A Guide to Steampunk Space Travel. (Please add your thoughts!)

[shynung]

What about CO2 ?

I was talking about oxygen and water production for LSS. In a setting where hydrogen peroxide is used as RCS, oxygen and water is stored in the same tank as RCS. Heating and cooling systems (via absorption refrigeration) from decomposing H2O2 is also possible.

On CO2, I think either a scrubber or air-liquefier-fractional distiller system could be used. While these can be made simple, I'm not really sure how steampunk-ish they are.

[Whirligig Girl]

I was talking about oxygen and water production for LSS. In a setting where hydrogen peroxide is used as RCS, oxygen and water is stored in the same tank as RCS. Heating and cooling systems (via absorption refrigeration) from decomposing H2O2 is also possible.

On CO2, I think either a scrubber or air-liquefier-fractional distiller system could be used. While these can be made simple, I'm not really sure how steampunk-ish they are.

Rebreathers were developed in some form as early as the 1600s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebreather#Early_history

But I can't really find anything on when a proper CO2 scrubber was invented.

[ChrisSpace]

I think I might do a small alternate history thing soon-ish, based on the concept of a late 19th century space program. My 'Point of Divergence' in the timeline is between the years 1500-1600CE (roughly between the planet's names becoming official in English, and the invention of the telescope), when a hyper advanced alien civilization arrives in the inner solar system, and spends 100 years terraforming Mercury, Venus, the Moon, Mars, Ceres, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto and Titan, as well as several planets around nearby stars, then seed hem with a combination of earth and non-earth plants and animals, before leaving the solar system forever so they themselves are never seen. Why they just left us alone and how the planets remain habitable, I probably won't explain. But what follows is a vastly expanded space era in which space colonization becomes real before rockets even leave Earth's atmosphere in our timeline. It may be a bit Europe-centric due to the geopolitical situation at the time, but that should be fine.

Do you like the idea of me doing this?

[Stargate525]

But I can't really find anything on when a proper CO2 scrubber was invented.

I don't see anything un-steampunk-ish about using good old fashioned plantlife for your carbon cycling needs. I imagine a big brass n' glass greenhouse (sorry, conservatory) strapped to the back of the rocket would fit right in.

[Whirligig Girl]

I don't see anything un-steampunk-ish about using good old fashioned plantlife for your carbon cycling needs. I imagine a big brass n' glass greenhouse (sorry, conservatory) strapped to the back of the rocket would fit right in.

Ah yes, of course!

Another problem with the launch vehicle issue that I found when I have been playing with stock parts in RSS. My first ship that was able to make orbit was an asparagus staged rocket with a small 1-man capsule (though to be fair, I did have enough fuel in-orbit to justify the addition of a proper 3-man capsule)

Problem is that Asparagus staging is really difficult in real life with modern technology, let alone steampunk tech. I suspect I could get some of the advantages of asparagus by just using excessive booster staging a la Delta-IV heavy with extra booster cores..

- - - Updated - - -

I'm questioning one thing though: life support ? We're talking about men, not kerbals right ?

Men and Women, if you're unrealistically non-discriminating for the times.

Greenhouses would probably be used on interplanetary voyages, and for cislunar space I would imagine CO2 scrubbers could be used. If not, suppose instead we just vent the atmosphere into space (or maybe store it for RCS or something), and then replace some of what was lost with pure oxygen+nitrogen atmosphere. it would certainly get rid of the scrubbers. If someone can find any indication about when the life support CO2 scrubber was invented, thank you.

[KerikBalm]

Question, do the steam-spaceship astronatus keep their motors clean and sing this song?

Edited July 21, 2015 by KerikBalm

[Accelerando]

Men and Women, if you're unrealistically non-discriminating for the times.

I appreciate the intent of including women, but I do want to quibble about this last part because it's extremely important. When it comes to historical accuracy you're writing about an alternate history where people went to space in the 1800s. I don't think we need to emphasize worrying too much about social accuracy, aside from making the world consistent with itself.

