Good Side to COGA Finding out about steam engines

Highjohn wrote: We know they could build one, Charis did. The questions are how many, how fast and most importantly, will they BLOW UP. Yes you can build a steam engine but they aren't easy to get right.

You've forgotten something: The presence of a safety valve significantly reduces the explosiveness of steam vessels. Not having read about safety valves in the textev, yet, the interesting question should be if CoGA engineers come up with a valid safety valve before the inquisition in light of a series of inexplicable explosions reaches the conclusion that steam engines are anathema to Jwo-Jeng, who clearly demonstrated it, and can only be handled by demon-worshippers. In that case, woe unto the CoGA engineers...

anwi wrote:You've forgotten something: The presence of a safety valve significantly reduces the explosiveness of steam vessels. Not having read about safety valves in the textev, yet, the interesting question should be if CoGA engineers come up with a valid safety valve ...

Actually, there is textev that the Writ explicitly approves of pressure cookers, and that implies some knowledge of safety-valves and/or pressure regulation.

Midst Toil and Tribulation wrote:Vyrnyr was the College’s leading expert in the field of pressures, which wasn’t something Irys would have thought of as a field of study in its own right. The Writ explained why the Archangel Truscott had arranged for the boiling point of water to increase in a tightly sealed vessel, after all, and taught mankind how to construct pressure cookers to take advantage of his foresight in seeing to it that it was so. The benefits for food preparation and preservation were well known to anyone who’d read the Book of Truscott and the Book of Pasquale, yet Vyrnyr wanted to understand how the Holy Truscott had arranged for it to work, and she’d been using her own observations and Mahklyn’s new mathematical tools to pursue that understanding. She’d shared some of what she’d discovered with Irys on one of the princess’ visits to the College with Lady Hanth, and the scholar’s eyes had glowed with pleasure as she displayed the elegant rules and processes Truscott had imposed on the seemingly simple act of lighting a fire under a sealed pressure cooker.

Keep in mind that, from Nimue/Merlin's perspective, this is all to the good. Inevitably the church will attempt to incorporate these steel making processes into their own production, which will yield further innovations and mechanization, as the only way to accomplish this is to build pressure accumulators, and high pressure air blowers, and so on, and so forth. Each step the Temple takes pushes them one more step on the road of technological progress. And dissemination of technical methods is the end game for N/M. None of it really hurts Charis as such since they already enjoy a huge edge in technological progress, and it will be a significant lag before the CoGA forces can retool yet again. And as they retool they are forced a bit further from the technological pyramid of wind, water, and muscle. Sure it improves their abilities, but always a step behind Charis (At least for now).
What's more, these production methods show whats possible. Once implemented they will make better profits for the mill owners (church or secular) due to improved efficiency so even without the war, the processes would continue in use. And what with people being people, once they realize that things can be improved, even the mainlanders will start wondering how much more they can improve and start doing that evil deed known as thinking. Folks will start tinkering and trying for an edge and someone with influence will bribe an attendant to approve this or that (just like they did with gunpowder) and before you know it, regardless of what happens to Charis, the technological revolution is off and rolling. (Maybe slower without Charis than with it, but still moving.)
So see, it's all good!

Larry

Joat42 wrote:Quality assurance is what happens when you have lazy people doing quality control.

"Only infants and imbeciles need assurance"

Larry, this is true but I cant help worrying bout a quote from Stalin "Quanaty has a quality all it's own." The German panther tank was arguably the best general tank of WW2, but even if it could kill five Shermans with ease the US production was such it usually met twenty

Poker

Larry wrote:Keep in mind that, from Nimue/Merlin's perspective, this is all to the good. Inevitably the church will attempt to incorporate these steel making processes into their own production, which will yield further innovations and mechanization, as the only way to accomplish this is to build pressure accumulators, and high pressure air blowers, and so on, and so forth. Each step the Temple takes pushes them one more step on the road of technological progress. And dissemination of technical methods is the end game for N/M. None of it really hurts Charis as such since they already enjoy a huge edge in technological progress, and it will be a significant lag before the CoGA forces can retool yet again. And as they retool they are forced a bit further from the technological pyramid of wind, water, and muscle. Sure it improves their abilities, but always a step behind Charis (At least for now).
What's more, these production methods show whats possible. Once implemented they will make better profits for the mill owners (church or secular) due to improved efficiency so even without the war, the processes would continue in use. And what with people being people, once they realize that things can be improved, even the mainlanders will start wondering how much more they can improve and start doing that evil deed known as thinking. Folks will start tinkering and trying for an edge and someone with influence will bribe an attendant to approve this or that (just like they did with gunpowder) and before you know it, regardless of what happens to Charis, the technological revolution is off and rolling. (Maybe slower without Charis than with it, but still moving.)
So see, it's all good!

