colonial weapons (and other stuff)

Ryan said:

Wow. Really, even Fax machines come with Backup systems?

[Tomb] That depends on 1) how expensive my fax is with and without a
backup. If a fax costs me equivalent of $10 today and a backup adds $1, but I
might not be able to repair it if I don't by the redundant
self-repair capability, then I'll spend the extra buck if I'm going to
Nowhere VII.

 Does that
mean we don't need the Armored recovery vehicle for the tanks in a battle?

[Tomb] This would depend on how fast you need the repair.

I mean if the nanites can fix the basic technology fax machine by themselves,
couldn't each tank carry around a barrel full of them to fix the broken track,
grav impeller, wheel, smoking hole in the armor?

[Tomb] Regenerating armour I can see. The others, some of them might be
doable to. But the thing is how fast will this work and will you not have
other battlefield constraints that make recovery fast an issue? This isn't
strictly analogous to the machine shop example. If my machine shop is down for
a week, it may be a problem. But if it fixes itself and I keep a backlog of
certain key spares, that isn't a problem.

> 2) colnies without educated people? Not from the NAC I think. I think

Not with out. But why is a Computer engineer going to move to a mining world
when he has a very viable job back at New Avalon? Sure he may get contracted
out, but you aren't going to have 400 Chip fabrication specialist that are
also Miners.

[Tomb] It'll be too expensive to ship out lasers and fancy fabs, but
shipping raw ore will work? What are they mining? Unobtainium? Fantasium?

[Tomb] I suspect you'll find that there are lots of computer engineers
who'd consider a move to a new fledgling colony on a nice new world if they
were promised 100 prime acres and a job in the central city as
network administrator - being a key player in something (even a small
thing) appeals to an awful lot of geeks, as does the pioneer/build
something spirit. Some people will want to stay near Uber University or Uber
Corp, but there are enough that are willing to work for a different kind of
compensation. Crap, look to the Open Source and Free Software movements....

Certain industries are going to be non existent on smaller colony worlds.
PERIOD. Eventually they will make it. But it will take time. One can extend
this sort of idea to certain states.

[Tomb] These will fall into two categories: ones which nobody needs
enough to spend the money on (and that are expensive) such as luxury goods,
and ones which are UberNew. But UberNew for 2183 is not a
self-repairing basic machine shop and dishwasher sized basic chip fab
IMHO. 15 years ago, your toaster didn't have microchips. 20 years ago, watches
didn't. Now your watch can be a computer that can blow away a lot of old
desktops in certain ways. 200 years from now, the world won't be much like
we'd recognize, I fear.

I can go to North Dakota and find lots of farmers. I won't find a factory that
fabricates chips.

[Tomb] Because it is cheaper to locate it somewhere else and the cost of
shipping is minimal and the supply is reasonably gauranteed.

I won't likely find many people that
can even burn e-proms in their basement work shop either.

[Tomb] If you include the cities in ND, I think you'd find more than a
few. How many Ham Radio operators do you think there are? How many people that
are jackleg mechanics? Lots. If the necessity exists for a thing, the skills
to work it appear eventually. If it can't be imported cheaper, and the
argument I believe indicated that mass transport of goods might be expensive
to preclude this.

 If I wanted
to suddenly locate a business in North Dakota to make computers, I'm going to
have a hard time getting it set up. I won't have enough skilled workers for
that industry. I won't have any nearby contractors for parts or supplies I'll
need.

[Tomb] And when you plan a colony, you'd only take farmers eh? You'd
never bother planning out your initial roster or immigration incentives to
help counterbalance your shortcomings? There are a lot of fisherman in
Newfoundland and New Brunswick, but there is a growing High Tech community
because the governments are making it attractive. If ND made it attractive,
business would locate there as would skilled labour.

I will be shipping harddrives, components, power supplies, CRTs, connectors,
memory and processors from out side of the country. Sure, I could get cases
fabricated there easy. But, I could set the same kind of factory up in Silicon
valley and be set for everything I need, there would be local businesses with
those fields already set up. Either as brokers
that bring it in from else where, or items that are made in-situ.

Granted, shipping is cheap, but, if it's so cheap, why aren't there computer
makers in North Dakota?

