Updating Navani's work

[Karger]

Just now, Nathrangking said:

Well  then glorious indeed!! This would make things interesting if implemented. (It has been too long since my last reread of WoR! Thank you @Karger for setting me straight!)

More like thank you for making the fused nights miserable.

[+Oltux72]

12 hours ago, Karger said:

• This should probably be made more aerodynamic.  This will hurt the carrying capacity but the speed will be much higher. 

At 5 knots?

12 hours ago, Karger said:

• I am not sure how I feel about a wooden structure.  How much is weight a concern?  Could we replace it with steel?

They have aluminium. And maybe duraluminium.

12 hours ago, Karger said:

• We need some redundancy in propulsion.  Maybe two sets of fabrials in case something happens to one?
• Local maneuvering.  I think she has the right idea with those fans but they need to be more efficient.  The ability to turn the ship fairly quickly in combat will matter.
• Chull power?  They need a better version of propulsion then animal muscle power.  I think for short bursts at least a lot could be done with elevated weights.  Also maybe look in to steam power?  Some kind of accelerationspren?

Use a gimbaled steam engine. Put a joiner and a reverser into the piston. On the upstroke activate the joiner and on the downstroke the reverser.

[ScadrianTank]

One way of adding a bit of redundancy to propulsion would be to use both a set of conjoiners and reversers which would function with a bit of delay. That way, the pair of the chulls would be moving one ship in the same direction while moving opposite directions themselves. This would also allow for one crew to keep pulling the ship while the other changes directions.

34 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

They have aluminium. And maybe duraluminium.

I think that Roshar at the moment is not advanced enough technologically to create an entire structure out of aluminum. I suspect that they don't have a way to even get enough metal. And IIRC there was a WOB saying that it would be hard to soulcast aluminum, but I may be wrong about that.

38 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Use a gimbaled steam engine. Put a joiner and a reverser into the piston. On the upstroke activate the joiner and on the downstroke the reverser.

As before, I'm not sure if this technology even exists on Roshar. This leads me to believe that methods of local propulsion for those types of ships of sufficient power and efficiency would be magical in nature.

Another idea I had was to use a pair of platforms floating on water, in a cistern of sorts, and adjust the vertical position of the main platform by changing the water level in the cistern. While the speed of climbing and descending would decrease, the safety of the crew of the ship would rise as the failure of the mechanism would result in a gradual descent, rather than a sudden crash to the ground. This would also allow for the ship to remain afloat at least at some distance for the ground if the water was drained from the sides of the cistern and not from the bottom, leaving the ship out of reach of regular foes. But this method is also flawed and I struggle to say if it would be better than the current one.

[+Oltux72]

8 minutes ago, ScadrianTank said:

One way of adding a bit of redundancy to propulsion would be to use both a set of conjoiners and reversers which would function with a bit of delay. That way, the pair of the chulls would be moving one ship in the same direction while moving opposite directions themselves. This would also allow for one crew to keep pulling the ship while the other changes directions.

Right. But then you can use a mill to power a chain or belt system. Put the fabrials onto the links of a chain. Span it horizontally as a loop. At the ends of the loop switch between joiners and reversers. Use chulls to move a rotary pole and use cogs to convert between vertical and horizontal movement. In fact you can keep it vertical if you can keep the chain fairly straight.

8 minutes ago, ScadrianTank said:

I think that Roshar at the moment is not advanced enough technologically to create an entire structure out of aluminum. I suspect that they don't have a way to even get enough metal. And IIRC there was a WOB saying that it would be hard to soulcast aluminum, but I may be wrong about that.

Then don't make the whole structure out of metal. Use metal for a frame work.

 

[Karger]

8 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

At 5 knots?

I good sailing ship could manage 8 assuming a good hull design and rigging.

8 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

They have aluminium. And maybe duraluminium.

As a rule aluminum is three times stronger then wood but also three times heavier.  You also definitely have to use duraluminum so the fabrails would work.

7 hours ago, ScadrianTank said:

I think that Roshar at the moment is not advanced enough technologically to create an entire structure out of aluminum. I suspect that they don't have a way to even get enough metal. And IIRC there was a WOB saying that it would be hard to soulcast aluminum, but I may be wrong about that.

