If magic doesn't exist in your steam/diesel punk setting, how would you go ahead and explain the very advanced technology that exists? Do you add new laws of physics to support the science? Alien technology that is easy to duplicate once understood? Or do away with the airships and keep things far more realistic?
Mostly wondering how others have approached the problem then an end all solution.
Also general art thread.
>>43579908
If it's about the airships, I'd take the blimp tech and kick it up several notches. The ship would be built around the baloon to keep it armored. Advances in metallurgy would provide lighter but less durable materials than regular steel. Though the airships would be used more for transport and recon than war.
>>43579908
Setting I was making long ago where another dimension up and replaced most of the the South American continent and was slowly consuming the U.S Southern States(Set in the Civil War Era).
The tech came from a new energy source from this new 'dimension' land that was found in abundance but one had to brave the legions of Lovecraftian horrors to reach it. It was basically a blue glowy rock that could be burned like coal but generated energy far surpassing that of coal or any other known energy source. With that kind of energy output, and a need to militarize the American territory fast to push back the invasion of monsters and their hell dimension, all kinds of tech sprung up with the blue rock supplying the necessary energy to power it(i.e support frames so soldiers could carry heavy weapons, power armor attached to power cables that were transported by trains. Trains that were more like tanks in that they didn't need to run on rails but rather just plowed through whatever terrain with ease, etc.)
I state 'The premise of this setting is that archaic high technology exists and is functional'.
That's it. If I want to, I'll technobabble some explanation, but if I'm designing a setting and state my intention, that's enough IMO. If you're aiming for realism, cool, but if I'm not then bringing it up isn't really relevant.
>>43579908
Anachronistic technological development. Sort of like how in Civilization V it's possible to get halfway up the tech tree in some areas without ever researching Bronze Working.
Steampunk is basically "we never developed a better power source than the steam engine, but in all other respects we've got modern age tech"
>>43580062
I had a very similar idea in my setting, crystals appearing after massive nuclear weapon usage ripping the fabric of space apart and having the creation of highly concentrated energy minerals.
>>43580026
Can blimps actually made to do this today? Regardless of the actual military use.
>>43580232
I'm not really sure DESU. Realistically, even with lighter materials, the balloon would still need to be much bigger than the thing it's carrying to have a chance at lifting it. Just look at modern blimps and compare the size of the gondola to that of the balloon.
Sure, you're leaving a huge cavity in the center of the hull for the balloon, and maybe add a keel to keep it upright. But would the lift provided by the balloon be enough? I mean building around it would still constitute to more mass. It was just a fantasy idea that might work with those who don't look too deeply into it.
>>43580404
didn't know tee-bee-eych was filtered
>>43579908
I wouldn't. There's nothing to explain about flying ships, trenches full of analog cyborgs and bots looking like 20's cars seem celar enough too. Realism is a stylistic choice, not a real goal you can achieve.
>>43580069
This. Steam punk is an aesthetic and like most aesthetics you can't look too closely or the reasons life doesn't look that way will become clear.
Same reason SciFi dates so quickly: zeerust.
Another question: Why does Xpunk always goes hand in hand with absurdly stupid designs like in >>43580803
Oh hey airship talk, yeah the square cube law is a bitch to work around if you aren't willing to hand wave it away. The best I could come up with was an artificial atomic compound that was stupidly light and energetic though decayed rapidly and was prohibitively expensive.
>>43580858
because people really don't understand Xpunk sometimes, and think it means advanced technology using archaic means.
>>43579908
I wouldn't read too much into it. Steampunk/dieselpunk is mostly "woah airships" with a pseudoscientific gloss if need be for how the whole thing works.
My setting actually works exactly like this. No magic, so to justify the fact that I want to make Mecha and Skyship wargames for this setting, I was forced to introduce a few departures from conventional science, because it's also almost completely devoid of petroleum.
To this end, I had to make a few departures from regular science. Several countries were able to make the jump directly from steam to extremely compact nuclear reactors, while another country has a Nikola Tesla like figure that invented efficient power transmission, known as "beamcast" Yet another country depends on exotic crystals with a fractal structure. These crystals are harvested from the bottom of the ocean in a certain region, but the impressive thing about them is that they're a nearly perfect battery. Thanks to the Piezoelectric effect, whenever a crystal flexes, it gives off an electric charge. These crystals, thanks to their fractal structure, can flex inward nearly infinitely, being used as a battery merely by putting them under intense pressure. When connected to an electrical circuit, it gives off energy over time, making it an incredibly efficient battery.
