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Blocky Spaceship Viability and Refueling Propellant On Earth-like Worlds


Spacescifi

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One discussion and one scenario here.

Discussion: Blocky/angular spacecraft are actually practical, and also arguably easy to design en mass than curvy shaped hulls. That is what I will go with for my scifi, since a large fleet should not spend lots of time on hard to shape hulls when they can make simple ones faster.

Although flats and edges do not like pressurization, who said I would pressurize the ship cabin? Only when landed on an Earth world, for breathing, but before launch it would depressurize the crew cabins.

Where would the crew be in space?

An inflatable bouncy house within the depressurized crew cabin. It's also a plus that it is naturally cushioned so any g-force would not hurt you if you fell into an inflated wall. Would be fun too.

 

 

Scenario: Scifi often features earth-like worlds and the warp/jump drives to travel to them. The rocket equation still is a challnge though, since landing a large vessel SSTO will almost certainly use up mosrmt fuel resrves while slowing to land.

So if you landed on an Earth-like world with say, medival Europe tech humanoids, where would you go to refuel propellant?

Rivers, oceans, and lakes can be used to extract LOX/LH but the process will likely take days to extract enough in tons, maybe a week or two.

Technically a rocket can burn any propellant, but some are more difficult to store and others corrode the engine. So methane could also be a choice, but I do think oceans are hard to miss and easy to spot beaches nearby for landing near.

The engine is a functional Nuclear lightbulb rocket with 2 rows of nozzles in the rear. And landing thrusters under the belly fore and aft.

Thoughts? Solutions? Potentially risks or dangers? You may discuss.

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7 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Blocky/angular spacecraft are actually practical

7 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

if you landed on an Earth-like world with say, medival Europe tech humanoids, where would you go to refuel propellant?

 

Spoiler

Thor's_Chariot.jpg

 

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Blocky spaceships is an thing
Apollo_11_Lunar_Lander_-_5927_NASA.jpg
Don't work so well in atmosphere however. 
Yes you could force it doing an powered landing. But then you probably have so good engines you don't care, 
Nuclear lightbulb is edging close to the don't care area, more so as you will have very good reactors so you get hydrogen and oxygen out of water fast. 
If you go interstelar you will have something way better. 

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On 10/18/2019 at 12:14 AM, Spacescifi said:

Discussion: Blocky/angular spacecraft are actually practical, and also arguably easy to design en mass than curvy shaped hulls. That is what I will go with for my scifi, since a large fleet should not spend lots of time on hard to shape hulls when they can make simple ones faster.

If you stopped watching movie crap and look for some realistic designs, you'll see this is exactly what they are about. However you are confusing crew quarters pressure vessel for ship outer hull. As for bouncy castle  – you will learn limits of this once you start punching holes and mounting in stuff like controls and life support. Bigellow-style baloons hung outside the hull may be a good way to provide some additional breathing space for crew, but for anything important like the bridge, you want a nice, solud pressure vessel. Also, if curves pose a challenge for your engineers, they are unlikely to produce a working car, much less a propelant tank.

 

On 10/18/2019 at 12:14 AM, Spacescifi said:

So if you landed on an Earth-like world with say, medival Europe tech humanoids, where would you go to refuel propellant?

Asteroids. Icy moons. Comets. Certainly not at bottom of a deep gravity well, that's for sure.

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22 minutes ago, radonek said:

If you stopped watching movie crap and look for some realistic designs, you'll see this is exactly what they are about. However you are confusing crew quarters pressure vessel for ship outer hull. As for bouncy castle  – you will learn limits of this once you start punching holes and mounting in stuff like controls and life support. Bigellow-style baloons hung outside the hull may be a good way to provide some additional breathing space for crew, but for anything important like the bridge, you want a nice, solud pressure vessel. Also, if curves pose a challenge for your engineers, they are unlikely to produce a working car, much less a propelant tank.

 

Asteroids. Icy moons. Comets. Certainly not at bottom of a deep gravity well, that's for sure.

 

Haha... you think I was inspired by imitating scifi tv shows?

This entire thread was inspired off what learned from KSP forums.

The blocky ship would be flat, with angular side/edge walls to make it somewhat aerodynamic at least. My main motive here is not just ease of building it, but also ease of loading/unloading and extra cargo space. Also the fact that rocket shaped ships kind of look dated in a scifi setting anyway... at least to me

As for the bigelow, I have seen designs fitted around a solid core beam down the middle, but inflated everywhere else. There ate many ways to do it withou risking inflatable damage.

