It's so easy how is everyone so stupid. I'd invent the train afterward and drive around everyone saying "you're so fucking stupid I'm not even good at this and I did it".

  • ErnestGoesToGulag [comrade/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I have no idea how steam engines work though besides the basic idea that you make some rocks hot and the smoke pushes stuff around?

    I'd be fucked

    • happybadger [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      You nake the container and then boil the water and then make the steam turn a thing. So easy and it took them forever.

      • ssjmarx [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        There actually were simple steam engines in ancient times, it just took a while for metallurgy to advance to the point where you could make one that did a useful amount of work.

          • happybadger [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            How much metallurgy could it take. Christ people are lazy.

            • ssjmarx [he/him]
              ·
              4 years ago

              It's super fucking easy actually, just heat up some wood to make charcoal, then heat up the charcoal to melt the metal while mixing in a different bit of charcoal to make it into steel. It's like these people have never played around with Minecraft mods!

      • blly509 [he/him,any]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Well someone else pointed out that usually slaves were way easier and cheaper. That industrial revolution thing was a real complicated and interesting transition that made a super complicated and actually useful steam engine profitable.

    • TheCaconym [any]
      ·
      4 years ago
      • Build a big metal receptacle, strong enough, entirely closed off except for a tube near the top that'll be the exhaust. Also add a safety valve (a valve that'll open only if the pressure inside gets too great, but at a level below that where pressure makes your receptacle explode) to not die.
      • Fill it with water (not 100% filled).
      • Plug your exhaust tube to a contraption like this, again out of strong enough metal. Steam goes in at the top tube there.
      • Heat your big water-filled receptacle, ideally with coal or another high-energy-density fuel.
      • You've got a train :traingang: or alternatively use the rotating or lateral movement of the contraption above for mills and stuff. But a train is better.
      • Mardoniush [she/her]
        ·
        4 years ago

        The "Strong enough" being the operative problem. Probably can't do a Walking beam engine before the developments in metallurgy from early cannons, if not the 17th century metallurgical analysis of Wootz steel by European scientists.

        Jet rotator engines work just fine though.

        • discontinuuity [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Metallurgy isn't the only problem, although it helps. Steel isn't strictly necessary unless you want safe high pressure and high heat boilers for more power and efficiency and fewer explosions. You could make almost an entire steam locomotive out of iron or bronze but it wouldn't be as light or durable or safe.

          You also need technology like metal casting, forging, and precision machining. Plus enough industrial capacity to produce miles of nearly uniform tracks.

          Maybe you could go straight from jet rotator engines to steam turbines and skip over piston engines entirely, but that would require a lot of the same technologies.

      • happybadger [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        I'm going to write this one down. What's pressure and is there is a number for that or do I just write P on the formula?