Retro-Tech: Uncommon solutions to problems on 11,000 worlds

[Whipsnade]

Gents,

One of the biggest dichotomies between Traveller's rules and Traveller's official setting has always been technology levels. Given the setting's emphasis on free trade and lack of a "prime directive", the idea that a truly Stone Age society living a parsec away from a star-faring one is ludicrous. We can propose explanations for the many low tech worlds in the setting and we can modify the meaning of tech level too, but that is not what this thread is all about.

In this thread I'd like to discuss "retro-tech" or "backwards-looking tech", those techniques and devices that a "low-tech" societies can employ thanks to knowledge developed by hi-tech ones.

Examples of this we've discussed in the past include "optical telegraph networks", ideas about sanitation, railways without steam engines, crystal radio sets, "kitchen sink" plastics and polymers, and mechanical computing among others.

I begin the discussion in my next post by presenting a technology and hopefully answering the what, where, and why questions regarding it's use.


Regards,
Bill

 

[Whipsnade]

Flettner Rotors

Flettner rotors depend in the Magnus Effect to produce thrust. Their performance is comparable to normal sails and vessels using rotors can sail must closer to the wind than vessels with normal sails. The rotors do require a power supply in order to rotate, but the power needed to revolve a few large cylinders is minimal when compared to that needed for screws or paddle wheels.

IMTU Flettner rotor ships are common on Winston/Querion in the Spinward Marches. While that planet isn't exactly low-tech, it's TL is 6, what it does lack is labor.

The various nations on the planet don't have the bodies to support a fossil fuel network while also not having the technology to either automate those networks or replace fossil fuels with other power sources. While fossil fuels aren't available for ocean-going shipping, conventional sails and their manpower requirements preclude that manner of propulsion also. Thus enter the Flettner rotor.

Ships on Winston have a small biomass fueled engine which can provide the tens of kilowatts needed to revolve the rotors. This way large ships can move goods across Winston's oceans with no need for dozens of sail handlers, boiler tenders, oil riggers, refinery workers, or coal miners.


Regards,
Bill

 

[leo knight]

Wing-in-ground effect craft: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSeZ1eQzDvI

A one-seater can fly 100kph (60mph) with a 13hp engine. Any place with relatively calm water, like the Baltic or Mediterranean, would be a good candidate. I'm guessing any planet with internal combustion engines (TL5?) could use this.

Zeppelins!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWpwZn0pKl4

Enjoy!

 

[ThunderChilde]

If quality lenses can be made and polished, solar heating can power a number of small scale manufacturing and refining technologies. Small scale, individual craftsman level, but hey, that has low tech written all over it. Between that and simplicities like water and wind mills, your off and running on powering even large maufacturing facilities.

By the by Whipsnade, some rigging patterns, like schooner rigs or Lanteen, require quite small crews. No widjammers mind you, but a lot of trade can be carried in schooners even if its only the coastal trade routes.

 

[sabredog]

Wing-in-ground effect craft: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSeZ1eQzDvI

A one-seater can fly 100kph (60mph) with a 13hp engine. Any place with relatively calm water, like the Baltic or Mediterranean, would be a good candidate. I'm guessing any planet with internal combustion engines (TL5?) could use this.

Zeppelins!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWpwZn0pKl4

Enjoy!

I use both ekranoplans and zeppelins.

The ekranoplans are great on a waterworld I have called Nikolas that has only a small string of islands near the equator. Since the "planes" can travel on land and water both they are great for fast transport of passengers and freight to and from the starport which is built on an artificial island on the opposite side of the world. This is because its a rich resorty kind of place and no one wants their billion credit view spoiled by someone's dirty rustbucket Free Trader lurching across their sky with a naked lady painted on the nose that would offend delicate sensibilities.

Plus I think that as limited in their capabilities turned out to be (at least for what the Soviets wanted to do with them) they were one of the coolest things to come off the cover of Mechanix Illustrated that actually worked.

And zeppelins are just the best for the same reasons, so long as you're not in a hurry. Especially for the really big mass lifter types that haul tons of freight across one world in particular and are fully automated except for the grease monkey who is onboard for union reasons and to give the player hijackers someone to point their guns at.