Who knows? I am actually quite okay with the idea of flexible control/computer panels that you can roll up like a scroll or hook up to an outlet. Just about anything is possible with imagination, and life imitates art and art imitates life. The following illustrates that.

 

As for refueling, it's on an earth-like world because that is a legit setting if you have multiple homeworlds for different civilizations.

Commerce is a motive, but if the natives do not have the tech for processing rocket fuel yet, then that falls to the landed SSTO ship to carry it out.

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2 hours ago, radonek said:

Also, if curves pose a challenge for your engineers, they are unlikely to produce a working car, much less a propelant tank.

Not for engineers. For "make this cost less!" bosses. Curves are expensive. Right angles are not. Simple shapes are much easier to mass-produce and repair (notice how expensive replacing a part of a car's bodywork can be). Additionally, a polygonal warship can be put together from just two armor "tiles", one for flat surfaces, and one for slope edges (warships will always have sloped noses). You set up rapid production lines for both, and then put them together to get a warship's outer hull. After a battle, just replace the damaged tiles. If you have a conical hull, though, each part of the cone has a different curvature, making it harder to accommodate mass production. It also makes sense for MMOD shielding to be like this, though it's less critical due to its lower cost. 

Rocket-shaped ships are aerodynamically optimal, and for atmospheric flight, you want that. However, in space, especially on a ship that can be expected to take hits, flat faces are cheaper to construct. The design may still be atmospheric-capable, just not the best for that.

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3 hours ago, radonek said:
On 10/18/2019 at 1:14 AM, Spacescifi said:

So if you landed on an Earth-like world with say, medival Europe tech humanoids, where would you go to refuel propellant?

Asteroids. Icy moons. Comets. Certainly not at bottom of a deep gravity well, that's for sure.

Anybody knows how much in modern currency did a medieval village cost?
(If all inclusive, equipped with, say, 100 peasants)

And how much does a lunar spacesuit cost?

3 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

The blocky ship would be flat, with angular side/edge walls to make it somewhat aerodynamic at least.

What's wrong with pyramids? ziggurats?

3 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

if the natives do not have the tech for processing rocket fuel

But what do they drink?

1 hour ago, Dragon01 said:

Curves are expensive. Right angles are not.

Spoiler

images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRYsMBCAvhLxLglGgIpsZt

Roll the slab, then roll the sheet. Curved things are cheaper than angled. Also they better withstand pressure difference.
Now requesting a photo of cheap squared barrels, which would obviously much better fit a squared shelf, a truck, or a yard.

Also, to make a cylinder wall out of a sheet it takes one bending, one welding.
To make a rounded square wall it takes 4 bendings, 1 welding.
To make a true angled squared wall it takes 4 weldings.

Also, of course, any welding seam is a potential source of a leakage (not in the seam, but next to it).

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23 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Now requesting a photo of cheap squared barrels, which would obviously much better fit a squared shelf, a truck, or a yard.

DEFCT180-P.jpg

Guess what, you failed at basic research again. This is what they use for transporting liquids in modern times. Granted, they're plastic, so shape doesn't really matter in that case. They are used because they waste less space (as you pointed out yourself), and they're cheaper because they're plastic. Also, they don't rust. 

Of course, this is all moot, because spaceships we're talking about are cones. On a cylinder, all pieces have the same curvature, so you can mass-produce rings like SpaceX does, and build out of that. A cone, on the other hand, you have to make in a single piece, or put it together from unique pieces.

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images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQvX7dHcTq-t1t8uukuvDm, so what?

A plastic box is not a metal can if you're not aware. It's made another way.

17 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

This is what they use for transporting liquids in modern times.

Orly? Then probably metal barrels are a photoshop.

I hope, you are aware that not every liquid can be transported in plastic cans, and that netal barrels are usually just cheaper in mass production?
Any 20 t plastic cysterns, not just 20 l water packs for a cooler?

17 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

Also, they don't rust. 

Of course they don't. They rot. Also they are chemically active, they are afraid of temperature, sunlight, and frost, they are not as strong as metal.
Plastic cans are for the end users of small amounts of liquids, nothing more.

17 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

Of course, this is all moot, because spaceships we're talking about are cones.

The mentioned LEM is a perfect example of a cone on a cylinder, sure.

17 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

A cone, on the other hand, you have to make in a single piece, or put it together from unique pieces.

Lolwut? A cone can be made out of any amount of pieces, like a cylinder.
And of course, none of these figures is flat and rarely squared, even if rounded.

Upd.
Wait... You want to build plastic ships???

