Itty Bitty Bigger World - Pillar
Sep. 15th, 2023 02:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyItty Bitty Bigger World - Pillar
"By day the LORD went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night." - Bible, NIV, Exodus 13;21
I was giving a presentation on rescue systems. This required reviewing some fundamentals of SanSan that a lot of people thought they knew, but really didn't.
"The first pillars were power plants."
Flash picture of a nuclear reactor, in this case the Diablo Canyon facility in San Luis Obispo County. Still running to this day, as a museum piece.
"Put in a fuel, get out power. Or to put it more precisely, put in ANYTHING and get out ANYTHING. Process non-potable water into potable water. Process waste into materials. Process toxic substances into useful ones."
I changed screens again. An array of process diagrams, too fast to grasp unless one paid careful attention.
"The most important pre-Protocol innovation that made the pillar possible was the invention of standards. ISO 9001, and all the rest. Many people think that standardization was what came with the adoption of Protocol, but it was actually the other way around."
Flash a horse drawn carriage.
"How wide is this horse's ass?" I asked rhetorically, and diagrams popped up showing the carriage width in meters. Also in feet, because I'm an archaic throwback. A stray Net comment immediately accused me of Eurocentrism and my expert software booted and blocked the commenter while leaving their comment up. My default, also because I'm an archaic throwback and value freedom of speech but not freedom from consequences.
"Ancient Roman roads were sized to a certain width. The first powered vehicles, the same." (Flash to railroad locomotive, then to the first ancient electric and hydrocarbon cars.) 'The highways of America's golden age." (Ten lane freeway, jammed with cars and trucks.) "The exact measurement never mattered ... but that we picked one and stuck with it, did matter. A lot." (Animation of US Army HUMVEE stuck in jeep tunnel of amphibious assault ship, then the latter being scrapped as a result.)
"So the maintenance access into a pillar is of a certain height and width. Always. The pillar itself, a multiple of that height and width. The power it supplies, to a AC and also DC standard. Water, potable - liters per minute or LPM. Sewage in, fertilizer out. Trace chemicals accumulate and are handled in totes - also standardized, according to the dimensions of old manually moved wooden frames called 'pallets.'"
Diagrams and pictures at each step. Interlinked.
"Most of our chemistry is catalytic in nature. We don't use enormous temperatures and pressures to handle substances, or if we do, we don't do it on planetary surfaces where there could be issues. We also don't use self replicating nanotech on planetary surfaces. Nanobots are programmed for specific tasks, but we don't allow direct reproduction of them. Even in off planet research facilities, we avoid situations that would place evolutionary pressures on von Neumann devices."
A flash of industrial disasters - refinery explosions, toxic waste spills, train wrecks, arcology fires, Chernobyl, Sacramento River.
"The upper limit on pillar size is not the cubic it takes up - which is rather small with modern technology - but the effect radius if something goes Very Wrong. Generally this means a pillar does not generate more than 1 gigawatt of power, which is still an awful lot. The upper limit on materials capsules was selected to limit the potential consequences of a spill. We could run trains full of petrochemicals if we wished, but nowadays we know better. When hobbyist race car tracks receive their shipments of high quality octane, they are sent by individual small capsule, spaced out for safety.
"We do pipeline liquids, particularly the Big Three - white, gray and black water. Potable drinking water, industrial non-potable water, and sewage. Instead of running an enormous petrochemical pipeline system with its share of disasters," (flash of San Bruno pipeline explosion) "we supply legacy propane via pillar generation, with only the smallest uses by pallet tote of pressurized tanks. Instead of sending trucks around to fill tanks, we simply have the tanks themselves enter the capsule system and report for refilling as needed."
A shot of a remote rural home in an ecological reserve.
"This structure is much as it was built in 2010. It has an underground electrical and data link to the neighborhood pillar. Because of the distance from the pillar, it has two propane tanks. When one is empty, it leaves to make room for its refill. The outbuildings have been deleted or undergrounded for aesthetic reasons. The water storage is still the ancient plastic tankage to an underground wellhead, but there is a field purifier and return loop in place of the leach field and a trickle potable water line - only 4000 LPM - from the pillar, used mostly for fire protection water."