The ones IMTU tend to look like variations on these Magnus Effect jobs:

http://www.magenn.com/about.php

 

[Fovean]

Gents,

One of the biggest dichotomies between Traveller's rules and Traveller's official setting has always been technology levels. Given the setting's emphasis on free trade and lack of a "prime directive", the idea that a truly Stone Age society living a parsec away from a star-faring one is ludicrous.END QUOTE

This aspect for me has been one of Traveller's most interesting concepts... I agree that it can be ludicrous, but I'm exploring the idea that the Stone Age society (unless interdicted) actually takes on whatever advanced tech it can reasonably handle, while offering what it can to interstellar society at large.

I've been noodling for nearly an hour trying to think of pop culture examples, but what I keep coming back to is a real-life one. I was fortunate enough to visit a national reserve on the Sudan/Ethiopia border. The anti-poacher guards lived in straw huts (TL3 IMTU) while patrolling in unreliable old pick-up trucks (TL5 IMTU) but brandishing AK-47s (TL6 IMTU) but they watched analog broadcast TV powered by solar panels connected to car batteries (TL8 IMTU) in those same straw huts.

I'm sure you all have discussed that sort of world ad infinitum here, but as ludicrous as it is to see a TL3 world in a jump-1 main bracketed by TL9-B worlds, isn't it just as ludicrous (sans interdiction) to figure that the poor little TL3 world hasn't adopted some of the angels' technology?

So while a 'truly Stone Age society' may remain so, without 'official' protections or native rejection of such, I see no reason for a low TL to mean that the world, in all its endeavors, only exists at that low TL.

Apologies if I'm dragging the thread off course, but this is really fascinating to me. Both as an exercise in pondering as well as a possible route to more interesting gaming.

.

 

[boomslang]

Wing-in-ground effect craft: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSeZ1eQzDvI

A one-seater can fly 100kph (60mph) with a 13hp engine. Any place with relatively calm water, like the Baltic or Mediterranean, would be a good candidate. I'm guessing any planet with internal combustion engines (TL5?) could use this.

Here are some more photos and concept art -- enough to put Gerry Anderson to shame:

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2007/05/ekranoplans-showcase.html

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2009/06/ekranoplans-showcase-part-2.html

Some of them are big enough to mount bay weapons (missiles, not guns -- recoil issues occur otherwise)...

 

[aramis]

Fovean:

Not 100 miles from me is a village that, for most intents, is TL2. No running water, no electricity, 30 people. Isolationist Old Believers. Don't even use cash. 300 miles from me are 5 or 6 villages that's about TL4-5.

 

[leo knight]

Thanks for the ekranoplan links. Gerry Anderson indeed!

I always considered tech level differences as opportunities for trade, or exploitation. And , players being players, adventure! In my old homebrewed setting, I had a TL5 planet within 2 parsecs of higher tech worlds. It didn't have enough people for any real industrial base. The planet's only real export were gemstones, dug from the desert mostly by hand (I had just read an article about Coober Pedy, the Australian opal mining town). The ruling class kept the miners in relative poverty through a "company store" setup, and sold the gems to finance rare offworld luxuries like reliable air conditioning and refrigerators. So the miners had clunky biomass diesel pickup trucks, shotguns and radios, while the overseers had (expensive, imported) air rafts, laser rifles, ice in their drinks and trivee sets.

Another thought is retrofitting higher tech that has broken down. I'm thinking of how the Cubans have dealt with the embargo, keeping 50s vintage cars alive with spit and baling wire. Here's a link: http://www.danheller.com/cuba-cars.html

 

[leo knight]

Aramis, that's wild. Anytime I get a low tech world, I ask myself, is this by accident, or on purpose? It may have started for me with the old Star Trek episode "This Side of Paradise", with a colony that wanted to get back to nature and reject technology. Also, when I was growing up (60s-70s), a lot of people were trying to "get back to the land".

I had to google "old believers". Are these the Russian Orthodox group?

Reminds me of the Amish, too.

 

[Whipsnade]

Apologies if I'm dragging the thread off course, but this is really fascinating to me. Both as an exercise in pondering as well as a possible route to more interesting gaming.

Fovean,

You haven't dragged the thread too far off course, in fact your real world example of "mixed technology" neatly illustrates what is the Hobby's general consensus regarding the meaning if technology levels in the official setting.