Larry

captinjoehenry wrote:Well i personally feel like without a massive additional intelligence windfall the information that the COGA got about steam engine is only going to lead to a program along the line of Hitlers Mause program. AKA it is only going to be a massive resource drain and they will end up needing to work their way through the whole history of steam engines. AKA they will be forced to start all the way at a simple boiler. Also it should be interesting to see how the public reacts to the fact the CoGA steam engines explode so much more often the the Charis's steam engines as the CoGA will not have access to anywhere near the quality of steel or any other material that will be needed for steam engines.

Safehold has pressure cookers. Explosions will not with some caution be a major issue.

pokermind wrote:Larry, this is true but I cant help worrying bout a quote from Stalin "Quanaty has a quality all it's own." The German panther tank was arguably the best general tank of WW2, but even if it could kill five Shermans with ease the US production was such it usually met twenty

Poker

This worries me as well (consider the 600,000 rifles the Harchongese Horde is carrying) but then I consider just how close to bankruptcy the CoGA is. Yes, the genie is out of the bottle. However, Mother Church isn't going to be able to pay the genie much longer!

Weird Harold wrote:

anwi wrote:You've forgotten something: The presence of a safety valve significantly reduces the explosiveness of steam vessels. Not having read about safety valves in the textev, yet, the interesting question should be if CoGA engineers come up with a valid safety valve ...

Actually, there is textev that the Writ explicitly approves of pressure cookers, and that implies some knowledge of safety-valves and/or pressure regulation.

True, they have pressure cookers, but the valves in our pressure cookers are more pressure regulation than safety valves. The safety valve would have to be an additional valve at the cooker; haven't seen those, yet.
A highly rated steam engine would have to operate at significantly higher pressures than a pressure cooker. And if you're relying on your operational pressure control valves in these instances, you're courting disaster. (I didn't research it, but I'd assume that pressure cookers were built before all high-pressure vessels were required to be fitted with safety valves...)
That said, there's a good chance that CoGA engineers will come up with the concept of safety valves all by themselves - eventually.

anwi wrote:True, they have pressure cookers, but the valves in our pressure cookers are more pressure regulation than safety valves. The safety valve would have to be an additional valve at the cooker; haven't seen those, yet.

Every pressure cooker I've seen -- going back to 1930's vintage pressure-cookers belonging to my grandparents -- has a blow-out plug in addition to the pressure regular weight/valve. I've seen what happens when pressure exceeds the regulated pressure and the regulator weight gets blown off (and had to clean the ceiling as the contents of eight canning jars exited through the regulator vent.)

The Writ was written to enable safe operation of pressure cookers from a Terran Federation (ca 4100+AD?) level of knowledge about pressure cookers and the hazards thereof. I would expect Safehold's pressure cookers to be at least as safe as 1930's tech, let alone 4100+AD tech might permit.

anwi wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:
Actually, there is textev that the Writ explicitly approves of pressure cookers, and that implies some knowledge of safety-valves and/or pressure regulation.

True, they have pressure cookers, but the valves in our pressure cookers are more pressure regulation than safety valves. The safety valve would have to be an additional valve at the cooker; haven't seen those, yet.
A highly rated steam engine would have to operate at significantly higher pressures than a pressure cooker. And if you're relying on your operational pressure control valves in these instances, you're courting disaster. (I didn't research it, but I'd assume that pressure cookers were built before all high-pressure vessels were required to be fitted with safety valves...)
That said, there's a good chance that CoGA engineers will come up with the concept of safety valves all by themselves - eventually.

Pressure cookers operate at relatively low pressures (1 bar / 15 psi) - a leak in a moderately high pressure steam system (over 40 bar / 600psi) will cut you in half (and then start to condense into a vapour cloud 10 metres away). Super critical steam systems (2100psi) raise this to an entirely new level. (You find leaks with a broom - when the broom gets cut, you have found the leak).
Boilers got relief valves when the pressure exceeded 50 psi (shortly after they went into ships) as the use of fuse-able plugs to dowse the fire box got too dangerous.
Adding interstage reheat can further complicate things if you want to.
As I have said before, if you want to mess with them, give then a working power plant made from chrome moly steel built right on the edge of safety and watch them try to duplicate it(or hastelloy and running on raw seawater). Each failure reduces the number of available competent engineers and craftsmen.
as an example a water pre-heater on the Great Eastern ruptured and killed the a third of the engine room crew - some lived for up to 2 days before drowning in their own secretions from scorched lungs - steam is just as nasty chlorine if you breath it in.