coal
- Thread starter parmasson
- Start date
Andrew Boulton
The Adminator
And the prize for the most random question goes to...
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Raw material for the hydrocarbon industry?
Possible products include:
polymers/plastics
dyes
drugs
carbon fibre
carbon nanotubes (which in turn suggest some interesting products)
synthetic diamond
Possible products include:
polymers/plastics
dyes
drugs
carbon fibre
carbon nanotubes (which in turn suggest some interesting products)
synthetic diamond
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Why are penguins black and white?
archhealer
SOC-12
What, there's no naughty children in the third imperium? No snowmen in need of eyes and mouths? Sheesh.
Fritz_Brown
Super Moderator
Because noone had invented color film when they were discovered, duh. And, paints didn't do well in the Antarctic!
Andrew Boulton
The Adminator
Why are penguins black and white? </font>[/QUOTE]The licence is cheaper.
(Oh God, I'm going to have to explain that now...)
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Fritz_Brown
Super Moderator
I think you could also use it as a base for concocting plastics and such - anything that needs carbon as a base. Using advanced materials engineering, you can do almost anything, but its still better to have a base element close to what you want to end with.
Edit: Doh! Sigg said that 2 months ago! I only read as far back up the thread as the penguin jokes....
Thanks, Andy, for reminding me of those jokes, and putting a smile on my face. 
end edit
Edit: Doh! Sigg said that 2 months ago! I only read as far back up the thread as the penguin jokes....
end edit
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Pickles
Guest
Of course, you need worlds with a reasonably long history of life for there to be any coal in the first place. Not a problem for many OTU worlds, but it could conceivably increase the value of coal massively if it is an uncommon resource in the universe.
The Hinterworlds Rambler
SOC-14 5K
As an element to Carbon Fiber material, maybe. But as a fuel source, it would be far better to bombard the planet from orbit. Coal is some nasty stuff. Few are nostalgic for the Coal chute days. And Shoveling.
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Actually Bromgrev that may not be a requirement. Anthraxolite is apparently an abiogenic coal. In fact there seems to be a resurgence in the debate over the biogenic or abiogenic origin of all "fossil" fuel types.
The way it stands now with what little I know, and the scientists seem to argue equally well for both, I'd allow abiogenic fuels as well as biogenic.
The way it stands now with what little I know, and the scientists seem to argue equally well for both, I'd allow abiogenic fuels as well as biogenic.
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Pickles
Guest
Enlightened worlds may even make the simple burning of fossil fuels illegal, although future tech could probably capture (and use) all the harmful left-overs. If it's scarce, it would be far too valuable in chemical industries to be wasted that way.
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
You mean like on present day Earth? Where we have no other sources* but seem intent on burning it all up to move one person around in several tons of steel for no purpose while nobody is figuring out how we're going to replace all the vital products made of plastics when the resource is gone.
* vaguely i recall some work on artificially cooked up hydrocarbons, very energy wasteful but perhaps with cheap fusion power...
No, I don't think the future in Travller will be any different, except in the expectation that the next star system will have all we need so we don't need to conserve the resources here since shipping is cheap.
Andrew Boulton
The Adminator
"Anthraxolite is apparently an abiogenic coal."
That's easy for you to say...
Anthraxolite? Is that like anthrax without the sugar?
I read an interesting article recently. If we ever get blasted back to the stone age, we're buggered. Most fiction assumes we'd drag ourselves back up without too much trouble, but in fact it would be very hard because we've used up all the easily-accessible metals and fossil fuels.
That's easy for you to say...
Anthraxolite? Is that like anthrax without the sugar?
I read an interesting article recently. If we ever get blasted back to the stone age, we're buggered. Most fiction assumes we'd drag ourselves back up without too much trouble, but in fact it would be very hard because we've used up all the easily-accessible metals and fossil fuels.
^Add to this that many new engineers don’t know how to design off of the computer (at least here in the US). My father-in-law complains about this occasionally. Before anyone gets their knickers in a twist the implication is not that modern engineers are stupid but that many current technologies are based on other technologies and skills that are not easily reproducible.
AB how about trash dumps? Lots of good stuff in there considering that the population would have to fall back to pre industrial revolution levels.
AB how about trash dumps? Lots of good stuff in there considering that the population would have to fall back to pre industrial revolution levels.
epicenter00
SOC-13
I've heard this particular arguement over and over again, and I've believed it for various points in my life (when you play Twilight: 2000 a lot, you run into this particular topic a lot more than the average person). However, I think in many ways this would be countered by exploiting marginal resource beds. A rebuilding society, at least in the early stages, is not going to need the vast quantities of resources that modern Western society requires. I think exploitation of trash dumps, reworking existing metals, and marginal resource bed exploitation would be enough to reach a critical mass to start exploitation of "deep mines" and such.
For instance, we don't really think of places like Greece or middle/southern Italy as strong areas for iron production, but historically, they yielded enough iron and such to make weapons and tools. Nobody mines in these places today because the density of iron ore isn't enough - there's other places where it's a lot easier to exploit, but that doesn't mean the iron there just vanishes like some Sid Meier videogame. There's still quite a bit there and it can still be exploited. It's just not enough warrant the kind of mining in scale that modern mining requires to turn a profit, but certainly enough to exploit if the desire and need was there and the needs were not too demanding.
Andrew Boulton
The Adminator
Oh, we could get up to a new iron age easily enough, but an industrial revolution would be tricky. Not impossible, but much harder.
Brings up an interesting point. If we know it has been done before, surely we can find out how to do it again. Don't remember who wrote the story, but in the SiFi world there is a short story about a future society re-building Earth after some man-made disaster wipes out civilization. The kicker is after they build the starship, the main research technician makes a remark to the effect of: "We knew it could be done. See here is the Technical manual for the Starship Enterprise...."
