Introducing the Hunter process.

Now that slowly but steadily chemistry is beginning to be introduced in Safehold, I think it is time for someone to "discover" a certain process invented in 1910 by Matthew A. Hunter. The process uses the mineral called rutile plus salt and coke to ultimately produce titanium, without the need for an arc furnance (which is a no-no for Safehold). Titanium alloys can be tougher than most steels but 40% lighter. So, costs aside, imagine having a ship with 30+ inches of armor that isn't any heavier than normal...

Seems like it would be way too expensive. But I don't have any experience with what the costs would be.

Belial666 wrote:Now that slowly but steadily chemistry is beginning to be introduced in Safehold, I think it is time for someone to "discover" a certain process invented in 1910 by Matthew A. Hunter. The process uses the mineral called rutile plus salt and coke to ultimately produce titanium, without the need for an arc furnance (which is a no-no for Safehold). Titanium alloys can be tougher than most steels but 40% lighter. So, costs aside, imagine having a ship with 30+ inches of armor that isn't any heavier than normal...

All true, and titanium is more or less impervious to sea-water, you don't need to paint it. (Guy in Japan built a sailing yacht, tooled around the Pacific, worked a charm.)

Serious problem number 1: Hunter process requires lots and lots of very pure gaseous chlorine. Pure chlorine is nasty unpleasant stuff, and you have to do the reaction really hot, which means a specialized reactor vessel that they probably can't make yet.

Serious problem number 2: it's expensive. Hunter process is used nowadays only when purity really, really matters, because the Kroll process is cheaper, and the Kroll process involves vacuum arc furnaces, a fluidized bed reactor, and molten sodium. This is the sort of industrial environment where prayer is frequently involuntary.

Serious problem number 3: you can't join titanium in an oxygen atmosphere. You have to use inert gas electrical welding of one kind or another. (Rivets are an infinity of pain.)

Serious problem number 4: if you think an aluminium/oxygen fire is entertaining, just try titanium/chlorine. When "better than potassium and fluorine" is the best thing you can say, it's not good. This stuff is seriously dangerous.

Serious problem number 5: when you're outnumbered and in a productivity war, "costs aside" is the last thing you want to say. You need to get maximal value from every Charisian mark. There isn't anything vital they must have titanium for to be able to do at all.

Belial666 wrote:Now that slowly but steadily chemistry is beginning to be introduced in Safehold, I think it is time for someone to "discover" a certain process invented in 1910 by Matthew A. Hunter. The process uses the mineral called rutile plus salt and coke to ultimately produce titanium, without the need for an arc furnance (which is a no-no for Safehold). Titanium alloys can be tougher than most steels but 40% lighter. So, costs aside, imagine having a ship with 30+ inches of armor that isn't any heavier than normal...

Sorry, but I can't see a need for this at the moment.

At this point in time, Charis is easily out teching the AoG, and for the next few years, this will continue.

In a few years, then perhaps titaunium will be needed, but at the moment steel is good enough!

Graydon wrote:

Belial666 wrote:Now that slowly but steadily chemistry is beginning to be introduced in Safehold, I think it is time for someone to "discover" a certain process invented in 1910 by Matthew A. Hunter. The process uses the mineral called rutile plus salt and coke to ultimately produce titanium, without the need for an arc furnance (which is a no-no for Safehold). Titanium alloys can be tougher than most steels but 40% lighter. So, costs aside, imagine having a ship with 30+ inches of armor that isn't any heavier than normal...

All true, and titanium is more or less impervious to sea-water, you don't need to paint it. (Guy in Japan built a sailing yacht, tooled around the Pacific, worked a charm.)

Serious problem number 1: Hunter process requires lots and lots of very pure gaseous chlorine. Pure chlorine is nasty unpleasant stuff, and you have to do the reaction really hot, which means a specialized reactor vessel that they probably can't make yet.

Serious problem number 2: it's expensive. Hunter process is used nowadays only when purity really, really matters, because the Kroll process is cheaper, and the Kroll process involves vacuum arc furnaces, a fluidized bed reactor, and molten sodium. This is the sort of industrial environment where prayer is frequently involuntary.

Serious problem number 3: you can't join titanium in an oxygen atmosphere. You have to use inert gas electrical welding of one kind or another. (Rivets are an infinity of pain.)

Serious problem number 4: if you think an aluminium/oxygen fire is entertaining, just try titanium/chlorine. When "better than potassium and fluorine" is the best thing you can say, it's not good. This stuff is seriously dangerous.

Serious problem number 5: when you're outnumbered and in a productivity war, "costs aside" is the last thing you want to say. You need to get maximal value from every Charisian mark. There isn't anything vital they must have titanium for to be able to do at all.

This, awesome information btw.

Also as others mentioned, the EoC is already way ahead of the temple lands, what they need now is the numbers so they can take control of the temple and maybe some inner circle Members to find out what stuff is hidden inside and how they can take control/destroy the orbital platforms.

One side benefit if they did choose to introduce this process is it could provide a level of cover for OWL. Let it be known that Charis has a process that can create a metal stronger than steel. Then say there is some kind of crisis and OWL has to make something. Since everybody *knows* Charis has the ability to make a super-metal then obviously the what-ever-it-is OWL just made is composed of Titanium.

Henry Brown wrote:One side benefit if they did choose to introduce this process is it could provide a level of cover for OWL. Let it be known that Charis has a process that can create a metal stronger than steel. Then say there is some kind of crisis and OWL has to make something. Since everybody *knows* Charis has the ability to make a super-metal then obviously the what-ever-it-is OWL just made is composed of Titanium.

