What if there were no micro-electronics?

[BytePro]

...
Why do you need a computer to land the moon mission (I'm not talking about the Apollo but a hypothetical moon mission)?

You don't.

To address that question literally - Apollo 11's Lunar Module was manually landed when Armstrong took over control due to problems with the computer! Armstrong also correctly eyeballed range using landmarks (as the computer calculated vs radar values were reporting different, IIRC).

Also, an unmanned test (Apollo 5? first LM test, IIRC) ground control had to disable the on-board computer and finish the test remotely without the use of the onboard system (as it faulted probably due to bad human inputs related to test specific fuel aspects).

IC based onboard computers were not required, but rather were simply chosen over other options. Apollo was no miracle of chance technologies. Basically, politicians supported it and people managed to get it done before politicians could kill it, is all.

 

[aramis]

Micro-Vacuum-Tube systems also exist... photolithography is useable to create them.

a quick search turns up several interesting bits...

A micro vacuum tube patent (google patent archive)
Science Magazine pop-sci type article on them
1995 IEEE paper on micro-vacuum tubes

And then, there's the whole issue of soviet avionics using miniaturized, even photoresistively etched vacuum tubes.... Vacuum tubes are also capable of analogue computation (since the vacuum tube gate can be set for any variation of "low" as well as "high" and "no" flow... whereas solid state transistors tend to be on or off...)

 

[BytePro]

Yeah, its interesting to speculate if semi-conductor transistors hadn't been developed - or, more likely, given the wide-spread pursuit of a solution, the technology being withheld too long for incremental development to make things as pervasive as they are today due to patent squatting or security concerns!

I can see MEMS and NEMS evolved systems performing analog, electromechanical processing and bypassing the whole 'digital revolution'...

 

[BillDowns]

Just a minor point, but semi-conductor components do not have to be digital. Analog semi-conductors are still in use in your car for voltage regulation

There are also other applications for analog semi-conductors, such as phase-locked loops, various elements of power supply controls, signal processing, etc.

 

[BytePro]

Yeah, didn't mean to imply that analog semi-conductors don't exist ... nor that analog ICs are not common today. Analog CPUs, on the other hand, while historically available, are quite rare. Earlier mentioned analog in terms of the OPs 'no microelectronics' in that a single, discrete, macro, analog device can potentially function in place of a great many digital micro-components. Historically, macro-analog mechanical systems have excelled at solving certain real world processing problems (such as integration, simultaneous solvers, spacial and temporal transforms and filters) that really challenge digital systems. Thus providing a potential to 'even' the playing field given the other advantages of digital ICs.

Take this into a MEMS, MEOMS, and NEMS dominated world in which transistors were not prevalent, and analog may have taken hold for general purpose processing, not just niche applications.

 

[DangerousThing]

Take this into a MEMS, MEOMS, and NEMS dominated world in which transistors were not prevalent, and analog may have taken hold for general purpose processing, not just niche applications.

MEMS and friends are sufficiently different from microelectronics that they should work with what I'm thinking of. And they'll occur a few TLs later, so the PCs will have to work harder until they get thee.

That you!

 

[epicenter00]

MEMS and friends are sufficiently different from microelectronics that they should work with what I'm thinking of. And they'll occur a few TLs later, so the PCs will have to work harder until they get thee.

I'm curious if using MEMS is not really something of a betrayal of your original concept in spirit if not in word. MEMS are not "ICs" but it seems that the technology shares a lot of the same infrastructure (micro-scale manufacturing in particular) and precursors. It seems that a society that can make MEMS would also realize the potential for ICs and make them as well, if not before, they'd "discover" the IC when they seriously started looking at MEMS.

 

[DangerousThing]

Just a minor point, but semi-conductor components do not have to be digital. Analog semi-conductors are still in use in your car for voltage regulation

There are also other applications for analog semi-conductors, such as phase-locked loops, various elements of power supply controls, signal processing, etc.