It is generally believed that, absent any external interdictions or internal cultural prohibitions regarding technology, a world's low technology rating in the official setting is an indication of poverty more than anything else. The world in question is too poor to import, maintain, or construct larger quantities of higher tech equipment.

I only mentioned the subject in passing in my original post because discussion about the meaning of TL within the setting are something that has been "done to death".

...isn't it just as ludicrous (sans interdiction) to figure that the poor little TL3 world hasn't adopted some of the angels' technology?

And that is precisely what this thread is all about.

Knowledge is "half the battle". Once a technology is invented, replicating it and it's effects are easier and - here's the funny part - can sometimes be done at a lower technology level than it's invention required.

That's my goal in this thread. Not the "goofy" or "road less traveled" tech like zeppelins or PARWIG, but higher tech concepts that lower tech worlds can make good use of. Here are another couple of examples:

"Optical telegraphs" or semaphore towers - In the real world both France and Britain had systems of flag waving towers connecting important points. The system in France was especially extensive and wasn't completely dismantled until the late 1840s. Terry Pratchett updates the idea in his Discworld novels. Instead of using arms or flags requiring laborious repositioning, Pratchett's "clacks" are precociously digital. The "clacks" send messages by opening and closing shutters to reveal large white and black panels. A world too poor, either in money, materials, or in labor, to manufacture the millions of kilometers an electrical telegraph system requires, could still have long distance communications with an "optical" telegraph system.

Railways - You don't need steam engines for railroads. We've been using the idea of carts on tracks since we built the Pyramids if not before. You can lay down and maintain tracks far much easier than building roads, Rome built and maintained her famous roads only because she had millions of slaves. Beasts of burden can pull the carts too, just as horses used to draw urban trolleys. The rails needn't be iron or steel either, wood or stone can work, albeit at an increased maintenance price.

Crystal or passive radios - You don't need power to pick up a radio signal and this page will explain why. Very simply components, including homemade wire and scrounged graphite, can pick up signals. You can even use the flame of a gas lamp as a speaker. A poor world could still link far flung settlements via radio passing on news, weather reports, educational lectures, and entertainment in much the same way radio is still used in Alaska and the Canadian bush.

I hope these examples give everyone a better idea of what I'm after in this thread.


Regards,
Bill

 

[Lycanorukke]

A lot would depend on how low tech "planet Podunk" is to limit what they could do with prior knowledge. Even on good old Terra you had people like Hero and DaVinci who designed things which have increidble applications at the time if people knew (in hindsight) what they could be used for.

Take Heros 'steam ball' (the aeolipile) has incredible applications. Make one and connect it to a motive source (wooden gears and primitive clutch) and you have a self propelled water craft or vehicle. Combine the steam ball to a simple array of magnets and copper wire and you have a generator. Link that up to a "Bagdahd battery" bank and you have a reasonable power source, and with a simple carbon filament lamp you have lighting and heating. And this is all Tech 1-2 stuff (at best).

Another is basic "programmable" machines - Hero built these and programmed them by wooden pegs on a drum. Combine this with a windmill and the locals have a automated machine which grinds and bags their grain saving time and labour.

Even a simple barometer built out of an animal skin, a bucket and a wooden pointer could be immensely useful to lo-techers to alert them of severe rainstorms.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Bill;

Admittedly this has been a big bugaboo of mine about the whole Traveller system since my first year into it.

I justified the tech-levels as such; there simply wasn't enough time and resources for all the private enterprise within the Imperium and elsewhere to hit every nook and cranny in explored space. Hence, you'd have a type B or C starport on a world that had a population of big harry 18th century tech level natives, who came to the starport to trade their pelts for a 57th TV or hunting rifle. Eventually SuSAG or Instellarms or a VP in charge of some other Megacorp development team would open shop on such a place. It just hadn't happened yet.

There's also examples like the Ahmish and Meninites, or even Bhutan which purposefully isolates itself from the rest of the world. The hinterlands of Khasakstan, Mongolia, or even American Indian reservations (before gambling and other infusions of wealth) might be other examples.

I guess my other real problem is with the notion of licensing technological levels to certain worlds. I think that's actually written somewhere in one of the supplements, or mentioned off handedly in one of the adventures (someone correct me please if I'm wrong). I have a hard time believing that the Imperium would say to one world, "Okay, you guys can use ACRs with M203 nade launchers, have clean water, use ICE cars, and electricity, while you guys on World-X will have a better Starport, but can only use spears for hunting..." It was one of those "huh" moments.