Titanium is good but cuts like butter with tungsten or cobalt alloys - (nickel and cobalt do require significant quantities of high purity sulfuric acid and ammonia for economic manufacture). Titanium becomes important where light weight is critical however workarounds exist that are much cheaper, chrome moly alloys for example, the Russians built a perfectly serviceable Mach 3 aircraft out of mild steel (MiG-25) that don't require reinventing the wheel if you will accept a slightly lower performance, lower efficiency and higher cost in operation (the capital cost will be lower however).

I would be concentrating on the chemical industries first - ammonia, chlorine, sulphates (and sulphides) and nitrates - as these have immediate military and agricultural benefits.

(I was a little surprised Langhorne didn't go to Chinese ideograms or some version of Orwell's New Speak if he really wanted to freeze a culture, if you don't have words for a concept then explaining it is very hard).

AirTech wrote:(I was a little surprised Langhorne didn't go to Chinese ideograms or some version of Orwell's New Speak if he really wanted to freeze a culture, if you don't have words for a concept then explaining it is very hard).

Too easy just to invent new words, I think.

I do wonder why he picked a basically pseudo-Christian, monotheistic religion, though. It seems to me that using monotheism the way they did requires the concept of a divine plan, which is likely to bring in, or at least is a bit closer to the concept of a rational, comprehensible world than I think Langhorne would have been happy with.

A polytheism with gods often opposed to each other and a the-material-world-is-an-illusion (or a Gnostic style "matter is evil") doctrine would seem more useful at preventing the sorts of thought that lead to science from ever arising in the first place.

IMO Langhorne wanted a "stable set of rules" to prevent the rise of Science. It's easier to create such a set of rules that would be obeyed if the rules are from the One And Only God. It would be harder to create such a set of rules where there are several gods with potentially "different ideas on how things should go".

Also, remember that Langhorne and the rest of the crew would die of old age. So the idea that were "only" servants of God and that their bodies were mortal so they'd return to heaven would explain they're eventual leaving better than if they were gods themselves.

As for the Gnostic style "matter is evil" doctrine or the "world is illusion" doctrine, IMO it is possible that Langhorne and the other planners just didn't think of those ideas when they thought of creating a religion. They likely knew of those ideas but to them the "default" idea to copy was a generic monotheistic religion.

On the other hand, the "matter is evil" or "world is illusion" ideas would conflict with providing knowledge about medicine and other ways of making low-tech life for the colonists more survivable. Remember they did want humanity to survive on Safehold.

cralkhi wrote:

AirTech wrote:(I was a little surprised Langhorne didn't go to Chinese ideograms or some version of Orwell's New Speak if he really wanted to freeze a culture, if you don't have words for a concept then explaining it is very hard).

Too easy just to invent new words, I think.

I do wonder why he picked a basically pseudo-Christian, monotheistic religion, though. It seems to me that using monotheism the way they did requires the concept of a divine plan, which is likely to bring in, or at least is a bit closer to the concept of a rational, comprehensible world than I think Langhorne would have been happy with.

A polytheism with gods often opposed to each other and a the-material-world-is-an-illusion (or a Gnostic style "matter is evil") doctrine would seem more useful at preventing the sorts of thought that lead to science from ever arising in the first place.

DrakBibliophile wrote:IMO Langhorne wanted a "stable set of rules" to prevent the rise of Science. It's easier to create such a set of rules that would be obeyed if the rules are from the One And Only God. It would be harder to create such a set of rules where there are several gods with potentially "different ideas on how things should go".

Yeah. I just think that was a mistake, because setting down a set of commandments like that with all the divine plan ideas that go with it pushes close to the idea of a rational universe.

Of course, it won't matter in the end because of Merlin, but I think Langhorne would have done better with just trying to prevent a rational approach to things than with the Proscription bit. That gives you ideas of what to go after if some group ever does break away from the world theocratic structure.

There's a reason science started in late-medieval/Renaissance Europe, and not medieval China or ancient Greece/Rome which had in many ways more technology.

Europe of that era was pre-primed with a rational approach to the universe due to the Scholastic movement in medieval theology which approached religion with reason and drew strongly on the rational elements of ancient Greek philosophy, like Aristotle (in contravention to the common image of the Middle Ages as ultra-superstitious... which mostly draws on stuff like the witch trials that are actually post-medieval). While the Islamic world of the era, which had showed such promise in developing e.g. beginnings of chemistry and medical stuff, was simultaneously adopting the idea of 'occasionalism' which said that effectively there are no natural laws and every event is a direct miracle, and stopped valuing philosophy.

I think it's a pretty good answer to the Fermi Paradox, at least in part -- science and thus advanced technology are probably incredibly hard to develop. You may need to be "pre-loaded" with the idea of a rational approach to things before you start.

Also, remember that Langhorne and the rest of the crew would die of old age. So the idea that were "only" servants of God and that their bodies were mortal so they'd return to heaven would explain they're eventual leaving better than if they were gods themselves.

Sure, but as long as they're making up a religion from whole cloth, they could just invent a new category of intermediaries-between-the-mortal-and-divine to be.

Or just copy avatars from Hinduism, they didn't stick around on Earth forever.

As for the Gnostic style "matter is evil" doctrine or the "world is illusion" doctrine, IMO it is possible that Langhorne and the other planners just didn't think of those ideas when they thought of creating a religion. They likely knew of those ideas but to them the "default" idea to copy was a generic monotheistic religion.

It's possible, but that seems absurdly short-sighted and narrow-minded, even for them.

On the other hand, the "matter is evil" or "world is illusion" ideas would conflict with providing knowledge about medicine and other ways of making low-tech life for the colonists more survivable. Remember they did want humanity to survive on Safehold.

I don't think that's necessarily the case. If you're making it up from scratch, you can present it however you want.

"The knowledge is provided so you don't have to weigh down your minds/spirits figuring out how to do these things on your own, thus giving you more time to approach spiritual perfection." Etc.