Don't be a first**g, now MECHS or GTFO! BTW, with the primary authors busy on new story post writing, what are the chances someone could clean up a version of the Story thread? Spelling mistakes, Time/Date stamps, proper ordering? I'm willing to help if it gets new material posted faster.
Talk to vIsitor about that. Things are going better than expected on my end though, so I should have the next piece up sooner rather than later.
I do believe I've found a piece of Top Secret CSN lostech that a certain GDI mechwarrior has already made use of. Clearly, this lostech must be classified, hidden, and kept away from the Inner Sphere nations... http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/gift-novelty/emergency-moustaches/10592521.html Ed.
Strange, it works fine for me... try this: http://tinyurl.com/6v6zusb Maybe the lostech has already been classified. Ed.
Actually I think this: http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/gift-gadgets/mini-dv-camera/10308311.html Will make Comstar's ROM's heads explode. They'll HATE those things with a passion. Of course, if you're a believer in the classics (however dead wrong they are): http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/gift-gadgets/spy-video-watch/30000085.html
Works fine for me. The mini DV camera, yes. The spy watch... sell them to the IS in bulk. Let them have them. Insert GPS trackers that synch up with CSN GPS Satellites and track enemy spies when they are on your planets because they've ALL been issued this watch
You know what would be a great export to poorer, low tech periphery nations in conjunction with agricultural equipment? Honda Super Cub's. For those of you who don't know what that is, its the most produced vehicle in the history of the world, with around 70 million manufactured today. The next closest is the Corolla which is ~30 million. It's a 49cc motorcycle which is incredibly durable, mechanically simple, easy as hell to manufacture, and pretty cheap. It gets >150 miles per gallon of fuel, and can easily run for decades. If you stay at 35 miles per hour, you will get 198 miles per gallon. You can switch out its engine oil with week old dirty french fry oil, unfiltered and it will run without a single issue. It can do ~55mph, carry like 6 times its weight, and you can drop it from a 9 story building and it will still run. You just have to replace the crushed tires afterwards. You can shoot it with a pistol and it will be fine. Up to BT standards of durability anyone? It would be a great high value export product, since with 1000 tons of cargo space you could fit 10,752 of them, assuming you have the space (though tehy are pretty small). These are the perfect vehicles to help jumpstart a low-tech society into a more modern mobile one by giving the average joe the ability to go anywhere he wants cheaply and quickly, oftentimes carrying product to sell. In fact, that is exactly what happened in countries like Vietnam and Thailand IRL. This picture is a bit big, so here the link instead of it embedded. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...es_of_Ho_Chi_Minh_City_super_cub_PB277788.jpg I fell in love with the super cub after the Top Gear (BBC) Vietnam Special. God that was a hilarious episode . You will crap yourself laughing if you watch it.
Not going to ever, EVER, argue that one. My dad still has an original (he certainly remembers the ads about it) one he bought and it's still running just fine. There's a couple places on it that look like it had gone through a war-zone, but the engine itself is simplicity at it's finest. That 2009-2010 EV concept actually went well beyond what they mentioned in the wiki article. If you flipped over the seat, it was going to have a cloth-type solar panel that was secured under it, that could be draped over either side to cover the rear tires and perform a trickle-charge off the sun, even if completely off-the-grid. And yes, that Top Gear episode is.....there are no words. There simply aren't any.
Hey! It MUST be lostech, it worked on an IS reporter - fooled 'er completely, it did! oOo On a more serious note, yeah, our ubiquitous micro-surveillance gear is going to piss off more than a few people in the IS. Not because it's better quality, but because there's so damn MUCH of it for so cheap a price. Same thing for the Super Cub, and its near cousin the CT (off-road version, with the "step-OVER" chassis instead of the step-through.) Produce them cheaply enough, go back to the earlier design with few or no electronics and idiot simple mechanics, and they'll sell out every time a drop ship arrives with a load. Ed.
If I knew about this two years ago, I would have added it to the JD lineup of fine available products.
