Comic Genesis Forums

Madmoonie wrote:

JakeWasHere wrote:

Straw wrote:I think that flying during the night would be the easiest way to remain unseen.

Yeah, but what happens when you want to put down (or HAVE TO put down in an emergency) in the middle of the night?

You land?

Even when you've got a big leak and you're going to land whether you like it or not, it *is* possible to influence where exactly you're going to land, something that might be a tad more difficult to do in the dark.

I was being cheeky.

TMLutas wrote:Even when you've got a big leak and you're going to land whether you like it or not, it *is* possible to influence where exactly you're going to land, something that might be a tad more difficult to do in the dark.

Well it's either to risk crashlanding in the dark(though I think lux lights or flares aren't that hard to add) or travel during the day and risk crashlanding in the middle of fearful natives with pitchforks scared by the odd flying object. Just kidding.

TMLutas wrote:

Kerry Skydancer wrote:

DracoDei wrote: Uranium or Thorium are low enough ratiation to be safe to be around (and yes, they probably WOULD know the dangers if they had samples), and have good enough mechanical and melting properties to be on a par with iron, lead, or copper as working materials??
I don't know anything about the above for sure, but I am always glad to learn.

Uranium and thorium are technically radioactive, but the level is very low due to the extremely long half-lives involved. Dunno much about thorium, but they use depleted uranium (that's the non-fissionable isotope) for various items that require a very tough, high-melt-temp metal. The ignorati jump up and down and screech about it, but it's no more dangerous than lead and much more useful for some things.

I admit, I'm assuming that Airth is about the same age/composition as Earth, so that natural uranium would be too low in U-235 to fission as-is. But if so, then there is no danger of spontaneous fission, TML. And thorium is never a danger for fission.

U-235 is naturally available today in concentrations of 0.7%. Now you can make a good living in certain sections of the US creating venting systems in basements to remove the decay products that naturally seep into basements from this concentration of uranium (look up radon). I wasn't particularly worried about fission. I was much more concerned with cancer. If you have a Scrooge McDuck sized money vault when money's lightly radioactive, you're going to have a shorter life. If they didn't understand radioactivity, it would look like greed made them ill and eventually killed them.

Ah, but that's because people panic over nothing. The venting is almost never necessary; but because it's radioactive you get people (including, unfortunately, real estate agents) screeching and running around like the proverbial head-without-a-chicken and insisting on totally unneeded 'safety' measures that jack up the cost.

BTW, U-235, U-238, and thorium isotopes all alpha-decay, just at different rates. You'll get radon and helium from any of them.

As for money bins - metal is -valuable-. I suspect that they'd have to have some sort of non-metal way to store large amounts of wealth, or they'd tie up too much of it in rich folks' holdings.

Kerry Skydancer wrote:

TMLutas wrote: U-235 is naturally available today in concentrations of 0.7%. Now you can make a good living in certain sections of the US creating venting systems in basements to remove the decay products that naturally seep into basements from this concentration of uranium (look up radon). I wasn't particularly worried about fission. I was much more concerned with cancer. If you have a Scrooge McDuck sized money vault when money's lightly radioactive, you're going to have a shorter life. If they didn't understand radioactivity, it would look like greed made them ill and eventually killed them.

Ah, but that's because people panic over nothing. The venting is almost never necessary; but because it's radioactive you get people (including, unfortunately, real estate agents) screeching and running around like the proverbial head-without-a-chicken and insisting on totally unneeded 'safety' measures that jack up the cost.

BTW, U-235, U-238, and thorium isotopes all alpha-decay, just at different rates. You'll get radon and helium from any of them.

As for money bins - metal is -valuable-. I suspect that they'd have to have some sort of non-metal way to store large amounts of wealth, or they'd tie up too much of it in rich folks' holdings.

The point of money being valuable in a hard currency society is not just a truism, it's a tautology. If you're using hard money, it's *all* valuable. That's the point. If you have soft currency for large transactions and hard currency for small ones, where's the inflation protection? I just can't see how you'd avoid rich men's money vaults, or even worse, a bank vault full of radioactive money where an entire town's worth of savings might sit.