But this also gets to my other pet peeve in regards to the starport classification from the Starport E thread in the Lone Star. Would there really be a map showing what "tech levels" each world had?

I, of course, write all this, and continue to write on this BBS in the hopes that a Traveller gaming group will congeal in my area someday.....

 

[Whipsnade]

Take Heros 'steam ball' (the aeolipile) has incredible applications.

Lycanorukke,

Bollucks.

You've touched upon a pet peeve of mine and Hero's aeolipile is the poster child for it.

Make one and connect it to a motive source (wooden gears and primitive clutch) and you have a self propelled water craft or vehicle.

You've nothing of the sort because you're completely ignoring many basic engineering issues that relegate the device to category of "toy".

You're going to be heating the ball so that steam squirts out the nozzles? Tell us how you're going to get feed water into the sphere while it revolving then. And how about those nozzles? Steam is erosive. The longer the nozzles are in use the more they erode, the more they erode the less reaction force is produced, and the less reaction produced the less efficient the "engine". I'm not even going to touch upon the lack of a firebox, how you'll produce the fuel you'll need, thermal efficiencies, and hundreds of other things.

The aeolipile, along with many of Hero's and Leonardo's devices, only look impressive to people with no mechanical or engineering background. They're toys, nothing more.

Another is basic "programmable" machines...

Oddly enough, analog computing is one of the retro-tech ideas I'm hoping this thread will discuss.

Even a simple barometer built out of an animal skin, a bucket and a wooden pointer could be immensely useful to lo-techers to alert them of severe rainstorms.

Yes and in fact it's precisely the type of High Tech Knowledge, Low Tech Application device I started this thread to discuss.


Regards,
Bill

 

[Whipsnade]

Admittedly this has been a big bugaboo of mine about the whole Traveller system since my first year into it.

BG,

And it's also precisely what I didn't want this thread to discuss.

The meaning of tech level in the official setting as opposed to the meaning of tech level in the rules is something that has been discussed in Traveller circles for thirty years. I've already mentioned the consensus solution, tech level in the setting is a measure of poverty, and I don't want to discuss the topic any further because it off-topic for this thread.

Tech level threads ramble on for hundreds of posts over weeks as everyone repeats the same things we've all heard thousands of times before. I don't want that. I want to discuss what sort of things people with low-tech capabilities can do with high-tech knowledge.

While they'll know about the germ theory of disease, they won't be able to make TL9+ tailored vaccines. While they know about radio, they won't be building Wi-Fi networks. While they know about genetics, they won't be geneering. While they know about thermodynamics, they won't be building gas turbines.

This topic is just aching to be explored. We've spent decades talking about what people know and when they know it as opposed to what people can do with that knowledge. A TL2 world in the official setting isn't going to look like Augustus' Rome. The people of that world will know much more, it's what they can do with that knowledge that should interest us.

Let's mull over how a TL4 world applies TL15 knowledge to everyday living and stop talking about why a TL4 world can exist in a TL15 empire. We've already figured the latter out, let's start exploring the former.


Regards,
Bill

 

[rancke]

A TL2 world in the official setting isn't going to look like Augustus' Rome.

But, but, but... what about that illustration in GT:Sword Worlds showing an Athenian (= Participating) Democracy complete with people in ancient Greek outfits gathering around a fire among classicalesque ruins with pillars and stuff?



Hans

 

[jappel]

The first thing that comes to mind takes a leaf from the Firefly episode "Jaynestown": a planet with naturally occurring deposits of clay or mud that when treated properly yield strong ceramics, which are then used in many applications in which metals, composites or plastics are used today. These might not be perfect replacements, but conceivably could require a much smaller economic and/or technological base to produce in useful quantities.

How about alternate forms of power generation, like wave-driven or thermocouple generators? Not as sexy or potent as a fusion generator, but perhaps sufficient for a low-density population.

Putting the two together I thought about ceramic conductors, but it looks like those require some fairly high-tech manufacturing. Though it might be plausible enough to posit a world with suitable source material - clay infused with some novel compounds that when treated and fired result in conductive material.

