Spicy thoughts

[gfish]

I've been thinking about Dune technology recently. Why didn't they just make Spice Harvesters that didn't involve rhythmic vibrations? Obviously industrial processes will always create vibrations, but do they have to be rhythmic? Stochastic Mechanical Engineering could be a major field of study at Arrakeen University.

Comments

[maida-mac.livejournal.com]

*laugh* You still have stillsuits on the brain, don't you?

[porysski.livejournal.com]

Would it be possible to do with only Butlerian Jihad-allowed mechanization, though? It's hard for me to imagine a way to do arrhythmic industrial processing without computers (otoh, I was raised an EE; it's often hard for me to imagine how to do anything without computers).

[hsifyppah.livejournal.com]

Maybe with a lengthy pre-set rhythm pattern, like a long spool of irregularly notched metal that determined the timing of the vibrate-y bits? You could make the repeating pattern long enough that a sandworm wouldn't twig to it.

Although really, thinking too hard about the technology in Herbert books just makes my head hurt. It takes a lot of handwaving to make his premises make sense. I prefer to experience them as like a music video of interesting ideas that don't have to make sense.

[porysski.livejournal.com]

But in order for actual stochastic action, you'd need some source of real randomness (e.g. radioactive decay timing) and a means of translating it into mechanical action. I'm really unsure that could be done within BJ restrictions. OTOH, you certainly have a point about the handwaving, so maybe I'm overthinking this.

[mdlbear]

I'm sure you could build a mechanical feedback shift register with a long enough period...

Whether that would be considered a computer in BJ terms is, of course, unclear. Probably not, since it doesn't have a stored program.

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

I'm imagining something like a fishtank of oil (on Arrakis, that's probably cheaper than water) as a chaotic system to generate the inputs. The fishtank is set up so it isn't insulated from the vibrations of the centrifuge. Install some limiters so it doesn't run out of control, and there's the prototype.

(Now, since I don't have a Mentat, I'll have to switch it on and see what goes wrong.)

[anansi133.livejournal.com]

What about biological systems? If you had critters that ate spice, and then other critters that ate those, and concentrated the spice. Repeat as necessary, you could eventually end up with critters that pooped processed spice, kinda like civets.

Maybe the first level spice finders are plants, so not to arouse the worm's attention, and then the second-level processors are like hummingbirds, that don't alight on the sand. Then the third level critters eat the eggs and young of the birds, which only do that stuff on rock, by which time you're safe.

[orawnzva.livejournal.com]

This is, in fact, what you have on Arrakis — the only problem is, there's one more thing after that in the food chain, and it's kinda big...

[stolen-tea.livejournal.com]

I suspect any sort of terrestrial locomotion (treads, wheels, etc.) would involve enough sound, though; worms can pick up individual people, after all.

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

Locomotion isn't the problem. Spice harvesters are carried in by a "carryall wing," which I suppose is an oversized ornithopter. The problem is that separating spice from sand is done by centrifuge.

[stolen-tea.livejournal.com]

My impression from the books was that harvesters moved about on the surface of the desert to clean out a spice patch, and were not stationary installations put down and picked up by carryalls. Or maybe I'm too influenced by Dune 2. :)

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

Definitely too much Dune 2. I just re-read the scene in Dune where a harvester is swallowed by a sandworm when the carryall goes missing.