Hot Air and the start of Flight

Dilandu wrote:

If I recall though, the general consensuses was that the machining capability was not yet up to producing the parts. Not sure I agreed, but that's what I recall. Also the need for precision types of alloys was the other argument against, again if my memory is correct. And again I'm not sure I agree.

Please. The light and relatively powerfull steam engines were avaliable even in 1850th. And the Charisians currently at the 1890th at least technological level (...after all, they are able to just condense all the industry from the thin air... )

Indeed , but Larry is talking about the possibility of machining the parts for diesels at that point in his post.

Larry wrote:

fallsfromtrees wrote:
IC engines until after the CoGA is overthrown are a no-no. To much danger of convincing Joe Peasant that you really are worshiping Shan-Wei. You can't afford that at this time.

Well hopefully I edited the quote train properly!
In any case, the problem with an Internal Combustion Engine isn't the peasants. It will be the bloody great rock falling from the sky.
An internal combustion engine is a wonderful electromagnetic noise source. Couple an immensely detectable spark gap transmitter (which is what an ICE is) with a regular frequency beat (the RPM rate of the engine) in a localized location (And what satellite constellation can't do triangulation) and even the dumbest, most poorly programmed, NO Tech allowed, computer program is going to react. Nope, worries about peasant reactions are not the problem at that point. Precision guided kinetic kill strikes, however, are a cat of an entirely different color. This is why I argued for diesel engines in a previous post train here on the forum. Diesels are heat engines only. Simple compression. MUCH less detectable than an ICE, and for that matter far more compact, I would argue, than a steam engine of comparable output power. If I recall though, the general consensuses was that the machining capability was not yet up to producing the parts. Not sure I agreed, but that's what I recall. Also the need for precision types of alloys was the other argument against, again if my memory is correct. And again I'm not sure I agree.
ON the other hand I do recognize that Safehold's grasp of chemistry is still very weak, so the grasp on precision metallurgy may also be weak. Without demand (Which I doubt there's been till Charis started it's industrialization phase) metals such as chromium, manganese, boron, etc. simply may not have been in demand, mined, or produced in any quantity. Indeed it's possible no one even recognized them as anything useful at all.

Larry

I'm with you on the diesels. My own thought is that Charis is ready used to change and skirting the edges of the proscriptions. And I also think that the machining is up to it. Anyone who can manufacture an advanced steam engine can produce a more rudimentary diesel.

Don

Dilandu wrote:

If I recall though, the general consensuses was that the machining capability was not yet up to producing the parts. Not sure I agreed, but that's what I recall. Also the need for precision types of alloys was the other argument against, again if my memory is correct. And again I'm not sure I agree.

Please. The light and relatively powerfull steam engines were avaliable even in 1850th. And the Charisians currently at the 1890th at least technological level (...after all, they are able to just condense all the industry from the thin air... )

Charis also has the ability to whistle up drawings from OWL, something Mr Whitworth would have given his eye teeth for. (OWL is already doing a little back room analysis and quality control based on the textev).

Despite my last comment, the strongest obstacle to diesel at this time is the proscriptions. I think it would go over ok in Charis. But the rest of the Empire is still shifting gears. And diesel on the mainland would be a nonstarter.

So all in all, introducing diesel before the group of 4 is gone and the power of the inquisition broken may well be unwise.

Don

that's hard to know. don't forget that nobody in the Inquisition had a clue how gunpowder worked, so the attestation approving it may not be very specific, or may be worded so that its extension to similar phenomena - doing work by confining a fast-burning substance in a small chamber - is pretty straightforward. what ever the reasoning was that permitted gumpowder would be hard to restrict to this specific case without understanding how it differs from closely related situations.

that's not to say that approval would be automatic, or meet with general favour. nor is it a given that introducing Diesel engines would be any wiser that Otto engines would be: the exhaust has a pretty distinctive spectral signature in the IR. dumping enough of it into the air could, at the hands of a sufficiently paranoid designer, invite a visit from the Flying Crowbar.

n7axw wrote:Despite my last comment, the strongest obstacle to diesel at this time is the proscriptions. I think it would go over ok in Charis. But the rest of the Empire is still shifting gears. And diesel on the mainland would be a nonstarter.

So all in all, introducing diesel before the group of 4 is gone and the power of the inquisition broken may well be unwise.

