HVAC or things fall apart

Given, as I am all too aware of, systems no matter how well maintained will have failures at random time enhanced intervals. Therefore, a system of maintenance/repair is instituted. Within the tech of the Terran Federation is the demonstrated existence of AI's which could be summoned/brought on line by the Divine Servitors to augment or provide new instructions. The AI could be further augmented by an uploaded entity to "supervise" the AI(s). The thousand year wake up of the Rakurai, probably up loaded primary personalities, would be the final level of periodic check on the system. None of these steps would require outside intervention or knowledge of the populace.

As has been stated previously, reclaimation and recycling, at the very least, would supplement and existing stocks of raw materials. Considering that the Temple is one of only a handful of known Terran Federation Tech sites known and the one most concentrated upon, the Transport that carried them to SafeHold would have probably been salvaged to the greatest extent possible and stored in the headquarters, i.e. the Temple.

the church might be religously obligated in possesing supplies of materials just in case. The servitors could harvest the material when needed.

Hi SYED,

You may well be right.

Given how close we're getting to the end of the series, supposedly only a couple of books left, one would expect more background details to be filled in, so we may finally learn some things in HFQ, particularly from Khody's journal, which given the immediacy of the scene could last another snippet or two.

L

SYED wrote:the church might be religously obligated in possesing supplies of materials just in case. The servitors could harvest the material when needed.

Potential Spoiler Alert

We really do have to take into consideration just how advanced TF technology was before the colony on Safehold. We know they had advanced synthetic materials and metal composites that could be used to create indestructible books, garments, swords and armor. We also know they had nanotechnology that was sufficiently sophisticated to locate, identify and eradicate pathogens and cancerous cells, as well as repair damaged tissue in the human body. We know of the "servitors" of the temple (as mentioned in HFQ snippets) that are known by the Church. We know that AIs can be as limited as necessary to perform something as relatively simple as maintenance for a structure such the Temple. And we know that technology such as OWL, PICAs, SNARCs, recon skimmers and all the other goodies in Nimue's Cave have a rather long shelf life, can be preserved longer in a nitrogen atmosphere and can survive decades (if not a whole century) of hard usage before requiring maintenance. It therefore stands to reason that:

A) The materials from which the Temple is constructed do not suffer material fatigue as quickly as present day materials do;
B) There are places beneath the Temple that can preserve necessary or essential equipment in working condition for a long time;
C) That the Temple probably has ways of fixing damage via its servitors as well as by any maintenance nanites (which conceivably could repair damage on the molecular level);
D) That the temple has some AI (or at least computer support) for maintaining its miraculous nature.

Undoubtedly, all things in nature eventually degrade and the Temple is likely to suffer catastrophic damage at some point. Given all we know so far however, that is likely to happen only after a much longer period of time than we are used to today. Also, the command crew would have know that their technology would eventually degrade. That may well be the reason for the periodic visits the "archangels" have planned - To correct not only damage to Safeholdian society (that deviates from Langhorne's plan) but also to the Temple itself.

If you have some provision for humans to bring materials to the Temple which will be used by the Temple systems to repair and replace the equipment in the secret parts of the Temple, that implys that there is some way to 1) shift the material into the secret part of the Temple that will not be noticed or discovered by humans and 2) there is fabrication equipment in the Temple that can convert almost raw materials (or just ore) into highly sophistocated equipment including electronics.
The tec left and available to the humans on Safehold for their use withing the guidelines of the Writs and Church is far below the levels needed to produce the alloys and hardware of even 19th Century Earth tech for electronics, and certainly such 20th Century things like computers.

Not so minor nits show up in what do you do with all the heat generated by converting ores (like the bauxite mentioned to usable alumnium) to 1st the needed metal/mineral and then the process to create the alloy needed and form it to the required items. Also what to do with the sludge and tailing from the process? Could there be some place known as the Anus of the Church where the shows up post processing and needs to be carted away? In a thousand years you would create a rather large pile. Even with being able to reclaim and prefabricate everything that broke or failed, you would still would need a place for what was no longer usable. Of course you "might" have some kind of fusion refuse system that also produced the power for the Temple though you probably would still need to have some system and requirement for suitable materials to be sent "inside" as fuel.

