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[RT][WIP][HSF] Set In Stone: Follower Chapter 26 Rational Stonepunk
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Author: u/Farmerbob1 Level 1 author*
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URL: https://setinstonestory.wordpress.com/2015/08/18/chapter-26/
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Score: 11
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Created: 2015-08-18T23:54:51
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Comments:
u/4t0m [+3] Chaos Legion (2 hours later)
Really great chapter, and it's awesome how often you've been updating!
u/Farmerbob1 [+2] Level 1 author (18 hours later)
Thanks!
Writing rationally is exhausting compared to writing non-rationally. I've written 20k+ words in a single day on non-rational original work.
That being said, things really bogged down for me after Albert appeared. The original intent was that Albert would never take a direct hand. Then I realized one day that a potato cannon would, in fact, be possible without metal. I also realized that moderately effective close-range rockets would be possible without metal. Various nasty explosive devices made of glass would also be highly effective in a world without metal armor. Even some crude chemical weapons could be formulated. That allowed me to create a rational insertion point for Albert, and dramatically changed the evolution of late Act II and Early Act III.
While there is no more or less physical fighting in this version as opposed to the original ideas, there is a lot more conflict.
I hope to finish things up for this book within three chapters. Perhaps two. Maybe four.
u/4t0m [+2] Chaos Legion (23 hours later)
I'm glad you took this route; it's been a great read.
u/Running_Ostrich [+2] (an hour later)
Another great chapter. I wonder what Riko's trying to do by taunting Marko. Perhaps he's trying to make Marko miss the idea for controlling Brad?
The possibility of having to remain conscious through major surgery wasn’t something I wanted to consider.
Is this talking about when Allen first got back to the camp?
u/Farmerbob1 [+3] Level 1 author (an hour later)
Allen's concerns about major surgery aren't based on any known needs, he's just glad that opium can still knock him out, in case he needs surgery in the future.
If the war goes forward and he ends up fighting in advanced scouting parties, he may well be injured seriously enough to need surgery.
u/varno2 [+2] (a day later)
I was wondering how you get to there being no metals on the planet, as
a) metallurgical silicon would probably work for most things,
b) if you have any orthoclase ic minerals, then using charcoal you would be able to relitively easily produce aluminium. Any world without orthoclastic minerals seems unlikely. You also have brick houses, thus clay and aluminium.
C) even without clay and aluminium you still have Flint tools, these can make really high quality knives, and there are Aztec swords made out of them. Flint can be scary sharp.
D) there is obviously sodium in relitive abundance in this world. Which while difficult to use is a reasonable metal to use for some things if no other solution were available.
u/varno2 [+2] (a day later)
See also this glass steam engine.
u/varno2 [+2] (a day later)
What I am saying is I can build a radio transmitter/reciever out of attested resources with relative ease.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (a day later)
Can you point me at a link for how to make such a radio? I don't doubt it's possible, but I've not heard of such a thing being doable in a way that would both have usable ranges and not require substantial industrial infrastructure to support the needed components and materials.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (a day later)
I love this stuff! Steam engines are possible, yes, but they are a lot harder to maintain than animals for most applications. When pneumatic power or regulated power is required, steam engines are generally used to create compression if there is no flowing water source nearby.
Steam cranes are basically a very crude steam engine - a large cylinder with a block and tackle arrangement.
u/varno2 [+2] (a day later)
I think you underestimate the durability of glass, especially if lubricated, ceramics can have longer lifetimes in usage than metals, the real reason they are not used is due to the high production cost, and them being brittle If used outside their limits. Properly designed, a mechanical engineer could make working engines which do real work.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (a day later)
Most ceramics have a lot of aluminum in them. Meerschaum is one of very few that do not. Aluminum does exist on Nirvana, but in tiny amounts. There are some deposits of other clays on Nirvana, but they are extremely rare. Ceramic engines are definitely doable if you have the materials, and I'm sure some exist in universities and perhaps the occasional major industrial facility, being used to compress air, or drive machines that require precision power output for things like nylon, rayon, or latex industries.
If the production costs of making ceramic engines is high now, with our current tech base, with Earth's resource base of plentiful aluminum-content clays, it will be several orders of magnitude higher on Nirvana.
