Erls wrote:
Flight is known - but via Zeppelin:
1- Without the internal combustion engine, Charis (and Safehold) develop highly advanced Zeppelins. Capable of multi-thousand mile flights at high speeds (when compared to ships), they are used for military and high-income transit. Thus, with stops along the way you can go from Tellesburg to Cherayth in less than 2-five days.
2- Zeppelins are being used as pseudo-bombers, with a minimal capability (basically, .50 cal machine gun) of anti-air combat. They can carry, however, a couple thousand tons of bombs and drop them far behind enemy lines.
3- This has also led to an early version of the aircraft carrier (in final production during the first books) which is designed around carrying a couple dozen armed Zeppelins to engage fleets far out of sight.
phillies wrote:Readers who have seen an airship hangar -- a few of them remain -- will realize that a CV that can carry a couple dozen zeppelins would be enormous. As a general statement, rigid airships are not very practical.
I had that same immediate through [G].
Without internal combustion engines I can't see zepplins having the 2,000 - 3,000 mile ranges that the historic ones did. And their, presumably, steam propulsion would cut heavily into their cargo or bomb capacity.
Oh, and an aircraft carrier capable of carrying "a couple dozen armed zepplins" would be an impressive feat.
An early WWI M-class Zepplin was 163.37 m (536 ft) long and 18.7 m (61 ft 4 in) across.
With
extreme squeezing you could just barely tie 6 of them down on the immense deck of the 100,000 ton supercarrier USS Nimitz length 332.8 m (1,092 ft), width 76.8 m( 252 ft) (and you'd need heavily braced outriggers to tie down to since only the widest part of the ship, at the forward part of the angled deck, is that wide. And that'd ignore that you'd probably break the Zepplins backs if they were lashed to the ship in rough weather.
Now a carrier capable of carrying and deploying more reasonable numbers of smaller, and flexible, blimps is a possibility. There would be significant weather restrictions on takeoff and landing, but without a rigid frame you can pump out their helium and roll up the inflatable balloon envelope. With only the deflated bag and the gondola to strike below deck it becomes practical to store a reasonable number in a hanger deck of some sort. Your limiting factor for numbers carried probably isn't the number that can fit in a hanger deck, but the volume of helium you could safely store to reinflate them. Cryogenic storage is beyond Safehold's tech, but you can only store some much helium at the pressures their metallurgy can manage for large tanks...
(And of course blimps tend to be much smaller, lower payload, and shorter ranged that rigid Zeppelins. But at least you
could carry and deploy them (one or two at a time) from a large ship in calm weather.
PeterZ wrote:Cruisers the size of a King Haarald. Smaller cruisers like the cities don't have the range that merchants will likely develop with the victory ships. So KHs are the heavy cruisers and the battle wagons will be in the 20k -30k ton range with 1 or 2 pushing that limit higher.
Slightly smaller ships can get good range as well. Those would be the light cruisers or destroyers. I suspect there is a size minimum for naval ships using coal that have the necessary range to match merchies. Once they get oil burners, smaller destroyers with the requisite range get more viable.
Until the RCN gets the naval bases spread all over Safehold, they simply have to design long ranges into their naval ships.
Historically the Royal Navy didn't deploy steam cruisers with the same range as merchant ships -- it would have made them too large and expensive to afford the necessary numbers. Instead they set up their wide network of naval bases and coaling stations - so there were cruisers patrolling sea lanes traveled by merchants, but not attempting to escort any given merchantman.
It's easier (and cheaper) to arrange and supply coaling / fuel bases than it is to design and build all your cruisers for several thousand miles unrefueled range. I'm sure they can put a naval station in Sidemark - and they've got the little islands they've captured and used during the war in the Gulf of Dolhar; plus of course basing in their home islands and the conquered island nations. You don't need too many more to cover the major trade routes with shorter ranged cruisers.
(I want them DEAD!
they pissed me off taking my home world [yes I know it is just a story but it still made me very mad]). to much focus on the steam punk and the details going into it would distract from the story IMHO.