The nuclear reactors actually allow for a particularly neat thing. While I was working on designs for an airship with an actual aeronautics engineer, I hit upon something. My first generation design had water to use as coolant/be heated into steam to turn propellers. My second generation design still had some water for steam's sake, but also added fans to suck cold air in, pass it through the reactor via copper pipes, and expel hot air. At this point, the engineer I was working with pointed out that this would generate thrust, and the exhaust would actually push the airship almost as much as propellers would. It took me a minute, but I realized there that I'd actually reinvented the nuclear jet engine. I upped the size of the intakes, stuck some fans on the exhaust, and got rid of the propellers.
Nuclear Jet Engine Zeppelin.
Yeah
>>43580955
What does it mean?
>>43581194
Whatever you want it to.
>>43581676
>>43581728
>>43581749
>>43580026
>>43580232
Try armouring those parts of the airship where the risk of damage is greatest (likely threat vectors and important systems) and segmenting the rest to maintain buoyancy through damage. Then use crew to conduct emergency repairs. Like a real warship.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_or_nothing_(armor)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armored_citadel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-sealing_fuel_tank
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damage_control
>>43581799
>>43581827
>>43581889
All I have anon
>>43581910
Thanks, don't have much left myself.
If anyone has a question on the subject, please go ahead.
>>43582059
Are you some sort of authority on Dieselpunk?
>>43581031
Did you also take into account that anyone bellow you would be getting doused with radioactive exhaust?
>>43581031
The problem with nuclear jet engines is you wind up spraying radioactive material out the back of the engine if you have direct air contact with the reactor. If you insulate the airflow, the cooling is too inefficient and heavy to work well.
>>43582640
that said, since you're using lighter than air lifting bodies, I suppose you could handwave the downsides of having the reactor isolated from the compressor-driven air supply. Research into nuclear jet engines kinda stopped after 1961 so you'd be making it up anyway.
>>43581827
>mw Rivet City looked nothing like that in Fallout 3
>>43580955
I thought it meant technology can't keep up with innovation and people just threw everything at the wall to see what sticks.
Anyone here read the mortal engine series?
It was about giant moving citys that skated around and ate eachother, was pretty good.
>>43579908
For airships, it's as simple as not having fixed-winged aircraft invented due to social inertia a-la the "it'll never catch on" vibe.
>>43581031
P R O J E C T
P L U T O
>>43583589
Yes, and the whole point of the series was that the traction engines (mobile cities) that were the main focus were also what was hampering the reconstruction of civilized society through blowing through resources like a fat kid and spewing pollution.
>>43583635
So, this raises a point I need to address in what I'm working on. Can fixed-wing craft and airships coexist? As it is, I'm having larger airships carry a small fixed-wing complement, more comparable in size to overgrown motorcycles (barring wingspan of course). The big thing keeping airships in use is that fixed-wing craft are still in their infancy and airships can't be beaten on range, but is this actually reasonable?
>>43583696
It's pretty reasonable - the first transatlantic flight was by plane, but it was specially converted for the job, and for a couple of decades after the only practical ways for long distance flight were airships or seaplanes
Something else that would give airships the advantage in becoming the premier mode of flight would - fittingly - be diesel engines developing as a technology before or faster than petrol engines. Diesel has better efficiency, but they're the heavier type of engine. Not as much of a problem for airships - you just build them bigger and they can deal with the weight, but heavier-than-air aircraft need all the power to weight ratio they can get.
So if for a few decades people think the only way to do internal combustion is big and heavy airships can be preferred, and planes can be the fast, experimental, exciting and dangerous newcomer
Oh cool thread is still up
>>43584880
>>43584745
So throw diesel at it and it could work... Neat. I was actually operating under the idea that the "fighters" were electric-powered, with high-density electrical storage (broadly similar to >>43581031 ) being more available than high-power compact engines. Using diesel engines gives an actual justification for that to work properly. Most of the "planes" would then be effective in short range and for relatively short periods of time, but they don't have range or endurance. Carrier-ships would have the proper infrastructure to keep them charged, but the limited range would still restrict it into close fighting, more fitting for the "fun over realism" angle.
Unrelated bonus airship.