But more than that, society isn't really the issue; it's actually more historically accurate to portray women in leading roles in exploration/engineering/military/etc, because they absolutely existed. There are scores of women who've explored the world before, much like there have been scores of women warriors; some "dressed as men", some not. But don't take it from me, Wikipedia as always has a whole list. And of course there are likely scads more that history (or Wikipedia in particular) has never bothered to remember.

Or, to put it another way...

...it's okay! It's okay to write about Women doing Things in your stories set in premodern times, 1800s or otherwise, without worrying about historical accuracy. And you should, because we were there.

---

As for CO2 scrubbers, rather, it seems that spacesuit rebreathers in particular depend on lithium hydroxide and activated charcoal, so if that can be produced using 19th-century techniques, it may be available. Activated charcoal seems simple enough; in the most basic way it is produced by making charcoal and then exposing it to oxygen during the process, in order to make it porous and adsorbing. Historically, charcoal was first confirmed to adsorb gases in 1773 by Carl Scheele, although charcoal filters had been used to filter water since antiquity. Lithium hydroxide is produced by reacting lithium carbonate and calcium hydroxide; lithium carbonate was used in medicine by the 1890s, while lithium medicine was used by the 1870s; and calcium hydroxide is prepared by mixing water with lime. So the chemicals for modern spacecraft air filtration, at least, seem to have been available to steampunk technologists.

Specifically with regard to spacesuits, on the Apollo PLSS, the rebreathing system is combined with the cooling system, using a fan to circulate air through the suit's liquid cooling garment, along with a water pump for moving the water coolant around; the cooling system ultimately rejects heat to space by expelling steam through something called a porous-plate sublimator, which is made of sintered nickel. Sintering has been known since antiquity, and nickel was first purposefully isolated after the 18th century. So the mechanical/electric components of the LSS may also have been available. However, developing the flexible liquid cooling garment may be tricky. NASA's EMU Liquid Cooling and Venilation Garment is made of spandex and nylon tricot, at least according to Wikpedia and to HowStuffWorks, while the circulation tubes are made of PVC.

Edited July 21, 2015 by Accelerando
oops, CO2 scrubbers

[comham]

Step 1: ya send ya steampunk gents into spess

Step 2: make sure ya spaceship has lots of brass, portholes, burnished dark woods, british flags (v. important)

Step 3: leave your obsession with realism on earth, you are in steampunk land now

[Technical Ben]

May I suggest an Antimatter Augmented Steam Boiler once up in the edge of space? There is a bit of antimatter up there, naturally occuring. Plus a "trap" is really easy to make even with Victorian technology, providing they had the understanding.

We can assume they discovered this after getting to space, and getting some sparks/glowing from some magnetics. Add a clever engineers and/or scientist (Val and Jeb duo?) and they could make a trap in situ in space and quickly change the world!

From this we can have extra power for FTL and other plot devices. With it being antimatter, it still has a massive cost and risk factor, so it can be balanced as needed (as common as petrol, or as rare as platinum).

The Penning trap, is basically just MAGNETS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penning_trap

Oxygen production from plants or algae is going to be difficult. It may need a small room of solid green stuff (no use getting light in there ) for enough oxygen for one person. It might be too much work. But if we want some really interesting and unique space craft, with 50% of the living space being green walls (lit inside with artificial power and light) and green armour (outside using "free" solar power), then going natural would do it.

PS, though, if you want to really run with ideas... make the problem of carbon dioxide a hidden "enemy" and constant threat. The scientists of the time do not know why astronauts keep going crazy then dying. It's dangerous as they act up and cause even more trouble than just themselves being hurt or dying. For "some reasons, unknown to us" this does not happen on larger pleasure passenger liners, which are outfitted with parks and greenhouses. So far, the best practice, is to move between rooms periodically, and vent out gases and air from the unoccupied rooms.

