#xenonite

Bloodymary DadsAU

Part 5

She has a name now!

first of, xenon is a noble gas, meaning just like the other noble gases, it's inert. it barely reacts with anything, let alone voluntarily, and it is a gas. it only turns solid at 161,7 K which is −111,45 °C (-168.61 °F for americans) and thus an EXTREMELY low temperature. erid is hot.

compared to the other noble gases, including radon, it's the most reactive out of all of them, and there are a few known stable xenon compounds that are mostly used for industrial or diagnostic purposes. none of them are a pure, crystallized xenon though.

xenon is also generally a horrible heat conductor (so technically perfect for thermal isolation like the blip-a must have and also the barriers rocky makes), and only starts conducting electricity at around 32 K (really fucking cold).

additionally, the most stable known xenon compounds is xenon(II)-fluroide, which is a solid, but it's nowhere close to what xenonite would be. plus, xenonite is pure xenon as far as we know, not a compound or complex.

on top of ALL of that, xenon is one of the most rare elements and the rarest stable one on earth, so considering the insane amount of xenonite the eridians make, they must have a fucking shit ton of it on erid. they make it by pouring together two liquids which, again, it's a gas, and they are not working in a super high pressure environment on the blip-a or hail mary.

HOW ARE THEY MAKING IT????

if i were in his position, i'd also be fucking amazed by xenonite. i'd be begging rocky for as much information as possible, and annoy every single scientist on erid until i have the answers i need.

meanwhile everyone on earth will also be losing their fucking minds over xenonite, except that they probably won't be able to make their own for a long, long time. even once they figure it out, industrial xenon production is expensive and, again, we do not have a lot of it on earth. what we do have is in nickel and iron compounds. we're NOT gonna be using xenonite for anything for decades, if not longer.

and then i asked my friend, "dawg why is there a building made of xenonite."

and he said "Grey, that's The Black History Museum. 😐"

and my unmedicated ass goes "nah, that's the eridian embassy"

...

and he still holds that over my head to this day

but i mean, like, come on

Xenonite Steam Locomotive

Erid has a thick atmosphere, iirc it's 27x greater than 0.4atm, so 10 atm of pressure. This makes the efficiency of a steam engine go into the absolute dirt. However, xenonite, even in hexagonal prism form, can withstand vastly greater pressures. Want hundreds of atmospheres of pressure in the boiler? That can be arranged. So the efficiency can probably be enough that it's worth doing.

I'm not sure what fuels the loco, but their technological civilization almost certainly requires fire for the invention of metallurgy, so I am imagining an oxygen-rich 'fuel' source that's the Eridian equivalent of petroleum products.

Of course an astrophage powered locomotive is certainly a possibility, but I'm sure they must have had vehicles before then.

The cab doesn't need windows!

The boiler doesn't need to be cylindrical, xenonite can handle it, but the steam-cylinders have a lot of potential wear issues so they're made of eridian steel and are made cylindrical. The wheels and rails are made of steel as well--if the rails were too hard they'd be too slippery to have any traction.

The valve gear is gesturing towards being a caprotti poppet/cam valve gear.

My kids broke out the fuse beads, and I decided I wanted to make a ball Rocky. The internet has been woefully bare of PHM patterns, and I’m not the greatest with pixel design, but I did my best!