HVAC or things fall apart

I understand that the Terran Federation tech base is far superior to our 21 century technology, but all tech requires maintenance, even in the Honorverse & Prince Roger series'. It occurred to me that the temple has been operating nonstop for centuries. My point is that somethings gotta give, sometime -probably catastrophically!

This winter my radiators went cold because 2 valves on the boiler got clogged and even though the boiler was otherwise working normally, hot water wasn't getting to the radiators.

Despite no maintenance for these centuries, nothing (we know of, so far) in the temple's (or Rakuri system) has failed. That's a stretch! Even something as basic as a mechanical switch would eventually suffer metal fatigue or corrosion and fail. Electrical outlets fail because the internal metal conductors become fatigued or corroded resulting in poor connections and/or high resistance points that can cause arcing, short circuits, fires etc. Even the molded plastic structure of an outlet cracks and breaks as it ages. Its unlikely that in all these centuries, no insects have infiltrated the infrastructure, (remember the origin of the term "bug" in computers was a spider had spun a web in a mechanical relay causing it to jam) no water damage from a leak has occurred nothing has shorted out, no optical sensors have become dirty etc. I just don't see how thats feasible.

This is an opportunity for some creative twists ala Ron Goulart's "whats become of screwloose and other inquiries".....

Here are some tongue-in-cheek ideas:
The automatic doors in Clyntahn's quarters or in the GoF meeting room refuse to open and they all starve. Maybe their valets overpower and eat them in desperation.

The climate control starts providing sub zero temperatures in the summer and/or 100 degrees + in the summer.

The air filtration system pumps out noxious odors causing everyone to flee.

The intercom system (I'm sure there is one even if it's not being used) starts generating inaudible harmonics, random or continuous audible sounds that set everyone on edge; cause aberrant behavior, headaches or just scare the bejesus out of everyone.

Remember it's not the elephants in life that get to. you, but more often the mosquitoes.

Search the books a bit more carefully for the terms "holy servitors".

There are mechanical mantenance bots. We just don't know much of anything about them.

FriarBob wrote:Search the books a bit more carefully for the terms "holy servitors".

There are mechanical mantenance bots. We just don't know much of anything about them.

Who maintains the servitors? But you're right. There is lots of stuff going on that we aren't in on simply because it's not germane to the telling of the story...

Don

n7axw wrote:

FriarBob wrote:Search the books a bit more carefully for the terms "holy servitors".

There are mechanical mantenance bots. We just don't know much of anything about them.

Who maintains the servitors? But you're right. There is lots of stuff going on that we aren't in on simply because it's not germane to the telling of the story...

Don

Any decent maintenance bot would have the capability to maintain maintenance bots. The real question is how do they get their raw materials? Even the most massive stockpile will someday be depleted.

Mendicant wrote:
Any decent maintenance bot would have the capability to maintain maintenance bots. The real question is how do they get their raw materials? Even the most massive stockpile will someday be depleted.

Understood, but sooner or later a problem occurs that can't be dealt with by a given set of program perameters, such as the need to arrange for the substituton of a resource for another resource that's no longer available or a myriad of other things that need to be dealt with that require the creativity of sentience to handle. As good as you can visualize computers being, there are limits in all things...including this.

Don

bert953 wrote:Its unlikely that in all these centuries, no insects have infiltrated the infrastructure, (remember the origin of the term "bug" in computers was a spider had spun a web in a mechanical relay causing it to jam) no water damage from a leak has occurred nothing has shorted out, no optical sensors have become dirty etc. I just don't see how thats feasible.

Actually it was a moth that got zapped by a relay and jammed the relay. The term debugging was coined by RADM Grace Hopper.

Not to topic jump but could phiysical maintinece be reason for the miillenial returns?

n7axw wrote:

Mendicant wrote:
Any decent maintenance bot would have the capability to maintain maintenance bots. The real question is how do they get their raw materials? Even the most massive stockpile will someday be depleted.

Understood, but sooner or later a problem occurs that can't be dealt with by a given set of program perameters, such as the need to arrange for the substituton of a resource for another resource that's no longer available or a myriad of other things that need to be dealt with that require the creativity of sentience to handle. As good as you can visualize computers being, there are limits in all things...including this.

Don

It's quite possible that the Temple's raw materials stockpiles get supplemented by the OBS's support systems, which may include some form of asteroid (or Oort cloud) mining.


Also, the Temple maintenance and support infrastructure can probably recycle damaged, burned out, etc, components rather more efficiently than we can, reducing the drain on its reserves. It may also be able to filter out useful trace elements as part of the air and water filtration systems.

Plus, while there are limits on what the Temple maintenance 'bots can be programmed for, there are also likely rules laid down about how and what are considered 'acceptable' changes to the Temple interior for the Church to follow, and anything that doesn't comply with the rules gets grabbed/disassembled by the maintenance bots and recycled. Beyond the 'permissible changes', it's likely that the 'bots and computers have the complete plans of how the Temple is supposed to be, and then are simply just ensuring that the Temple is in accordance with the plans.
Also, most of the exposed/inhabited portions of the Temple don't actually have anything important in them, limiting the amount of damage some idiot can do. The important parts of the Temple are all where nobody can (currently) get at them, just the maintenance bots.

Kytheros wrote:It's quite possible that the Temple's raw materials stockpiles get supplemented by the OBS's support systems, which may include some form of asteroid (or Oort cloud) mining.

More likely, the Temple sits atop a network of mines and tunnels that have it teetering precariously, waiting for the inevitable subsidence to swallow it.

The main systems of the temple would be highly secure, but the servitors, the maintaince and cleaning bots, would be far easier to access and infiltrate. Sure these systems would have their own security, but nothing like hte main systms would have. So they could be used as a back door to infiltarte and surveil the temple and the systems it contains.