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Charisian Urban Development

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Re: Charisian Urban Development
Post by Imaginos1892   » Mon Jun 17, 2019 10:58 am

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Isilith wrote:You want to put a blimp, with flammable hydrogen bags, over a high rise fire.

If the roof is burning, there's nobody left to rescue. If the fire is a few floors down, risk to the blimp would be minimal. Lower a bosun's chair on a 20-foot rope.
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Re: Charisian Urban Development
Post by iranuke   » Mon Jun 24, 2019 10:44 pm

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If I wanted to build a subway using steam technology, I would go with a cable-car system using steel cables and keep the boiler for the steam engine above ground.
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Re: Charisian Urban Development
Post by PeterZ   » Mon Jun 24, 2019 11:23 pm

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iranuke wrote:If I wanted to build a subway using steam technology, I would go with a cable-car system using steel cables and keep the boiler for the steam engine above ground.

Not a subway, but an elevated line. Whether the train works beneath the roads or above them matters little. The advantage of expanding the capacity of intracity travel along current roads and streets makes the investment in those steel structures worthwhile. Elevated lines will also have fewer issues with steam powered locomotives. Mind, I suspect that such elevated lines will be powered by Dobel engines fueled with alcohol or plant based oils.

Chicago "L" had its first lines running in 1892 using a steam locomotive. "L" stands for elevated.
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Re: Charisian Urban Development
Post by Randomiser   » Wed Jun 26, 2019 7:51 am

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Erls - You want to introduce High-rise living blocks and commuting to poor innocent Safehold, what kind of sadist are you?
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Re: Charisian Urban Development
Post by PeterZ   » Wed Jun 26, 2019 1:27 pm

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Tellesberg exists along the hills between the Styvyn Mountains and the Iron Hill Mountains. There is no plain to expand into, so space is limited. As the empire grows, Tellesberg will see commensurate growth. The geography has already cursed them to suffer high rises that their economy can very well afford.


Randomiser wrote:Erls - You want to introduce High-rise living blocks and commuting to poor innocent Safehold, what kind of sadist are you?
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Re: Charisian Urban Development
Post by Warpy   » Thu Jun 27, 2019 2:13 am

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Imaginos1892 wrote:
Rescuing people from the outside of a building above the eighth floor or so is too high for us, too. On Safehold, they could pick people off the roof with a blimp if they can't evacuate down the stairs.


So you would have a gas bag filled with highly flammable Hydrogen get close to a building on fire to rescue people... Turbulence and air currents caused by the fire would make the blimp hard to control, and did I mention that Hydrogen just needs a little nudge to go poof! And before you say it, yes they could use the helium that comes off as a byproduct of drilling for natural gas and oil however that is a minuscule amount of helium and the process by which it is captured may be enough to get the attention of the Orbital Bombardment Platform.
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Re: Charisian Urban Development
Post by Warpy   » Thu Jun 27, 2019 2:23 am

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Imaginos1892 wrote:
Isilith wrote:You want to put a blimp, with flammable hydrogen bags, over a high rise fire.

If the roof is burning, there's nobody left to rescue. If the fire is a few floors down, risk to the blimp would be minimal. Lower a bosun's chair on a 20-foot rope.


so the heat and exhaust of a burning building still has to escape even if the roof isn't on fire, and airships are notoriously fragile (look up accidents involving airships if you don't believe me), the thermals and air currents being generated would make it difficult to control the blimp and are likely to move the airship off course, this is of course excluding the fact that gaseous hydrogen becomes more reactive as it is heated, mainly as somewhat less reactive diatomic hydrogen disassociates into pure mono atomic hydrogen and if memory serves the Imperial Balloon Corp still hasn't figured out how to stop hydrogen from slowly eating through their gas bags.
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Re: Charisian Urban Development
Post by Daryl   » Thu Jun 27, 2019 3:44 am

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As an aside I heard a story on this when working in the aviation industry. An Iroquois helicopter is known to be an under powered big box. So when people congregated on top of a burning Asian high rise they filled it with everyone, and between bouncing and pushing got it off sideways, straightened up, and had a slow motion controlled crash after over torquing the mechanicals all the way down. Everyone survived, but the old chopper didn't.
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Re: Charisian Urban Development
Post by Galactic Sapper   » Sat Jun 29, 2019 1:46 pm

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Think outside the box. Instead of rescuing people off the roof, provide them the means of rescuing themselves. Zip lines!

>Imagines fire brigade showing up, using a mortar to shoot a grappling-hook-type-thing to the roof, and securing the other end several hundred yards down the road. On the room the evacuees secure the line, break open a locker of hand/seat units, and zip away to safety!
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Re: Charisian Urban Development
Post by DMcCunney   » Mon Sep 30, 2019 8:36 pm

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Erls wrote:So, I got to thinking.. Charis could, with existing technology, turn their capital cities (Both Imperial and Kingdom) into technology demonstrators. While at the same time introducing the modern urban city and providing a well-designed transportation network. I describe what I mean below.

Tellesberg, at least, is already a technology demonstrator.

Think gas lighting in the streets, regular cisterns holding water with steam powered pumpers for the fire brigade, regularly scheduled railway service to a big central station from other parts of Charis, steam automobiles, Praigyr powered refrigeration gear that makes ice no longer a high priced luxury item imported from elsewhere...

I live in NYC. It developed skyscrapers as a consequence of geography. Manhattan is an island where the scarce resource is land. Buildings grew up because they couldn't spread out. While Tellesberg has been steadily expanding, it has not reached the point of skyscrapers just to hold everyone. They would be expressions of national ego but not necessarily fill a real economic need.

(I grew up in Philadelphia. It had room to spread out. It's a big city indeed, but you don't realize it because it didn't grow up. Indeed, it wasn't allowed to - when I lived there there was an unwritten rule that no building could be taller than the top of the statue of William Penn atop the clock tower in the gothic monstrosity that is City Hall. It was not technically illegal, but you would never get a zoning permit to do it. It was only well after I moved to NYC in the 70s that taller buildings began to appear, but the city still preserved sight lines so where you wanted to build was a factor in whether you could.)

Subways are another Why? matter. They are useful for commuter transport when your existing road system can't handle the traffic volume, but whether you can build them will depend on what's under the city. NYC has an extensive subway system under Manhattan Island, but the island rests on a granite tectonic plate. Subways tunnel under rivers to the surrounding boroughs, but are elevated once they emerge. (NYC used to have elevated lines in NYC but they were removed in favor of underground lines because of right-of-way issues.)

Philadelphia's subways are entirely underground but less extensive. There is a main north/south line and a main east/west line. From there you connect to buses and trolleys that serve the rest of the city.

Tellesberg's present commuter needs can likely be handled by replacing dragon-drawn trams with steam automobiles, and paving what are currently cobblestone thoroughfares. Elevated lines are a possibility, but you face extensive disruption in building them. Where will the lines run? What must be torn down to provide the right-of-way?

And building subway lines is an enormously complex and fantastically expensive operation. NYC is in the process of building a new tunnel for a Second Avenue subway line. Many residents didn't think it would ever actually happen. It is in process (and I believe parts are operational), but if it is fully completed in my lifetime I'll be mildly surprised.

Charis could probably do it, but unless it served a purpose beyond "Look what we can do!", it would arguably be a mistake. Such capital expenditures need to improve the quality of life of those living there. (You may assume anyone living over the tunnels being dug would think their quality of life had declined significantly.)
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