So, Veeky Forums...

Oh absolutely, blast furnaces are the main source of low-medium carbon steel and they need coke. You could use natural gas instead of coke but we of course don't have that on this world.

As long as you can plant crops, you are fine. You need carbon, that's all. So even if it's cheaper IRL to use petroleum, plastic made the "long way" from farming would increease the price about 5-6 times, depending on how well organised the production line would be.
Which is still fucking cheap, BUT using oil is cheaper.

OP asked about tech equal to our.
And this shit is possible on efficient, industrial scale for what now? 50 years? 60?

Of course you could. And in fact, it's CHEAPER this way to both build the mill and operate it.

The Pacific Islands are never colonized and Islam grows to dominate the West as they now continue to control the vital trade routes between East and West.

>Imagine a human history where the sails were never invented
That's literally impossible, so your "mind exercise" is just plain retardation of the lowest kind.

Fuck off

>Planes I suppose can be dealt with energy crops (and I'd suppose less low cost flights), but... I dunno, ships are efficient, but they do guzzle much gas, don't they?
Planes are way more energy-hungry than ships. Ships can actually run with SAILS, believe it or not.
Planes would probably be the first thing to go.

Otherwise, green energy could theoretically power almost everything Earth does nowadays.

Sails are one of the most widespread and independent inventions throughout entire fucking humankind. It's like asking to imagine humans never using bows or hominids never manage to master fire.

>That's literally impossible
>Maybe there are no winds in the lower part of the atmosphere or something.
smug_anime_girl.jpg

I'm saying the EAF is not a traditional smelter as in taking the iron ore and spitting out steel, it's designed to smelt steel scrap and turn it into something you want. Furthermore, EAFs are used for high-carbon steel, low-mediums certainly are doable but the cost is still high.

Plus, EAFs are infamous energy hogs, you need some powerful energy sources to run one. Then again, current oxygen furnaces run on natural gas, which is another fossil fuel.

>Maybe there are no winds in the lower part of the atmosphere
>I have no idea about basic physics

>ITT: Barely educated idiots prove they have no idea about modern technology, renevable energy or just about anything
I guess this is one of those threads where armchair specialists gather and try to imagine how world around them works rather than check any sources.

No wonder dolts like Lindybeige get steady supply of watchers.

Actually, I have no idea about basic physics, enlighten me, oh great user.

>I think MOST plastics can be derived from energy crops. It will probably less cheap, though.
>As long as you can plant crops, you are fine. You need carbon, that's all.

Gotcha. I don't know anything about it, so I was curious. Thanks anons.

>5-6 times.

Seems legit. A small, not really life-changing change, but it's a difference in lifestyle that can be colourful.

Yeah, but planes generally transport things with a different weight/cost ratio. And people.
So I'd guess you'd fly less, it would be pretty costly, and high-speed trains would be the norm (probably REALLY high speed, like that project in Japan for a 600+ kmph line), but it's not like planes wouldn't exist.

Maybe they would even think about microwaves from satellites. I read somewhere that theoretically it would be possible to have them follow an object moving, so you could have "solar planes" that way.

>fwiw, in military terms it's not really a problem 'cause the greater setting means FTL travel and so factions warring on the planet itself are backed up by spaceships and satellite should shit hit the fan, "air superiority" is actually "orbital superiority" - but per se the planet is tecnologically less advanced (to be more precise, on "primitive" planets colonists stay consciously on lesser tech levels than they could, for various reasons. With time this changes)

To be fair electricity is not really the problem here. Hydropower and wind is aplenty (the planet itself works of different tectonics, and steep plateaus are pretty normal; seasons are longer, which probably means more wind). Hell, considering that nuclear itself is pretty accepted and more mature (fast breeders and probably thorium), power is probably cheaper. It's really a problem of some bottleneck like energy storage, heat for furnace and plastics, though at least the third is most surely a non-problem.

But I'm digressing, I am not here to bore you with the setting per se.