>>43584993
I'm just amused that for once the actual technology for a -punk can be used to give a legitimate answer to the "how do you justify [unrealistic cool thing] - not a fantastic one mind, but still one rooted in reality
And just now I'm noticing most of my dieselpunk pictures are just cool photos
>>43585086
Make it cool, forget about realism. Got it.
>>43581194
Generally _____-punk means you are telling a story about technology trampling the common man, and the struggles of prole type characters to make their way in the world despite not being born in the privileged minority.
It can be accompanied by anachronistic tech, but at it's heart, Steampunk should be more about John Henry and less about Lord Gulliver Lobcock the Fourth, unless it's about him oppressing the workers in his mines and pilfering artifacts from the colonies.
But that's where it started, not where it is now. Now Steampunk is used as a term for what should probably Airship Gothic or perhaps steamship or railway gothic.
>>43585849
Sure, if you can beat real life for coolness.
>>43579908
>Do you add new laws of physics to support the science?
You know we used both those technologies IRL?
>>43586027
I fucking love monowheels.
>>43586440
There's a lot of things from when we were still figuring out motorised transport that are cool
>>43586017
Steampunk's defining work, The Difference Engine, is about globetrotting upper middle class people working for the government. Granted, one of them is motivated by political agitation but mostly on a personal level. A lot of its precursors also tend to focus on those who stand apart from, but not necessarily on the bottom of, society.
Dieselpunk, particularly in stuff representing the 20s, 50s, and some of the Weird War stuff, is more about the liberating effects of technology on people. So the "punk" in this case focuses on the self-actualized and driven rather than simply the oppressed.
And I think that steampunk is the stuff that focuses on the SCIENCE! while gaslight romance focuses on the Victorian.
>>43579908
In my setting, I go the "fringe science" route.
Probably unlike our world, LENR (a.k.a. "cold fusion") is totally real, and was discovered in the setting equivalent of the late 1800s. Pass an alternating current through a metal hydride of precisely the right composition and crystal structure, and you get enormous amounts of thermal power from very little fuel without any significant radiation.
The extremely high energy and power density, and the fact that it could only be used as a constant thermal power source, means that technology was just about permanently diverted down the road of steam generators rather than internal combustion engines. (In addition, boilers for small vehicles and aircraft are of the "flash boiler" type invented for steam-powered cars in our timeline, allowing further scaling down).
Apart from the magic power source, the other source of "advanced technology" was the development of something very like the Analytical Engine, with the exception that it was actually constructed, made practical by the incorporation of early electromechanical logic to greatly simplify the otherwise prohibitive mechanical complexity. This tied in neatly with other developments of the time, like the mass adoption of a telegraph network and the invention of teleprinters and teletypewriters, making the use of the full power of a large Analytical Engine possible in business or in the home by time-sharing on dedicated 'mainframe' machines remotely via the telegraph network.
This simultaneously drove much more research into electrical and fine mechanical machining, and the ability to do much more sophisticated mathematics more easily helped accelerate the process of science.
Also, the fact that helium is the product of the lithium + hydrogen nuclear reaction means that it is produced cheaply as a waste product from large power plants, making zeppelins much more economical.
>>43586535
Even the Difference Engine can barely be called defining - it was made by Gibson and Stirling to try and fit the niche of steampunk "created" by the authors who coined the term (because they wanted to group their works into a genre that would be recognised as theirs) - they wanted to see if they could do their thing in a different setting.
But focussing on the technology (or at least having it strong in the background) helps - the story you tell doesn't matter, what makes it steampunk (or dieselpunk) is the setting and background - which isn't a bad thing, it's no better or worse than any other setting used mainly for background than for telling a particular type of story.
>>43586632
I thought it was the other way around - "steampunk", as a term, was specifically coined to define "that thing wot The Difference Engine is"
>>43586719
Personally, I think Victorian fantasies are going to be the next big thing, as long as we can come up with a fitting collective term for Powers, Blaylock and myself. Something based on the appropriate technology of the era; like 'steam-punks', perhaps.
—K.W. Jeter, in a 1987 letter to Locus (sci-fi magazine)
The difference engine came out in 1990
Kind of makes sense that no-one can agree what steampunk is, given the origins of the thing
>>43579908
Personally I think the aesthetic of diesel and steam tech work best in a high fantasy setting, but also kinda feel it seems too overdone in such and have a hard time working with it without feeling like a hack. If you're trying to use it in a non-fantasy setting, deal with it the same way Fallout dealt with nuclear sciences and transistors, have it develop long before some other life-changing technology that happened around the same time rather than after, or have that other technology develop way later than it did, and work from there.