[Tomb] Everything has to locate somewhere and sometimes that is just a
momentum thing. And ND probably isn't on the radar of people looking for a
high tech HQ. And if you are the first business into an area, it is hard for
your HR to steal guys from the other company. But that's some of the profit
based issues. A colonial administration has different issues and different
tools and incentives to offer. If the gov't of ND offered programmers a huge
ranch for moving there and advertised all the great family reasons to live in
ND, I think you'd see some movement (especially if they at the same time lured
companies with tax breaks). It's all a matter of your offer relative to other
places.... and if colonies want to make themselves attractive to educated and
mobile workers, it can be done. Sometimes it is about lifestyle, sometimes
opportunity, sometimes money. Always about optics (advertise!).

During WWII Austrialia and South Africa didn't have sufficient industrial base
to build many of the things being built in the United States. They didn't have
the ability to build anything beyond light armored vehicles. Austrailia did
have one Locomotive foundry as I recall and by the time the had finished with
their tank design, it'd already been surpassed by factory production in the US
and in the UK. Just ramping up production took long enough that the distance
issue
with shipping them there was easier than making them in-situ. They
eventually got things working, but the lack of industrial base for that
particular item was long in coming. Realize this was due to a wartime need
where there was an enemy just off the coast apparently ready to invade.

[Tomb] You know, this discussion reminds me of a group of generals
preparing to fight the next war by preparing to fight the _last_ war.
What went on there in WW2 has some value as a case study, but does not
necessarily acknowledge the changing capabilities of industry, especially on
the micromanufacturing scale. Nor does it acknowledge the general increase in
educational levels. Nor other factors. History is interesting, the trick is
ferreting out the pertinent while realizing how the world does and will differ
from what has gone before.

Austrailia wasn't a struggling colony. They weren't a failing colony. They
just didn't have the industry present to do that. South Africa eventually
built her own defense industry, but it took years and lots of really hard work
to do it. It wasn't a back yard project either.

[Tomb] Unless you are suggesting all colonies will be created out of 100
people and a shoestring budget, I don't see that as a valid comparison either.
South Africa evolved a defense industry when it became apparent procuring
foreign arms was going to be very tough. It offered to solve that problem plus
offer export opportunities. Similarly, if a colony can get something easily by
importing and cheaply, they will. As the access to the good goes away or costs
increase, the incentive to manufacture it locally will go up. If we're
positing expensive space travel, then the INTIAL incentive to be able to
handle almost anything you need (and to a reasonable level of sophistication)
will be high. And that alone creates a market for the design and manufacture
of things to make this possible! Right now, colonization isn't really a
business opportunity. By 2183, it will probably be a big market.

You are correct here. Likely there will be some planetary defense
force of some sort even so. Quakers/Amish will likely be just as
happy being a small settlement on a larger planet.

[Tomb] Very true. Mind you, some of the groups might be happier away
from everybody else. And there may be a class of settler that is always
moving to the next new settlement - once you get more than three

> At 9:28 PM -0500 1/29/02, Tomb wrote:

> [Tomb] It'll be too expensive to ship out lasers and fancy fabs, but

They could be slowly building up stocks to be sent back on bulk freighters.
One big ship on a long slow run to get ore is nice and efficient. Even if it
takes some time. Figure that that ore freighter is containerized rather than
big bulk holds. It could bring in new materials, parts and components for
things not locally available.

As far as shipping lasers, again though, if you're shipping out lasers for
every Colonial Militiaman that needs one why did St John make the rules the
way he did? Isn't the NAC giving its best weapons to the SAS and other special
forces types first? I'm pretty sure that what firms like Holland and Holland,
McMillian Brothers and Remington are offering in 2183 will still be different
from what the NAC is equipping it's ground forces.

> [Tomb] I suspect you'll find that there are lots of computer engineers

Yes but a few engineers doesn't an entire Industry make. You need more than
just the basic raw materials and far more than just the know how. Open source
is struggling. Congress isn't helping right now either.

> [Tomb] These will fall into two categories: ones which nobody needs

And 20 years ago everyone thought we were to have established a base on mars.
40 years ago, they thought we'd all have robots running around in our houses
cleaning things. That and we'd all have personal flying vehicles.

Again, certain industries supple things to other industries. To fabricate
Printed Circuit boards (not the complete board, just the Part the chips and
processors go on) you need resins, chemicals, and metals that are refined
differently. To get those metals, you need more chemicals that are different
to refine them from ores.

The thing is though, many of those chips are made at a single plant. Memory
prices sky rocketed a few years ago because the one of the few plants that
made them in South East Asia burned down. That small a manufacturing pool is
very much due to the precise nature and intensive needs of such a product. You
do far more than lay bits of sand out on a cookie sheet. Processors have some
amazing amounts of precision metallurgy in them.