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Wind comes from difference of temperature of the air. By sole fact you have a planet spinning around own axis and having day/night cycle, you MUST have wind, unless you have absolutely no atmosphere.

So fucking get back to school, because that's what elementry kids are taught when starting Geo.

>I wouldn't want them to be nuclear-powered.
You go full nuclear or don't go at all.

And expanding on this - having different COLOUR of the ground is enough to cause movement of the air, because this spot is darker/lighter and thus collects sun energy on different pace, giving it away at different rate.
Then comes geological structures
Man-made changes (for all it's worth, cities are treated as large rock formations by climatologists)

And so on and forth.

You CAN'T have no wind. It's fucking impossible. You would have to get rid of entire atmosphere first to not have wind.

If you are familiar with Sunless Sea and/or Fallen London, their whole excuse for not having wind, "because it's Hollow Earth setting!" makes no fucking sense. You can have draft in any given underground complex, all it takes is minor temperature difference.

What if magic/super high (essentially magic) tech?

Or, to outright quote The Other Guys:
"But computers... What if, one day, they were in charge?"

Your question makes no fucking sense

I've realised the quote alone doesn't bring the whole absurdity of the question:
youtube.com/watch?v=H7HP2vSBHqk

>>but... I dunno, ships are efficient, but they do guzzle much gas, don't they? I wouldn't want them to be nuclear-powered.

Sails, user.
Or wind turbines hooked up to electric motors, if you want to be fancy about it.

Humongous autonomous freighters plying the trade winds, deftly avoiding calms with satellite imagery and analysis. Other sail ships fly the Jolly Roger and prey on these freighters, dropping motorboats powered by ammonia turbines to chase and board these tame behemoths. Battle groups centered around a nuclear powered fleet supply ship hunt these pirates, added by activists with homemade solar-powered reconnaissance drones.

Are you retarded?
>ships are efficient, but they do guzzle much gas, don't they
Yes, you fucking are

Water transport is by far the most efficient one, and an truck engine mounted on a barge can move cargo ten times bigger than the truck on land. That's even without specialised ship engines, that have very low RPM, because they don't fucking need more.
Not to mention you can use diesel engine running on fucking sunflower oil, without even tweaking anything in the engine construction other than filters

>I wouldn't want them to be nuclear-powered.
Why not? Nuclear power is excellent, efficient, and clean.

>and clean
Until you are faced with the problem of storage.

Literally not an issue if you have a desert and/or are not a retard.

Additionally, the lack of fossil fuels in this world could have spurred development of fusion energy.

>Additionally, the lack of fossil fuels in this world could have spurred development of fusion energy.
I think it would be the opposite. Lacking easy energy, we wouldn't have become such an energy-hungry civilization so quickly. Our achievements would have been much greater on the less energy reliant technologies instead.

>Water-unit reactor
>Storage problem
You can literally dump it into the ocean, you dolt. The reactor size and emission vs ocean size means virtually no effect.
Especially if you pick some ocean trench as dumping ground

Alternatively, the lack of easy energy would have caused us to explore more avenues of energy, rather than investing such a huge portion of infrastructure to fossil power.

>I am stupid dolt
>I also know nothing about energy production
>Or renevable energy sources
user, for crying out loud, you can get energy from just about anything ELSE than fossil fuels with so much ease it's amazing. The only reason why are using fossil fuels is because they are cheaper on the short run, and short run is all the big business cares.
And by cheaper, we are talking barely 20% cheaper than, say, biofuel, with pretty much the same properties as engine fuel.

I think he's more trying to say that without fossil fuels, it would have been harder to jumpstart the industrial revolution. If it isn't cheap enough, then people would keep doing what they'd been doing for a longer period of time. Not to say we'd never get there, but 20% cheaper adds up in the long run.

Which is retarded to say and think. Industrial Revolution, the real deal (because you know there were three of those, right?), was entirely powered by wood, turned into charcoal. The 2nd one was all about hot blast, to cut down use of fuel. The third one decided that it would be better to use otherwise useless petroleum as fuel (so it was cheap) than use farmland of limited, early 20th century agriculture as a source for oil for engines.