You miss the point. It's not soft currency, but metal is too valuable to hold in stockpiles. Rich folks would have land, goods, large quantities of less valuable commodities, rather than big piles of cash sitting around untended. Maybe even a banking system of some sort, though we haven't seen any indications of it. One can have banks without paper money.

Kerry Skydancer wrote:Ah, but that's because people panic over nothing. The venting is almost never necessary; but because it's radioactive you get people (including, unfortunately, real estate agents) screeching and running around like the proverbial head-without-a-chicken and insisting on totally unneeded 'safety' measures that jack up the cost.

Yeah Kerry, that's why serious people are against a careless use of depleted uranium because it's a heavy metal and toxic.

BTW, U-235, U-238, and thorium isotopes all alpha-decay, just at different rates. You'll get radon and helium from any of them.

Nuclear fission is still not a realistic option for obtaining helium.

You miss the point. It's not soft currency, but metal is too valuable to hold in stockpiles. Rich folks would have land, goods, large quantities of less valuable commodities, rather than big piles of cash sitting around untended. Maybe even a banking system of some sort, though we haven't seen any indications of it. One can have banks without paper money.

I beleave it was mentioned that the Archivest Guild controls the banking. I think the refrence was on one of the CD's I'll have to check. That is one of the reasons the Archivist are so wealthy and powerful is because they control the money, investments, lowns, and of course keep surpluss money safe for people, they are not just about records and paperwork you know.

Kerry Skydancer wrote:You miss the point. It's not soft currency, but metal is too valuable to hold in stockpiles. Rich folks would have land, goods, large quantities of less valuable commodities, rather than big piles of cash sitting around untended. Maybe even a banking system of some sort, though we haven't seen any indications of it. One can have banks without paper money.

Of course you can have banks without paper money. I mentioned banks myself as being the ultimate in danger in a radioactive hard money system. The problem is hardly solved by creating a greater concentration of the stuff, is it?

detrius wrote:

Kerry Skydancer wrote:Ah, but that's because people panic over nothing. The venting is almost never necessary; but because it's radioactive you get people (including, unfortunately, real estate agents) screeching and running around like the proverbial head-without-a-chicken and insisting on totally unneeded 'safety' measures that jack up the cost.

Yeah Kerry, that's why serious people are against a careless use of depleted uranium because it's a heavy metal and toxic.

BTW, U-235, U-238, and thorium isotopes all alpha-decay, just at different rates. You'll get radon and helium from any of them.

Nuclear fission is still not a realistic option for obtaining helium.

Fission??? Who said anything about fission as a source of helium? You can get it as a byproduct of mining and refining uranium and thorium, or as was pointed out, as a byproduct of natural gas wells. I don't think the Raconnan have either of those things.

And depleted uranium is no more toxic than a lot of other things used for warfare; serious people don't get all bent out of shape over it unless they are against nearly any weapon invented since, oh, 1750 or so. Which pretty much rules out 'serious' anyway.

Kerry Skydancer wrote:Fission??? Who said anything about fission as a source of helium?

You did. Nuclear decay is a kind of naturally-occurring fission. It's not a viable source for helium. This decay is what produces helium in the earth's crust in the first place, but it takes a very long time for significant amounts to accumulate. I have never, ever heard of helium being obtained as a byproduct of uranium or thorium processing.

Dapple wrote:

You miss the point. It's not soft currency, but metal is too valuable to hold in stockpiles. Rich folks would have land, goods, large quantities of less valuable commodities, rather than big piles of cash sitting around untended. Maybe even a banking system of some sort, though we haven't seen any indications of it. One can have banks without paper money.

I beleave it was mentioned that the Archivest Guild controls the banking. I think the refrence was on one of the CD's I'll have to check. That is one of the reasons the Archivist are so wealthy and powerful is because they control the money, investments, lowns, and of course keep surpluss money safe for people, they are not just about records and paperwork you know.

Not exactly.

Their main purpose is to serve as a national archive, a "backup" for all printed and written records and materials.

A secondary concern is WEIGHTS AND MEASURES. They are relied on for accuracy in weights and measures for all trade... which means that, since metals are exchanged by WEIGHT, their scales are used as the final authority on accuracy.

A tertiary field of expansion is the preservation of rare and historical artifacts... the museum Kestrel showed Quentyn being one example.

