[TML] Molding Ships

[shadow at shadowgard.com]

On 2 Oct 2007 at 16:54, Charles Prevatte wrote:

> ATGM are not practical unless you are assuming the "space men" came in
> legion force levels with a massive space ship and lots of on board factory
> capacity.
> 
> I was assuming a small group on ONE side with a small ship and a good
> library package.  Say a TL 11 commecial ship or perhaps just a life boat
> with the survivers personal electronics and perhaps one of them is an
> engineer.
> 
> ATGM would take recreating 1970s level electronics at the least.  That would
> take 10+ years assuming 1940s tube technology.  It takes time to build up a
> base of train personel to build totally new things.

Actually, no. They were building them *in* WWII. TV guided missiles 
were actually used. Mostly air-to ground.

Radar proximity fuzes are arguably harder to build. And were mass 
produced.

> A transister would be near magic to most 1940s personel, while an engine
> that had a better compression ratio is perfectly understandable, even if the
> way the better tolerences are achieved is a bit of a mistery.

The original patent for a transistor was before WWI. It was a 
modified "crystal detector". It was forgotten because theory couldn't 
explain it, so nobody knew how to improve it.

> In the case of the transiter you have to train the entire production staff
> and the users.

Nope. The users don't care. It's a black box anyway. Just a smaller 
one that uses less power. Production staff is much the same.

The only people you have to train are the folks producing the 
transistors. And that doesn't take as long as you might think.

But it'd take too long to build the equipment to produce a 
significant number of transistors. Then again, it'll tak a while to 
redo that factory full of machine tools.

But building gear *using* transistors is no big deal. Designing it is 
harder, but the "space men" can do that for you.

> In the case of the engine, a few people to help in the final assembly have
> to learn a new trick or two that is very close to what they already are
> doing.
> 
> There is a very large difference in scale.

Trust me, there are a *lot* of things that will be "minor" but very 
important changes.
 
> Look at the engine in the Wright brothers plane.  Today we have better and
> more powerfull engines in leaf blowers and lawnmowers, but the basic
> principle is exactly the same.  No new concepts to learn, just refinements.

Too many of the things you want to build require new materials. Like 
the turbine engines in the copter and the M1A1 tank.

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