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1 minute ago, kerbiloid said:

Orly? Then probably metal barrels are a photoshop.

No, they're just ancient, considering the amount of rust on them. Plastics are very much not chemically active. A bigger problem is that it does not decay once you don't need it anymore, and it's harder to recycle. Plastic containers handle extreme temperatures more poorly than metal, but that's it. It's also lighter and cheaper.

3 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Plastic cans are for the end users of small amounts of liquids, nothing more.

Did you actually look at the picture I posted? 681 liters. That's almost certainly more than those metal cans of yours. This is an industrial container for pallet usage. 

6 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Lolwut? A cone can be made out of any amount of pieces, like a cylinder.

Any amount of unique pieces. My whole point is about mass producing those pieces. Why don't you accept that you don't know what you're talking about and go educate yourself somewhere else? 

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15 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

Did you actually look at the picture I posted? 681 liters.

Sorry, I'm weak in maths, you know. Is it just 0.5 t or whole 0.7 t?

Let's try to build a plastic spaceship for hamsters out of them!
Wait... It will burst in vacuum...

15 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

A bigger problem is that it does not decay once you don't need it anymore

A bigger problem is that they decay when you use them and don't when stop, lol2.

15 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

Any amount of unique pieces. My whole point is about mass producing those pieces

Have you ever heard about CNC metal-cutting machines?
Have you ever cut curved things out of sheet placing them aside to save as much material as possible?
The uniquity means nothing here. All you need is as less different shapes as possible, but not just one. 10 shapes are well enough.
And of course, standard bending radii, that's really important.

15 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

 Why don't you accept that you don't know what you're talking about and go educate yourself somewhere else? 

Why? I'm just enjoying the funny things which you usually tell.

P.S.
Have you ever made tin things at all? No matter, by CNC or by hands? I doubt, due to these "unique" pieces.

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3 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

Not for engineers. For "make this cost less!" bosses. Curves are expensive. Right angles are not. Simple shapes are much easier to mass-produce and repair (notice how expensive replacing a part of a car's bodywork can be). Additionally, 

 

Haha... so based on this logic, starfleet should have the least amount of ships of any power in the Alpha Quadrant, due to their love of curvy hulls.

latest?cb=20180309053905

 

On the other hand, the Borg should have like..  billions of easy to repair ships. It's a pity star trek never implied this, but they have ignored more basic physics stuff (inertia drifting/newtonian maneuvers) far longer anyway so that is likely asking for too much.

I am here to correct that. At least in my scifi the stuff star trek ignores will no longer be. Ad so much more.

8c7bbbba95c1025975e548cee86dfadc.jpg?ito

 

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Do note that in Trek, they can just replicate what they need. Making uniquely shaped hull pieces is probably easier when your default manufacturing method doesn't care about shape. Interestingly, in terms of combat worthyness, Starfleet ships look surprisingly good. Low forward profile and lots of acutely angled surfaces for projectiles to bounce off from. Not the optimal design, but not a horrible one, either, unlike the cube, which will take all enemy fire at, at best, a 45 degree angle (and unlike Starfleet ships facing the enemy, we never seem them trying to present a corner). As long as you keep the saucer (and other frontal surfaces) edge-on towards enemy, it should work fairly well. Angled armor works on lasers, too, as they'll spread over a larger area.

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@Dragon01 @kerbiloid I hate to derail your derailment, but original point was about fabrication difficulty of curves, not about barrel shapes. Boxy barrel that got you so riled up 1) is molded, which is exactly kind of technology that can make curves en masse as easy as sharp edges and 2) just to drive point home, that "box" is actually full of curves. For exactly kind of reasons already stated here.

21 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Anybody knows how much in modern currency did a medieval village cost?
(If all inclusive, equipped with, say, 100 peasants)

Village itself close to zero. But people, those are invaluable. And lots of other factors exist. Nothing of this has any relation to modern economy, much less rocketry  so I don't see your point.

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9 minutes ago, radonek said:

Nothing of this has any relation to modern economy, much less rocketry  so I don't see your point.

My point is that for the price of a spacesuit required for every medieval peasant to mine something outside the Earth, you could buy a whole county of them, but still need a spacesuit for everyone of them.
So, the given problem itself (use medieval culture to refuel a spaceship, and maybe to mine something in space) makes no sense.

P.S.

9 minutes ago, radonek said:

But people, those are invaluable

Wasn't that about medieval? Whole kingdoms weren't.

