Re: Steam engine/Helm

Well, there was talk of Gnomish ships powered by giant hamsters walking in a
cylinder?

So 2 giant hamsters = X? horsepower?

As far a boiler, if your travels are not too far from the sun, say inside
the orbit of Mars kinda thing, you could use solar collectors to focus
sunlight on your boiler.

Better yet, use a Sterling engine. This thing has been around in one form or
another since the 1600's. You can use coal or better kerosene when the sun
is not available or strong enough or want a boost in speed.

In the flow, I'd crank up a double wall metal cylinder past my air envelop
with a pump to run water or better yet mineral oil back to my engine. Have a
spark device to ignite the flow, that creates the heat required to run the
engine.

I can get silly and say put one on each side of your ship and use a
butterfly to open and close on the front of the cylinder to get extra thrust
on each bang cycle:)

Eventually, some bright boy will turn the booms holding the cylinders into
wings..



"Van Arsdell's clever toy belongs to a diverse class of heat engines called
air engines, or, more commonly, Sterling engines, after a Scots clergyman,
Robert Sterling, who filed the first patent for the type in 1816. Actually,
rudimentary Sterling engines existed before Sterling, going back to the late
1600's; but Sterling added a refinement that he called an 'economizer'. It
is now called a 'regenerator', and it increases the engine's yield of work
for a given input of heat increases, in other words, what we call its
'efficiency'. A regenerator is now a standard part of every Sterling engine
design."

It runs without noise or vibration and is truly an environmentally friendly
device. When one end is heated and the other kept cool, useful work can be
obtained through a rotating shaft. It is a closed machine with no intake or
exhaust which results in very quiet operation. Anything that gives off heat
can be used to run a Sterling engine. Some common methods are burning coal,
wood, straw, gasoline, kerosene, alcohol, propane, natural gas, methane and
so on. But combustion is not required, only heat is required, or more
accurately, a temperature difference between the hot and cold sides. This
allows Sterling engines to run on solar energy, geothermal energy, or even
on the surplus heat from industrial processes including cooling water from a
nuclear power plant. It competed with steam engines of that time, and was
even sold by Sears Roebuck to pump household water in the 1920s. Sterling
engines are used today in much of the "undeveloped" world.

Look up solar powered sterling engine on Google.

Clint

-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion list for the Spelljammer campaign setting
[mailto:SPELLJAMMER-L@??????.???????.com] On Behalf Of Dreamer
Sent: July 25, 2005 1:02 PM
To: SPELLJAMMER-L@??????.???????.com
Subject: Re: [SPELLJAMMER] Steam engine/Helm

In <URL:news:local.spelljam> on Mon 25 Jul, Scratch wrote:
> Does anyone have stats for anything that resembles an early steam
> engine adjusted for spelljamming? I'm putting together a steam tech /
> high magic sphere and any help I could get with this would be appreciated.

Sounds like fun!


> If there isn't any one have any suggestions on how to go about
> designing one?

You might like to think about in terms of how large a steam engine would be
needed to move a ship of that size on water. Then there is the question of
how sophisticated the engine is at wringing the energy out of the steam, and
hence indirectly the fuel - some of the later steam engines were very
impressive in this respect.


> How would one deal with the waste generated by burning coal? That sort
> of thing would foul an atmosphere in no time.

Putting your funnnel outside your atmosphere envelope, so the smoke goes out
into the vacuum of space is one idea, as is a system for converting as much
of the steam as possible back into water so that it can be reused.

With a bit of ingenuity, it should be possible to use some of the energy
from the steam engine, to break down foul air into air. An "air
regenerator". But, the fact that you are burning something using up air, to
get your steam, is by strict science a definite problem.

If this is fantasy/magical steam-tech, you could gloss over the details of
combustion, and say that as long as the "air regenerator" stays in working
order, the steam engine is not

considered to foul the air.


> How to convert mechanical
> energy into spelljamming energy or is all energy magical in nature?

Spelljamming drives seem to operate on the principle that you do some sort
of "work" which might move a normal ship along the water, and this moves it
through space. You could have an "etheric turbine" if you wanted, which
spins up a more than three dimensional gyroscopic mechanism, to convert the
mechanical energy into spelljamming energy, or something else which you feel
suits the style of the steam-tech, like Cavorite paddlewheels on the side,
or mithral screws at the back. Maybe big fans for vertical movement?


> What
> happens when the helm gets hit, boiler explosion?

You need to worry about fuel bunker, that holds the coal, water tank that
replaces the water lost as steam, the furnace that heats the water into
steam, maybe various high pressure steam lines, the boiler, the actual
mechanics of the steam engine which turns the steam into mechanical motion,
and the spelljamming engine. A little chart listing these, with results, and
how difficult it is to repair, would probably do.

If the boiler is built right, boiler explosions should be pretty uncommon,
but hitting the boiler so it leaks steam would be pretty bad. Armouring the
mechanism looks like a good idea - making it at least AC-2 shouldn't be too
difficult, nor should burying most of it inside the ship.

If your funnel is taking your smoke outside your atmosphere envelope, hits
on that should be considered, as it might get blocked, or holed, so your
atmosphere starts getting fouled.


> I imagine manning the
> helm would consist of a wheel to control side to side movements and a
> series of levers to control the other axis's. Any ideas?

That would do, or you could have the wheel twist in various ways to get the
different directions. Maybe thinking about the controls on a submarine would
help?

You might want to look up steam ships via Google, and see how much coal took
a ship how far, to get some idea about fuel.
Burning the bits of your wooden ship for fuel means you are getting pretty
desperate.

Also, taking a furnace into the phlogiston...

If your furnace was very carefully designed, with baffles and such,
effectively sealed, you might be able to use the explosive nature of the
phlogiston to help power your ship!

For example: assume fuel consumpion falls to a tenth, but if the furnace is
not in perfect condition when you enter the phlogiston, a saving throw
against explosion needs to be made, and then made again on a regular basis
(daily?), or there will be a catastrophic explosion.

Preferably the engineer will do a thorough set of tests before entering the
phlogiston, to prove the furnace is safe. Diving straignt into the Flow out
of combat might be ... bad.

Alternatively, a smaller "phlogiston engine" might be used, which uses
chemicals (like powerful acids and other dangerous stuff) without fire, to
provide energy while in the Flow.


--
Dreamer
dreamer@??????.?????.??.uk
http://www.romsys.demon.co.uk/

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