steampunkers, i call on you....

[Fargo]

Originally Posted by spaceagent-9

i stole this pic from the star wars thread

hey, you stole my ship!
never thought that shape would work for something steampunkish too...

[spaceagent-9]

its true!
on ll counts, i saw it and i knew it would covey the message better than any description i was trying to get across for a steam punk ufo airship design!!!
i hope people went to go look at your build thread its fantastic!

[Hudsonduster]

Well, you got me thinking.

A fun thing to do when mulling a challenge like this is to look around for the questions you didn't immediately ask.

Like, why do we always just accept the term "UFO" as describing something of extracurricular origin? It don't gotta be aliens all the time. Verne's fabulous machines were made by Nemo, Robur, &c.&c. By that token, "Unidentified" can simply be anything beyond the comprehension of the unschooled.

Continuing that thought, consider that sightings are usually of things just past the technology of the witness. Part of this is explained by the natural limits of description & vocabulary available--Ezekiel saw a "Wheel"--but this can also really mean a couple of things: first, and no fun for us, it just says the guy making the story up has no imagination. But it also strengthens the argument that some mad genius, not some superior alien culture, is behind the fabulous machine. --Which is a cornerstone of Steampunk.

A way to underscore the human/alien divide is to apply really imaginative modes of travel to the aliens--why's a spaceship gotta be gleaming metal? Why not as logically a lenticular cloud, or a rolling laminar-pattern "Space Train?" If those guys're smart enough to travel between the stars, d'you really think they wouldn't've stumbled on the concept of deceptive camouflage?

And how about a Mad Genius who dreams up a totally-new propulsion method using available resources?
How about a "Two-Stage Oxy-Methane Conversion Engine"--methane burns and powers the gas turbines that (1) provide main power to the lifting rotors and (2) run the Sterling superevacuator distiller that separates out the water vapor from the CO2, said water being pumped back into the turbine jets, where it flashes to steam...
Fuel is generated right onboard the Machine, via the digestive by-product of a flock of sheep (well, it's in New Zealand, after all) who also stand in as ballast.
"...The odd phugoid motion of the vessel's flight was described as 'ungulation.'..."

'Duster

ps: Yes, "Extraterrestrial." It started out as an accident, but it was too much fun to correct. 'D

[spaceagent-9]

thats what i like to see!
did you ever see the video of the laser driven air popper, satillite launch system?
its really cool.
kind of a cone that has a laser shine up into it, igniting the air all the way up into orbit apparently....

[Hudsonduster]

I'll tell you my "Deceptive Camouflage" story...

Part of my daily commute was along a causeway across a reservoir; I'd often pass the time on cell-phone with my friend Rocky Russo, a pretty famously free-thinking guy in many circles. One day, I noticed a toilet set out on the road's shoulder, mid-causeway, and remarked on it to Rocky, well-how-about-that. A couple days later, I drove by and it had been smashed to smithereens by someone. I told that to Rocky.
"ah-HAH!!" he said. "It's SPAWNED!"
"--What?"
"The toilet. It's spawned. And you're witness to it..."
For the rest of that drive, we worked out the life cycle of Koh'Mohd, The Porcelain Invader:
In Adult form--that's what I saw on that first day--it's sessile, like barnacles or sea anenomes, the Koh'Mohd simply settles down in some likely spot, and waits. It might be years, or decades, but the Koh'Mohd has a very slow metabolism; during most of this waiting time, its internal processes switch from self-sustenance to the process of preparing to Spawn. It may look utterly inert for all this period. Life goes on all around it, and it seems to have no interaction.
Until one day, when it's Ready.
When it finally requires a large amount of Protein, with which to build its Next Generation.
Virtually overnight, the Koh'Mohd goes from a passive receptacle to a fully-developed and articulated mouth: the next hapless Human to wander along with a copy of People Magazine and a few minutes to kill, well--
Imagine the surprise.
The sudden suction.
The dull thud and sickening flush.
And that's it. In one fell swoosh, one less Human in the world, with nothing to mark his Passing (which, well, didn't happen anyway) but a passel of children knocking ever-more-insistently on the bathroom door and snarking about lighting a match in there.
Then--
When the nutrients are fully assimilated--
The Koh'Mohd suddenly explodes into tens of thousands of tiny fragments.
The vast bulk will simply be incorporated into the surrounding earth. Some, lying next to sufficient organic matter, may leach enough substance to grow into the next stage of the cycle, and end up on the tables of Diners as generic white coffee mugs. There, they continue to grow on a diet of dried coffee (American ones often develop Koh'Mohd Diabetes from too much residual sugar) and the occasional lipstick smear.
Fiesta Ware is Mating Display Time.
Then, through mixing bowls, CrockPots...
And ultimately the mobile stage ends, and the Wait begins again.

There it is. I bet you never sit down again.

'Duster

[spaceagent-9]

kind of like the toilet monster meets the green slime?

[Fargo]

Originally Posted by spaceagent-9

its true!
on ll counts, i saw it and i knew it would covey the message better than any description i was trying to get across for a steam punk ufo airship design!!!
i hope people went to go look at your build thread its fantastic!

thank you to be honest, I noticed its kind of "retrò" shape too, but I only realized it after having drawn it and posted here!
anyway, if someone is interested in this steampunkish potential about that model and wants to give it a try there's no problem for me, PM me and let's see what can be done.

[Maxby]

My good Sir, what technical specifications were you reading?

It is all very simple, The furnace burns dilythium coal and aetherine gasses and provides heat at a high enough temperature to start an excinerative reaction which charges phlogisten used throughout the ship. Both normal aether and subaether propulsion are achieved by the concentration of heat from the phlogisten into the steam pulse thrustors. When thrusting hyper energized steam into normal aether the ship travels at relatively slow speeds but when emitted into a subaetheric field the escaping hyper steam can push against the very fabric of the aether itself resulting in very high speeds indeed.

For the particulars on subaetheric physics, (trexar coils & dynode emitters) I will have to defer to those boffin chaps in the Science section.

BTW, A warp my dear fellow is something they deal with in weaving and textile manufacture.

[spaceagent-9]

thats excellent and should be the first page, but where is the ship?