>>43589663
Any diesel punk media? I think I've never watched or read anything in that genre, steampunk either.
>>43583508
>That dude in the background whos eyes shift in his head
>>43586971
Can we rename the not-shit parts of steampunk? I'm tired of my awesome boat game being lumped in with those fucking cog-fops.
And oh my fuck, can we add over-use of flat brass colouring to the list of shit cog fops do terribly?
>>43586597
I really like how well you figured this all out. That's awesome, can I use this myself sometime?
>>43590549
A common recommendation is the Leviathan trilogy by Scott Westerfeld.
>>43593867
Do you have a suggestion?
>>43593867
>can we add over-use of flat brass colouring to the list of shit cog fops do terribly?
No.
Because they do everything terribly, so it's a given.
I think that the best bet at this point is to go with things like victorian sci-fi/fantasy or alt-historical setting, but I don't see the point in worrying too much
>>43595774
And the real thing (though IRL ships did approach the levels of sophistication seen in fiction, towards the end)
>>43579908
Anyone here has tips on how to build a dirigible airship like on this pic? I am crazy for this kind of logistics.
I want to know if it is possible to make something similar to it, using the as few magic as possible.
>>43595384
>Leviathan trilogy
thankyou
>>43595911
Basically big ships with baloons?
I always found this design kind of dumb, but incredibly charming at the same time.
You never played a true aerial adventure, if you never was on board to a pirate airship.
>>43595911
The problem there is weight - even without the masts, those ships probably weigh in the order of 600+ tons at the very least (something the size of HMS Victory would weigh over 3000)
The Hindenburg, weighing in at 215 tons with equipment, crew, cargo and fuel, had about 232 tons of lift from its enormous gasbags
So you either build your "boat" much, much smaller or find some way to give lots of extra lift
That said, the galleon+ballon design of airship always looks pretty awesome
>>43580247
>>43580291
Damnable Monkey Luddites and your war machines!
>>43596306
Who're you calling a luddite, literally-any-animal-fucker?
>>43579908
It is possible to create a circumstance where something actually possible becomes viable even if it isn't in reality.
For example I worked on a setting where the primary means of war and travel were blimps. The reasoning was that it was set on a planet that had large reserves of helium and was very geologically active. Permanent human settlement was only possible in several specific regions and the vast space in between could only be controlled with blimps because road systems were almost impossible to maintain and any infrastructure sufficient to support heavier than air travel was vulnerable to earthquakes.
>>43596272
Hum...what if we did a smaller kind of boat?
>>43597022
Wait...the way the caption reads it's almost like, "people in the past were idiots! But they still managed to build a boat that actually fucking floats! Holy shit, these retards managed to figure out the concept of floating!"
>>43597178
Uh...I think that you are reading to much nto it fella.
>>43593867
No because the only difference is where you glue your cogs. It's not suddenly the thinking man's victorian fantasy just because you only stick them on your guns and dirigibles. Everything brass coloured is no better than painting it all olive drab or gunmetal grey either.
>>43579908
I wonder how a real life CLASSY and fancy airship would look like.
One made on the present.
And way more classy and elaborated than the ones that we have today, one made to feel like something out of a dieselpunk book.
>>43597797
>I wonder how a real life CLASSY and fancy airship would look like.
>One made on the present.
id say extrapolate from first class cruise ship cabins
>>43597953
>>43597797
Probably pretty decent - the Hindenburg had cabins like Pullman luxury railway coaches and was fitted out as in the picture - it was thought that you'd spend most of your time in the public spaces - the bar, lounge, writing room, dining room, music salon or smoking room.
Sounds pretty good for 5 day flights
>>43596272
Safety concerns aside, Hydrogen isn't very good for effective lift, and helium is even worse I believe.
You pretty much need to either completely ignore the issue or have some kind of handwavey magic substance.
The Warbirds RPG, for example, has "Float Stone" a material that keeps the flying islands aloft and is mined and used for the cores of airships. It has a neat property where the hotter it gets, the less it lifts, meaning airships can perform ballast control simply by heating and cooling their floatstone cores.
It also makes fires nearly as dangerous as a hydrogen airship.
