[TML] Molding Ships

[shadow at shadowgard.com]

On 4 Oct 2007 at 9:38, Charles Prevatte wrote:

> > Build the comm sats and spy sats *bigger*. Manned even. Solar heated
> > *boilers* will provide plenty of power, and do it with tech the
> > locals understand.
> >
> > The designs the folks in the 1940s came up with were quite workable.
> > And I bet the computers have better ones on file.
> >
> > Given the sheer size of the Imperium and length of history, it's
> > likely this isn't the first or even hundredth time that a society at
> > this TL has gotten outside help to build spacre tech that is
> > maintainable with local tech.
> 
> Had not thought of that.  Good point.  But it would depend on the
> capabilities of the "space mens" ship to get such monsters into orbit quick
> enough to make the defference, and the crews would almost be suicide troops,
> because if the space ship were damaged they would be trapped.  But a very
> interesting idea.

Actually, getting *down* is pretty easy, especially from low orbit. 
Ablative re-entry shields can be made from "high tech" materials such 
as *oak* (Seriously! The Chinese have done it)

Solid rockets to de-orbit are pretty simple as well.

Anybody up to making V2 motors can (with your improved machine tools) 
build *much* better motors that work better and give much better 
thrust, even if you are limited to kerosene and LOX. (LH2 is *way* 
too much trouble to deal with at first)

> > > > 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.
> > >
> > > It's been tried.  The inverse square law kills you very fast, with the
> > > termal gradiant.  Also, you are talking about a serious scaling
> > problem and
> > > strutural strength limitations.  Univac was what you are trying
> > to build.
> > > It worked, but it was not at all portable, and took a huge investment in
> > > manpower to program an maintain.
> >
> > The units I'm thinking of were actually *used* by the US miltary for
> > EMP proof electronics for a while. And I'm talking about units that
> > were showbox sized and kept in an "oven". They got preheated and once
> > running, had enough waste heat to stay at operating temp.
> 
> Yes, I rememebr those, and they do have the inverse square problem.  They
> are built to the size that uses it to good effect, but larger units would
> overheat.  Mostly they were comm cores or single process controlers, (IIRC)
> not general use processors.  There usefullness would be very limited and
> each would have had to be built for it's task.

Sure, but there are a *lot* of processes where they'd be useful.

And designs aren't likely to be a problem.

> > Part of the design was that the tubes didn't *have* filaments. Which
> > eliminated the primary cause of failures.
> >
> > Sure, a shoebox sized TIMM unit was only equivalent to a handful of
> > 70s ICs. But it still replaced a cabinet full of tubes.
> 
> They were also unrepairable except by replacing the entire unit.

So? For some "use once" applications...
 
> > > > 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.
> > >
> > > Ionizing radiation and steel hulled ships!  Your crews would be
> > dead in a
> > > day.  Every naval ships would be a radioactive death trap for
> > decades in not
> > > centuries.  Trinity site is still to dangerious to visit unprotected.
> >
> > Sorry, but you are *way* off base. The blast won't *induce* a
> > significant amount of radioactivity in the target area. That takes an
> > *insane* neutron flux.
> >
> > The contamination is the fission products from the bomb deposited on
> > the area. Most of it can be washed off.
> >
> > I had a teacher who was on one of the ships outside the blast area
> > for one of the tests at Bikini Atoll.
> >
> > The ship got rocked *badly* by the shock wave (and nobody had told
> > them it was a "double", so after the first bit rocked the ship hard
> > one way, everybody quit bracing and started moving again. So when the
> > second part got there there were a lot of "accidents" as folks got
> > thrown around.)
> >
> > Check Navy procedures for atomic attack. If the ship is far enough
> > from the blast to still be operable, they just wash down the outside
> > to remove the fallout.
> >
> > If the blast was a surface blast (less blast damage), you'll get some
> > induced radioactivity it material that got sucked into the initial
> > fireball.
> >
> > It's *still* easy to decontaminate.
> >
> > And Trinity site isn't *remotely* dangerous. Hell, until they banned
> > visitors (because they were wandering thru the missile ranges and the
> > like) folks were hauling off chunks of trinitite. They bulldozed the
> > blast glass under to stop that.
> >
> > I've seen a chunk of trinitite gotten from the site before they did
> > that. Funny looking greenisg glass. Slightly radioactive, but not
> > hazardous unless you stuff it in your pants and keep it there for a
> > few months.
> >
> > Remember, highly radioactive materials are that way *because* they
> > have short half lives. Which means the radiation drops off fast.
> >
> > Seriously, you are *not* going to put a base out of commision long
> > term with a nuke other than by physical damage or by building a bomb
> > designed to spread large amounts of *medium* half-life stuff. And
> > even then, the stuff can be washed off or collected.
> >
> > At best, you'd be causing a lot of cancers years later unless the
> > enemy was *totally* clueless about radiation.
> >
> 
> Then all the proceedure I have read in army manuals are incorrect, and is
> the history of the treatment require on the survivors of the Japaneese
> bombing.  Example, filling that HAD to be remove because they were radio
> active enough to kill the patient, and as for biki atol, some to the target
> ships were so hot with radiation they did not allow observer to remain more
> than 10 miniutes to take samples.

Yeah, the ones *inside* the fireball. 

And since only neutron flux can *induce* radioactivity, and the 
amount required to induce significant radioactivity in a filling 
would exceed the lethal dosage, I have to suspect that the info 
you've read is just a *bit* "overly simplified".

> And trinty is still dangerous, perhap not loose your hair and die after 1
> hour dangerous but it still has long term effects.  A large dirty bomd
> detonated over perl harbor would limit how must it could be use and how
> quickly, and much more effectively than the original attack.