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11 minutes ago, radonek said:

@Dragon01 @kerbiloid I hate to derail your derailment, but original point was about fabrication difficulty of curves, not about barrel shapes. Boxy barrel that got you so riled up 1) is molded, which is exactly kind of technology that can make curves en masse as easy as sharp edges and 2) just to drive point home, that "box" is actually full of curves. For exactly kind of reasons already stated here.

Quite frankly, that fool had been missing the point from the start, and got me sidetracked. Also, the specific containers in the pictures are rounded, but they don't have to be. There are some pallet containers that have sharp edges, and they are also used for transporting liquids. I just didn't care for finding a picture of one. Not sure what they're made of as I've never used one, but they exist.

16 minutes ago, radonek said:

Village itself close to zero. But people, those are invaluable. And lots of other factors exist. Nothing of this has any relation to modern economy, much less rocketry  so I don't see your point.

Not really, on both counts. People were fairly cheap back then. Land was what costed money, although it having people live on it was a nice bonus. A suit of armor could cost as much as a village, and I see decent-looking armors (not costumes, actual plate) for about 1000-2000 pounds on eBay. So I'd guess it'd be in that ballpark.

Of course it has nothing to do with anything relevant, but with who asked that question, what did you expect?

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2 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

Quite frankly, that fool had been missing the point from the start, and got me sidetracked. Also, the specific containers in the pictures are rounded, but they don't have to be. There are some pallet containers that have sharp edges, and they are also used for transporting liquids. I just didn't care for finding a picture of one. Not sure what they're made of as I've never used one, but they exist.

Not really, on both counts. People were fairly cheap back then. Land was what costed money, although it having people live on it was a nice bonus. A suit of armor could cost as much as a village, and I see decent-looking armors (not costumes, actual plate) for about 1000-2000 pounds on eBay. So I'd guess it'd be in that ballpark.

Of course it has nothing to do with anything relevant, but with who asked that question, what did you expect?

It should be feasible to compute how many man-hours went into crafting plate armor (although the number of different specialties would make it very time consuming to  learn enough to do it): time to mine the ore, time to harvest the charcoal, time to smelt the ore into steel, time to craft the armor (presumably a much more elite craftsman than typical).  Also depending on the time and era for "medieval" there might well be records of slave sales: slaves were often the most valuable things traded on a wide scale (the Normans [and I guess Franks] didn't like slavery, so it disappeared in England somewhat after 1066 and I assume had already left France).

Another way to see just how valuable human labor was (to the elites) was the effects of the Black Plague.  Afterwards everybody knew just how valuable commoner labor was to the elites.

And there was always the longbow (see "Pure Newtonian space combat" thread).  Archers didn't require all that much valuable equipment (at least until people noticed yew trees disappearing), but once trained they were invaluable.  Same for pikemen (although I'm not sure how much was training and how much was selecting extreme bravery.  Holding that pike during a cavalry onslaught must have been terrifying).

While elites may have talked a lot about "land", what they meant had to include the people they held in disdain or it wouldn't have been all that valuable ("owning" a mountain range would be pretty pointless, aside from strategic benefits).

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Prior to the Black Plague, if you owned any usable land, it was relatively easy to get people to move in. A mountain range with a bunch of sheepherds would be worth much less than the same area, with the same population, in the lowlands, just because the latter would be much more productive than the former. This is still the case, BTW. Seeing as land prices vary widely (so does plate armor), and every village would cost a different amount, anyway, all you can do is estimate, roughly, the range of reasonable values, which is what I did.

The nice thing about plate armor is that it's more or less as valuable today as it was then. Suits of armor are still custom-made, artisanal goods, made by a small group of skilled craftsmen for a small group of wealthy users. I don't know if the proportions between armorers and knights were similar to proportions between armorers and reenectors, but laws of economics suggest they should be. The only difference would be the materials cost, which tends to be relatively insignificant, given the labor involved in making it (though steel is much cheaper today than it was back then).

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7 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

Quite frankly, that fool had been missing the point from the start, and got me sidetracked.

That wiseman said that sharp-edged hull is cheaper than a rounded one. How can I take him seriously after such crap?
Don't weld where you can just bend.

Another masterpiece was about "unique details" cut from a metal sheet...

7 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

A suit of armor could cost as much as a village

A prooflink.

5 hours ago, wumpus said:

Also depending on the time and era for "medieval" there might well be records of slave sales: slaves were often the most valuable things traded on a wide scale

I mean just that a spacesuit would cost so much that using of peasant hand work will never be actual when you have such tech. Just because you would always spend more than you get from them.