However, all reports says this only buys a little time. Worse, it's only working at diminishing returns each time. So it is of utmost importance astronauts not exceed more than double their rooms "oxygen rating level". This limits active flight to 12 hours orbital for anything smaller than a cruiser. Prolonged missions risk "space madness".

Finally. Perhaps a "range finder" would be a job. Getting the measurements of the moon is just maths (I assume ). So the rest is down to using a complex protractor, similar to a sextant. With a telescope and measuring the angles to the horizon, or say the apparent size of craters against a chart, to give really rudimentary readings. From there, the rest would be practice with a string held model lander and a model crater, with the pilot learning the timings and visual cues to land "instrument free", just as Scott Manley did on Youtube.

Edited July 21, 2015 by Technical Ben

[Accelerando]

Oxygen production from plants or algae is going to be difficult. It may need a small room of solid green stuff (no use getting light in there ) for enough oxygen for one person. It might be too much work. But if we want some really interesting and unique space craft, with 50% of the living space being green walls (lit inside with artificial power and light) and green armour (outside using "free" solar power), then going natural would do it.

PS, though, if you want to really run with ideas... make the problem of carbon dioxide a hidden "enemy" and constant threat. The scientists of the time do not know why astronauts keep going crazy then dying. It's dangerous as they act up and cause even more trouble than just themselves being hurt or dying. For "some reasons, unknown to us" this does not happen on larger pleasure passenger liners, which are outfitted with parks and greenhouses. So far, the best practice, is to move between rooms periodically, and vent out gases and air from the unoccupied rooms.

However, all reports says this only buys a little time. Worse, it's only working at diminishing returns each time. So it is of utmost importance astronauts not exceed more than double their rooms "oxygen rating level". This limits active flight to 12 hours orbital for anything smaller than a cruiser. Prolonged missions risk "space madness".

Carbon dioxide was first isolated in the 1700s, and was known to be exhaled by animals by the 1750s-70s. CO2 scrubbers, now that I'm reading further, have also existed since the 1800s, with Henry Fleuss's rebreather suit using rope yarn soaked in potash to remove CO2, effective for three hours. Lithium hydroxide/activated carbon gives around 8 hours. CO2 toxicity is also something you'd notice pretty quick in vacuum trials on Earth, I think. If your setting uses no electricity, then perhaps oxygen and CO2 levels could be monitored using a gas separator of some sort, but I'm not sure. However, it should still be possible to work out a reliable oxygen supply system, especially with electricity.

Oxygen production from greenhouses should work the same way it does today. Light can be directed into dense greenery using a system of mirrors and/or prisms/light pipes to distribute light to the plants without allowing radiation into the greenhouse. Algae is especially good for life support purposes. Atomic Rockets specifies that around the order of 6 litres of algae, a cube of algae 20 centimeters on a side, should be enough to keep a human breathing, and perhaps fed.

--- updated ---

The basic reaction of photosynthesis was roughly known by the 1800s, as well, so it may well have been possible for steampunk scientists to develop a greenhouse life support system.

May I suggest an Antimatter Augmented Steam Boiler once up in the edge of space? There is a bit of antimatter up there, naturally occuring. Plus a "trap" is really easy to make even with Victorian technology, providing they had the understanding.

We can assume they discovered this after getting to space, and getting some sparks/glowing from some magnetics. Add a clever engineers and/or scientist (Val and Jeb duo?) and they could make a trap in situ in space and quickly change the world!

From this we can have extra power for FTL and other plot devices. With it being antimatter, it still has a massive cost and risk factor, so it can be balanced as needed (as common as petrol, or as rare as platinum).

The Penning trap, is basically just MAGNETS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penning_trap

I don't know enough about Penning traps to comment intelligently, but considering how challenging antimatter is to contain today I assume it would be very difficult for any steampunk society to extract power from antimatter in Earth orbit.