In short - it doesn't fucking matter.
And about the 20% cheap - SHORT run. On the long run, you can save fuckload, going full biofuel. So while in term of decade you are making a 20% "profit" using petroleum, every year after that is a profit on using biofuel.
And that's assuming you are going from a fucking scratch with designing and building everything.

Welcome to the [Current Year], where we are still using petroleum just because. It's not even a conspiracy, that's just plain stupidity.

Calm yo tits, user.

The problem here would be that for shipping you'd need quite big fuel quantities anywyay. Yeah, biofuel, I get it, but I have the feeling that it could be trickier than it is, in regard to trains, considering cheap power already in the economy of the planet. In my planet, population would be considerably less than Earth's, but still..

Actually, is it TOTALLY unthinkable to have electric ships? No, seriously. I heard some idea for boron storage for projects like solar farms in the Sahara...

Because container ships are the most non-hassle transport method, probably. With a nuclear ship you'd have much hassle: I dunno, say three nuclear techies per ship. Port infrastructure would be even worse.

It's not impossible, it seems a problem though.

I guess maybe they would start with nuclear megaships, oddly enough, because of bigger initial investment anyway.

Just to add up - you know diesel engine was designed to run on vegetable oil, right? Well, maybe not vegetable, but peanut oil to be specific.
And as already pointed out, you can pour fucking frying oil inside and it will go, just remember to replace filters more often.

I'm sorry an oil tycoon raped your mother and killed your father, user.

May you some day find peace and a rest from your triggering.

It wouldn't pose much problems, since you could make biofuels, biosourced polymeres and make the roads in concrete rather than asphalt.

Wouldn't say, there's 3 of them in my valley

OK guys I have one

Imagine a world... Where op is not a fag.

What would that world look like?

>for shipping you'd need quite big fuel quantities anywyay
You are a fucking moron and should feel ashamed about it.
To cross 10k nautical miles (Earth's equator has 20k) at pretty quick pace of 18 knots you need roughtly 38 m3 of fuel.
And that's using fucking WW2 technology. That's the fucking range of Type VII D U-boot, unit not exactly know for being large.

Electric ships require ABSURD amount of energy to spin the turbines, unless you go full nuclear.

Then there is the bullshit about "nuclear power being a hassle". You literally put the reactor in, fuel it and are done for next 10-20 years, depending on reactor type. Then just fucking refuel it.

Reading your post is literal cringe. A fucking moron, an obnoxious cretine, who has no fucking clue about what he talks about, but keeps posting his pretentious "let's asume physics and chemistry don't work the way they do" bullshit and then having the bloody audacity to tell others to calm down.
Your stupidity and sheer lack of ANY fucking knowledge about the subject you talk about is simply impossible to ignore or remain calm.

They could theoretically create biodiesel fuel from crops if they manage to bring enough supplies to get the production started.

That being said being unable to produce plastics would probably be a huge issue in a modern society

A better fucking place.
Assuming this is OP, I'm fucking speechless one can be so fucking uneducated and rather than getting at least some knowledge, posts stupid threads and even worse posts in the net.

... which you can create from the biofuel you've created, at pretty good rate.
So it's a non-issue, assuming you are not as stupid as OP and not just send down random strangers on the hypothetical planet.

>That being said being unable to produce plastics would probably be a huge issue in a modern society
Most consumer (read: non-critical) plastics can be made from starch. Plus in most case they can be substituted for aluminium or cardboard antway.

So I guess you think nuclear powered submarines don't require specific knowledge and maintenance, that they're "simple" as diesel-powered ones.

Stay triggered. Thanks to the other anons, the thread was good before this guy.

>... which you can create from the biofuel you've created
I don't think you can make polymers from ethanol except for polyethylene.

Half of the posts in this thread are mine. The non-asking ones.