I don't know, I kind of suspect the maket is probably already pretty saturated. Of all the real life products produced on Earth I would expected to find still in use on some back water periphery hole. The Honda SC is right their with the AK-47 and an early generation Toyota Hilux Pickup. Hell it's probably still in production somewhere out their in the sphere.
What resources do we have for petroleum fuel costs in the IS? Is distribution cheap enough for corner-gas stations? (Even with use-anything fuel engines) What was decided on the general living conditions of the 'average' middle class equivalent in the IS? Which thread would I look through to track it down?
I'm not against JD's home office sending the specs for it. We know that the two offices talk to each other. Although, you might want to include a simplier version of JD's Gator Utility Vehicle. This is a place were JD never left Terra, the shear fact that they use mechs in farming is well beyond the level of logic you are trying to use.
It can't hurt to check out the market for it on Antallos at least. Then expand the market if it isn't dirt common in the Periphery.
You don't really need oil, butanol is (currently) just as easy to produce, and was the original choice of Henry Ford as the desired fuel for autos. The move to gasoline was made simply because it was a cheap by-product of the kerosine industry at the time. Butanol is an alcohol, but with an interesting difference - it resists mixing with water, and will remain separate in much the same way oil does. It also has a much higher energy per liter than ethanol, almost as high as gasoline, and can be used directly in most ICE without any changes or adjustments to the engine. Best of all? There are several micro-organisms that produce butanol by fermentation, just as yeast produces ethanol. Now that the CSN has Primitive fusion reactors, the oil industry had better get its $#it in gear, because butanol will end up cheaper than gasoline. Ed.
Its pretty simple to change any gasoline engine to run off ethanol. Change the compression ratio, increase the float a bit, and (optionally) use a higher temperature sparkplug to ensure more heat retention in the combustion chamber. I can't remember anything else you need to do... But just those things you can do with some epoxy (for the float) and with basic hand tools. The reason ethanol has the reputation of ruining engines is because older engines used various rubber seals that were cheap, and were dissolved/embrittled over time by ethanol. If you don't use such crap to save a few cents in your engine you won't have any issue. Using scrap metal, some repurposed wood, yard waste and some starter yeast you can make your own simple as hell still to produce your own fuel. If you have a bit of land to grow your own corn or something, well... With a tiny bit of land you could produce more fuel than you need, for basically free (minus labor). But on the other hand the ABE fermentation process that produces Butanol is pretty useful. Through the consumption of starches it produces Acetone, Butanol, and Ethanol is a 3-6-1 ratio. The ethanol would obviously not be consumable due to toxic contaminants, but the process does produce more industrial useful chemicals than typical sugar fermentation by yeast to produce pure ethanol. One of the major befefits of the ABE process is that should you choose to, you could even fuel the process using ruined starchy food crops. If your potatoes suffer a blight, they are still viable for production of acetone, butanol and ethanol.
Actually, butanol doesn't need any engine changes aside from concerns about dissolving rubber. You can dump it straight into a gas engine as is and run normally. (Though the fuel lines might dissolve on you, long term.) As for the toxicity, isobutanol has a low toxicity on par with gasoline. And can be made by fermenting cellulose, instead of sugars. As in wood and other woody plant materials such as farm waste. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isobutanol Ed.
gasoline is pretty toxic ed, though fairly harmless if not ingested. Butanol is a varnish remover and paint thinner, though safe enough to use in small amounts in makeup so long as you don't ingest it. and keep it out of your eyes. Some people have bad skin reactions to it though. And as far as i know, cellulose is not a feedstock for butanol. Butanol is typically from the anaerobic fermentation of starches by various related bacteria species (or from petroleum reduction). Celluslosic production of butanol from something as simple as fermentation would revolutionize the fuel industry. You could ferment a potato into 10% ethanol, 60% percent butanol, and 30% acetone. In fact the potato is the traditional feedstock for the process, though it was typically done to get the acetone for cordite production.