A shot of an late 20th century urban apartment complex, spectacularly ugly.
"This complex was built for automobile parking underneath the residences. This has been deleted in favor of capsule access lobbies and conversion to additithe onal living and storage space. Supports have been installed for the arcology layers above. Light wells are protected by easement for the legacy swimming pool and grass, although supplemental lighting has been added. Note however that the original twobyfour construction is still present."
A shot of a mid 20th century urban skyscraper.
"This forty story steel building has been preserved as a historical antique. Note the structural reinforcement and the access bridges at the 10th, 20th and 30th floors to the capsule system. The support equipment has been removed from the roof and basement as superfluous; power, data and waste handling is through pillar connections. Only ventilation continues to be consistent with the original building design, but the air is now purified and humidified and trace toxins removed with biopathogen monitoring per standard."
A shot of a modern multi layer farm.
"This is a modern nanotech structure. The bottom layers are hydroponics and meat tanks, both biotech and natural fish. The middle layers are soil farming and ethical animal enclosures. The upper layers are aerial plants, food forests and recreation spaces. The animal stock pens are of special note because of the natural lifespan requirements - no animal meat may be harvested until the animal has lived at least its average pre-industrial lifespan."
An annoying flasher on the screen. design saves lives ... Design Saves Lives ... DESIGN SAVES LIVES .... DESIGN! SAVES! LIVES!
An animation of an early motorcar, a mid 20th century luxury auto (which wasn't), a late 20th century convertible, an early 21st century self driving electric car... and the changes in design that caused them to go from ridiculously unsafe to extremely safe.
Arrows showing the force impacts on each. As the designs advance, the forces are resisted, then later transitioned safely. The accident that put a early car's driver in the morgue, a mid-century driver in a wheelchair, a late century driver in the hospital, by the early 21st century the driver is walking away, and in mid 21st century is unharmed walking out of a visibly damaged capsule.
Another annoying flasher. construction saves lives ... Construction ... you get the idea.
A diagram shows the separations between hazardous facilities and occupancies. Somehow pillars are never built adjacent to residential housing. Capsuleways are separated from schools and hospitals. The buildings themselves, able to protect occupants and redirect forces. From the rural shack with steel roof and self-cleaning air guns to blow off embercast, to the blow-off roof of the pillar that directs the force of an exploding fusion plant upward rather than outward.
"Situations - that endanger persons, property or the natural or built environment - occur in any of these."
"Therefore rescue technicians must not merely know, or respect advisories or cautions," a montage of KEEP OUT | hazmat placards | Dangerous Electrical Voltages | Nanohazard | biohazard symbol | radiation symbol | TRAINED PERSONNEL ONLY, "but thoroughly understand _why_ these cautions exist."
A shot of what are still called 'green sheets,' or responder injury reports.
Pause to show a diagram. An overhead electrical line has fallen onto a fence. The energized fence is touched by an unwary worker. The worker is incinerated.
"When things go wrong, and they do, even in San San in the middle of the 21st century, the safeguards we are all used to having around us at all times can fail. Sometimes gracefully, sometimes spectacularly. This is why we close scenes to the public when hazards exist, even at the risk of freedom of movement lawsuits. We are no longer stupid enough to hang exposed electrical lines in the open air, but we do have the capsule system, and sometimes capsules operate on legacy roadways without safety separations."
A last graphic. KINETIC HAZARD ALERT. And a person is struck by a capsule, leaving behind their shoes with feet still in them. The body is found scattered in pieces for a hundred meters past the impact point.
"Don't let this be YOU. And every year, the #1 hazard that kills people, continues to be a fragile human being getting in the way of a kinetic energy movement. We are weak, fragile water balloons in the world we have made, full of meat grinders and high speed anvils."