Piezoelectricity seems like another candidate. The Conrad Stargard books certainly contain a number of howlers, but ISTR him using quartz piezoelectric "spark plugs" for an engine.

 

[Max]

I must say Whipsnade that you really got my mind boiling.

First thoughts lead me to materials science and from there to chemistry. Materials is going be a big slow down, if you cannot produce copper wire (no copper?) then even a crystal radio is going to be tough. However it's only at the very fringes of chemistry in the RW where you need more than tech 1 to actually do the chemistry once you know what it is you are doing, provided you have the feedstock and aren't worried about safety. (Fire, pot and waterproof sheet gives you fractional distillation which gives you many reasonably 'pure' chemicals.) But if you really, really needed to make wire for a radio you can get small amounts of iron from human blood.

Which leads me to the thought that just about anything can be made on a one-of basis at low tech levels if it is worth the investment. Once the knowledge is there you can find a way to make most things if you are willing to pay the price, which can be pretty high, so there would have to be a utility versus cost equation in deciding what "high tech" items to make. Tech level would seem to represent what is easily available more than an absolute limit on what it is possible to make. While a WIG craft could be made at tech 3-4, would it be worth the cost to make them or perhaps it would be worthwhile to make a few for special cases?

I'll have to give more thought before coming up with examples of retro tech but I think the emphasis should on usefulness. Once you know the basic principals then it should be possible to kludge together something to do the job if you really need it done. If I had the resources of the Roman Empire at my disposal I could produce a laser, it would be as large as a small house and it would be far less useful as a weapon than a bronze dagger and less efficient as a cutting tool (on a cost/benefit basis) than wooden sticks, but it could be done.

 

[Lycanorukke]

You've touched upon a pet peeve of mine and Hero's aeolipile is the poster child for it.

I would disagree with some of the points, but as it is a peeve I wont press my luck.

Oddly enough, analog computing is one of the retro-tech ideas I'm hoping this thread will discuss.

May I ask for clarification - do you means things like the Antikithera mechansim (for navigation), Babbages mechanical computer (calculaton), or the Z3 (relays instead of transistors) or even clockwork mechanisms (derivative of fancy european clock automations)?

Yes and in fact it's precisely the type of High Tech Knowledge, Low Tech Application device I started this thread to discuss.

Ah, my apologies I misunderstood - you want a low tech solution to a problem using theories known by high tech knowledge. Not reverse engineering a high tech machine to low tech.

Radiation sensor - two bits of light foil hanging from a common wire in a tin. Ionizing radiation builds up a charge on the wire outside and the metal plates repel each other. If they do so - get away. (swiped from the old 'duck and cover' book)

Refridgeration - a insulated box with the cooling pipes leading to a simple radiator array in a nearby river. The water flow cools the working fluid (water) and cools the box - probaly not to freezing but keeps it cool and constant. Insulation is grass or other material. If they are slightly higher tech they could use ammonia or ether as a working fluid with wind powered compressors.

Communications - single or adjacent buildings have a 'tin cans and wire' style intercom. Jailors could listen into prison cells, execs could 'page' their secretaries, etc. An expansion over a small area (village size) could use 'speaking tubes' instead (the guard post yells into the tube to 'HQ' for help).

Air flow - A 'squeeze box' air pump made out of leather and wood to pump air into mines, act as a bellows for a forge, 'air conditioning', or a very simple vac pump for the aforemention refridgerators when hooked to a venturi. Depending on size could be powered by water wheel, windmill, or muscle power.

 

[leo knight]

I see what you're getting at, but the Cuisinart in my head keeps turning it around into "road-less-travelled" tech, or cast-offs or cheap products from high-tech worlds co-opted by low-tech worlds.

A few ideas from our world:

Cargo containers (probably lots of them lying around near trade routes):
http://webecoist.com/2009/04/05/15-awesome-ways-to-reuse-shipping-containers/

Steel drums, or other re-use of manufactured materials:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steelpan#Origins

Shrink wrap, or other plastic films (got the idea when I drove by a boat dealer in December): http://therealdeal.com/miami/articles/foreclosures-could-put-houses-in-plastic-mike-enos-fast-wrap

Sorry if that's not what you're looking for. But my mind is like a gumball machine: turn the knob, you don't know what will come out!