5 hours ago, wumpus said:

Same for pikemen (although I'm not sure how much was training and how much was selecting extreme bravery.  Holding that pike during a cavalry onslaught must have been terrifying).

Btw, do I understand right that infantry pikemen had 4 m pikes, while knights up to 7 m?

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57 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Don't weld where you can just bend.

A prooflink.

Maybe you'll admit to being wrong about something when you find out yourself, for a change. Also, spaceship armor is not a piece of metal sheet. 

57 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Btw, do I understand right that infantry pikemen had 4 m pikes, while knights up to 7 m?

Knights didn't have pikes. They had lances. And unless they were Polish Hussars (who only used such giant lances to fight pikemen), none of them were longer than pikes.

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15 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:
1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Don't weld where you can just bend.

A prooflink.

Any food can in your fridge. Find any tin can with welded corners.
(Oh gawds, I  want to hope you aren't asking that seriously... )

15 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

spaceship armor is not a piece of metal sheet. 

He is still dreaming of space tanks maneuvers...
Spaceship armor...
Let's cast them from iron!

Btw, find a not bended hull surface in the Enterprise, lol.

15 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

Knights didn't have pikes. They had lances. And unless they were Polish Hussars (who only used such giant lances to fight pikemen), none of them were longer than pikes.

Lances were replaced with pikes in any normal cavalry long ago. Because nobody needs a flat knife on a stick ramming an armored infantry.
Read the books at last, and not only Senkevich.

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18 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Spaceship armor...

Yes, armor. What you're going to do, hide? Dodge a guided missile? I told you what spaceship combat will most likely look like. You may choose to ignore it, but stop derailing threads from someone who's actually interested in learning about realistic conclusions. Because you have failed to provide anything of use to @Spacescifi in any of his threads, and what "info" you did provide was bogus.

19 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Any food can in your fridge. Find any tin can with welded corners.
(Oh gawds, I  want to hope you aren't asking that seriously... )

And the "armor costs as much as a village" is a commonly quoted piece of medieval trivia. So now you waste your time googling what everybody knows, and I will proceed to ignore what you found.

14 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Lances were replaced with pikes in any normal cavalry long ago. Because nobody needs a flat knife on a stick ramming an armored infantry.

Here's an English lesson for you. "Pike" is a two handed, sharp-pointed polearm. "Lance" is a one-handed polearm for use by cavalry. Lances stayed in service much longer. A "flat knife on a stick" is a halberd or a billhook, and a completely different thing (complementary to the pike).

You're the one in dire need of some serious reading. 

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26 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

I told you what spaceship combat will most likely look like.

In your dreams.
There will be no spaceship combat, just exchange with rocket hits. Any spaceship is a defenseless motionless target.

26 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

You may choose to ignore it, but stop derailing threads from someone who's actually interested in learning about realistic conclusions.

I.e. to not argue with every your free fantasy.

26 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

And the "armor costs as much as a village" is a commonly quoted piece of medieval trivia.

In pop books. But you have a chance to bring real numbers rather than repeating "an armor costed as a village", "a horse costed as a village", and other things "costed as a village".
Were there at all items in their price list cheaper than a village?
The armor quality varied very widely, and it is not a spaceship armor, just pieces of tin pipe tied to the body under the clothes.
Or (earlier) just a long coat with random metal plates.
Or (earlier) a primitive armor made of bent tin bands forgotten by Romans.

When I asked you how much exactly did cost the village and the armor, this expectedly started another hurricane of harsh manners from the real scientist, lol.
While I just hoped to know the numbers. :sealed:

26 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

So now you waste your time googling what everybody knows,

So, I asked the nearest available everybody for his googling results.

26 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

Here's an English lesson for you. "Pike" is a two handed, sharp-pointed polearm. "Lance" is a one-handed polearm for use by cavalry. Lances stayed in service much longer. A "flat knife on a stick" is a halberd or a billhook, and a completely different thing (complementary to the pike).

Please, feel free to substitute a correct English term as you clearly understood that I mean a long nobody-cares-how-many-hands stick with a sharp-pointed head used by all available cavalries since (well, probably Late Medieval) till 1940s.
Those false friends of translator... I would write "pique" instead of "pike", as the ancestor word of "pika" used for any long stick with a sharp-pointed metal head.

26 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

You're the one in dire need of some serious reading. 

Yes, and I do this as much as possible, and recommend this to you.

P.S.
Btw, have you ever cut shapes from a paper sheet?
The technology is absolutely the same as with tin hulls.

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