I'd be bloody surprised if you could get such processes easier as time goes
on. Just look at the modern automobile. Its gotten more complex to make and
requires more specialized parts than 30 years ago. Not less. I can rewind a
stator for a motor with the same things my grandfather would have used. I
cannot repair a one piece surface mount computer board from my Honda Insight.
The parts come from a particular factory.

> [Tomb] Because it is cheaper to locate it somewhere else and the cost

Ahha! But could you start that factory up in North Dakota if shipping were
expensive? You'd be better off locating that factory central to your finished
materials and ship out an expensive to ship final product.

> I won't likely find many people that

Yes, but the whole point is that these items aren't going to be getting made
insitu. If they are being shipped in and they are already the cream of the
crop in weaponry then I highly doubt the average militiaman is going to have a
first rate weapon. Likely he'll have something cheap, reliable and effective.

Besides, most of those Ham Radio dudes couldn't even begin to think about how
to make some of the more basic components in their radios.

> [Tomb] And when you plan a colony, you'd only take farmers eh? You'd

Nope, I'll probably have a few specialist. But I doubt any

> [Tomb] Everything has to locate somewhere and sometimes that is just a

I think you'd still have a hard time getting a computer maker to move to ND.
> [Tomb] You know, this discussion reminds me of a group of generals

We're not talking war fighting here. Its economics and things like Moore's
Law.

Its more like the folks that (as I said above) stated we'd have flying cars by
the year 2001. We're barely to the electric car stage.

> [Tomb] Unless you are suggesting all colonies will be created out of

And that happened over how long? 50 years from their early stage of making
Marmom Herrington Armored cars for the North Africa campaign to making the
Oliphant and the Rooikat. Still thought in WWII terms, South Africa was more
than 100 people.

Likewise Austrailia. They had thousands of people. Many of them knew how to
fix a car. Far far fewer of them knew how to build a tank. In fact the person
( A Colonel Watson) that helped design the Sentinel was shipped (in 1940) from
Great Britain via the US (he looked at the US M3 designs on the way out). The
first design (The AC I) they settled on used the final drive design from the
M3. When they got around to looking at the manufacturing side of this it was
realized that this was going to be too sophisticated for Austrailian
facilities at the time (April '41). It would take a year for the fabrication
tooling to arrive from England. (What's the time from one planet to another in
FT terms? Half a week? 3 Months?)

So, they decided to down size the weight and size of the vehicle so they could
use locally made truck components for the engines and final drives, when they
finally worked everything out, it was
realized it would be limited to a 2 pounder gun and a 16-18 ton
weight. By september they decided to abandon this design (AC II) and go back
to the AC I. They simplified the final drive and changed to using horzontal
volute bogies and had a working prototype by Jan of '42. And by August of '42
they had the first production vehicle off the assembly lines at the Chullona
Shops build specifically to make these tanks. They built a total of 66 tanks
by July of '43. By this time it was realized the US could supply the entire
requirement of vehicles for the 1st Austrailian Armoured Division that had
recently been formed. Thus the Sentinel never saw combat and was only used for
training in Austrailia. You should know the hull and turret castings were
considered an achievement for Austrailian manufacturing. The
thing used 3 Cadillac V-8s in a clover leaf arrangement.

This all shows that just because people know how to do it and that you have
the raw materials available it doesn't mean that you can do it fast, cheap and
in even close to the same scale that a industry can that is much larger and
more broad. It takes a multitude of supporting industries for making engines.
Let alone more complex components. Just because you can make one kind of
component, doesn't mean you can turn around and make another in a few days.
You have to
re-tool, redesign and re-arrange the factory for that particular item.

Outside of the Lockheed martin plant, there are a pile of assembly jigs and
stands that were used to make the C141. All of those now rusty bits of metal
were made to build the production C141s. They were made using the prototypes
as an example to get the production floor arranged and configured for making
the aircraft in multiples rather than in single units. Those jigs are now junk
rusting in a field. It took at least a year just to make those jigs and get
them all just right so they could turn out the first production aircraft.

If you get 15 guys to make a laser rifle in their work shop over 10
weeks using parts shipped in or painstakingly made in-situ then
great. Just because they do that, doesn't mean they can turn around and start
turning them out by the dozens in the same amount of time. More back industry
needs to be set up and running before hand.

> [Tomb] Very true. Mind you, some of the groups might be happier away

Planets are big places.