Steam

Thaliodin wrote:

pokermind wrote:Using steam to propel a projectile like gun-powder forget it too high a pressure needed for a reasonable muzzle velocity. Hook a small steam engine up to a Gatling gun crank why bother make a Gardner gun and then upgrade to a maximum machine gun.
Why are all you SIFI gun-nuts fixed on the Gatling, more barrels, heavier, and cumbersome or the multirace even worse! the paths that the bolts follow are machined in a cylinder oodles of fun to machine.
So wicki the Gardner or check it out on you-tube. it uses simple easy to machine cams, and the Gardner is the direct ancestor of the maximum machine gun.

The Gatling gun has several significant advantages with cooling, mechanical reliability, and gravity-fed ammunition. The Gardner gun incorporated many of the same features, but both of them require a drawn-brass cartridge. The Gatling design would could easily be derived from a mitrailleuse-type design to provide additional firepower in the field.

Of course, a steam/belt-driven Gatling with a sufficiently large ammunition hopper would be capable of extremely high rates of fire, faster than any human could turn a crank.

Have to agree with Pokermind here. The simple truth is that if you want a heavy weapon, then a revolver-rotary is far more efficient, and for a lighter weapon a singlebarrel automatic is far better overall.
And for half the times where a so called gatling(call it a (full barrel) rotary gun as it is, Gatling wasn´t the only one to build rotaries even in his time) is better than either two i mentioned above, a Gast gun is better.

Rotaries are good when you dont care about weight efficiency and the spin-up time doesn´t matter(gatlings waste their first 0.1-0.5s worth of shots while spinning up), which is why they´re common on ships where the extra weight is minimal and targets are far enough that wasting the first 10 or so shots isnt an issue, but everyone(ehm, except one) have dropped them from aircrafts.

IF I remember correctly, a nuclear power plant is nothing but a steam engine.... the way it works is you have water TANK A with radioactive rods in it. The rods can be adjusted to expose more/less radioactive materal to TANK A. thus heating the water to a boil. the more radioactive materal exposed, the more the water boils. the steam then rises to turn a shaft and then the steam is pushed into a pipe system that coils its way though TANK B, whitch is also filled with water. The steam in the pipe system is turned into water again and deposited back into TANK A.

I say all this because it would be plausible for Safehold to go from coal steam power to nuclear steam power verry quick and it would not take any new dispentions from the church... once steam is aproved....

Hallofaman wrote:IF I remember correctly, a nuclear power plant is nothing but a steam engine.... the way it works is you have water TANK A with radioactive rods in it. The rods can be adjusted to expose more/less radioactive materal to TANK A. thus heating the water to a boil. the more radioactive materal exposed, the more the water boils. the steam then rises to turn a shaft and then the steam is pushed into a pipe system that coils its way though TANK B, whitch is also filled with water. The steam in the pipe system is turned into water again and deposited back into TANK A.

I say all this because it would be plausible for Safehold to go from coal steam power to nuclear steam power verry quick and it would not take any new dispentions from the church... once steam is aproved....

Yes and no.

Steam is relativly easy to justify since it is just a combination of water, air, and fire. All the components are already approved - they just haven't been put together yet.

What are the proscriptions on using radioactive materials? The production and mining of the materials for the rods would be the violation.

Which is why the tech proscriptions have to go...

Montrose Toast wrote:

Hallofaman wrote:IF I remember correctly, a nuclear power plant is nothing but a steam engine.... the way it works is you have water TANK A with radioactive rods in it. The rods can be adjusted to expose more/less radioactive materal to TANK A. thus heating the water to a boil. the more radioactive materal exposed, the more the water boils. the steam then rises to turn a shaft and then the steam is pushed into a pipe system that coils its way though TANK B, whitch is also filled with water. The steam in the pipe system is turned into water again and deposited back into TANK A.

I say all this because it would be plausible for Safehold to go from coal steam power to nuclear steam power verry quick and it would not take any new dispentions from the church... once steam is aproved....

Yes and no.

Steam is relativly easy to justify since it is just a combination of water, air, and fire. All the components are already approved - they just haven't been put together yet.

What are the proscriptions on using radioactive materials? The production and mining of the materials for the rods would be the violation.

Which is why the tech proscriptions have to go...

Also, and far more importantly, I'm pretty sure nuclear reactions would cross whatever thresholds are set on the Rakurai, and would probably wake up whatever's under the Temple too.
Edit: That is, even if the Church didn't object to the matter ... you still wouldn't want to do it.

Simply based on the pressures involved (without getting into radiation handling requirements), Safeholian metallurgy has a long way to go before they can even think of using nuc power sources. PS. Allowing the primary coolant to boil is considered a Bad Thing ...

Kytheros wrote:

Montrose Toast wrote:

Hallofaman wrote:IF I remember correctly, a nuclear power plant is nothing but a steam engine.... the way it works is you have water TANK A with radioactive rods in it. The rods can be adjusted to expose more/less radioactive materal to TANK A. thus heating the water to a boil. the more radioactive materal exposed, the more the water boils. the steam then rises to turn a shaft and then the steam is pushed into a pipe system that coils its way though TANK B, whitch is also filled with water. The steam in the pipe system is turned into water again and deposited back into TANK A.