---

With regards to the rangefinder, that is true, and parallax + angular diameter optical measurements are used to calculate planet sizes, see also here. I'm also slightly disappointed that KerikBalm's suggestion about using a Coincidence Rangefinder for landing wasn't included in the OP, because it satisfies exactly the need for judging short-range distance. Blah!

Hary R's suggestion, earlier in this thread, that cannons may be used as a starting point for developing space travel is also worth note. _{(And why wasn't my post about worldbuilding concerns included, either?)}

Edited July 22, 2015 by Accelerando

[Beowolf]

I worked with a semi-pro author on a similar concept. He wanted to stick with as much hard science as possible, and the big problem was with material strength and tolerances. The available steel wasn't strong or consistent enough to handle the demands of heavy rocketry. Even in steam engines, the stuff was always developing hot spots and cracks. Different parts of pistons, cylinders and linkages expanded at differing rates from heat, resulting in rapid wear.

Looking into the history of steam power, I learned that all the early engines used "suction" rather than steam pressure. They'd dump hot steam into the cylinder with the piston fully extended, and as the steam condensed, atmospheric pressure slowly pushed the piston down. And that was because their steel cylinders would fail under higher pressures. Plenty failed even using this negative pressure technique. Well, if it has trouble at 15psi, it sure isn't going to last as a rocket nozzle!

Turbopumps would be even worse, as 19th century manufacturing tolerances didn't come anywhere close to what's required. AFAIK, before WWII no device more complex than a bullet could spin at turbopump speeds (30,000 rpm!) without tearing itself apart. The first gas turbine that produced more power than it took to overcome the friction losses of spinning it wasn't developed until 1903. The modern micrometer appeared around 1844, and the new, improved standard for super-precise machining became 1/1000th inch. There was a cool pic of a jet turbine weld on Reddit the other day. An aeronautics engineer said tolerance on those welds is 3/100,000ths. Nearly two full orders of magnitude tighter.

Then, for the icing on the cake, look at how reactive LOX is, and consider how they could possibly control the stuff with Victorian tech. Victorian gaskets are natural rubber and leather and that stuff explodes with LOX. Silicone and fiberglass weren't even words yet. LOX fed by nitrogen-pressurized tanks I could believe, but that doesn't seem like enough thrust for liftoffs. On the bright side, they did have access to the hydrofluoric acid used to clean LOX tanks and pipes of all organic material before filling. Though I bet they'd kill lots of techs while they figured out how to handle the nasty stuff in such large quantities. Teflon safety-suits and SCUBA weren't things yet, either. They'd have to use brass deep-diving suits, plus a hose to carry the used air back outside. Those suits are almost no protection at all against HF spills, and will only protect them from fumes for a short time. So while they learn nearly every accident will be a fatal one.

I'm not saying you can't have an alternate history where such things are dealt with. I imagine a 20-year Manhattan Project-style all-out effort by a major power could have solved a bunch of these problems. I'm just saying they'd need one heck of a good reason, because it's going to lay waste to their existing economy.

[Technical Ben]

The difficulty of Antimatter trapping, only need to be as equal to the difficulty of making a steampunk rocket. IE, it's fictional.

But I agree with the oxygen/carbon dioxide problem. The ideas were only as plot devices. With what can be added, or left out.

[Whirligig Girl]

I worked with a semi-pro author on a similar concept. He wanted to stick with as much hard science as possible, and the big problem was with material strength and tolerances. The available steel wasn't strong or consistent enough to handle the demands of heavy rocketry. Even in steam engines, the stuff was always developing hot spots and cracks. Different parts of pistons, cylinders and linkages expanded at differing rates from heat, resulting in rapid wear.

Looking into the history of steam power, I learned that all the early engines used "suction" rather than steam pressure. They'd dump hot steam into the cylinder with the piston fully extended, and as the steam condensed, atmospheric pressure slowly pushed the piston down. And that was because their steel cylinders would fail under higher pressures. Plenty failed even using this negative pressure technique. Well, if it has trouble at 15psi, it sure isn't going to last as a rocket nozzle!