It's take some cleanup, and you'd lose some of the volunteers. But 
given the way we were thinking baclk then, there *would* be 
volunteers.

> Also, the masses of dead and dieing people from arround the harbor would not
> have been available to rebuild.  There were less than 300 civilian
> casualties fron the attack and most of those were from falling AA shells WE
> fired.  That would NOT have been true in the case of a multi megaton nuke.
> The dock workers were back to work the next day, and we raised every ships
> that was sunk accept the Arasona which became a memorial.  We could have
> raised and repaired it.  There were plans to do so.  Perl Habor was one on
> the largest and most capable naval bases in the world.  Destroying it would
> have had an effect on the war.  And a Biki atol class nuke WOULD have
> destroyed it.  It would not have been able to repair the Yorktown after
> Coral Sea and that would have ment the Yorktown would NOT have been at
> Midway.  The Japanese would not have lost most of their carriers and we
> would have been down to at most one main line carrier.  Not to mention all
> the support ships that would have been unuseable because of the Perl Harbor
> blast.  The war would have lasted several years longer, and in that time
> Japan surely would have been able to build another bomb.  Doolittle's Raid
> might have been a necessity to take out the enemies Nuke factory.

Yeah, repairs would have been harder, especially due to lack of 
manpower. But that'd be true for any attack that killed that much of 
the population. Nerve gas, for example.

Heck, persistent chemical agents would be harder to deliver, but 
*much* harder to clean up.

> > > > If the ship is flayable, just drop big rocks on them from orbit.
> > > >
> > >
> > > If there are rock near by, and IF the ships can move them, and
> > if the ships
> > > is flyable enough to try.
> >
> > You don't *need* rocks. If the ship is fltable enough for the idea to
> > work, it'd flyable enough to boost multi-ton massess on a chosen
> > trajectory at a few hundred km/sec.
> >
> > At 300 km/sec, a 1 ton mass impacts like a 10 kiloton nuke.
> >
> > A ten ton mass will be equivalent to a 100 kT nuke. That's big enough
> > to allow for some moderately ragged targeting. And small emnough to
> > be easily carried by most ships.
> 
> Again, it depends on the ship and it's condition.  If it does not have 10
> tons of cargo capacity then no.  Say a scout courier.

You replace the air raft with the "rock".
 
> If you give the "space men" to much tech then you remove the need for them
> to improve the local tech to change the balence and you are back to the
> 'space men' assualting the Chancelry with powered armor and plazma guns.  Of
> course they will win.   That is not the point of this discussion.  The point
> is what could "time travellers" or other people from an advanced sociaty do
> to change to course of history on a more primative world.

Heck, have the locals have a disease they are immune to, but takes 
out the ship's crew. They don't dare leave for fear of infecting 
other worlds. But before they die, the turn the ship's "library" over 
to the "good guy" natives.

> > It occurs to me to wonder how hard the big thermobaric bombs are to
> > make? One of the bigger "daisy cutters" dropped near the enemy
> > trenches (or built into a crude tank chassis, driven there by remote
> > controll and then detonated) would ruin your whole day. It'd collapse
> > even the better "dugouts" in the trenches and kill unprotected
> > personnel for quite a ways. Might even flatten a lot of the
> > obstacles.
> 
> Yep, they are fairly simple mechanically.  It's one of those thing we could
> have done a lot sooner but did not stumble apon until later.

Evil thought...

Can you just *imagine* what Stalin would have done with one? Say, 
placing them in strongpoints and *letting* the Nazis capture them 
(say just far enough outside of Stalingrad to avoid excessive damage 
to the important parts of the city)

Taking fortifications after *that* sort of incident would be 
something that the German troops would be *really* paranoid about.

> > And if you *can* manage nukes, and produce enough, subs placing them
> > just outside enemy harbors for simultaneous detonation in a few weeks
> > (to give to to place them and get folks ready to take advantage)
> >
> > *slaps forehead*.
> >
> > Doh! It just hit me. Any WWII era cipher other than a one-time pad
> > can be cracked in *minutes* with a 1980s personal computer (I've done
> > it, the basic programs are easy and relatively well known). Cracking
> > actual codes is harder. But doable (alas, I don't have any of the
> > programs for that).
> >
> > So a high priority should be to rig some *high* speed "paper" tape
> > readers that interface to a small computer from the ship, running
> > cryptanalysis software. Rigging the high speed *output* is going to
> > be harder, but I daresay a multiplexer can be rigged up to drive
> > dozens (or hundreds) of teletypes for output.
> 
> More like 1000's yes, sorry, I had assumed that would be a given.  A modern
> PC would be more powerfull than all the "computers" that existed in WW2.

Given that I was doing it on a 8085 with less than 32k of RAM, a 
modern PDA is more than capable of doing that sort of thing.

> It
> would chew through egnima in a hour or so.  All posible setting!  Once to
> have the program for the encoder, that code is done.  Another interesting
> side effect would be you could (with the speed of a moderm computer)
> decipher all the older intercepts in that code in a day or two.  That
> information while dated would give you a VERY GOOD picture of the enemies
> plans and deployments.  The enemy would be in serious trouble.  If you held
> off using the knownledge for a few weeks to get your forces into place you
> could ambush a lot of the enemies forces in advantagious locations and badly
> hurt him before he realised you could read his codes better that he can.
> The enemy might never recove from such a crushing blow if it was struct hard
> and well.

distribute a few spare "PDA" equivalents to important headquarters 
and the good guys can use PGP or the like for communications between 
those locations. 
--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com