Advanced tech without electricity/internal combustion?

Zakharra wrote:Another question then: Why then didn't Merlin introduce Stirling engines over steam engines? If they are that much more efficient and effective as you all Are portraying, he should have pushed for them instead of the 'inefficient and dangerous' steam engines. Unless there's more of a benefit to steam engines than Stirlings.

Steam engines require less machining tolerance, so Steam provides the power to make the tools needed to make an efficient Stirling.

It's a case of, "needing to make the tools to make the tools." A good blacksmith or talented amateur can make a functional steam engine with nothing more than ferrous rocks and a dead cow or two. (Need leather for the bellows once you get past smelting the first chunk of metal with a few friends using blow-pipes. ) I'm not sure the same can be said for a Stirling-Cycle engine; the operating principles aren't quite as intuitive as simple Steam engines.

One of the crucial accidents of history was that processes to make high grade steel did not get developed until many decades after the development of the stirling engine. The crappy power/weight ratios of early Stirlings limited them to stationary engines (and up until the 20th century, the vast majority of factories were powered by stationary engines at one end of the hall; the power was supplied to the machines by a series of drive shafts running along the rafters and drive belts going down to the machines on the floor).

Had high strength steels been developed earlier, then Stirling engines might have been more competitive in mobile applications (railways, steam traction engines, ships etc.) where the power to weight ratio trumped most other considerations. Here a feedback cycle of improvements in mobile power applications led to better designs, which were adopted by more and more users, developing a larger infrastructure of manufacturers, mechanics, schools of instruction, engineers etc., so steam rapidly overtook Stirling on Earth.

Using modern material science and mathematics, an apparently viable light aircraft engine using the Stirling cycle was designed in the 1990's, but the developers could not receive backing (the light aircraft industry is a rather small market). The company; Quiet Revolution Motors Corporation (QRMC) no linger exists, but Googling this can turn up details of how the inventor intended it to work:

http://www.airsport-corp.com/stirling.html

Others promise high power to weight ratios, but I don't see that they have produced a working prototype either:

http://stirling.nevadacan.com

Zakharra wrote:
I am not convinced that's true otherwise the factory owners in the middle to late 1800s to the early 1900s would have used the stirling. They were notorious penny pinchers. Many of them were extremely cheap in what they paid for factories, equipment and employees, and if a stirling would have come with operational costs significantly lower as you are implying, they would have been all over that in a heartbeat.

Graydon wrote:
Factory owners in the middle to late 1800s did use Stirling engines. The major problems were low specific power -- that's the seals -- and cylinder failures -- that's the materials. Still used. (It's not like early steam engines didn't have boiler failures!) Steam, and waste gas single-cylinder gas engines, eventually won out industrially mostly for reasons of specific power.

Safehold, and specifically the Empire of Charis, has a history of good plumbing and what sounds like hydraulics, nickel-steel armor plate, good steel gun barrels, etc. Can totally cheap on the recuperator, too. (In a "try a quarter inch longer" sort of way, just what Howmsyn's known for.)

They can totally make an efficient Stirling engine because they're in most respects well ahead of the 19th century so far as materials science goes. That would give them an engine that can be run safely by anyone capable of managing a fire, which is just easier than a steam engine.

Zakharra wrote:
Another question then: Why then didn't Merlin introduce stirling engines over steam engines? If they are that much more effecient and effective as you all Are portraying, he should have pushed for them instead of the 'inefficient and dangerous' steam engines. Unless there's more of a benefit to steam engines than stirlings.

it may well be that steam was going to be easier to slide by the proscriptions, and that Merlin wanted them to get used to the idea of mechanical power before introducing something like the Stirling engine. In addition, who is he going to get to introduce it. Housemyn is already pushing the envelope for new innovations, even ones that are minor tweaks to existing devices. Introducing a radical new mechanical engine right off the bat strikes me as a recipe for disaster.

Let's not forget that Merlin likely doesn't know about Stirling Engines in detail (why would he?), and the Safeholdians even less. When looking at the history of technological development on Earth, all of them are going to see the prevalence of steam power first and so steam power is going to be what they all go after first.

I think it would take a bit more in-depth research for any of the Inner Circle to look at Stirling Engines as anything more than a historical curiosity. And everyone's busy enough that developing Stirlings just won't occur to any of them.

Now if someone not in the Inner Circle reinvented the Stirling from the ground up...

Zakharra wrote: Another question then: Why then didn't Merlin introduce stirling engines over steam engines? If they are that much more effecient and effective as you all Are portraying, he should have pushed for them instead of the 'inefficient and dangerous' steam engines. Unless there's more of a benefit to steam engines than stirlings.

High power Stirling are hard to design well as they need tighter tolerances, good theoretical understanding of how they work and advanced materials. Worse, compromises must be made to balance conflicting things. like e.g. unswept volume vs regenerator efficiency.

Steam engines in contrast are easy, even if they are dangerous.

In our history, progresses were made so fast on the latter than trying to develop an alternative at the time was not viable. When the theory was understood well enough to make stirlings competitive, IC engine were discovered and again their progress was faster.
Tech history is full of theoretically better solutions shunned in favor of easier to develop alternatives or by accident. Once a solution is adopted, it is very hard to reverse things.