And, as a consequence of their record-keeping services, they also provide messenger and notary public services... their messengers are, in fact, qualified to serve as notary publics.

A certain amount of debate, internal and political, has gone into whether the guild should be divided up into four seperate guilds or not--- but thus far it's a suggestion that's been put on the back burner, as the interrelation between the four duties of the guild make it somewhat problematic.

They don't "do" savings accounts or banking.

Acolyte wrote:

Kerry Skydancer wrote:Fission??? Who said anything about fission as a source of helium?

You did. Nuclear decay is a kind of naturally-occurring fission. It's not a viable source for helium. This decay is what produces helium in the earth's crust in the first place, but it takes a very long time for significant amounts to accumulate. I have never, ever heard of helium being obtained as a byproduct of uranium or thorium processing.

Ummm, no. Alpha decay is -not- fission, not even slightly. Completely different process. Don't assume I conflated the two.

I have managed to confuse the presence of alpha-tracks and helium entrapment in ore bodies (which geologists do use in dating at times) with the presence of commercially viable amounts of the stuff. Upon reflection, if there are decent amounts of helium present, the uranium or thorium would itself be mostly gone and you'd have a lead mine instead.

Kerry Skydancer wrote:Ummm, no. Alpha decay is -not- fission, not even slightly. Completely different process. Don't assume I conflated the two.

Sure, it's a completely different process from the kind of artificially-induced chain-reaction fission we use in nuclear power plants and fission bombs. But it is fission, nonetheless. See this informational page from the Stanford Linear Accelerator.

Bozhemoi. I've -never- seen it called fission before, and I've read more textbooks on the subject than I can remember, including teaching it for the Navy. Sounds like Stanford let some clueless website designer do that.

I wasn't relying on that page, just using it for support. What I wrote was a dim memory from high school physics many years ago. But even if it was my source, according to the notation at the bottom this is the person responsible for its content. Why don't you email her and tell her she's clueless?

Acolyte wrote:Why don't you email her and tell her she's clueless?

Might as well since Alpha decay certainly is not the same as fission! God were did she or you for that matter learn about physics?(though I highly doubt she herself really wrote that) In fission the nucleus splits into half. Half! In Alpha decay the nucleus splits into a alpha particle and a daughter nucleus which is the size of the original nucleus minus the helium nucleus. The most radical difference between these two is that fission releases pretty freaking much more energy.

Of course this might just one of those cases where people use the common term fission(wrongly) because they can't bothered to use(or don't know) the correct name of the nuclear reaction which in this case is alpha decay.

I'm well aware of the usual process of nuclear fission, thanks. But if Stanford Linear Accelerator won't change your mind, I certainly can't.

Straw wrote:Of course this might just one of those cases where people use the common term fission(wrongly) because they can't bothered to use(or don't know) the correct name of the nuclear reaction which in this case is alpha decay.

It's actually one of the cases where the author had to translate his post from one language into another (*discreetly points to his location*) and a small but important detail got lost in the translation process. Heh... I hope you can forgive me my faultiness.

About nuclear decay vs. nuclear fission: in short, I've learned in school that fission is a special form of nuclear decay that requires an external energy source, for example a neutron released by a decayed nucleus.

Kerry Skydancer wrote:...a source of helium? You can get it as a byproduct of mining and refining uranium and thorium, or as was pointed out, as a byproduct of natural gas wells. I don't think the Raconnan have either of those things.

Aah... okay, obtaining it as a byproduct of the ore's refinement makes much more sense...
I swear your former posts gave me the impression that you wanted to put extraction hoods over big piles of uranium and/or thorium to collect the helium produced by the radioactive decay (never mind that this would take one aeon or two... ). Thanks for the clarification.

And depleted uranium is no more toxic than a lot of other things used for warfare; serious people don't get all bent out of shape over it unless they are against nearly any weapon invented since, oh, 1750 or so. Which pretty much rules out 'serious' anyway.

Okay, can we agree upon that it is possible to stay serious while maintaining a sceptical point of view on the use of toxic materials for warfare (*) as long as a fully functional and hostile T-72 is percieved as a greater potential hazard?

(*) not used due to their toxic qualities