Quote:
Originally Posted by Rupert
There doesn't seem to be a whole lot on the net, but I found a 1912 Case Steam Tractor rated at 75 hp and weighing 24,000 obs empty. That's on the order of 0.005 KW/kg, dry.
I found another, a Burrel from 1903 with a nominal rating of 8HP, weighing 11,400 kg loaded. That's around 0.0005 KW/kg, but nominal horsepower had little relationship to actual output by then, which looks like it was about 5 times nominal for that class of engine, so say 0.0025 KW/kg.
http://www.paxmanhistory.org.uk/paxmanTE.htm suggests about the same.
They were not weight efficient, that's for sure. |
Okay, so they'd definitely be for rich farmers who still weren't quite rich enough to afford magical Elemental Furnaces, which
start at 0.005 kW/kg, but don't need any fuel.
That being said, how much of the absolutely massive tonnage of these things has to be made from
high-quality steel, that requires TL6+ industrial steel infrastructure to make in large quantities and how much of the total weight can you get away with steel that's economical to manufacture at TL4-5 emerging industrial steel infrastructure?*
*That is, the people who designed them are TL7, the overseers, foremen and technicians are TL6-7 and many of the more skilled workers are TL5+ in the appropriate skills even if their general TL is one lower, but there might not be all the absolutely huge furnaces and other machines that you expect to see at TL6+, but instead lower-tech workarounds until they've had time to construct all the infrastructure they need.