Soulcasting.

7 hours ago, ScadrianTank said:

Another idea I had was to use a pair of platforms floating on water, in a cistern of sorts, and adjust the vertical position of the main platform by changing the water level in the cistern. While the speed of climbing and descending would decrease, the safety of the crew of the ship would rise as the failure of the mechanism would result in a gradual descent, rather than a sudden crash to the ground. This would also allow for the ship to remain afloat at least at some distance for the ground if the water was drained from the sides of the cistern and not from the bottom, leaving the ship out of reach of regular foes. But this method is also flawed and I struggle to say if it would be better than the current one.

You could have a fairly fast speed using water pumps.  Worth investigating further.

[+Oltux72]

15 minutes ago, Karger said:

I good sailing ship could manage 8 assuming a good hull design and rigging.

In water, which is orders of magnitude denser and more viscose.

[Karger]

6 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

In water, which is orders of magnitude denser and more viscose.

Yeah so the Fourth Bridge is not moving at anything like its potential speed.

[+Oltux72]

8 minutes ago, Karger said:

Yeah so the Fourth Bridge is not moving at anything like its potential speed.

That depends on how cojoined fabrials work. Apparently they need to be at rest with respect to each other to transmit force. In other words, she is as fast as her chulls can be made to walk. Indeed horses would work better.

[Karger]

1 minute ago, Oltux72 said:

That depends on how cojoined fabrials work. Apparently they need to be at rest with respect to each other to transmit force. In other words, she is as fast as her chulls can be made to walk. Indeed horses would work better.

Or just use gears to multiply the force.

[+Bzhydack]

On 28.07.2020 at 9:56 PM, Karger said:

• This should probably be made more aerodynamic.  This will hurt the carrying capacity but the speed will be much higher. 
• I am not sure how I feel about a wooden structure.  How much is weight a concern?  Could we replace it with steel?
• We need some redundancy in propulsion.  Maybe two sets of fabrials in case something happens to one?
• Local maneuvering.  I think she has the right idea with those fans but they need to be more efficient.  The ability to turn the ship fairly quickly in combat will matter.
• Chull power?  They need a better version of propulsion then animal muscle power.  I think for short bursts at least a lot could be done with elevated weights.  Also maybe look in to steam power?  Some kind of accelerationspren?

1. Adding Wings can overcome lowering carrying capacity, by adding lift. I can also see usage of luckyspren fabrials to lower the weight of machine.

2. Wooden structure is fine. We have many planes made of wood, even Bombers and Fighters during WW2. Steel is too heavy for now, gems can crack under big weight. But Aluminum will be perfect - light and cannot be magicly attacked. Only drawback is price.

3. Yeah, probably.

4&5 They will not have good maneuverability without on-board power. Yes, water power can be good for now, but without engines this cant be autotnmous. I think should be possible to make gem-engines using conjoiners, reversers and aluminum - similar to our electric engines. Of course, this is future.

[Karger]

9 minutes ago, Bzhydack said:

1. Adding Wings can overcome lowering carrying capacity, by adding lift. I can also see usage of luckyspren fabrials to lower the weight of machine.

They are not moving fast enough for lift to be plausible.  5 knots is slightly faster then walking.

[+Bzhydack]

9 minutes ago, Karger said:

They are not moving fast enough for lift to be plausible.  5 knots is slightly faster then walking.

For now. Of course, in next versions speed will increase, so wings will be effective. First plane Wright Brothers was able to fly with around 10km/h speed. 12s, of course, but stil.

[ftl]

The core technology is already there - the ability to disconnect from one moving fabrial and reconnect to another, like what they do with the chulls on the shattered plains when they need to turn them around! That's the key to making this a fully fledged airplane.

Instead of having the chulls walk the whole length of a course, then disconnecting from the chull team and reconnecting after turning chulls around, make the disconnection/reconnection happen mechanically. Then you can make the whole thing be basically a small conveyor belt. Put two fabrials moving back and forth, over a much smaller distance, doing the disconnect/reconnect automatically at the end of the short course. Then you can do the same thing with vertical movement, you don't need to lift a platform all the way up and down urithiru.