On that cheerful note, we start expounding in detail on scene safety working around pillars.
"By day the LORD went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night." - Bible, NIV, Exodus 13;21
I was giving a presentation on rescue systems. This required reviewing some fundamentals of SanSan that a lot of people thought they knew, but really didn't.
"The first pillars were power plants."
Flash picture of a nuclear reactor, in this case the Diablo Canyon facility in San Luis Obispo County. Still running to this day, as a museum piece.
"Put in a fuel, get out power. Or to put it more precisely, put in ANYTHING and get out ANYTHING. Process non-potable water into potable water. Process waste into materials. Process toxic substances into useful ones."
I changed screens again. An array of process diagrams, too fast to grasp unless one paid careful attention.
"The most important pre-Protocol innovation that made the pillar possible was the invention of standards. ISO 9001, and all the rest. Many people think that standardization was what came with the adoption of Protocol, but it was actually the other way around."
Flash a horse drawn carriage.
"How wide is this horse's ass?" I asked rhetorically, and diagrams popped up showing the carriage width in meters. Also in feet, because I'm an archaic throwback. A stray Net comment immediately accused me of Eurocentrism and my expert software booted and blocked the commenter while leaving their comment up. My default, also because I'm an archaic throwback and value freedom of speech but not freedom from consequences.
"Ancient Roman roads were sized to a certain width. The first powered vehicles, the same." (Flash to railroad locomotive, then to the first ancient electric and hydrocarbon cars.) 'The highways of America's golden age." (Ten lane freeway, jammed with cars and trucks.) "The exact measurement never mattered ... but that we picked one and stuck with it, did matter. A lot." (Animation of US Army HUMVEE stuck in jeep tunnel of amphibious assault ship, then the latter being scrapped as a result.)
"So the maintenance access into a pillar is of a certain height and width. Always. The pillar itself, a multiple of that height and width. The power it supplies, to a AC and also DC standard. Water, potable - liters per minute or LPM. Sewage in, fertilizer out. Trace chemicals accumulate and are handled in totes - also standardized, according to the dimensions of old manually moved wooden frames called 'pallets.'"
Diagrams and pictures at each step. Interlinked.
"Most of our chemistry is catalytic in nature. We don't use enormous temperatures and pressures to handle substances, or if we do, we don't do it on planetary surfaces where there could be issues. We also don't use self replicating nanotech on planetary surfaces. Nanobots are programmed for specific tasks, but we don't allow direct reproduction of them. Even in off planet research facilities, we avoid situations that would place evolutionary pressures on von Neumann devices."
A flash of industrial disasters - refinery explosions, toxic waste spills, train wrecks, arcology fires, Chernobyl, Sacramento River.
"The upper limit on pillar size is not the cubic it takes up - which is rather small with modern technology - but the effect radius if something goes Very Wrong. Generally this means a pillar does not generate more than 1 gigawatt of power, which is still an awful lot. The upper limit on materials capsules was selected to limit the potential consequences of a spill. We could run trains full of petrochemicals if we wished, but nowadays we know better. When hobbyist race car tracks receive their shipments of high quality octane, they are sent by individual small capsule, spaced out for safety.
"We do pipeline liquids, particularly the Big Three - white, gray and black water. Potable drinking water, industrial non-potable water, and sewage. Instead of running an enormous petrochemical pipeline system with its share of disasters," (flash of San Bruno pipeline explosion) "we supply legacy propane via pillar generation, with only the smallest uses by pallet tote of pressurized tanks. Instead of sending trucks around to fill tanks, we simply have the tanks themselves enter the capsule system and report for refilling as needed."
A shot of a remote rural home in an ecological reserve.
"This structure is much as it was built in 2010. It has an underground electrical and data link to the neighborhood pillar. Because of the distance from the pillar, it has two propane tanks. When one is empty, it leaves to make room for its refill. The outbuildings have been deleted or undergrounded for aesthetic reasons. The water storage is still the ancient plastic tankage to an underground wellhead, but there is a field purifier and return loop in place of the leach field and a trickle potable water line - only 4000 LPM - from the pillar, used mostly for fire protection water."
