Re: colonial tech

KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de wrote:

> Thomas Barclay schrieb:
> > Richard has a point about colonies making use
> > of simplistic tech. This could include advanced
> > steam engines (advanced in design, so as to
> > retain simplicity but acheive max efficiencies).
>
> Why steam engines ? At whatever tech level you look at, a steam engine
> isn't really simpler than an equivalent internal-combustion engine.
The
> reason motors supplanted steam engines was that, at the same tech
lvel,
> they were more efficient, easier to operate and more powerful than
> steam engines. Occasionally, you see notes in tech magazines about
> reviving steam engines for some purpose or other, but little usually
> comes of it. Simple motors can be operated under appaling conditions,
> too.

Internal combustion engines have only supplanted steam engines in
electricity production within the last fifteen years, but only because
you
can build them faster and use the high grade waste heat from a gas
turbine
to power a steam generator.  Internal combustion engines only beat out
steam engines for part load applications and specific power density (a
300Mw gas turbine and auxillaries is MUCH smaller than a 300Mw steam
plant
and turbine).

The steam engine has two main advantages over an internal combustion
engine:
1) It is not limited to certain classes of fuel.  The germans never did
perfect the
coal fired diesel, there are severe issues with applying nuclear power
to
the Otto (four stroke), Diesel, or Brayton (gas turbines) cycles.  Steam
engines can run on anything that supplies heat; although, not
necessarily
all at the same time.  They are not limited to burning fluids.

2) Sacrificing some efficiency for robustness allows you to choose a two
stage curtiss wheel, which will have fewer then ten moving parts.  Small
tube boilers with a large heating area per unit volume will reduce the
starting times to rival those of IC engines in subzero temperatures.

A third advantage is that a steam engine does not need to employ a
mechanical-electrical-mechanical or mechanical-hydraulic-mechanical
power
conversion process to achieve the very useful feature of
max-torque-at-zero.  The slower it is moving, the more torque you can
apply.

A fourth advantage is that you could deploy the steam enigine as a
"prime
mover"

>
>
> Anyway, a high-tech product needn't always be more complex to operate,
> prone to failure or hard to maintain than a primitive one. Compare,
> say, a quartz watch with a mechanical one.
> Even manufacture need not be that advanced, at least not always. Many
> high-tech products are assembled or even manufactured in semi-Third
> World countries.

The only thing third world about manufacture-for-export facilities in
the
third world is the worker pay/rights/benefits (except for low-input/high
markup goods like fashion clothes).

>
> The massive investment is in research and development.
>
> > Let's talk about the "Factory". This is a nanobot
> > builder/controller system. The part you need
> > from Earth is the main controller. And maybe
> > an initial dose of bots. Add appropriate trace
> > minerals, and set it down on a big metal
> > deposit. Wait some time, get a small factory or
> > machine shop capable of turning out the parts
> > for your tractor/car. The factory has the
> > advantage of being self repairing. It needs no
> > input from the colonists, ...
>
> Indeed ? No re-programming to suit local
> conditions/fuel/maintenance/repair ?

The only problem that I have with selfreplicating nano-robots is the
(im)possibility of being able to prevent horrible disasters, with
properly
designed software code.  After the first glitch (hopefully not on a
densely
populated world) self-replicating machines will only be reintroduced
after
the software has been deterministically proven to be bug free (this may
not
be possible).

>
>
> ... except relocated every
> > so often or a new program (not too expensive
> > to ship due to brutal info density and therefore
> > low shipping costs) downloaded from Earth.
> >
> > And I agree with Richard in terms of the
> > simplicity of construction of "a car" (basic) and
> > maintenance of same. Henry Ford was building
> > internal combustion vehicles long before
> > assembly lines. Garages were about the order
> > of the day. And he didn't have 200 years on us.
>
> Well, Gottlieb Daimler was building cars well before Henry Ford. :-)
> Anyway, the purpose of the assembly line was not to be able to build
> cars at all, but to build them in large numbers, cheaply, and
> efficiently.
> If you have a small colony of a few 100.000 people, it is nonsense to
> build a factory that can turn out 10.000 cars a day.
>
> > Henry's cars also gave good value because if
> > his engineers told him a crank shaft had to be
> > 1", he ordered a 2" shaft. They were
> > overdesigned, but they lasted a long long long
> > time even when poorly treated in many cases.
>
> Were they indeed good value ? If they were that overdesigned, the
> material to build them was double that what was neccessary, hence the
> car had to be more expensive than neccessary. It is not always clear
> that customers will prefer a product that lasts double as long if they
> have to pay double the price for it.

Henry Ford may have started out with over-building, but he eventually
got
around to finding where he could cut costs by reducing the standards for
parts that had historically never worn out before the vehicle was
junked.
As for the crankshaft, in 1996, according to learning coordinator at the
Westinghouse turbine plant, in Hamilton Ontario, machining costs $50 an
hour and the material costs $0.06 a pound (high grade steel for turbine
blades, YMMV).	Unless the larger crankshaft needed larger machine
tools,
the cost of increasing the size is paid for by the customer with more
gas
needed to move the heavier vehicle.