clothes

[knnn]

So what are clothes made of?  You've apparently got the skin from the vats and spidersilk, but that's pretty much it I would think.  No wool, cotton.

[Second Aristh]

We know that the ethersilk is rare since they can't effectively tame the silkweavers (btw I pictured them as giant centipedes instead of spiders).  I don't see all of the dresses being made of leather though. 

[knnn]

We know that the ethersilk is rare since they can't effectively tame the silkweavers (btw I pictured them as giant centipedes instead of spiders).  I don't see all of the dresses being made of leather though.

There's also a comment about how an all silk shirt is very expensive.  Even if the clothes were all skin/leather, you still kinda need to sew things together.  That pretty much requires cotton/flax/fur/hair.

[wyltok]

Considering the fact that both Gwen's skirts and Benny's shirt were used to make bandages, I think it's safe to say that most clothing is made of natural fibers. From Gwen's reaction to the Temple's garden, my money's on hydroponics as a source of fibers for clothing.

There are plenty of fiber producing plants that can serve double duty (the flax used to make linen, for example, may also be used to generate linseed oil, hemp plants also produce, shall we say, "medicinal" compounds, and apparently sisal is so versatile it can even be used as a bio-fuel source).

Given the somewhat anachronistic setting, I wouldn't be surprised if rayon was also out there; while it's cheapest when made from wood fiber, from what I read in the Wikipedia article, it can be made from any cellulose source.

[knnn]

Considering the fact that both Gwen's skirts and Benny's shirt were used to make bandages, I think it's safe to say that most clothing is made of natural fibers. From Gwen's reaction to the Temple's garden, my money's on hydroponics as a source of fibers for clothing.

Nice references!

I think I agree that it would pretty much have to be hydorponics.  There's simply not enough depth of soil in the ground to grow things.  No rivers to move minerals around, etc.  Then again, even with hydroponics, you still need nutrients and water to grow things.  I suppose the water can be extracted from the clouds outside the spire, but you still need the nutrient solution.  I think it's sustainable with steam-tech, but I submit that to start up the process would require advanced understanding of how things work.  Just another example of how things have degraded since "the Builders".
 

[wyltok]

Nice references!

I think I agree that it would pretty much have to be hydorponics.  There's simply not enough depth of soil in the ground to grow things.  No rivers to move minerals around, etc.  Then again, even with hydroponics, you still need nutrients and water to grow things.  I suppose the water can be extracted from the clouds outside the spire, but you still need the nutrient solution.  I think it's sustainable with steam-tech, but I submit that to start up the process would require advanced understanding of how things work.  Just another example of how things have degraded since "the Builders".

Wikipedia's article on hydroponics and its history is surprisingly interesting:

The earliest published work on growing terrestrial plants without soil was the 1627 book Sylva Sylvarum by Francis Bacon, printed a year after his death. Water culture became a popular research technique after that. In 1699, John Woodward published his water culture experiments with spearmint. He found that plants in less-pure water sources grew better than plants in distilled water. By 1842, a list of nine elements believed to be essential for plant growth had been compiled, and the discoveries of the German botanists Julius von Sachs and Wilhelm Knop, in the years 1859-65, resulted in a development of the technique of soilless cultivation.

That seems pretty contemporary to steampunk to me.

[knnn]

That seems pretty contemporary to steampunk to me.

You still need some sort nutrient solution do grow things, but yes, I agree it is within steampunk.

[wyltok]

Hoagland solution was developed in 1938, improved in 1950, and remains in use to this day. That's a little later than steampunk, though.

[knnn]

Hoagland solution was developed in 1938, improved in 1950, and remains in use to this day. That's a little later than steampunk, though.

It also uses a lot of specific minerals that I think would be hard to find within a spire.  Any natural deposits would be quickly depleted and I don't think you'd be able to recycle things efficiently.

...actually, that raises an interesting point -- if they are using hydroponics, then what happens to all the human waste?  In our world they get recycled back into the earth, but here I don't see the mechanism.   Maybe there's pipes leading into the vatteries?

[crusher_bob]

You still need some sort nutrient solution do grow things, but yes, I agree it is within steampunk.

Or you could attach a fish tank to your hydroponics plumbing and let the fish poop do the job.  It's not perfect, and you are still left with the problem of taking care of the fish, but you can eat the fish every now and then too.

It may be possible to extract various elements from the oceans using the apparently endless electricity provided by power crystals.  Assuming there are oceans, and you can safely hover an airship over them for long periods of time.

I suppose it's also possible to work mines, use power crystals to smelt the ore, and then ship the refined metal to the spire in airships.  Not sure how safe mining would be, but I'd guess that the mining tunnels wouldn't be so bad to keep secure.

[knnn]

So the master Etherialist asks his apprentice at one point for "woolen socks".   I guess that adds wool to the list of possible materials.  Not sure how they manage that.

[NutJobismyJob]

Well, if they can grow meat in the vats, maybe they grow mutton and it comes covered in wool.

[crusher_bob]

There are always cats.  Cats have very fine hair.  I'm sure it would make great cloth. Thus did the great war start.

[miellyn]

Chapter 26, when first entering the temple of the way:
"foodstuffs growing from the filthy soil of the surface, rather than in a proper water garden treated with nutrient-bearing vatsand. The very thought was somewhat nauseating. Why do such a thing?"

Apparently normal crops (from cotton to grain) can be grown in a water garden.

[knnn]

Chapter 26, when first entering the temple of the way:
"foodstuffs growing from the filthy soil of the surface, rather than in a proper water garden treated with nutrient-bearing vatsand. The very thought was somewhat nauseating. Why do such a thing?"

Apparently normal crops (from cotton to grain) can be grown in a water garden.

Nice quote!

Though I have to admit to smirking at "vatsand".