Someone even mentioned elsewhere the possibility of attracting and crushing insects in vast quantities and extracting metal content from their remains in order to make metallic clay. That might be cheaper to implement than finding and collecting clay with aluminum in it, even if you consider dealing with the need to isolate the metals from the rest of the organic chemicals.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (a day later)
Good Stuff here!
A) It is barely theoretically possible to get metallurgical grade silicon without having electrical power and pure carbon electrodes for an electrical arc furnace in large quantities. Most organic fuels will not burn at temperatures above around 1950C under perfect conditions. Metallurgical grade silicon requires 1900C.
B) Aluminum-bearing stone and clay exists, but it is rare. The bricks used in home construction are either made of glass, concrete, or concrete reinforced with blown glass.
C) Flint is, indeed, a material used in our world for a lot of things. It's also a result of biological processes for the most part. Processes that Nirvana never had. I won't say that it doesn't exist on Nirvana from non-biological geological processes, but if it does, it's going to be highly rare. Between tempered glass blades and stone tools, most of the uses for flint are covered.
D) Sodium definitely has it's uses, and can be synthesized in a pure metallic form in several ways. However, metallic sodium is also reactive with water, so most of those uses are going to be restricted to very protected environments.
The bigger problem that one runs into when considering the more esoteric metals requiring a lot of resources and/or high purity is labor. An agricultural society devotes practically all of it's labor to food production, storage, and distribution. On Nirvana, farmers are a lot more productive than they were on Earth before industry, but a lot less than they were before internal combustion. This allows some of the workforce to be devoted to industry, arts, and education. Industry tends to be focused around glass and stone, but there are several smaller industries as well. Gunpowder and nitrocellulose production, Nylon production, Latex production. Steam and pneumatic power does exist, but it is low pressure, and high maintenance.
Innovation is possible, and with sufficient resources, some interesting results can be had, but how many people can you afford to remove from the agricultural labor pool when the most efficient practices have already been determined by 4500 years of educated farmers?
u/varno2 [+2] (a day later)
Which cement are they using in their concrete?
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (a day later)
Portland cement. Roman cement requires aluminum (found in pozzolan volcanic ash)
u/varno2 [+2] (a day later)
Portland uses calcium, magnesium or aluminium.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (a day later)
My notes indicated that Portland cement could be made entirely with calcium, not requiring magnesium, aluminum, iron, or any other metals. If that is not the case, then non-hydraulic concrete will be what is used on Nirvana, mixed with blown glass for extra strength in some applications.
u/varno2 [+2] (a day later)
Also pure carbon electrodes are relitively possible, I did some math and you could reasonable make an arc furnace using hydro-power, and a graphite wired generator. You could make dicyano-acetylene, in a furnace burning acetylene, which can be produced semi-readily.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (a day later)
Hrm, lampblack, coke, and sugar syrup at high temperature and pressure can make a fairly pure carbon electrode. Interesting.
Graphite is naturally formed by sedimentary action on Earth. It's a biological by-product. That process will never have existed on Nirvana.
Graphite can be reduced from silicon carbide, and silicon carbide can be made from carbon and molten silicon, which we discussed earlier as barely possible with organic combustible materials.
So we can get the graphite, but I do not know how it would be shaped into wires. My Google-Fu is failing me on this right now. Can you link to a process for changing graphite dust into wire?
u/varno2 [+2] (a day later)
Carbon fibre. Or even carbon nanotubes which have been spun. This production method or one similar will be common knowledge by the point in time when The story begins. http://www.dailytech.com/Sheets+of+Cheap+Carbon+Nanotubes+Now+a+Reality/article10927.htm Methane flowing over a catalyst, the Nickel cobalt and iron are all required for humans to live so the required ammounts should be accessible.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (a day later)
Sure, the Nirvanans could create carbon fiber wires before Albert took technology away. But if we can't produce it cheaply now, in any appreciable quantity, the Nirvanans aren't going to have any hope of doing so in an agrarian society.
If the devolution of technology had been gradual, maybe a technique might have been devised, but it wasn't. Albert took away all computing and industrial technology in the space of a single day.