Turbopumps would be even worse, as 19th century manufacturing tolerances didn't come anywhere close to what's required. AFAIK, before WWII no device more complex than a bullet could spin at turbopump speeds (30,000 rpm!) without tearing itself apart. The first gas turbine that produced more power than it took to overcome the friction losses of spinning it wasn't developed until 1903. The modern micrometer appeared around 1844, and the new, improved standard for super-precise machining became 1/1000th inch. There was a cool pic of a jet turbine weld on Reddit the other day. An aeronautics engineer said tolerance on those welds is 3/100,000ths. Nearly two full orders of magnitude tighter.

Then, for the icing on the cake, look at how reactive LOX is, and consider how they could possibly control the stuff with Victorian tech. Victorian gaskets are natural rubber and leather and that stuff explodes with LOX. Silicone and fiberglass weren't even words yet. LOX fed by nitrogen-pressurized tanks I could believe, but that doesn't seem like enough thrust for liftoffs. On the bright side, they did have access to the hydrofluoric acid used to clean LOX tanks and pipes of all organic material before filling. Though I bet they'd kill lots of techs while they figured out how to handle the nasty stuff in such large quantities. Teflon safety-suits and SCUBA weren't things yet, either. They'd have to use brass deep-diving suits, plus a hose to carry the used air back outside. Those suits are almost no protection at all against HF spills, and will only protect them from fumes for a short time. So while they learn nearly every accident will be a fatal one.

I'm not saying you can't have an alternate history where such things are dealt with. I imagine a 20-year Manhattan Project-style all-out effort by a major power could have solved a bunch of these problems. I'm just saying they'd need one heck of a good reason, because it's going to lay waste to their existing economy.

Well that is a bit disappointing. How exactly did that semi-pro author solve the problem?

[Hary R]

Well that is a bit disappointing. How exactly did that semi-pro author solve the problem?

You can't keep it fully Victorian steam punk hard science fiction, as said in the post you quote, technology was not on pare with what is required to go to space and scientific knowledge was... well Jules Verne's "from the earth to the moon" was hard science fiction at the time.

But as steam punk is mostly an alternate history, we can imagine that they somehow find a way to make thing to have the required tolerance, a sudden breakthrough for example where they have the modern style materials way before us. The hard part of that is to keep it Steam punk, that kind of breakthrough came from a breakthrough in other domain of science, which will lead to find other form of energy.

[CaptKordite]

I have been involved with steampunk for a number of years, have been playing Kerbal Space Program for just a year and have been playing the Professor Phineas Kerbenstein's wonderous vertical propulsion emporium mod for about a month so it was probably inevitable that I would come across this thread. One of the things I do in the steampunk community is present at conventions on Victorian spacecraft. And, in my research for that topic, I found the the 19th Century's ideas of how they were going to get into space, both in scientific romances and in science, was NOT rockets.

In 1779, Erasmus Darwin, the famous grandfather of the more famous Charles, made a sketch of tanks of compressed inflamable air (hydrogen) and dephlogisticated air (oxygen) mixing in a chamber and being ignited to make a liquid fuel rocket. He understood the principals involved (that had been generally known for millennia) and understood that compressing (liquifing) the gas would make a better rocket but it would take until the end of the next century with the works of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky to put it all together into what we would recognize as a space craft.

In between, rockets sucked. People used them for fireworks. The military used them for signalling. They tried using them as artillery but that's where they really stunk. So much so that no one even made the leap that, if improved, they could take people into space. Even Verne, who imagined the technological steps necessary to take the submarines of his day to create Nemo's Nautilus, didn't consider rockets when taking his protagonists to the moon.

By far, the most common way that Victorians got into space, at least in the fiction of the day, was some variation of anti-gravity. Or, perhaps more accurately, non-gravity.