>>43603001
Yeah. What I really wish I could work out is a decent excuse for antigravity, ideally as a non-propulsive balloon-like lift source - that way you can have your giant metal war-airships, and a wide range of other cool shit. (Up to and including spacecraft, if it's powerful enough.)
But I just can't think of a good enough source of technobabble to justify it. My fringe-science and crackpottery folders only have really stupid shit, or stuff that needs superconductors, high-energy plasma, and other shit outside that tech range.
And I don't really want to go full magic bullshit, although I guess I could always give up entirely and just say "screw it, we're going full pulp, antigravity is based on radium tubes invented by Tesla or some shit"
>>43593914
Sure! Honestly, you didn't need to ask; it's just an idea, not anything I own.
>>43603172
>And I don't really want to go full magic bullshit, although I guess I could always give up entirely and just say "screw it, we're going full pulp, antigravity is based on radium tubes invented by Tesla or some shit"
Yeah. Mad Science is always a possible solution.
Out of curiosity, what system does airship combat best?
>>43579908
>Mostly wondering how others have approached the problem then an end all solution.
Either by simply not explaining it, beyond broad stroke explanations, and only bringing up technical stuff when it's dramatically relevant or doing what you said here
>Alien technology that is easy to duplicate once understood
without the beeing understood part. Fantasy-tech should progress the story and add flavor, not muck it up with gear/smokestack flavored technobabble.
My group consists mostly of engineers, we long ago learned not to look too closely at things, and generally just to ask before trying to go building something potentially game breaking.
>>43604398
pretty much this.
Sure there are people out there who require "hard" sci-fi but there are others who care more for the immediate story/drama than that technology behind it.
>>43603172
youre almost getting into the territory of trying to reinvent the airship.
alternatively you could just say fuck it and make bullets less effective through some atmospheric fuckery (thicker atmosphere) which would allow for thinner armour / skin on your flying ships and also increase the buoyancy of hydrogen/helium/vacuum.
>>43597392
Butthurt cogfop detected.
>>43604825
Steampunk a shit and a dead fad. Like all dead fads the only activity left in it is people bitching about posers doing it wrong. By default that makes Steampunk the most punk of them all.
>>43579908
Just wanted to say that "scavenger world" hasn't been mentioned.
In a scavenger world, advanced technology developed by a civilization (native or alien) centuries or millenia ago has been left behind, which would be very rare. Steampunk would comprise a majority to 99% of the mainstream technology.
Complete the following sentence:
Airships and _______
>>43605799
Propane
>>43605799
Amazons
>>43605799
Armour.
>>43605646
Scavenger worlds that have re-developed somewhat, like pic related, can be pretty cool, though I'm not a huge fan of all scavenging all of the time stuff
>>43604899
Butthurt cogfop confirmed.
>>43605799
>explosions
Incidentally, anyone else really really liked the setting of Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle?
Is was a beautiful world of magi-tek and steampunk and WW1.
>>43579908
Bump.
>>43603001
Actually, it is very effective for lift that is independent of air thickness. Take weather balloons for example. They reach so high into the sky that can only be equaled by rocketry. As for flammability, well, though using flammable gasses, without the right ratio of fuel to oxygen, it won't ignite. In this case, airships are assisted by their size, because any holes would only be considered a drop in the bucket, and without the gasses being at pressure, it is unlikely to transition to an ignitable mix quickly. In fact, a minor increase in an airship's size greatly increases its performance, so in respect to size, your only limit is in resources. The main drawback to airships is, and most likely always will be speed. Airplanes are quick and nimble, like a pack of wolves. An airship is like an elephant, slow, but capable of doing much damage when provoked.
>>43608141
Buoyancy is not independent of air thickness, weather balloons work at high altitude because their mass/displacement ratios are ridiculous, not because balloons in general have equal performance at altitude as at sea level.
>>43608234
So, what would you estimate the average maximum altitude of an airship to be, then?
>>43586597
Brilliant. Consider that all stolen. This could easily serve as the basis for an "airships everywhere" dieselpunk setting; set in a 1920s follow-on to a steampunk late 1800s era with the technology you described. Diesel is much more expensive, of course, but still not very pricey pound for pound - and it would provide much more compact power for mobile applications (i.e. freeing the entire vehicle from the boiler + cold fusion reactor.) This produces the exact combination of tech that you'd need for dieselpunk airships.
>>43608940
Of what mass, of what displacement, of what lifting media, baseline earth atmosphere or no?
