#fantasy engineering

Here are some notes our e-board put together after our watch-through of Arkangel on Black Mirror to help guide our group discussion. What are your thoughts on the ethics behind Arkangel?

-Sara won’t develop emotionally

--Won’t learn to grieve, and won't learn to healthfully cope with stressful moments

--Never learns how pain can affect people, so she can’t recognize when she’s hurting people

---This is mostly about emotional pain, but when she beats her mom up, that’s a physical representation of this

---Also, when she was trying drugs for the first time, trying to steal and open the supply Trick needed to sell could’ve gotten Trick in a lot of trouble from his suppliers/buyers 

Two words: high winds.

You’re floating? In potential blizzard conditions? What?

What do you mean it’s held up by gravity dust? You’re making it LIGHTER?

You were lying and it’s held up by ONE STEALABLE OBJECT?

The cover story is literal garbage if you have one braincell, or can access dust shipments

You have no / minimal backup plan if it is stolen / lost

You have no way to put it back down without it

It’s extremely obvious it’s on Atlas

You really hovered a city on top of another city without contemplating the sheer magnitude of a disaster would occur if it dropped?

Like Atlas is supposed to be the most militaristic of the 4 kingdoms? WHY do they have an extremely easy way to literally destroy the entirety of the capital? WHY didn’t anyone say that it’s a terrible idea?

(The title, assuming I've translated it correctly, means "Our Lady of Pipework".)

...I wish "speculative engineering" were a thing in the same way speculative biology is.

E.g. not just "cool machine but with a decorative aesthetic" (which is really all that this is, not a good example), but, in the same way as imagining a species' evolution in response to environmental selection pressures, imagining how a people would invent unique technologies within a cultural context to accomplish a particular function using available materials and knowledge and institutions. What circumstances might have connected every home to a hydraulic power network? What would people have come up with to travel swiftly over long distances if domesticating horses hadn't been so convenient an option? What if the need to pump water out of coal mines hadn't created a niche for experimenting with steam power to be a useful adaptation?

I may have gotten a little distracted in the course of figuring out what to put in the surreal junkyard

DnD invention time !

Decanter of endless water powered car engine

A: decanter of endless water

B: form fitted watertight clamp to hold it in to the valve

C: one way valve with no moving parts to prevent backflow

D: water flows around and spins the triangle to do so.

E: axel to take power from the engine

F: ratchet to do...ratchetty things...

G: engine exit pipe + open area for water to be collected from if needed

H: pipe to outside world with one way valve so the engine will work even when the vehicle is underwater

Airship Design: Engines.

Key engine components and their purpose: Aerodynamo - A device used to maintain a pseudo-current of air to ensure a ship isn't overly effected by it's shape and to maintain an even keel while in motion.

Containment Chamber - A section of a Ceruleum reactor in which the Ceruleo-Thermetic reaction takes place, combining a small amount of heated or statically charged air to initiate the process of liquid Ceruleum breaking down into magical and thermal energy. This energy is used to power the various parts of a device, and the side of the containment chamber as well as it's shape dictates overall power output.

Gyrodrive - The 'navigation' component, this device translates control changes into the appropriate shifts in thrust to turn or ascend at an angle. The size and complexity of the Gyrodrive directly translates to how quickly one can make adjustments in coarse.

Power coil - A garlean device used to direct bleed-off from the containment Chamber into subsystems. Which systems are powered and the size and efficiently of the coil varies by designer. Larger, unattached coils can be used to store energy for a period of time.

Ballast - The device is much like a traditional ships Ballast, though only superficially, It is the device which keeps an airship stable when inert, and can be adjusted to rise from a stationary position. The Ballast and Aerodynamo are usually integrated for ease of design.

Isolator - A regulatory device used to prevent excess vibration in various parts of an airship. An isolator that is damaged is the main cause of critical failure in any airship.