Based on new discoveries in the fundamentals of light and electricity, it was not uncommon for scientific speculation to imagine that gravity was something similar. A wave or a ray travelling through space to act on other objects. So, if you were able to make an object opaque to gravity, that shadow would protect things behind that object from the effects of gravity, thus rendering it weightless. While the Cavorite sphere in H.G.Wells "First Men in the Moon" is probably the most famous of these anti-gravity machines, I want to talk about a much earlier, and perhaps the first such presentation.

In 1847, John Leonard Riddell published a story titled "Orrin Lindsay's Plan for Aerial Navigation." He called his spacecraft the Electric Balloon and through an amalgam of steel and mercury plus an application of electromagnetism, his spherical ship became opaque to gravity and thus floated above the Earth. To direct the craft in one direction or another he would open a window, thus allowing a ray of gravity to enter the craft, act upon the inside, and thus pull the craft in that direction.

His story was ten pages long with five additional pages of footnotes.

At the end of the Victorian Era, Wells recognized that, were a sphere like Riddell's to be made suddenly opaque to gravity, it would already have the centripital force of the Earth's rotation and would be suddenly hurled into the sky. (Actually, it would be travelling tangentially to the Earth's rotation, 600mph in England, but would appear to leap into the sky at 150mph.)

I could go on but want to spin that back to KSP for now. I know that there is (or was in earlier versions) a way to hack gravity to make it very light. Can that be built into a craft to simulate anti gravity? Difficult to make it quite the same because KSP does use three-body calculations. Imagine falling towards the Mun and having to counter the ballistic fall by opening a window and letting Kerbin's gravity in to slow you down.

 

[fredinno]

On 7/21/2015 at 0:07 AM, ChrisSpace said:

I think I might do a small alternate history thing soon-ish, based on the concept of a late 19th century space program. My 'Point of Divergence' in the timeline is between the years 1500-1600CE (roughly between the planet's names becoming official in English, and the invention of the telescope), when a hyper advanced alien civilization arrives in the inner solar system, and spends 100 years terraforming Mercury, Venus, the Moon, Mars, Ceres, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto and Titan, as well as several planets around nearby stars, then seed hem with a combination of earth and non-earth plants and animals, before leaving the solar system forever so they themselves are never seen. Why they just left us alone and how the planets remain habitable, I probably won't explain. But what follows is a vastly expanded space era in which space colonization becomes real before rockets even leave Earth's atmosphere in our timeline. It may be a bit Europe-centric due to the geopolitical situation at the time, but that should be fine.

Do you like the idea of me doing this?

Why would they just leave tho? Is it that important they're not seen? And terraforming takes more than a single century.

Edited January 22, 2016 by fredinno

[ChrisSpace]

1 hour ago, fredinno said:

Why would they just leave tho? Is it that important they're not seen? And terraforming takes more than a single century.

What you just quoted was a really really really early iteration of my alternate solar system project. I later scrapped the idea of aliens doing the terraforming.

[Spaceception]

1 hour ago, fredinno said:

Why would they just leave tho? Is it that important they're not seen? And terraforming takes more than a single century.

If it's a hyper advanced civilization capable of traveling between stars, it's entirely possible for them to Terraform in a century.

(Lets carry this conversation in the Alt. history thread)

[RocketSquid]

I just had an idea: steam-powered fuel pumps using steam created from the engine cooling loops.

[wumpus]

Here is an earlier thread (I think it is what Fredino means by the "point of divergence" thread)

Some thoughts on earlier ideas:

Randal Monroe's what if already covered gunpowder (i.e. model rocket engine) rockets.  A gunpower rocket capable of puting an ant in orbit would resemble the Great Pyramid.  https://what-if.xkcd.com/24/

Liquid rockets are right out: V2's fuel [turbo]pump: 4000hp.  Wright Brothers (~1900) 24hp.  Liquid rockets in 1900 might be scaled up from Goddard, but they aren't going to space.

