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Future of Electricity

This fascinating series is a combination of historical seafaring, swashbuckling adventure, and high technological science-fiction. Join us in a discussion!
Future of Electricity
Post by Salisria   » Sat Jul 30, 2022 6:25 pm

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First off, it's obvious that until the Writ and the rakurai are neutralized, electricity has no future on Safehold, but there's no reason it should necessarily follow the same development path as on long dead Terra.

The initial steps with batteries will probably be the same, but then I see a potential fork. Instead of the next major development being the generator/motor, it could be the photoelectric cell, particularly if the Inner Circle pushes it for environmental reasons. It probably would be a slower development path, which is why I don't expect that path to be taken. Also, if there remain political rivals to Charis by the time electricity is introduced, events would likely force development of the generator/motor as that is more readily applicable to military/industrial uses.
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Re: Future of Electricity
Post by Guillaume   » Sun Jul 31, 2022 5:52 pm

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At a guess, they will try to go as far s possible in technology without electricity since it's the specific telltale the Gbagba ( sp? ) are are looking for.

For lots of things electricity can be replaced... by water or air... especially when not in analogic. ( understand binary )

There's plenty of videos in YouTube that shows how to build logic gates with hydraulics ( water ) or air.
If you can build logic gates, you can build microprocessors.
And from there all the modern technology ( electricity based ) we take for granted can be derived... from air and/or liquid based gates. ( now the miniaturization is probably going to be a PITA... but after all computers started by being building sized and used lamp powered gates modules)
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Re: Future of Electricity
Post by phillies   » Sun Jul 31, 2022 9:54 pm

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Guillaume wrote:At a guess, they will try to go as far s possible in technology without electricity since it's the specific telltale the Gbagba ( sp? ) are are looking for.

For lots of things electricity can be replaced... by water or air... especially when not in analogic. ( understand binary )

There's plenty of videos in YouTube that shows how to build logic gates with hydraulics ( water ) or air.
If you can build logic gates, you can build microprocessors.
And from there all the modern technology ( electricity based ) we take for granted can be derived... from air and/or liquid based gates. ( now the miniaturization is probably going to be a PITA... but after all computers started by being building sized and used lamp powered gates modules)


If you can build logic gates...the hydraulic circuits have to be large.
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Re: Future of Electricity
Post by Salisria   » Mon Aug 01, 2022 7:47 pm

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The Gbaba aren't nearby. (Or rather if they were, it would both be a change in their unchanging behavior and a guarantee that humanity could never hope to survive in the long run, so it might as well be reasonably assumed they aren't nearby.)
It's the rakurai that are presumed to be looking for electricity.

As interesting as a steampunk spacefaring society might be, I would be surprised if that's where this series is going.
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Re: Future of Electricity
Post by Loren Pechtel   » Mon Aug 01, 2022 8:06 pm

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Disagree on photoelectric--you can't jump from batteries to solar cells, they're too power-intensive to make. You could keep things clean by going battery->generator->hydro power->solar power and avoiding fossil fuels, but since we've seen fossil fuels used on warships I don't think they'll avoid them otherwise.
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Re: Future of Electricity
Post by Guillaume   » Tue Aug 02, 2022 7:22 am

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phillies wrote:If you can build logic gates...the hydraulic circuits have to be large.


Well, the first electrical logic gates were not on the small size either... being vacuum tube powered.
A computer with less computing capacity than a basic calculator was filling up a whole building. ( well the building was built for the purpose to hold said computer )
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Re: Future of Electricity
Post by Salisria   » Mon Aug 08, 2022 10:13 pm

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Guillaume wrote:
phillies wrote:If you can build logic gates...the hydraulic circuits have to be large.

Well, the first electrical logic gates were not on the small size either... being vacuum tube powered.
A computer with less computing capacity than a basic calculator was filling up a whole building. ( well the building was built for the purpose to hold said computer )

Whether it's the Harvard Mk I, Collosus, or the Z3, each of those 1940s computers was more capable than a basic calculator. The device of that era that is most similar to a basic calculator is the IBM 603, which was about the size of a sideboard, not a whole room.
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Re: Future of Electricity
Post by Fireflair   » Tue Aug 09, 2022 12:00 am

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I've always rather thought that the inner circle would do something like Merlin did with the steam engine. Pick an island well out of sight of everyone else and just set up an experiment. Some place no one knows about which is well off the beaten path.

Slowly increase the electronic signature of the location until the satellite drops a rod from god on to it. Then you'll know the threshold you can't cross.

As for dealing with the satellite, that's been beaten to death all over the place in the forum. Though my advocacy falls on using one of the shuttles to get close enough to destroy the thing. This is assuming that they can't figure out something with the key and the computer under the temple.
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Re: Future of Electricity
Post by Salisria   » Tue Aug 09, 2022 6:02 pm

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Speaking as the OP of this thread, I wasn't worrying about what the threshold at which the rakurai would start dropping rocks or verifying that was the case, but how electricity would develop once the Inner Circle was certain it wouldn't.

That said, I doubt the rakurai sensors would be set to be so sensitive as to target small battery powered DC usage, even if they could be set that sensitive, because of the risk of false positives. But the electromagnetic signature from transmission lines (either AC or DC) would present no risk of a false positive, and is what I would expect to be at least a trigger, tho not necessarily the only trigger.
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