The River World Saga!

[kiwi1960]

Anyone read these books by Philip Jose Farmer?

The story is quite complex... every single human that has ever died on Earth is reborn on another world, some 35 billion people all told... (this book was written in the 70's)

They find themselves all naked, on the shores of a river. they have what is called a grail with them, which feeds them from mushroom shaped devices along the river.

To cut a long story short.... Mark Twain (the author) decides to build a river boat and go tot he head of the river (near the north pole) and confront the aliens and ask why. his first boat is stolen by King John Lackland ... (Lackland cos at one point he didn't have any land) this is the tyrant king that helped create the myth of Robin Hood. So... Twain builds a bigger boat and starts chasing him... he has a long head start, measured in years....

NOW.... for the forums.... here is the point of this post.

Even with some clever people, long dead famous engineers.... how easy would it be to....

Build weapons, ie: a pistol, complete with powder etc etc... from scratch...
The river boat.... complete with plastic coated hull, steam cannons, plastic bullets, monitors... TV cameras... Wide screen monitors for movies... booze (if none of the ingredients for actually making it are on this planet and they use what is there...) and electric engines..... (which get power from the mushroom shaped devices along the river...)

and better.... aeroplanes .... burning wood alcohol as fuel (to me, its not explosive enough to work an engine, especially one for flight purposes)

and in the building of all this, they made jeeps.... again, wood alcohol powered...

MY QUESTION TO YOU IS....

Would it be possible, on another planet, to start from scratch and remake all that we had on Earth in a matter of a few years.... ten at the most.... and have it looking as refined as what we have without it being bulky and untidy and ugly to look at.... WITHOUT the need to repair it constantly....

Would that even be possible?

THEN.... to add water to the oil fire.... it never dawned on Twain that the journey would have been faster if he had built an airship..... which, eventually they did, and when a few left on it to chase King John... it was shot down....

This airship was made of very modern alloys.... lightweight alloys... possibe to mine, refine and smelt into a lightweight metal???

I have my doubts...

What do you guys think? Edited November 23, 2015 by kiwi1960

[FleshJeb]

I'm not going to answer the questions, but you might enjoy: [url]http://www.amazon.com/The-Transmigration-Souls-William-Barton/dp/0446601675[/url]

A few of the chapters are set in a reimagining of Riverworld.

The Ringworld series (Larry Niven) also deals with some of the questions you're looking at.

[kerbiloid]

Current prosperity is based on:

- Precise machining, which requires already done machines to self-reproduce.
- Huge amount of accumulated hard-to-reach resources.
- Specialization of labor. No one (of course, except a sysadmin in a small firm) needs to be all-in-one human orchestra unless for fun.
- Ability to select a thousand of people from a million to operate a high-efficiency technology.
- Central government able to coordinate and force efforts of millions of people in a desired way even against their will.
- Central government able to suppress any chaotic evil group trying to oppose it in the previous point.
- Central government able to regulate and guarantee more or less clear rules of game in economy instead of primeval chaos.

All these achievements appeared as a result of tight iterative process.

Ancient mechanics knew enough much to create a primitive steam machine, but without a great amount of steel this knowledge was useless and stayed a toy.

Great amounts of steel required a steel revolution of XVIII century with huge furnace and much more bad steel instruments produced "manually" in primitive forges.

Most of natural resources are scattered around all the Earth. So, collecting a significant amount of them needs transport system, roads, stations, etc. Which require an industry.

All this would be impossible until somebody had concentrated such huge material and human resources in one hand: forcing one peasants to deliver more than they wanted to, forcing other peasants to wotk in mines instead of a field, making third peasants to arm and fight together against gangs and lesser armies, collecting finances in several banks, establishing rules of game for those who want to make a career.
I.e. until countries of several million people appeared.


If beginning from scratch, there would be a Jules Verne's Mysterious Island.

Then people would realize that only several of them is needed to plan and invent. All others must work with a plough or pickaxe all their life.

Then most of people would say: Well, I'm happy enough in my own garden and don't need all this technomagic. No hot water? So what - I can wash with a cold water or not wash at all.

Then some smart guys would say: Bah! We don't need to work ourselves, we can make our neighbors to work also instead of us.

Then they would get an early feudalism slough without any need to develop something - until feuds grow enough huge to swallow others.


So, even with an undestroyable techno-oracle which always ready to provide any free ears with tons of useful information, this process would take centuries.


That's why we need some initial ISRU plants in KSP to start a self-reproducing industry.

[Streetwind]

There was a thread recently here on the science forums discussion how long it would take to rebuild all of human technology from scratch, if you had today's knowledge to use. Perhaps you can find some insight there.

[kiwi1960]

Not so much insight.... but .... wondering if you guys think its possible.

To build a modern computer, you not only need metal... but an oscilloscope, multimeter and solder .... and IC's not exactly easy to make...

I reckon it would take a minimum of 100 years if everyone works towards the goal.. thing is, I'm giving them credit for KNOWING all the stuff....

Making and knowing are two different things.... I don;t think the author took that into account... or maybe he did and its literary licence....