Before bottled oxygen was available, German Zepplins would make bombing runs at 20,000 feet, but couldn't stay there for more than about 4 hours without risking crew performance and injury, so the allied counter was to attack them over continental Europe on the way back from their bomb runs in England, once they'd descended, driving Germany to pioneer supplemental oxygen tanks, but the purity was poor, and it made you feel I'll the next day. L-49 once stayed at altitude to avoid fighters because she'd lost two engines, and ascended to almost 25,000 feet when warmed by the morning sun, but they brought her back down as fast as they could.
The American dirigibles carried purified oxygen and so could cruise at 34,000 feet, during the interwar.
>>43609673
With pressurized cabins, if such is possible. Lifting media; seeing as we are going for height, hydrogen would be the best choice. As for Atmosphere, baseline, easier to get an idea of. I would think a rigid airship would be of greater size, so of better use, fabric would most likely be beta-cloth so to be both non-flammable as well as strong. As for the frame, would carbon-fiber be strong enough to withstand the forces applied?
what about diesel-electric? a central diesel generator and electric motors as opposed to individual diesel motors for propulsion? you could save weight that way
>>43611184
That's not the main advantage of diesel-electric power systems - they tend to be even heavier than straight diesel systems, due to the extra stuff and batteries
There are a few advantages - you can have essentially maximum power straight away, you don't have to have big spinning power trains running though your machine, and given that diesel engines are more efficient anyway that can make the power system very efficient - but weight is not an advantage diesel-electric systems have
Bump.
>>43608141
This is a pretty good point - airships only get better with size, with only 3 major problems - speed, getting caught by weather (it didn't help that airships' apparent solidness seemed to make crews a bit over-confident, with several cases where people knew there was bad weather and just feeling that they could take it) and needing increasingly large infrastructure and investments to support them.
Otherwise bigger is better when it comes to airships, but given that you lose a lot more when one crashes they were much more vulnerable to the public.
>>43610516
Carbon composite will be tough enough for dirigible work, and the less weight you spend on structure the more weight you can reserve for payload (armor, luxury appointments, weapons, passengers).
But the higher you go, especially in a rigid airship, the lower the payload you can carry.
>>43614244
so its either high and light or low and loaded?
>>43585849
>no fucking background
It's hard to believe they actually ask money for this shit.
>>43611671
Covetics
>>43614652
Thanks (genuinely, as an engineer I'm finding that fascinating), but what does that have to do with the weight of diesel-electric systems?
>>43614905
Inspired by things like pic related
>>43614274
Pretty much.
>>43579908
I'd go with some floatstone-like rare mineral, craved by all superpowers, which produces an anti-gravity effect when subjected to a certain electrical current, for instance. Not very realistic, but neither are flying battleships which don't fall out of the sky after sustaining minor gunfire.
i want to build a diesel motorcycle like the one using the CAT engine, but i would do a more classic chopper frame, with a deep red paint job and a vanity plate that reads Smaug
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTelPtO6aGg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oIvGrcwTso
>>43579908
"New laws of physics" constitutes magic, so not that.
>>43580026
>lighter but less durable materials than regular steel
Might some derivative of carbon fiber be a good material for such things?
bumping this thread because it's currently the most interesting thread to me on /tg/
>>43616002
Meant something along the lines of "is line or universe but this exists explainable by this science" but I think I got enough to move forward. This thread has given me a lot of ideas.
>>43614244
Yes, but the main asset of an airship is the exact same thing that makes it so weak in a direct combat situation, it is slow moving. In other words, it makes a perfect stable platform for launching or retrieving objects. As for the carbon fiber, I proposed it because it potentially is lighter than aluminium while being much stronger. What would be launched or retrieved, you may ask. Well most satellites are not truly in space, but in the extreme upper atmosphere, so it is possible to reach them, or get close enough to them for magnets to pluck them out of the sky. You could launch them as well, if you had a few rockets on-board your ship, and it would require much less to get them up than if they were on ground level.
>>43616628
>You could launch them as well, if you had a few rockets on-board your ship, and it would require much less to get them up than if they were on ground level
This is incorrect. The vast majority of the difficulty in getting to orbit is in the lateral velocity, not the altitude.
>>43616667
Yes, but wouldn't that be easier if the rocket isn't being launched 90 degrees off of that, and instead focuses all of the energy towards lateral speed?
>>43614905
Six-wheeled cars are my fetish. Even better if it has four wheels up front instead of in the back.
