[TML] Molding Ships

[shadow at shadowgard.com]

On 2 Oct 2007 at 16:35, Charles Prevatte wrote:

> Sorry, you missed the point.  I was mainly talking about what a very small
> group of "space men" and their ship could have done reasonably in that
> situation.  Even a very few spy or comunications sats would have taken more
> tech than could be cobbled together from one small space ship.  While
> upgradeing a factory, or even several, to produce year 2000+ engines for
> helecopters would have been trivial.  Boot straping the electronics era in
> the WW1 era would have been nearly imposible due to the ammount of
> supporting technologies that would have to also be boot strapped.  But high
> grade light engines for choppers and/or aircraft is mostly limited by
> tollerences in the machine processes available at that time.  The best use
> of the available computing power would be to improve a factory to produce a
> product that could tip the balence of the war.  By your own statement above
> you yourself say as much.  But satalites are not simple easy to produce
> things, and they take a lot more than just improved machining.  The same
> would apply to SAMs, to much electronics to boot strap.  You could manage a
> LAWs rocket factory, an engine factory for helecopters, Jets, or better prop
> engines.  And Gatling guns would be very easy if you already had the plans
> on file.

Actually, if the spaceship can still fly (say it's the jump drive 
that failed) Satellites will be well within the capability of the 
locals. It's *launching* that's the biggest headache.

For that matter, the better machining *would* allow stuff like ICBMs 
and orbital spacecraft from WWII tech.

> Boot strapping the micro electronics industry would take advances in 100s of
> support technologies.  It would take longer than the war would last.

Actually, there are several tricks that will improve things a lot. 
Composition resistors to replace the wire wound ones that were in use 
in the early 30s is an *easy* change. But it'd make a *huge* 
difference. 

So would digital designs (even if tube based) rather than analog. 
There are a lot of things that are really hard to do with analog 
design, but easy to do with digital. 

And given design help, I expect that micro-"tube" designs like TIMMs 
would be doable. Basically a large, heated "brick" with *tube* 
circuits using dime sized tubes and everything arranged tightly in a 
dense, 3D package.
 
> A simpler solution would be to use the ships systems to build a very small
> number of A-bombs, to remove key targets.  Even one such weapon could tip
> the balence.  Think of how things might have turned out if the attack on
> Perl Habor had been made with a high megaton nuke, particularly a dirty one
> that would have denighed the US the use of Perl and it's facilaties for the
> rest of the War.

Building an A-bomb is easy. Getting the fissionables *isn't*. And the 
ship's systems will be essentially useless for that.

A dirty nuke wouldn't have much area denial potential. *Especially* 
with WWII sensibilities about "safety". 

Get some volunteers to bulldoze dirt over the worst spots. hose off 
the rest, and worry about *maybe* getting cancer later.

If the ship is flayable, just drop big rocks on them from orbit.

A reactor is easier to build. And you can take a page out of 
Henlein's "Solution: Unsatisfactory" and create dirty bombs using 
various isotopes.

And it may well be that weapons grade lasers are buildable with local 
tech (depends on how Traveller lasers work). Even if only ground 
based and ship mounted ones are the best you can do, they pretty much 
make air attacks (and a lot of surface attacks) impossible.

A weapons emplacement that can kill anything mobile at line-of-sight 
ranges is going to be a great defense.

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