In Safehold case, the path to steam discovery was easy, but without Carnot theory, stirling cant be done. So Charis college must make available the theory first.

alj_sf wrote:

Zakharra wrote: Another question then: Why then didn't Merlin introduce stirling engines over steam engines? If they are that much more effecient and effective as you all Are portraying, he should have pushed for them instead of the 'inefficient and dangerous' steam engines. Unless there's more of a benefit to steam engines than stirlings.

High power Stirling are hard to design well as they need tighter tolerances, good theoretical understanding of how they work and advanced materials. Worse, compromises must be made to balance conflicting things. like e.g. unswept volume vs regenerator efficiency.

Steam engines in contrast are easy, even if they are dangerous.

In our history, progresses were made so fast on the latter than trying to develop an alternative at the time was not viable. When the theory was understood well enough to make stirlings competitive, IC engine were discovered and again their progress was faster.
Tech history is full of theoretically better solutions shunned in favor of easier to develop alternatives or by accident. Once a solution is adopted, it is very hard to reverse things.


In Safehold case, the path to steam discovery was easy, but without Carnot theory, stirling cant be done. So Charis college must make available the theory first.

evilauthor wrote:Let's not forget that Merlin likely doesn't know about Stirling Engines in detail (why would he?), and the Safeholdians even less. When looking at the history of technological development on Earth, all of them are going to see the prevalence of steam power first and so steam power is going to be what they all go after first.

I think it would take a bit more in-depth research for any of the Inner Circle to look at Stirling Engines as anything more than a historical curiosity. And everyone's busy enough that developing Stirlings just won't occur to any of them.

Now if someone not in the Inner Circle reinvented the Stirling from the ground up...

Very good points and in line with my reasoning. Right now, Charis and Safehold need engines that provide a lot of power (and torque) now, and the steam engine is doable at the current tech level and a skilled village blacksmith could make smaller versions of them, or spare parts for it. Plus Terra's history is filled with all sorts of examples of steam engines (the entire history of them) and the switch to IC engines.

It seems to me that a lot of the push for stirlings on this forum are from those who kind of want Safehold to advance differently. So even though there is already a well documented history of steam engines, they're pushing for the stirling because its different (and coming up with reasons why it would be better), at least that is the impression I'm getting. /shrug It seems like the most efficient way to advance Safehold is to follow the Terran example, and having the history and technical information they do, they can cut out a lot of the mistakes we made. Going for the stirling would be going into much more uncharted territory.

Perhaps the stirling wasn't considered worth mentioning in the historical archives and Merlin has no idea.
Take a look at past posts in this subject area. Almost everyone knows about the effect steam power had, but how many even heard of the stirling?
Think; there are various books on card games and such, but all card games aren't included.
Many know of Charles Dickens, few know he was abandoned to a workhouse at a young age.
Documented history is a collect of events deemed important by the collectors.

TN4994 wrote:Perhaps the stirling wasn't considered worth mentioning in the historical archives and Merlin has no idea.
Take a look at past posts in this subject area. Almost everyone knows about the effect steam power had, but how many even heard of the stirling?
Think; there are various books on card games and such, but all card games aren't included.
Many know of Charles Dickens, few know he was abandoned to a workhouse at a young age.
Documented history is a collect of events deemed important by the collectors.

Very unlikely. Stirling Engine is the closest approximation of the ideal Carnot cycle, and as such is covered in all theory books about engines or thermodynamic.

alj_sf wrote:

TN4994 wrote:Perhaps the stirling wasn't considered worth mentioning in the historical archives and Merlin has no idea.
Take a look at past posts in this subject area. Almost everyone knows about the effect steam power had, but how many even heard of the stirling?
Think; there are various books on card games and such, but all card games aren't included.
Many know of Charles Dickens, few know he was abandoned to a workhouse at a young age.
Documented history is a collect of events deemed important by the collectors.

Very unlikely. Stirling Engine is the closest approximation of the ideal Carnot cycle, and as such is covered in all theory books about engines or thermodynamic.

But that's only the case today.
If in the future a new technology supersedes ours, will the documentation on the stirling be important enough to survive?
Probably yes. But, there's a chance it might be lost.
The wood stoves used in the palace.
I would speculate that only the most effective designs survived any documentation.

TN4994 wrote:If in the future a new technology supersedes ours, will the documentation on the stirling be important enough to survive?
Probably yes. But, there's a chance it might be lost.
The wood stoves used in the palace.
I would speculate that only the most effective designs survived any documentation.

The Carnot cycle is the most fundamental cycle in thermodynamic. Without it, you cannot understand any engine. But the Carnot engine is purely theoretical and cannot be built nor really simulated.

Stirling cycle is a close approximation and you can built or simulate it. In fact you can make a model from paper that works on the heat of a cup of coffee. Don't produce any real power, but do works.
From there you can go to Otto or Rankine Cycle (resp IC engines and Turbines).

So Stirling is always the first engine studied, and unless laws of physic change, it will stay there.