>>43616794
You still have 50 km to climb from the stratosphere to the official edge of the atmosphere, and at the high velocities of orbit you're still going to experience significant atmospheric drag.
You save on fuel, sure, but it's more like needing 9 km/s of delta-V instead of 10, at best. This cuts the size of the rocket to about a third, but one-third of an orbital launch vehicle is still quite large, and now you have to deal with the complications of launching from an unsteady, drifting, flammable platform.
>>43616628
Any amount of atmosphere that will support a buoyancy craft will cause a satellite to burn up at orbital velocity. The altitude record for a weather balloon with a tiny tiny payload is something like 15 miles lower than the lowest orbits that are stable for longer than a week. You aren't going to be plucking satellites from their courses from a zepplin.
Further, increasing altitude provides only marginal savings on fuel to orbit, especially since you're probably going to come up on hard performance limits around 100,000 feet with even the smallest of cargos (current rigid airship altitude record is ~95,000, and that is a remotely operated jobbie that couldn't even carry a man to that altitude, never mind a rocket of useful size).
No, using a zepplin as a rocketry base is fucking retarded. A heavy lift dirigible that serves as a mothership for heavier than air craft (ala Macon) might be useful as a base for midair recovery of sensitive materials (before good digital cameras, spy satellites would periodically eject film that the Airforce and Navy snatched mid air for security reasons), but for launch phase you are just adding a bunch of shit that could go wrong and limiting your overall launch stack weight for no appreciable gain.
>>43616808
>>43617258
I wasn't thinking of plucking full sized satellites from the sky, I was talking about the garbage that is floating up there. Those types of objects have a much lower mass, but a higher speed and even if unable to be scavenged, the forces acting on them would serve to slow them down to allow them to burn up in the atmosphere. This would most likely be profitable in the long run by reducing damage to active satellites. Up there, an object the size of a grain of sand that is able to stay up there can leave impact marks the size of a bullet on the ground. As for the rocketry, if that amount of weight won't work, would using the airships as temporary substitutes for communication satellites work?
>>43617694
You could use lighter than air craft fit telecom features, the Military blimp that broke free this week does that and provides various kinds of sensor coverage.
>>43617694
If there was any space debris orbiting at that altitude, it would have already deorbited by the time I finished typing this.
Space debris is at the same altitude that satellites are at, clustered in the same orbits. Once its orbit actually enters the atmosphere at any point, drag rapidly brings it down.
>>43617400
Dude NSFW
>>43618442
just wish i could find a bigger picture.
So what is your preferred aesthetic? This...
>>43619374
or this?
How would a world like this work with fantasy creatures like elves, goblins, dwarves, etc?
>>43619389
I prefer >>43584993
BEST AESTHETIC
>>43619374
This, though it looks like it can only hold those two aircraft.
>>43619295
Here you go friend
>>43621705
>>43621771
>>43621781
>>43621817
>>43621863
>>43621885
Thinking of six wheeled cars, I'd really love to see a dieselpunk interpretation of FAB 1 - this art for the 2015 show is the closest I've been able to find
>>43579908
Dunno, which category does a world filled with tesla coils that power the entire world through wireless electric network and most of the weaponry is just some form of gauss rifle to mega-tazer that scorches flesh?
>>43609186
People kinda misinterpret the problems surrounding a steam car. It's not that the boiler is any more or less bulky than an internal combustion engine. Steam engines are kinda finnicky when it comes to the oils used to lubricate the pistons which actually generate the torque to push the car along.
There are some serious advantages to a steam car, though, chiefly this: Torque in abundance. There's no need for a gearbox on a steam car because every stroke is adding motion to the vehicle, compared to the every 3rd/4th/5th stroke in the internal combustion engine.