And nice knowing you are going to colonise empty, alien planets, sending down Joe Average and Miles Mediocre, with no training, no know-how, and not even FUCKING MANUALS to consult. not to mention proper gear, tools or just about anything.

Fucking neck yourself already.

You need carbon.
Assuming you don't have coal and charcoal is not an option, biofuel is your next best bet.
With GREATLY decreased efficiency, but still possible to do on industrial scale, so... yeah, go figure.

Besides, you can use natural rubber.

Not even him, but if you are seriously talking about civilisation on par with our tech-wise, then building and maintaining a ship outfitted with nuclear propulsion is what any bigger military shipyard can do. And if it's an ice-breaker, then even civilian ones can help.
If we are talking submarines, it's harder to build the submarine itself, than design nuclear reactor for it or maintain it. It's really that simple. It might shock you, but average graduate with Masters in Physics is perfectly capable of making a nuclear reactor, assuming you provide him with materials.

So I hardly see how this is a hassle, if we are to evaluate an effort of entire civilisation here.

It's not a matter of needing carbon or not, it's a matter of having the correct chemical functions in the right places.

Also, I stand corrected since you could also do PVC from bioethanol and salt.

My point being, the lack of plastics is totally a non-issue except for the added cost. If anything, this planet will have less plastics and thus recycling and waste disposal would be less of a hassle.

Point taken. My main issue is how you can just go "the long way" to get plastics if you really, really need to, changing one polymer to another, not to say it's a good thing to do or something you should do.

>you'll never live a comfy life of ethanol farmer on OP's planet
>you'll never live on a planet where oil-based endocrinian disruptors don't exist
>you'll never see nuclear-powered freight ships sail away in the sunset

The last one had a project for this.
But since it was late 60s, the costs were too high.

Chinks were thinking about it, but then realised they can just register their freights in Carribbean, as they have even lower standards than Chinks, thus cutting costs elsewhere.

Besides, nuclear freighter is kind of pointless, unless you suddenly have a demand for fast transportation of really huge guantities of something.
Which never happens in bulk trade.

But China's main military problem is that it can't get its troops close to the US in time to accomplish anything.

Did I say it was impossible? I said I'm not sure if is what economic costraints will suggest.

Hell, take the icebreakers you mentioned: 140 crew. A container ship has perhaps 12, I think.

So I am considering nuclear-powered ships (the problem is cheap transport, not technology. I mean, it even is an agricoltural planet: as ins, it exports agricoltural goods. It not like those spaceships run on the power of love) over biofuel ones, but I still think it's kinda tricky to assume they would use more or less like we rely on our container ship.

I'm still thinking that the most elegant solution is HUGE nuke ships. Local shipments could be trickier, but I wouldn't dismiss electric coastal ships as the norm, after the population grows.

Truth to be told, I toyed with the idea of landmasses pretty much contiguous to each other. It would be a good planet to be a train enthusiast, that's for sure.

>Besides, nuclear freighter is kind of pointless, unless you suddenly have a demand for fast transportation of really huge guantities of something.
You could probably scale the reactor down and it would fit but your ship wouldn't get accepted in normal harbours for safety reasons anyway.

The fuck you are even talking about?
Do you even know what a freighter is?

It's not about reactor size (they fit submarines, you know). It's about cost-to-profit ratio. Installing one cuts out fuel costs considerably, BUT freighters don't use that much fuel in the first place (at least not from the point of economy and not relative values). The other benefit is that you can move at least twice as fast as on regular propulsion and in case of freighters maybe even three times as fast... but what for? You are transporting bulk amount of product X and said product can easily stay on ship for entire month or even few. It's not like you need to transport that coal NOW or move those cars NOW.
Thus the benefits of nuclear propulsion for freighter, while significant, makes no economical sense.

Joesville, 500 inhabitants, has probably a train line to ship away its production to Asimov City, where the goods are loaded on a nuke freighter to get to the Jules Verne mass driver and off-planet

Yep, the other user was right - you have absolutely no clue about the subject of nautical engineering.
And here is a clue - don't use arguments like "I'm think". That's not an argument. That's an assumption. Or opinion, depending on exact wording.

