Re: COLONIAL WEAPONS

Ryan Gill wrote:

> At 3:11 PM -0600 1/28/02, Scott Clinton wrote:
> >
> >In SG2 we have:
> >50-100 ton tanks that can hover...
> >rail/gauss weapons in sizes from < 10kg to multi ton sized...
> >power armor ...
> >fusion power...
> >...and lets not forget faster than light travel...
> >
> >But, you can't buy into a more reliable, robust and slightly more
> >portable version of a weapon that basically can be produced today???
>
> It would depend on the level of technology on the colony would it
> not? I could take a Macintosh and a digital camera to Borneo and live
> there for 5 years. But, I would question whether it would be running
> after 5 years in the jungle.
>
> One has to realize that depending on the size of the colony, you have
> a great limit on what industry is available on that site. Look at the
> number of businesses involved in making a car. Just a simple car.
> Those major parts source from more than 500 factories all over this
> continent. Smaller components probably source from further afield.

The industry required to build a car can fit in a modest garage.  The
500
factories are needed to produce cars at a rate of one per minute.  The
garage with sheet metal, bar stock, plates, forge, and machine tools
will
allow you to produce a car fast enough if you only have twenty, and they
each last twenty years.

>
>
> Granted some things would be easy to fix if there are available
> parts. There's the other issue. Parts. If it takes half a year to get
> a shipment of parts in from the major systems, you are going to want
> to limit what is purchased from off world in deference to what is
> made on world.

The colony will probably start with steam powered machinery, as the
first
(admittedly really inefficient) steam engines managed to produce useful
work despite fact that threaded fasteners were still cut by hand.  Steam
engines have the advantage that they are easy to build and maintain.
While reciprocating steam engines require some artistry to run, being
able to operate one gives wonderful insight into what is wrong when it
breaks done.  They can also use locally grown fuel, like charcoal.

[Bizarre aside: to build precision machines, you need a very accurate
lead screw.  You only need one, because after the first one is made, it
is trivially easy to copy it by the millions.  Fortunately, in the mid
eighteenth century, someone discovered that if you press a hard metal
knife edge into soft metal round stock, at the desired thread pitch,
turning the round stock would advance it past the cutting tool at the
correct rate.  The man who did this is unknown, but his invention made
Jesse Ramsden a fortune.]

>
>
> Think about the large amount of commerce that goes on in the US or UK
> every day. Parts, raw materials, sub components, whole finished
> products. The web is really really complex. If your lag time between
> shipments of components is very long then you are going to have huge
> issues with assembly time.

The web is complex due to the economies of scale.  Colonial economies
will start small and then grow.

I will stand by my speculation that unless supply ships are inexpensive
to charter and arrive every few weeks, the colony will not rely on