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Old 01-10-2020, 06:57 PM   #51
Anthony
 
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Default Re: High/ultra tech sights/accessories on muzzle-loaders

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Originally Posted by Agemegos View Post
I envision ontogenically engineered pseudo-plants
Possible original reason for the tech: improved nitrogen fixing plants for fertilizer. There's a reason fertilizer plants explode.
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Old 01-10-2020, 07:04 PM   #52
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Default Re: High/ultra tech sights/accessories on muzzle-loaders

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The thing that can be made readily with TL5 tools and methods and is useful for sharpshooters is a bipod. That gives automatic bracing for a prone shooter; they aren't useful to standing shooters in close formation, because they'd need legs 4-5 feet long, rather than about a foot, and those would get in the way terribly.
I have been given to understand that prone shooting in battle wasn't usually practical until the introduction of breech-loading rifles, because it is awkward and difficult to reload a muzzle-loader while prone.
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Old 01-10-2020, 07:10 PM   #53
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Default Re: High/ultra tech sights/accessories on muzzle-loaders

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Possible original reason for the tech: improved nitrogen fixing plants for fertilizer. There's a reason fertilizer plants explode.
Possibly, but I think if you had that technology it would be more straightforward to have every crop plant fix its own nitrogen, and to economise on transport and handling.
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Old 01-10-2020, 07:40 PM   #54
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Default Re: High/ultra tech sights/accessories on muzzle-loaders

Plants do not fix nitrogen, it is symbiotic bacteria called diazotrophs that fix nitrogen (such as found in the root nodules of legumes). If you want to enrich soil, you would genetically engineer diazotrophs to be more productive or so associate with a greater range of plants. For example, genetically engineering diazotrophs to attach to hemp, and you will have a fast growing, durable, economically valuable, and legal crop (at least in the developed world) that also functions as green manure.
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Old 01-10-2020, 07:43 PM   #55
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Default Re: High/ultra tech sights/accessories on muzzle-loaders

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Originally Posted by Agemegos View Post
I envision ontogenically engineered pseudo-plants …
Possible original reason for the tech: improved nitrogen fixing plants for fertilizer. There's a reason fertilizer plants explode.
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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
Plants do not fix nitrogen
Ammonia plants carrying out the Haber-Bosch process do.

Anabaena also.
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it is symbiotic bacteria called diazotrophs that fix nitrogen
Diazotroph is a polyphyletic category, not a taxon. Some diazotrophs are not bacteria but archaea.

The plantation crops under discussion in this thread are not really plantae but self-assembling solar-powered nanotech chemical engineering factories. They can do whatever their designers want, provided that it is possible to molecular biology.
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Old 01-10-2020, 09:07 PM   #56
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Default Re: High/ultra tech sights/accessories on muzzle-loaders

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I envision ontogenically engineered pseudo-plants that produce a papery PET capsule with a base, with pseudo food bodies in the base producing strands or thin rods of propellant inside the capsule. When it is ripe it can be harvested for processing, but you can divert the ripe capsules for use as charges. Just put the thing into a muzzle-loader with the capsule end towards the breech, the base acting as a wad, and ram down a Minié bullet in front of it. Half-cock, attach primer to lock, Robert is your mother's brother.

It would only look like loading a musket with a bird's-eye chilli.
You would probably want some sort of system to pierce the side of the capsule by the touchhole to let the primer's flash through. This could be as simple as sticking a skewer through the touchhole, or as complex as a mechanical system like a sewing machine's to make the hole and retract the spike (so it doesn't block the hole) just before the primer is struck.
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Old 01-10-2020, 09:21 PM   #57
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Default Re: High/ultra tech sights/accessories on muzzle-loaders

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That would imply the fouling would have predictable effects, and I'm not sure that would be true. Too many factors (heat, relative humidity, length of time between shots, how the wadding, er, wadded...) interacting in ways difficult to measure without sensors throughout the weapon, and then it's no longer a locally produced low-tech muzzle-loader.
It's presuming the fouling has gradual effects, and the best predictor of a round's behaviour is the round that went before (or a weighted average of the last few rounds), and that any prediction of a round's behaviour is better than no calculation.

Actually, as for sensing the weapon's state, there might be some benefit from a seismic/vibration sensor that monitors how the round is loaded and tamped, or that "pings" the weapon and receives a loading-state signature.
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Old 01-10-2020, 09:27 PM   #58
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Default Re: High/ultra tech sights/accessories on muzzle-loaders

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You would probably want some sort of system to pierce the side of the capsule by the touchhole to let the primer's flash through. This could be as simple as sticking a skewer through the touchhole, or as complex as a mechanical system like a sewing machine's to make the hole and retract the spike (so it doesn't block the hole) just before the primer is struck.
Yeah. One way to do it would be to drill a flash tube somewhat wider than you need, tap it, and then screw in a tubular fitting with a nipple on the outside for the cap to go on and a sharpish spur on the inside to tear open the charge-wrapper as it is forced past.

Or, as you say, you could stick a bodkin or spine through the touchhole before fitting the cap, as a routine part of loading.
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Old 01-10-2020, 09:57 PM   #59
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Default Re: High/ultra tech sights/accessories on muzzle-loaders

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You would probably want some sort of system to pierce the side of the capsule by the touchhole to let the primer's flash through.
The real world answer was the Dreyse needle gun, the first bolt action rifle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyse_needle_gun
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Old 01-10-2020, 10:20 PM   #60
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Default Re: High/ultra tech sights/accessories on muzzle-loaders

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The real world answer was the Dreyse needle gun, the first bolt action rifle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyse_needle_gun
What's the corresponding pistol action? Colt Paterson revolvers?
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