Of course. Still, intercontinental trade is a given.

>they most probably use a bigass Lofstoom loop or two

Now that I think of it, microwaves from satellites to ships could be an interesting solution.

>microwaves from satellites to ships could be an interesting solution.
Interesting - maybe
Sensible - absolutely not
Economical - maybe it's time to stop obsessing yourself with electrical engines and their (non-existing) efficiency for long, continous and laborous work, user?

Why not?

...

Because at the very worse fuel (here biofuel) on this planet would cost 2 to 5 times as much as fossile fuels cost on earth, not enough to warrant such a display of bad energy yields.

I think you have no sense of cost and profitability, not to mention efficiency.
If you can have a farmland producing, say, linen, which you can then use as fibres and source of oil, which you can turn into biofuel and the alternative is sending entire flotilla of satelites on the orbit to power your ships (which require complicated electrical propulsion based on energy they can't gather themselves and need specific shape of desc to be used in the first place, complicating cargo storage), you think anyone would even consider the utterly pointless satellite deal?

Not to mention you need to first somehow SET those satellites on the orbit. To quote a great person:
I have often been asked: if we have traveled between the stars, why can we not launch the simplest of orbital probes? These fools fail to understand the difficulty of finding the appropriate materials on this Planet, of developing adequate power supplies, and creating the infrastructure necessary to support such an effort.

I see, no argument.

In this case, no fuel would be required. We're talking about satellites that would convert solar radiation to microwaves. Simple solar panels and some antennas.

In any case here we're talking about a spacefaring colony, you wouldn't use biofuel for rockets even if the colony was isolated, if that's the point. Rocket nowdays use LOX.

>In this case, no fuel would be required.
Only a massive array of satellites made of precious and rare metals, pretty much for nothing since fuel for ships wouldn't be that expensive.

Are you purposefully stupid?
Or is this genuine?

>Let's send satellites!
>Even if we don't have enough infrastructure to power our sea-going vessels!
Have you ever heard about logistics, you idiot? Or infrastructure? Or production base?
It's like you are living in some sort of a bubble, where there chains of actions and reactions don't exist and all effects are separated with efforts.

Are really, really shit.

Any large scale power would be concentrated solar thermal.

>Are really, really shit.
user, you at least know what year it is?
We are no longer in the 70s

And this is one of those technologies that increases efficiency on steady, yearly basis, so panels builds ten years ago are already technologically dated and can be replaced with shit twice as good.

Let me guess - biofuel is a scam, right?

>I wouldn't want them to be nuclear-powered.
Uranium is far less damaging on the environment.

Also Thorium reactors are a thing.
Their waste is safe after 400 years, and their fuel needs far less processing.
Also the plants are inherently safer (which is saying something, Uranium plants are super safe).

But you need Uranium's waste to make nukes, so fuck funding Thorium research.

>Let me guess - biofuel is a scam, right?
Very broadly speaking, yes.

If nothing else, it's gregariously energy inefficient.
It's only viable because of we subsidize it so heavily.
Which is a weird thing to do, since the aren't a major export.

Ask Brazilians how they feel about running entire country on scam. But it will be just faster if you kill yourself already.

Seriously, it's almost fucking 2017 and there are still idiots like you.

>we
Who is we, motherfucker?

Also
>Biofuel
>Inefficient
Do you even know what biofuel is, you moron?

I'm not sure about fuel economy, basically. Energy crops are pretty terrible in relation to land use: sugarcane has 1.5 2/m^2 and that's being optimistic My planet is gonna have I dunno, half a billion/one billion people tops, so land use is not THAT much of a problem... still, I dunno. Considering that you can safely assume a cost of 20 $/kg (equivalent) for putting shit into orbit with the infrastructure I envision, it's worth considering.