Don't underestimate gun launches.  In steampunk times they probably have more delta-v available than *anything* else.  See the Paris Gun for a real-world example of Steampunk power.  As far as getting to space, I'm guessing that Paris Gun + multi-stage gunpower (or nitrocelese if sufficiently stable) could provide enough delta-v to get into Kerbin's orbit.  8000m/s just isn't happening.

Control and stabilization also aren't happening.  Spin stabilization is your best bet (but requires extreme balancing of solid rockets), 1950s rockets spun at single-digit rpms (no stress from the spin).

With a *ton* of handwaving, you might get Victorians into space from a Kerbin-sized planet (probably smaller once you start working out all the details).  Not going to happen on Earth.

PS: In a book published in 1958 (rushed out after Sputnik), it described a proposal for lifting two 100lb [45kg assuming weighed on Earth] [male] astronauts.  One objection was that while finding said 100lb men might be difficult, 100lb women would not.  The objector received a surprising amount of fan mail from the ladies.  I expect that Victorian times would likely be similar to the 1950s, with women being considered (and probably ideal considering the mass advantage) but ultimately rejected for such missions.  On the other hand, it might well turn out that a few of the "original 7" of Victorian times might be women in "drag": plenty of women fought as men in the US Civil War, not so sure if it was possible/done in later wars.

Edited August 5, 2016 by wumpus
bit about women astronauts and Victorian times

[kerbiloid]

Refined oil itself is not so taboo/offtopic for steampunk, btw.
It was widely produced since early XIX century and is in any case more powerful than a gunpowder or an alcohol.

The problem is mostly metallurgical and mechanical. Steampunk technologies use much more rude and inaccurate details than dieselpunk ones, as their rotation velocities are much lower.
Steampunk machines make steampunk machines, they need decades of evolution to produce machinery of dieselpunk quality.
So, that steam-powered pump would rotate too slow. It needs thousands rpm to make enough pressure for fuel injection, at least because if it could it would be dieselpunk and nobody would need the steam boilers.

[benzman]

I just downloaded the picture of the moonship in the original posting, because I thought it was such a beautiful picture, then I saw the word 'bonestell' in the title and it all became clear.

 

[Gauga159]

On 2015-07-13 at 3:00 AM, GregroxMun said:

weed

*dies laughing* oh im so immature

[wumpus]

On 8/5/2016 at 2:08 PM, kerbiloid said:

Refined oil itself is not so taboo/offtopic for steampunk, btw.
It was widely produced since early XIX century and is in any case more powerful than a gunpowder or an alcohol.

The problem is mostly metallurgical and mechanical. Steampunk technologies use much more rude and inaccurate details than dieselpunk ones, as their rotation velocities are much lower.
Steampunk machines make steampunk machines, they need decades of evolution to produce machinery of dieselpunk quality.
So, that steam-powered pump would rotate too slow. It needs thousands rpm to make enough pressure for fuel injection, at least because if it could it would be dieselpunk and nobody would need the steam boilers.

Assuming they could come up with the liquid oxygen (seems unlikely), alcohol would still likely to be a preferred fuel over kerosene/oil.  The V-2 used an alcohol*/liquid oxygen mix and barely lost any ISP and had 1000 degrees less temperatures to deal with (probably F, but still much easier to deal with).  They still aren't overcoming all the other issues (read fuel pump) to make liquid rockets.

* roughly 60% water.  So something like 80 proof vodka (US proof).  Expect losses when your techs (especially sailors) check your fuel tanks.

[CaptKordite]

3 hours ago, wumpus said:

Assuming they could come up with the liquid oxygen (seems unlikely)

In 1779, Erasmus Darwin (Charles Darwin's grandfather) made a sketch of a design for a rocket engine using inflammable air and dephlogisticated air. (We know those things today as hydrogen and oxygen.) In 1804, John Dalton wrote of "the reducibility of all elastic fluids of whatever kind, into liquids." The theory was all there, after that, all you need is the materials technology to actually accomplish that. That came about just after the turn of the 20th Century but, in steampunk, it's pretty easy to push that back in the timeline.