>>43622157
There's also the need to build steam in advance - I know that was an issue with steam trains, at least, you can't just think "I want to go out for a drive right now"
That said, in 1900, 40% of American cars were powered by steam, 38% by electricity, and 22% by petrol, but internal combustion engines got better very quickly (the biggest early boost after the turn of the century being the electric starter)
>>43622250
By the 1920s, steam was pretty easy to generate. You might need to wait a minute or two to start the car, but not more than that. Modern day steam cars would start in about 10-20 seconds. Interestingly, Jay Leno has a really good sort of mini-documentary about one of the last, most advanced steam cars ever built.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUg_ukBwsyo
>>43622281
That makes sense - on a locomotive the system is a few orders of magnitude bigger (and working at higher pressures), so steaming up does take a while, but a car doesn't need anything like as much steam
Also, from what people who work on them say, streamlining makes servicing the engine an even bigger bitch than it already was - diesels may be dirty, but compared to fireboxes and coal they're nothing like as bad
![1388950539917[1].png](https://i.imgur.com/z9AC0lz.png "1388950539917[1].png")
>>43621900
>>43622344
You wouldn't need to make steam from coal these days. Humanity got really, exceptionally good at generating heat in the past ~80 years. A trickier problem would be disposing of damaged lead-acid batteries, since a steam car would have a continuous drain on them. I suppose no more than an ICE car does today, because of all the accoutrements put into a car these days.
>>43622074
How do you stop the tesla network earthing, particularly through any passer-by?
>>43623582
Are Liarsoft's VNs rate as good depictions of alt-Victorian Steam Fantasy settings? Newest one is Gakhthun of the Golden Lightning.
>>43619913
I take it you liked Last Exile?
Are you guys ready for the future?
>>43629255
>>43622157
>Steam engines are kinda finnicky when it comes to the oils used to lubricate the pistons which actually generate the torque to push the car along.
Why are steam engines more finicky about lubricating the pistons than internal combustion engines are? I'd never heard that before.
By the way, would replacing the actual combustion heater with a magic "cold fusion" thermal source actually help? I don't know if the firebox actually contributes to the weight that much relative to the "boiler" and "engine" parts, and I'd assume that boiler size and weight is limited more by the need to withstand high pressure than the constraints of heating with combustion gases.
>>43619374
>>43619389
Neither, I prefer the Crimson Skies/US Navy "drop bays and trapeeze hook+winch" launch/recovery systems.
>>43629255
Mind.. fucking... BLOWN!
>>43629255
>US mail rockets
No, but wasn't this tried in one of the world wars?
>Liner to Europe
happens, most expensive way to do it
>7,000,000 more women works
and then some whether they like it or not.
> Communication via satellite
Bingo
>Accurate weather forecast and control
AHAHA
>60% more disposable income
AHAHAHAHA
>Longer vacations
AHAHAHAHAHAHA
>More holidays
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
>No more air pollution
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
>Low cost video
And beyond, just as misogynist too
>50% more in school
Even more under penalty of law
>No cars downtown
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
>More theater groups
Not sure
>More complex hobbies
OH god yes some hobbies are practically autistic only now.
>More culture centers
Postmodernism says everything is art so yes.
>Increased participation sports
only if you count participation trophies
>More and better home appliances
Solid yes.
>Diagnostic machines
Yes
>Replaceable organs
We're actually getting there
All in all sides hilarious ones pretty good.
>>43630409
>Liner to Europe
Adjusted for inflation, you actually could get a liner ticket for that much, or a little more.
>No cars downtown
This would be ridiculous, but to be fair, some cities do have pedestrianized areas in the city centre.
>No more air pollution
There's still a lot, but it's actually been cut down quite a bit. Or at least we're polluting with some less deadly substances now.
>Accurate weather forecast and control
Weather forecasting is a hell of a lot more reliable than I remember it being when I was younger, though yes, the second part is absurd.
You also missed:
>308 fewer work hours per year
According to a slapdash google search, there are actually less on average.
>Transocean jets to London - 3 hours
Which was pretty much spot on for Concorde, till they scrapped it.
>family helicopter
This one's just dumb though, and the reasons it could never work should have been obvious even back then.
>Automated highways
Self driving cars are coming into existence, so entirely dependant on whether or not they catch on (smart money's on no).
>>43630409
>No more air pollution
>AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Are you kidding? Compared to the 1950s, modern air pollution is astonishingly low. Even the worst areas of America are better off than the typical American city was when that image was made.
>>43580858
because people like fantasy escapism to be cool and fun, its part of games and imagination. If we want practicality in all settings, lets play ant simulator the RPG.
>>43579908
I don't have a single setting, but I usually go the 'high technology without automation" route. People are as scientifically advanced as us, but craftsmen make everything.
>>43593867
If it's straight out of the 30s-50's belches black smoke, rattles like a box of bolts, and growls like an elephant.
Well we have a name for that Genre, that's Diesel Punk son.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DieselPunk
>>43638637
>>43638667
>>43638697
>>43638717
>>43638722
>>43638732