Not to mention audio system amplifiers.

Actually, *all* semiconductors are analog. To use them digitally the voltages are chosen carefully and also the semiconductors are made to have a good fit for those voltages.

 

[DangerousThing]

I'm curious if using MEMS is not really something of a betrayal of your original concept in spirit if not in word. MEMS are not "ICs" but it seems that the technology shares a lot of the same infrastructure (micro-scale manufacturing in particular) and precursors. It seems that a society that can make MEMS would also realize the potential for ICs and make them as well, if not before, they'd "discover" the IC when they seriously started looking at MEMS.

IMTU, microelectronics became impossible. Nobody knows what happened, but the Empire fell when this technology became impossible, because almost everything depended on it in some way.

Some TL 15 tech would still work but not all of it. Actually, at TL 15 it would have been possible to create ships that had no microelectronics, but nobody saw the need.

Think of it like an *extremely* high TL virus embedded in the universe itself. I have precedent IMTU for something like this (a life-form called the Dreen, which are composed of state-machines running at this level).

 

[BytePro]

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Actually, *all* semiconductors are analog. To use them digitally the voltages are chosen carefully and also the semiconductors are made to have a good fit for those voltages.

Why its interesting to speculate what would have evolved had transistor semi-conductors not taken hold. (They would probably have been developed, regardless.)

I'm curious if using MEMS is not really something of a betrayal of your original concept in spirit if not in word. MEMS are not "ICs" but it seems that the technology shares a lot of the same infrastructure (micro-scale manufacturing in particular) and precursors. It seems that a society that can make MEMS would also realize the potential for ICs and make them as well, if not before, they'd "discover" the IC when they seriously started looking at MEMS.

I tend to agree - hence didn't present this directly as a solution for the OP, though he seems to have a solution workable for himself, so its good he can make use of it.

Technically, MEMS and such are sold on ICs today, and even if the electrical dependence was removed (MMS, NMS, MOMS, NOMS), packaging such nano/micro mechanical systems working together into a single discrete package would constitute an IC, IMO.

BTW: a Google Image search for MEMS, MOEMS, NEMS, etc. yields lots of nice RPG background.

 

[DangerousThing]

I tend to agree - hence didn't present this directly as a solution for the OP, though he seems to have a solution workable for himself, so its good he can make use of it.

Large computers and stuff are for the TL of the game, which is up to TL 12.

The MEMS and friends gives me an upgrade path for TL 13+.

I figure that jump drives need supercomputers to create the jump solutions. A ground based computer can do this, but without the high density parallel super-computers I think that jump ships will only work for trips between fixed locations.

Most exploration ships will use a slower drive called the hyper-sail which requires more man-power with some computational help.

All IMTU of course.

Right now the computation is being provided by miniaturized vacuum tubes and people who are natural computers themselves.

 

[SanDragon]

Mentats?!?

 

[DangerousThing]

Mentats?!?

Ayup.

If you don't have the tech to build a digital computer you go with what you've got. In the SF I first started reading, Computer was a job description rather than a device. Read The Spacehounds of IPC someday, by EE Doc Smith. I prefer it to his Lensman stuff.

 

[SanDragon]

Anything may be better than his Lensmen stuff.

A science-fiction everman just rubbed me wrong.

 

[DangerousThing]

Anything may be better than his Lensmen stuff.

A science-fiction everman just rubbed me wrong.

The hero was the opposite of an "everyman." It was noted by many people in the book that he was the best of the best, even before it was revealed that he was the culmination of an alien breeding project to produce the very best human male (he married the end result of the other breeding project, the perfect human female).

My problem with the series is that the humans seemed to go up an order of magnitude in power with each book. Towards the end they were teleporting planets as weapons across galaxies.

 

[Carlobrand]

He may have intended to say, "overman," or rather "ubermensch". That pretty well fits with what you're describing.