Don

Louis R wrote:that's hard to know. don't forget that nobody in the Inquisition had a clue how gunpowder worked, so the attestation approving it may not be very specific, or may be worded so that its extension to similar phenomena - doing work by confining a fast-burning substance in a small chamber - is pretty straightforward. what ever the reasoning was that permitted gumpowder would be hard to restrict to this specific case without understanding how it differs from closely related situations.

that's not to say that approval would be automatic, or meet with general favour. nor is it a given that introducing Diesel engines would be any wiser that Otto engines would be: the exhaust has a pretty distinctive spectral signature in the IR. dumping enough of it into the air could, at the hands of a sufficiently paranoid designer, invite a visit from the Flying Crowbar.

n7axw wrote:Despite my last comment, the strongest obstacle to diesel at this time is the proscriptions. I think it would go over ok in Charis. But the rest of the Empire is still shifting gears. And diesel on the mainland would be a nonstarter.

So all in all, introducing diesel before the group of 4 is gone and the power of the inquisition broken may well be unwise.

Don

So your first IC engine is measiuring small quantities of gun powder into the cylinder, and exploding it. Marvelous idea - you can justify it using the same lawyering Paityr used for the steam engine.

AirTech wrote: Charis also has the ability to whistle up drawings from OWL, something Mr Whitworth would have given his eye teeth for. (OWL is already doing a little back room analysis and quality control based on the textev).

Well, THIS is possible. But the situation when we "oh, we just forgot that we have a factory, capable of mass-producing the harvey armor plates, or heavy rifled breechloaders" is... less possible.

Dilandu wrote:

AirTech wrote: Charis also has the ability to whistle up drawings from OWL, something Mr Whitworth would have given his eye teeth for. (OWL is already doing a little back room analysis and quality control based on the textev).

Well, THIS is possible. But the situation when we "oh, we just forgot that we have a factory, capable of mass-producing the harvey armor plates, or heavy rifled breechloaders" is... less possible.

Finding that your prototypes (including tooling) seem amazingly free of engineering oversights would speed the entry into service however. (Having plumbing go BOOM periodically has been an integral part of the development of technology on Earth).

AirTech wrote:
Finding that your prototypes (including tooling) seem amazingly free of engineering oversights would speed the entry into service however. (Having plumbing go BOOM periodically has been an integral part of the development of technology on Earth).

Or to phrase it another way, the burned hand teaches best... True to a point unless it ends up leading to risk avoidance.

Don

AirTech wrote:

Dilandu wrote:Please. The light and relatively powerfull steam engines were avaliable even in 1850th. And the Charisians currently at the 1890th at least technological level (...after all, they are able to just condense all the industry from the thin air... )

Charis also has the ability to whistle up drawings from OWL, something Mr Whitworth would have given his eye teeth for. (OWL is already doing a little back room analysis and quality control based on the textev).

One point nobody seems to have brought up yet is the absolute requirement to show the process by which a new innovation came into being. Paityr Wylsynn isn't handing out patents without that paper trail, even if a lot of the design was cribbed from OWL. For example, bullets for revolvers and the M96 weren't invented (although Howsmyn knew all about them) until one of his shop stewards had a bright idea of how the pistol could be improved.

I'm sure the Inquisition always required this sort of documentation, (remember the guy who made a slight improvement to water wheels in OAR) but Merlin wants the people of Safehold to learn how to think and innovate on their own. So although he's dropped a lot of hints and the inner circle is using OWL to skip generations of development, there's dozens or hundreds of inventive Safeholdians and at least two mainland "wizards" who are improving existing technology or coming up with entirely new inventions - although on the mainland they have to be protected from the Inquisition!

Merlin has often wished he could assassinate Thirsk's and Magwair's tame wizards, but since they're doing exactly what he wants in the long run - innovating and inventing, he has to bite his tongue and accept that even though they're making the ultimate butcher's bill higher by creating a better repeating rifle than the ICA's Mahndrayns for example, he has to let them do it. Snuffing out every pocket of enemy innovation would cause people on the mainland to stop innovating at all. Getting them to start innovating again might be just a wee bit difficult with tales of the horrible murders of previous innovators being whispered all about, no doubt encouraged by the Inquisition.

There's no doubt that Merlin feels a burden of guilt for the allied soldiers who are killed by the improved weapons those innovators produce, but his agenda is not the EoC's agenda, and as much as it may torture his soul, he has to allow it for the future of the human race.