[TML] Quick TL upgrades (was Re: Molding Ships)

[shadow at shadowgard.com]

On 1 Oct 2007 at 17:21, Charles Prevatte wrote:

> As for bread boarding, that would work IF you mean the original meaning of
> the term breadboard and not the modern hobbiest meaning which would be
> almost as difficult to replicate as modern 4 layer eched circuit board.

I've got an old amplifier that I "breadboarded" that way in 
electronics class. Tape a circuit diagram to a convenient size piece 
of plywood. Drive finishing nails where you need wires to cross, 
connect or turn a corner on the diagram. Solder wire between nails. 
Add parts with leads soldered to nails.

Easy to troubleshoot, relatively easy to revise.

Closest I ever came to a "modern" breadboard was a toy I picked up at 
OMSI back in the late 60s or early 70s. A "Denshi board", basically 
an enlarged version of one of those breadboards with slots to snap 
plastic encased parts into, and metal strips that snapped into place 
as wiring. 

Wish it hadn't gotten lost long ago.

> You would be very surprised to see how much 60+ year old equipment is still
> in commercial use today.

No I wouldn't. :-)

I used to work with a QA person who carried one of those Kurta 
"fishing reel" calculators. 
 
> When replacing something with new would cost 1M+ that 1941 AM transmiter
> looks pretty good.

For that matter, the final power stages of big transmitters are 
*still* tube circuits as far as I know. It's kinda hard to push 100 
kW thru solid state stuff. :-)

> That brings up one other very interest point.  Mechanically many of these
> machines have changed very little if at all.  What little change has
> happened has been to accomodate electronic controls (mostly positioning
> servo motors and sensors)  IF you have a good machine shop and a good modern
> computer (even a laptop) an a small store of electronic parts (say what a
> ships stores would have or what they could fabricate with an onboard high
> tech automated factory, you could quickly convert  a WW1 era factory into a
> very modern facility.  Easily equal to most of those in use today.

The servos are going to be the hard part.
 
> The improvements would be considerable.  Part tolerences would improve by
> several orders of magnatude (engines would run better on less fuel),
> quantity of good parts would increase dramaticly, and the number of
> defective parts would decrease considerably.  Even a fairly large factory
> would need only a very few "space men" to do this if they were good at their
> jobs.  The down side would be that the machines built at this factory would
> be very difficult to service (if they could be serviced at all) without
> parts from this factory, without loosing the improments you have gained.
> 
> Example, It would have been almost imposible to build usable jet engines
> with a 1920's era machine shop, but with modern controls added to those
> machines, it could be doable.  At the least that machine shop could turn out
> Spitfires instead of Jennys.  That's the difference of about 200 MPH in
> speed and a lot more forepower.  And if the spitfires design was in the
> ships data banks, you would not need a prototype and redesign phase and the
> lest and best version could be used directly.

Yep. In fact, I daresay that such things are part of the standard "TL 
packs" that get used in settingh up colonies and the like.
 
> Also you could do such things as look up the formula for TNT, C4, Simtex,
> non corosive gun powder, fiberglass and it's bonders, kevlar, and lots of
> other things that are fairly simple to make, once someone has stubled onto
> them in the first place.

And simple tech "tricks" that took centuries to work out but are 
*easy* to implement. Everything from efficient stove & furnace design 
to the trick of making lead shot in a tower.
 
> Add in some of our modern drugs (particularly antibiotics) and a very few
> "space men" could change the balence of power on a low tech world in a very
> short time.

Only if you can get the military to *listen*.
 
> What would air dropped nepalm done to the trench warfare of WW1? 

Not as much as you'd think unless you can get the idiots running 
things to quit trying to use their old tactics. That's why things 
were so bad. They kept trying to use "mass wave" tactics against 
things like machine guns.


> Or the Gatlin gun and helecopter to WW2? 

Gatlining guns date to the US Civil War. It's some modifications to 
the feed mechanism and adding a motor that are the big change.

Helicopters are mostly targets unless you can get much better 
engines, in which case there are likely better uses.

--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com