I say all this because it would be plausible for Safehold to go from coal steam power to nuclear steam power verry quick and it would not take any new dispentions from the church... once steam is aproved....

Yes and no.

Steam is relativly easy to justify since it is just a combination of water, air, and fire. All the components are already approved - they just haven't been put together yet.

What are the proscriptions on using radioactive materials? The production and mining of the materials for the rods would be the violation.

Which is why the tech proscriptions have to go...

Also, and far more importantly, I'm pretty sure nuclear reactions would cross whatever thresholds are set on the Rakurai, and would probably wake up whatever's under the Temple too.
Edit: That is, even if the Church didn't object to the matter ... you still wouldn't want to do it.

Brom O'Berin wrote:Simply based on the pressures involved (without getting into radiation handling requirements), Safeholian metallurgy has a long way to go before they can even think of using nuc power sources. PS. Allowing the primary coolant to boil is considered a Bad Thing ...

Not if you're building a BWR (boiling water reactor) design. Then it's part of normal operation.

That said, running radioactive steam through the power turbines never struck me as a great plan.

So I prefer the PWR (presurized water reactor) concept where the primary coolant never boils (unless, as you say, something goes badly wrong) and you use a heat exchanger to transfer heat to the secondary (non-radioactive) coolant loop which boils and runs the steam turbines.

Merlin can provide the best steam designs around, but can he also provide fuel formulae. Things that will allow for hotter and longer lasting flames.
Will hydro, tidal and wave power come up in the future.

So major island settlements will get linked by train tracks on every island.
Industrial revolution really begins, more people available for the military and navy. Start in old chariis, then cause huge draw of workers in the empire then spreading.

Hydrolics will be brought to the fore frunt in a big way.

There must have been stuff that the proscribtions actually blocked over the years, so I wonder if using the creative excuses the church has used to pass the things they were bribed to, could they now be allowed.

SYED wrote:Merlin can provide the best steam designs around, but can he also provide fuel formulae. Things that will allow for hotter and longer lasting flames.
Will hydro, tidal and wave power come up in the future.

To some extent he wouldn't want to.

He needs Safehold to get in the habit of looking at technology as something to improve. So he isn't interested in giving Charis the best set of cheats to let them win, because that just sets up a new 'tech handed down from on high' situation where they're likely to be fairly static because they don't understand the intermediate steps and underlying theory well enough to figure out how the nearly ideal tech might be improved.

Jonathan_S wrote:

SYED wrote:Merlin can provide the best steam designs around, but can he also provide fuel formulae. Things that will allow for hotter and longer lasting flames.
Will hydro, tidal and wave power come up in the future.

To some extent he wouldn't want to.

He needs Safehold to get in the habit of looking at technology as something to improve. So he isn't interested in giving Charis the best set of cheats to let them win, because that just sets up a new 'tech handed down from on high' situation where they're likely to be fairly static because they don't understand the intermediate steps and underlying theory well enough to figure out how the nearly ideal tech might be improved.

Disagree because 1 simple reason charis already knows how to think by themselves and its training more and more people for it, if merlin have them the best design of steam engines all the other countries and powers will need to study steam to be able to compare to charis, in a certain way I think is a little bit emotional for merlin he want to give and make charis as advanced as he can before Cayleb and sharleyan die, i remember that in 1 of the books he said it will be very hard almost impossible for them to build a recon skimmer in Cayleb lifetime, but probably cayleb and several of the others who know the secret are pushing as hard as they can and studying like maniacs so merlin can jump some steps, so I think it wont damage merlin long term plans to give charis the best design on a technology as basic as steam powered engines.
Later on he will need to sit back and give recomendation on why some things wont work in internal combustion engines and nuclear reactors etc, there I think he will stay back and let them fumble a little bit around.

Charles83 wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:

SYED wrote:Merlin can provide the best steam designs around, but can he also provide fuel formulae. Things that will allow for hotter and longer lasting flames.
Will hydro, tidal and wave power come up in the future.

To some extent he wouldn't want to.

He needs Safehold to get in the habit of looking at technology as something to improve. So he isn't interested in giving Charis the best set of cheats to let them win, because that just sets up a new 'tech handed down from on high' situation where they're likely to be fairly static because they don't understand the intermediate steps and underlying theory well enough to figure out how the nearly ideal tech might be improved.

Disagree because 1 simple reason charis already knows how to think by themselves and its training more and more people for it, if merlin have them the best design of steam engines all the other countries and powers will need to study steam to be able to compare to charis, in a certain way I think is a little bit emotional for merlin he want to give and make charis as advanced as he can before Cayleb and sharleyan die, i remember that in 1 of the books he said it will be very hard almost impossible for them to build a recon skimmer in Cayleb lifetime, but probably cayleb and several of the others who know the secret are pushing as hard as they can and studying like maniacs so merlin can jump some steps, so I think it wont damage merlin long term plans to give charis the best design on a technology as basic as steam powered engines.
Later on he will need to sit back and give recomendation on why some things wont work in internal combustion engines and nuclear reactors etc, there I think he will stay back and let them fumble a little bit around.

I know that Merlin wants to teach Charis to think for itself, but it seems to me that things are a bit too serious for that in the pure sense.

Also, the Crown Princess is young enough for just about anything(!), so I would give her the NEAT asap. Also, it might be a good idea to rescue as many infant orphans as could be handled and give them implants as well.