with our technology, projects for developing heavy lift capacity have hit a lot of snags despite some significant advantages for use in un/under-developed regions. The sea is still a much more efficient, and likely faster, option on Safehold. As for tactical operations, airship use in WWI was pretty limited and with almost no real consequence. Explosive shells and incendiary rounds--fire vine oil, for instance--would offer CoGA forces the weapons to repel any airship attacks.

And bombing is completely out. Airships would really only offer strategic bombing capabilities and that'd be subject to huge accuracy issues, especially limited to the sort of crude, dumb bombs that they can produce for the foreseeable future. That sort of mayhem would only hurt their ability to persuade people in the future, which is completely incompatible with their ultimate goals.

After the war? Airships are still unlikely. The Inner Circle has tried to skip as many development steps as possible while still allowing their people to keep up. That'll continue well after the war until they reach TF tech levels. Just like how they went from galleons to steamships--skipping, say, paddle steamers along the way--they'll skip bothering with airships. They'll probably skip gliders and the first few (primitive) generations of planes, too.

The first "dirigible" Airships were steam powered and Giffard invented the injector in his attempts to save weight for his 1852 Dirigible.

It should be possible for Safehold.

chrisd wrote:

Bluestrike2 wrote:Unlikely. Speed, lifting capacity, and fuel efficiency would create some significant disadvantages with Safehold's tech base. Even today with our technology, projects for developing heavy lift capacity have hit a lot of snags despite some significant advantages for use in un/under-developed regions. The sea is still a much more efficient, and likely faster, option on Safehold. As for tactical operations, airship use in WWI was pretty limited and with almost no real consequence. Explosive shells and incendiary rounds--fire vine oil, for instance--would offer CoGA forces the weapons to repel any airship attacks.

And bombing is completely out. Airships would really only offer strategic bombing capabilities and that'd be subject to huge accuracy issues, especially limited to the sort of crude, dumb bombs that they can produce for the foreseeable future. That sort of mayhem would only hurt their ability to persuade people in the future, which is completely incompatible with their ultimate goals.

After the war? Airships are still unlikely. The Inner Circle has tried to skip as many development steps as possible while still allowing their people to keep up. That'll continue well after the war until they reach TF tech levels. Just like how they went from galleons to steamships--skipping, say, paddle steamers along the way--they'll skip bothering with airships. They'll probably skip gliders and the first few (primitive) generations of planes, too.

The first "dirigible" Airships were steam powered and Giffard invented the injector in his attempts to save weight for his 1852 Dirigible.

It should be possible for Safehold.

Yes, but Giffard's design had severe limitations that affected speed, mobility, and lifting capacity. With Owl's records, the Inner Circle could develop something significantly more advanced than what Giffard managed, but it'd still be unable to fulfill a bombing role. Sufficient munitions for any raid would weigh well beyond anything an airship could lift.

If the Inner Circle needs to destroy targets they'd otherwise use bombers for, they can just use SNARCs and their self-destruct capabilities to ignite something flammable like gunpowder already at the location or use remotes to deploy explosives. The Inquisition would automatically assume sabotage by Charisian spies, and Charis gets the results they need (and they'd be throwing a wrench in the Church's industrial efforts while the Inquisition hunted for secret saboteurs). Much easier to do that compared to diverting industrial resources away from their current priorities for the limited gains they can get at this time with airpower.

Clyntahn has proven that he looks for saboteurs among innocent civilians rather than tearing up his own organization.

Strategic bombing could be done under cover of the worldwide network of secret seijins, and allows doing it slightly more humanely than usual. A stranger appears, says "Evacuate the powder depot/headquarters/capital ship within ten minutes, I want you to live" and shouts "I am seijin Zorro!" as he disappears. Clyntahn's been told to expect seijins. Bonus points if the bomb is a conventional design so the only supernatural aspect is the seijin, who can only serve the true Church.

Airships would provide intelligence that field commanders could know about without Ultra level clearance, useful, but they could be a huge setback in the propaganda war. Worse, what happens when the CoGA sees the idea and duplicates it?

Bluestrike2 wrote:If the Inner Circle needs to destroy targets they'd otherwise use bombers for, they can just use SNARCs and their self-destruct capabilities to ignite something flammable like gunpowder already at the location or use remotes to deploy explosives. The Inquisition would automatically assume sabotage by Charisian spies, and Charis gets the results they need (and they'd be throwing a wrench in the Church's industrial efforts while the Inquisition hunted for secret saboteurs). Much easier to do that compared to diverting industrial resources away from their current priorities for the limited gains they can get at this time with airpower.

Nice idea, but it won't happen. See the FAQ at the top of this page, specifically the Safehold topic titled: "Why doesn't Merlin use SNARCs to sabotage the Church's war efforts?"