A shot of an late 20th century urban apartment complex, spectacularly ugly.
"This complex was built for automobile parking underneath the residences. This has been deleted in favor of capsule access lobbies and conversion to additithe onal living and storage space. Supports have been installed for the arcology layers above. Light wells are protected by easement for the legacy swimming pool and grass, although supplemental lighting has been added. Note however that the original twobyfour construction is still present."
A shot of a mid 20th century urban skyscraper.
"This forty story steel building has been preserved as a historical antique. Note the structural reinforcement and the access bridges at the 10th, 20th and 30th floors to the capsule system. The support equipment has been removed from the roof and basement as superfluous; power, data and waste handling is through pillar connections. Only ventilation continues to be consistent with the original building design, but the air is now purified and humidified and trace toxins removed with biopathogen monitoring per standard."
A shot of a modern multi layer farm.
"This is a modern nanotech structure. The bottom layers are hydroponics and meat tanks, both biotech and natural fish. The middle layers are soil farming and ethical animal enclosures. The upper layers are aerial plants, food forests and recreation spaces. The animal stock pens are of special note because of the natural lifespan requirements - no animal meat may be harvested until the animal has lived at least its average pre-industrial lifespan."
An annoying flasher on the screen. design saves lives ... Design Saves Lives ... DESIGN SAVES LIVES .... DESIGN! SAVES! LIVES!
An animation of an early motorcar, a mid 20th century luxury auto (which wasn't), a late 20th century convertible, an early 21st century self driving electric car... and the changes in design that caused them to go from ridiculously unsafe to extremely safe.
Arrows showing the force impacts on each. As the designs advance, the forces are resisted, then later transitioned safely. The accident that put a early car's driver in the morgue, a mid-century driver in a wheelchair, a late century driver in the hospital, by the early 21st century the driver is walking away, and in mid 21st century is unharmed walking out of a visibly damaged capsule.
Another annoying flasher. construction saves lives ... Construction ... you get the idea.
A diagram shows the separations between hazardous facilities and occupancies. Somehow pillars are never built adjacent to residential housing. Capsuleways are separated from schools and hospitals. The buildings themselves, able to protect occupants and redirect forces. From the rural shack with steel roof and self-cleaning air guns to blow off embercast, to the blow-off roof of the pillar that directs the force of an exploding fusion plant upward rather than outward.
"Situations - that endanger persons, property or the natural or built environment - occur in any of these."
"Therefore rescue technicians must not merely know, or respect advisories or cautions," a montage of KEEP OUT | hazmat placards | Dangerous Electrical Voltages | Nanohazard | biohazard symbol | radiation symbol | TRAINED PERSONNEL ONLY, "but thoroughly understand _why_ these cautions exist."
A shot of what are still called 'green sheets,' or responder injury reports.
Pause to show a diagram. An overhead electrical line has fallen onto a fence. The energized fence is touched by an unwary worker. The worker is incinerated.
"When things go wrong, and they do, even in San San in the middle of the 21st century, the safeguards we are all used to having around us at all times can fail. Sometimes gracefully, sometimes spectacularly. This is why we close scenes to the public when hazards exist, even at the risk of freedom of movement lawsuits. We are no longer stupid enough to hang exposed electrical lines in the open air, but we do have the capsule system, and sometimes capsules operate on legacy roadways without safety separations."
A last graphic. KINETIC HAZARD ALERT. And a person is struck by a capsule, leaving behind their shoes with feet still in them. The body is found scattered in pieces for a hundred meters past the impact point.
"Don't let this be YOU. And every year, the #1 hazard that kills people, continues to be a fragile human being getting in the way of a kinetic energy movement. We are weak, fragile water balloons in the world we have made, full of meat grinders and high speed anvils."
On that cheerful note, we start expounding in detail on scene safety working around pillars.
