10-02-2010, 09:41 AM | #41 |
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: near London, UK
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Re: Seaplanes & Submarines
There's a big hazard with snorkelling (or even surface running) in rough weather with a diesel boat. You need fresh air in the crew spaces, so the usual arrangement has the air intake feeding into them, and the engine drawing air from the other end (human-exhaled air still having plenty of oxygen for diesel purposes). And this is all good.
Now the submarine hits some rough weather. You don't want water coming into the crew space, so the valve claps shut. The diesel keeps running, dropping the pressure in the crew space. Everyone's ears pop. Then they start to bleed. Then they die. (Unless someone was right there on the switches to kill the engine when this started.) This is called an engine run-on casualty, among other things. A modern diesel boat has interlocks to kill the engine if the air intake is interrupted - though something like this may well have been what did for Great Wall 61 even so. A WWII-tech one doesn't.
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10-02-2010, 03:13 PM | #42 | ||
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Seaplanes & Submarines
Quote:
Quote:
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10-02-2010, 08:08 PM | #43 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Cowtown, Canada
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Re: Seaplanes & Submarines
Yes, now that you bring it up I think that's where I recalled it from. The 'sodium seawater' battery idea is pretty cool, although atomic power is just as much handwavium. Season to taste for your specific campaign.
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10-02-2010, 08:20 PM | #44 |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: near Houston
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Re: Seaplanes & Submarines
I'll clarify that by "sudden" storms I'm talking about from 10-15 minutes warning. Even the slowest-diving subs can submerge in under three minutes and the fast-diving ones in under a minute. OTOH, a surface ship can't get very far in 15 minutes.
I have not quite decided how frequent I want them to be (including duration and average time between storms). This will probably become clearly once I decide on *why* there are sudden, violent storms. They could be natural, technologically influenced or perhaps of magical/divine origin; each has it's advantages and disadvantages. If I do decide on sudden storms of short duration, then submerged range is really not not much of an issue. I will again say that this is a going to be a pulp setting. It should ve *vaguely* plausible, but does not need to stand up to any hard science test.
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10-02-2010, 08:26 PM | #45 |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: Seaplanes & Submarines
What if instead of islands you have submarine settlements. What if the planet was colonized at a higher TL, and numerous underwater cities were constructed. They then suffered a technological discontinuity and only recently have returned to TL6?
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10-02-2010, 08:45 PM | #46 | |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: near Houston
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Re: Seaplanes & Submarines
Quote:
OTOH, no (jungle) islands do limit adventure possibilities.
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10-02-2010, 10:34 PM | #47 |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: Seaplanes & Submarines
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10-03-2010, 01:04 AM | #48 |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Meifumado
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Re: Seaplanes & Submarines
I think geography is sufficient explanation, unless you want more. IANAmeteorologist, but I understand that an ocean world without large land masses would naturally have crazy storms happening constantly.
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10-03-2010, 05:09 PM | #49 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Cowtown, Canada
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Re: Seaplanes & Submarines
Quote:
A cluster of islands might have a better chance of long-term survival. The outer islands in the cluster would break up the waves to protect the inner islands. An island in the middle of a huge asteroid crater would also have some protection; the 'walls' of the crater would help break the waves before they reached the island in the center. Another possibility is to have large-ish land masses to break the waves, but for whatever reason they are mostly uninhabitable and only the islands are fertile.
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10-06-2010, 07:20 PM | #50 |
Join Date: Nov 2007
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Power for your world
2 billion years or so ago, U-235 was present in sufficient quantities to fission without refinement, and in one case, did so naturally. The U-235 to U-238 ratio was about 3% then--suffucient for a reactor--but not for a bomb. So there's not much handwavium needed for the power source, just the discovery of its utility.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_reactor So, on a younger planet, you CAN have long duration subs. You can also have nuclear disasters, and create oil from water and CO2.
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Tags |
cliffhager, pulp, seaplane, submarine |
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