Aircraft for Safehold

That would require solutions to engines and airframes.

There have been diesel aircraft.

Wood was a successful material for a long time but hopeless if Charis wanted aircraft carriers. Aluminum without electricity would require expensive refining. A leapfrog to composite materials would do it but might be hard to figure out without Merlin being too blatant about supplying information.

The Wright Flyer was fabric and wood, but it was an extrapolation of existing glider designs. I haven't seen any indication of gliders on Safehold, so where would the initial idea come from? Yes, I know Merlin could seed it easily enough, but he's spent the past 10 books trying to establish that everything he's helped Charis produce is coming out of native Safeholdian ideas and inspiration to avoid any question of "demonic influence". I don't see him changing tactics at this point.

Efficient diesel engines would require aluminium pistons, and a number of innovations including high tech steels.

Seed gliders, or kites that are big. Then have some of the manned kites break loose and give the idea of the glider.

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Julia Minor wrote:The Wright Flyer was fabric and wood, but it was an extrapolation of existing glider designs. I haven't seen any indication of gliders on Safehold, so where would the initial idea come from? Yes, I know Merlin could seed it easily enough, but he's spent the past 10 books trying to establish that everything he's helped Charis produce is coming out of native Safeholdian ideas and inspiration to avoid any question of "demonic influence". I don't see him changing tactics at this point.

That raises a fascinating question. Humans have wanted to fly for a very long time. Why did Safehold not make any non-powered aircraft? Is there a Proscription we haven't heard of, maybe? But why?

Well, for one thing, flight was very much the province of the angels and archangels, and apparently a very, very few of their most favoured and holy human servants. It wouldn't take much of an implied 'thou shalt not...' to put it out of bounds - and it can be a very generic one. "angels and saint do these things. you're neither, so..."

However, given the relative lack of horror and outrage that accompanied the introduction of tethered balloons and then airships, the controls were probably rather more straightforward: recall that the Writ doesn't just contain the Proscriptions [which were in fact a rather late addition, not something Langhorne and Bedard thought was needed], it includes a great many _prescriptions_ - statements of the proper and holy way to do many things. Properly chosen, and with experimentation rather discouraged, they would have closed off the path to balloons and many other things Langhorne fondly imagined to be beyond the scope of "medieval technology"

Expert snuggler wrote:

Julia Minor wrote:The Wright Flyer was fabric and wood, but it was an extrapolation of existing glider designs. I haven't seen any indication of gliders on Safehold, so where would the initial idea come from? Yes, I know Merlin could seed it easily enough, but he's spent the past 10 books trying to establish that everything he's helped Charis produce is coming out of native Safeholdian ideas and inspiration to avoid any question of "demonic influence". I don't see him changing tactics at this point.

That raises a fascinating question. Humans have wanted to fly for a very long time. Why did Safehold not make any non-powered aircraft? Is there a Proscription we haven't heard of, maybe? But why?