Brigade XO wrote:If you have some provision for humans to bring materials to the Temple which will be used by the Temple systems to repair and replace the equipment in the secret parts of the Temple, that implys that there is some way to 1) shift the material into the secret part of the Temple that will not be noticed or discovered by humans and 2) there is fabrication equipment in the Temple that can convert almost raw materials (or just ore) into highly sophistocated equipment including electronics.
The tec left and available to the humans on Safehold for their use withing the guidelines of the Writs and Church is far below the levels needed to produce the alloys and hardware of even 19th Century Earth tech for electronics, and certainly such 20th Century things like computers.

Not so minor nits show up in what do you do with all the heat generated by converting ores (like the bauxite mentioned to usable alumnium) to 1st the needed metal/mineral and then the process to create the alloy needed and form it to the required items. Also what to do with the sludge and tailing from the process? Could there be some place known as the Anus of the Church where the shows up post processing and needs to be carted away? In a thousand years you would create a rather large pile. Even with being able to reclaim and prefabricate everything that broke or failed, you would still would need a place for what was no longer usable. Of course you "might" have some kind of fusion refuse system that also produced the power for the Temple though you probably would still need to have some system and requirement for suitable materials to be sent "inside" as fuel.

OWL has to do all of that too. So we already know that it is possible.

Hi Brigade XO,

Kudos for all the excellent points!

If the refuse pit was dug rather deeply by a small fusion weapon near the temple, it may after a thousand years be kinda full and need emptying by the 'return' of the archangels to take out the trash.

I'm sorry I couldn't resist that.

But its so much more acceptable than the temple's anus which is what I think you meant rather than church's.

Another possible explanation is there are other 'temple servitors', never seen by any Safeholdian, which are mining what's required and bringing it to the temple processors via deep tunnels that are fuzed the same way Nimue's cave is, though they are far less deep than Mount Olympus; which might also explain why the temple was located there as the most central location for such resource mining, NTM such processing being safe from the Rakurai.

Its quite possible the excess heat from metal refining is used for other processing requirements including power generation for other requirements though not necessarily required, or for reclamation at levels we dream of, with enough left over for the temple's vast hot air vents mentioned since BSRA or BHD but certainly by AMF.

L

Brigade XO wrote:If you have some provision for humans to bring materials to the Temple which will be used by the Temple systems to repair and replace the equipment in the secret parts of the Temple, that implys that there is some way to 1) shift the material into the secret part of the Temple that will not be noticed or discovered by humans and 2) there is fabrication equipment in the Temple that can convert almost raw materials (or just ore) into highly sophistocated equipment including electronics.
The tec left and available to the humans on Safehold for their use withing the guidelines of the Writs and Church is far below the levels needed to produce the alloys and hardware of even 19th Century Earth tech for electronics, and certainly such 20th Century things like computers.

Not so minor nits show up in what do you do with all the heat generated by converting ores (like the bauxite mentioned to usable alumnium) to 1st the needed metal/mineral and then the process to create the alloy needed and form it to the required items. Also what to do with the sludge and tailing from the process? Could there be some place known as the Anus of the Church where the shows up post processing and needs to be carted away? In a thousand years you would create a rather large pile. Even with being able to reclaim and prefabricate everything that broke or failed, you would still would need a place for what was no longer usable. Of course you "might" have some kind of fusion refuse system that also produced the power for the Temple though you probably would still need to have some system and requirement for suitable materials to be sent "inside" as fuel.

Speaking of the AC system, how neat it would be if some Charisian spies could somehow sabotage the air intakes of the Temple to cause the inner chambers to start smelling of brimstone

peke wrote:Speaking of the AC system, how neat it would be if some Charisian spies could somehow sabotage the air intakes of the Temple to cause the inner chambers to start smelling of brimstone

Along with thoroughly heating the place up, you mean...

Don

peke wrote:Speaking of the AC system, how neat it would be if some Charisian spies could somehow sabotage the air intakes of the Temple to cause the inner chambers to start smelling of brimstone

Probably not - the ventilation system would have filters between the exterior air and the innards of the Temple.