RE: COLONIAL WEAPONS

Potassium Nitrate is easy if you're on farm.  As Oerjan points out -
everyone has to pee.  In medieval times, before pure deposits were
found, the most common way of collecting KNO3 was to lift manure piles. 
After aging for a while, the potassium nitrate concentrates as a white
ring on the bottom of manure piles.  Probably not pleasant work, but
unless you happen to be one of those lucky Pacific islands with tons of
nitrates just sitting around, you'll have to collect it the hard way.

Assuming geological forces and a crust compositon similar to earth,
sulfur is only going to be found in high concentrations as a mineral
deposit.  Geothermal areas might provide a continuous source, or barring
that you might genetically engineer bacteria to extract sulphur from
coal or other bio matter.  I've heard there are current projects to do
just that to provide a "cleaner" coal for burning.

Carbon - if there's earth type life, there's carbon.

One might hypothesize that a new colony would have easy access to such
components for the following reasons:

	a) A good portion of the early economy is going to be
agriculturally driven

		1) Feeding people with "homegrown" food is cheaper than
importing it, even if it comes out of a vat.

	b) Most industry is going to be geared to supporting the
agricultural sector - heavy industry is churning out tractors, not
SUV's, chemical companies are making fertilizer instead of solvents for
circuit board manufacture etc.
	
		1) Most early explosives are just derivatives of
fertilizer because of the nitrates in them.  Modern explosives have
tweaked the structures to get you more bang for the molecule, but if you
can churn out tons of fertilizer you can demolish almost anything (see
Oklahoma City Bombing).

		2) Supporting the agriculture industry, there will
probably be some type of extraction plant at mineral rich sites.  Even
if a fertilizer only needs 0.1% of some element, when you use hundreds
or thousands of tons of it, it adds up pretty quickly.	So there is
likely to be a site that has the capability of producing tons of sulfur
per year or hundreds of pounds per day.

	c) Assuming a planet with an earth type atmosphere, there is
going to be a good percentage of carbon dioxide in it.	Using bacteria,
plants, trees, algae etc, you can fix this gaseous carbon into a solid
state.	Barring that, several types of carbonate rock can be burned or
heated to release carbon dioxide which can then be fed into greenhouses
or vats.  The carbon can then be extracted from these organisms by
heating their corpses without oxygen.  Remember to dry out the corpses
first, otherwise you spend a lot of energy getting the water out.

The conclusion is that a basic agricultural colony would have plenty of
access to explosives/gunpowder.  The manufacture and use of firearms
would be a different matter.  

--Binhan
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Oerjan Ohlson [mailto:oerjan.ohlson@telia.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2002 10:20 AM
> To: gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu
> Subject: Re: COLONIAL WEAPONS
> 
> 
> Karl Heinz wrote:
> 
> > >Gunpowder:
> > >75% potassium nitrate
> > >15% carbon
> > >10% sulfur
> >
> >carbon (in the form of charcoal) can reasonably easily be 
> produced (assming
> >you have wood and oxygen).
> >Potassium nitrate and sulfur exist as mineral deposits. 
> Lucky if you find
> >them nearby. Otherwise oyu would have to trade with other 
> parts of the
> >planet.
> 
> Potassium is fairly easy to get - the "latin" name comes from 
> "Pot Ash"... 
> you can make it from the ash of certain kinds of wood - IIRC 
> ash wood :-/
> 
> Nitrate - well, everyone needs to pee.
> 
> Sulfur might be harder though, I don't know :-/
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Oerjan
> oerjan.ohlson@telia.com
> 
> "Life is like a sewer.
>   What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
> -Hen3ry
>