You need some power for this engine - to run the conveyor belts, and to do the mechanical connection/disconnection of the paired fabrials, however that would work. You could at this point power it any way you want - put it at a waterwheel on a river or something, like a mill.

...but, we've already heard of heating fabrials. You've got a heating fabrial - just make it hot enough, and you've got the power for a steam engine. After all, heat -> steam -> turning wheel -> moving conveyor belt -> moving ship.

And the last bit of innovation - once the whole thing is self-contained enough, you can put the whole thing directly on the ship that it's powering. It gets a little confusing because you've got the relative motion of the ship and of the fabrial which have to be in opposite directions - but again, "connecting" and "disconnecting" the fabrial and ship let you get forward motion out of this.

[Karger]

41 minutes ago, ftl said:

Then you can make the whole thing be basically a small conveyor belt. Put two fabrials moving back and forth, over a much smaller distance, doing the disconnect/reconnect automatically at the end of the short course. Then you can do the same thing with vertical movement, you don't need to lift a platform all the way up and down urithiru.

I was thinking instead a wheel turned by hydropower.  It passes behind an aluminum bar to stop it from going up and down or left to right and instead goes forward.

[+Oltux72]

14 hours ago, Karger said:

Yeah so the Fourth Bridge is not moving at anything like its potential speed.

I may have to correct myself. The 5 knots is probably average speed. How exactly the speed curve looks like depends on whether you indeed need to stop for the chulls to turn. Yet your main resistance is probably rolling resistance. Looking at Fourth Bridge only as the flying component is a mistake. The next obvious step would be to place the ground part on rails. Then you could run it like a cable car on a loop. In fact 5 knots is quite fast. I suspect that they are already using rails.

[rjl]

Having to keep communicating with Urithiru seems awkward - building on ftl's ideas above could they have the engine onboard?

If all you need is gems being moved with great power over tiny distances - round oval shaped courses with aluminium blocking the wrong angles etc - do it with conveyor belts powered by a steam engine, scale it down and put it inside the ship - though you will need need a source of water for the steam - could maybe soul cast it.

[Isilel]

They need  to invent the luckspren/mandras-powered fabrials for on-board altitude control, then it would even be possible for them to use sails for propulsion, like in Navani's original designs. Would be just the matter of catching beneficial air currents, like the birds that rely mostly on gliding, such as condors, etc. do.

[+Bzhydack]

7 hours ago, ftl said:

Instead of having the chulls walk the whole length of a course, then disconnecting from the chull team and reconnecting after turning chulls around, make the disconnection/reconnection happen mechanically. Then you can make the whole thing be basically a small conveyor belt.

Yeah, but is need to have more gems. Under pressure, gems have tendency to crack. But i also think about conveyor belt. It will have lenght of bridge and lower, returning part will be cover in aluminum pipe. WIth one gear, this construction can be set in any direction, allow to much larger maneuvrability. Only drawback is that this need very large tank of water to sustain mouvment.

Edited July 30, 2020 by Bzhydack

[+Oltux72]

8 hours ago, ftl said:

And the last bit of innovation - once the whole thing is self-contained enough, you can put the whole thing directly on the ship that it's powering. It gets a little confusing because you've got the relative motion of the ship and of the fabrial which have to be in opposite directions - but again, "connecting" and "disconnecting" the fabrial and ship let you get forward motion out of this.

Where is the advantage? Switching the engine on is hard. The speeds need to be matched. That is a nightmare if you have no idea what is happening on the ground.

[+Child of Hodor]

Put fins and a racing stripe on it!

I'm too dumb to contribute much to the fabrials. I'll give suggestions for addressing flammability and aerodynamcis issues that were ID'd in the OP. 

Add a thin layer of less flammable material to cover the wooden exterior in.This make it heavier, but less than soulcasting the whole exterior hull. At least make it so the enemy can't set fire to it with first contact. Make them work for it. 