Nuclear IS probably more realistic, I guess, and I have no qualms about biofuel per se, but I like to consider the alternatives.

I realized that: hell, aside from electric, when the planet is more settled, they probably use thorium as much as much as fusion (it's not even a planet; it's a satellite of a Jovian planet) for power on land*.
he problem of nuclear ships is that you can have more failures. So, yeah, they're gonna have that, but some consideration is needed, methinks.

*=actually, they have also aquatic cities, but that's not important.

>And this is one of those technologies that increases efficiency on steady, yearly basis
Consumer-grade photovoltaic technology is on a plateau until someone can figure how to make ZnO nanowire diodes reliably and cheap. Until then you are stuck with silicon in the 20-40% energy yield range and you can't still have power at night.

Unless you use cadmium but so long for ecology.

1.5 w/m^2.

>Energy crops are pretty terrible in relation to land use
I'm not sure if the thread is still on, but let's try...
Here it is: Please stop being such a plebian, repeating like a sheep bullshit Republicans fed to public in the 80s, because oil lobby felt endangered, rather than investing in the biofuel market.
Especially since technology "slightly" improved for last 30 years.

>you can't still have power at night.
What are storage units?

>Who is we, motherfucker?
Any country making biofuel. Which is most countries.
The UN tried to get everyone to subsidize it, or something?

>Do you even know what biofuel is,
Yes.
>you moron?
Processing biomass into fuel takes more energy than the fuel contains.
That is, by definition, inefficient.

It's not pointless (see batteries) but it's not a power source.
It's power storage at best.

Which, among other things, makes it irrelevant when discussing power sources.

Lithium ion storage units are 15 years of lifetime tops, and extremely polluting to make, and storing energy by pumping water in hydro power plants requires you to flood whole valleys.

Everything else is under 60% yield.

My data is actually pretty legit. Of course everything has to be put in perspective: it's a pretty terrible land use if you compare it to, say, fotovoltaic panels.
(which are juuuust a tiny bit more expensive, on the other hand, I know. So, I dunno, I tend to think maybe 30-50% of naval shipping would use that.)

Lad, on earth, with fossile fuels everywhere biofuel is just as cheap as standard gas. On the other hand the photovoltaic market requires huge subsidies not to crash.

The fuck is your problem with this whole electric engine on ships?!
Some sort of obsession or what? For ships you need engines with low RPM. Something that electric engines are horrible at, while taking a lot of power.

Remove the absurdly hight protective tarrif US Congress set on the imported units and it's doing just fine next year.
Because you are aware there is a steep tarrif on photovoltaic units in States to "protect home producers", only that barely anyone is producing?

With massive protectionism in Brasil, they sure are.

>Processing biomass into fuel takes more energy than the fuel contains
You are officially retarded.
Biofuel is fucking ethanol. Most basic alcohol you can destill from any plant containing starch.
Biofuel is literally high-proof booze.

And you are acting like it was a fucking rocket science and the efficiency was below 10%.
Which is ironic, because if you compare cost of building an oil rafinery and entire infrastructure requires to get gas in the end with building industrial alcohol stills, well lad, you are fucked.
And even if you ignore that, it takes to be a complete moron who never checked data and knows absolutely nothing on the subject to say with a straight face it takes more energy to destill booze than to refine petrol, since they use exact same process, you unbelivable faggot, since both are about destilling.
And to destill petrol-based fuel, you need temperature almost three times as high as for destilling alcohol.

Electricity from photovoltaic panels is about twice as expensive as electricity from nuclear power plants, while being less convenient and requiring an insane amount of land use.

Also I don't give a single shit about the US policies.

>protectionism in Brasil
They don't subsidise the fuel market for past 20 years, you idiot.
But sure, let's pretend the green energy is all just scam.

What next? Windmills are gonna sap wind from Earth?

>Also I don't give a single shit about the US policies.
YOu should. Because as much as we both would wish otherwise, they are one of the bigger markets on this planet and single decision there can completely change entire branches of industry and services.