If you want to imagine new industries on Nirvana, you have to imagine them from the ground up, not from prior technology down.
u/varno2 [+2] (a day later)
Also, the haber process should be practical, and as you have nitroglycerin I don't think you are running into that problem.
Also most-efficient farming practices, in terms of land usage and production with high yielding crops should be producing enough such that at most 1 in 3 people need to work in agriculture. Especially with 4500 years of breeding.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (a day later)
The Haber process appears to require metallic catalysts and high pressures. The high pressures might be arranged. The metallic catalysis would be fantastically expensive to collect and maintain.
One not only has to farm the land, one needs to process, store, and deliver food to market. All of these things require significant labor.
In 1920, in the United States, thirty percent of the population lived on farms. That number doesn't consider how many people worked in the food processing, transport, or retail industries.
u/varno2 [+2] (a day later)
Iron oxide is the catalyst, and you don't need much (really a few 100g would be enough) if you have Mamilian life then the blood of a couple oxen would be enough for a huge amount of Ammonia. Well mabee not quite. But there is 1-5kg which could be used for 100 years of prosperous farming.
I just looked up the catalyst lifetime, it is about 5-10 years, and is still mostly available for recycling after this, with careful management, the loss rate should be manageable and easily offset by productivity elsewhere.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (a day later)
I could imagine the production of small amounts of ammonia for use in fertilizer from the Haber process. I don't think that obtaining the hydrogen would be possible for large production. Hydrogen creates strong bonds. It can be separated from water using electrolysis, which requires electricity in significant quantities, or hydrocarbons, which do not exist naturally on Nirvana. It may be possible to generate a biodiesel hydrocarbon, but that process requires very high pressures and temperatures.
In an agrarian society where machines are mostly powered by animals, there is an easy local source of ammonia - animal urine.
Rotating crops with clover and alfalfa is also very viable for nitrogen fixing in the soil.
A large reason why ancient agriculture was inefficient was because they didn't understand soil management.
But in the end, Nirvana has proportionately huge oceans and small land masses as compared to Earth. Sodium Nitrate deposits on Earth are not created by a biological process. There will be significant deposits of this natural fertilizer on Nirvana.
In the end, I grant you that Nirvanans will have a far better agricultural system than preindustrial societies on Earth, but Earth was deep into the industrial age before the farm population began to shrink significantly.
u/varno2 [+2] (a day later)
For a stone-punk electrical generator, we use a fibreglass spun rotor wih carbon fibre-windings for the field coil, there is a carbon slip ring into the binding. The rotor spins on ceramic ball bearings.
Rayon, polyethyline, PVC, Polypropylene, teflon, HFCs, etc, are all producible with relative ease.
High temperature materials are not readily available. However there is no reason why completely plastic automobiles couldn't be constructed (proofs of concepts existed in the 80s). The main thing lacking is computers and electronics, however none of that is really required to have a highly productive society, food scarcity really should not be a thing.
Love the story btw. Albert is meddling quite significanly though.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (a day later)
I'm breaking down here at carbon fiber windings. How does one get to carbon fiber wire from graphite powder, or via any other means - I can't find anything low-tech about how to do this.
u/varno2 [+2] (a day later)
Pyrolosys of rayon. Rayon can be produced here, the process is really no more involved than making leather or any number of older processes. http://www.madehow.com/Volume-1/Rayon.html
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (a day later)
Rayon is doable, yes. Pyrolysis of Rayon is also doable, but will the resulting material be suitable for creating long wires that are flexible and capable of carrying current? It looks as if Mitsubishi manufactures some carbon fiber products by pyrolysis of Rayon, but are the processes they use repeatable in a primitive tech base, with no computers and no metals? Possibly.
I will grant that it may be possible to create a carbon fiber wound motor, but how much labor will be required? If it takes a hundred thousand man hours of labor to wind a single small motor, you have to feed those people, and the people doing the labor are coming out of the rest of the labor pool. Nirvana does not have slave labor, which is how a lot of early industrial processes were made affordable on Earth.
Even in situations where things are possible, they are not always plausible, except as proofs of concept.