Aerodynamics

Right now it sounds like a WW2 transport boat where the front drops open on the lower deck.  "The end construction was little more than a large wooden rectangle"; "The Fourth Bridge set down, and the front doors of the bottom level opened to accept passengers. "

 

Narrow front and back to a point as much as possible and put the doors on the sides. I say both front and back because it sounds like the Shattered Plains team sends "forwards" and "backwards" force. Either end could end up being the leading end. Put a covering on top of front and back that flares out like the ship shown below. The cloth canopies they are using also help channel the wind without adding much weight. 

https://images.app.goo.gl/Jy9JzRbTfzgpaHBN7

Edited July 30, 2020 by Child of Hodor

[Karger]

On 7/29/2020 at 5:05 AM, ScadrianTank said:

I think that Roshar at the moment is not advanced enough technologically to create an entire structure out of aluminum

Just make a structure and soulcast it.

43 minutes ago, Child of Hodor said:

Add a thin layer of less flammable material to cover the wooden exterior in.This make it heavier, but less than soulcasting the whole exterior hull. At least make it so the enemy can't set fire to it with first contact. Make them work for it. 

A thin metal coating.  Interesting idea.

[+Oltux72]

On 29/07/2020 at 6:53 PM, Karger said:

Or just use gears to multiply the force.

That is the problem. It will not work. Both parts of the fabrial need to proceed at the same speed.you may use gears between the engine and the fabrial for speed, but increasing force without speed is useless.

[Karger]

10 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

That is the problem. It will not work. Both parts of the fabrial need to proceed at the same speed.you may use gears between the engine and the fabrial for speed,

That is what I was talking about.

10 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

but increasing force without speed is useless.

That makes no sense(unless you alter the mass they are proportional).

Edited July 30, 2020 by Karger

[Blackwarder]

14 hours ago, ftl said:

The core technology is already there - the ability to disconnect from one moving fabrial and reconnect to another, like what they do with the chulls on the shattered plains when they need to turn them around! That's the key to making this a fully fledged airplane.

Instead of having the chulls walk the whole length of a course, then disconnecting from the chull team and reconnecting after turning chulls around, make the disconnection/reconnection happen mechanically. Then you can make the whole thing be basically a small conveyor belt. Put two fabrials moving back and forth, over a much smaller distance, doing the disconnect/reconnect automatically at the end of the short course. Then you can do the same thing with vertical movement, you don't need to lift a platform all the way up and down urithiru.

You need some power for this engine - to run the conveyor belts, and to do the mechanical connection/disconnection of the paired fabrials, however that would work. You could at this point power it any way you want - put it at a waterwheel on a river or something, like a mill.

...but, we've already heard of heating fabrials. You've got a heating fabrial - just make it hot enough, and you've got the power for a steam engine. After all, heat -> steam -> turning wheel -> moving conveyor belt -> moving ship.

And the last bit of innovation - once the whole thing is self-contained enough, you can put the whole thing directly on the ship that it's powering. It gets a little confusing because you've got the relative motion of the ship and of the fabrial which have to be in opposite directions - but again, "connecting" and "disconnecting" the fabrial and ship let you get forward motion out of this.

 

9 hours ago, rjl said:

Having to keep communicating with Urithiru seems awkward - building on ftl's ideas above could they have the engine onboard?

If all you need is gems being moved with great power over tiny distances - round oval shaped courses with aluminium blocking the wrong angles etc - do it with conveyor belts powered by a steam engine, scale it down and put it inside the ship - though you will need need a source of water for the steam - could maybe soul cast it.

That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking. 
 

And since distance between the gemstones effecrs how much force you can transfer having the engine as close to the ship is paramount.

Modern Roshar can creat steel in  large quantities, I think  it safe to assume that they know about watermills and gears.

 

so build this thing, have a resident Windrunner keep atmosphere and launch into space to invade Braize 

[+Hoiditthroughthegrapevine]

Here's an idea for troop immobilization, say you have a dangerous prisoner, like for instance, the man previously known as Moash, and you want him to be unable to move from a specific spot. Use this little beauty, a locking shackle conjoined to a 2 ton block of soulcast granite. Or why not just conjoin the shackle with the base of Urithiru.