What Kind of Pony Looks at the Job Description "Fly the Poop Ship" and Says "That's the Job for Me"? · 4:11am Oct 28th, 2014
Looking back, I realized that in one post, I said I would call them hoofnotes, but then totally forgot and called them footnotes right after. My bad, yo. So, this hoofnote is concerning the technology and engineering of Cloudsdale. I touch on it in chapter 31, but this is where I'd really like to sink my teeth into it.
Cloudsdale is made of clouds, but that's not all it's made of; that would be preposterous. There has to be a lot of metal and plastic up there too, for things like factory machines, plumbing, and electrical components, not to mention the sundries that fill citizens' homes. Rainbow Dash says that there are things called "construction-grade clouds," which are sort of like the cloud version of concrete. Basically, things with all the properties of a normal cloud, but that don't break apart or change shape easily. These are the clouds they use for the actual foundation of the city, as well as all the houses, all the factories, and so forth. However, they are severely limited in use. Because they can't be shaped easily, they can't generally be used for anything more precise than holding up a heavy thing. You can't carve them into smaller, more delicate shapes, because the material isn't rigid; it is still water vapor, after all. And it's for that same reason that you can't use it for plumbing, because, being water vapor, it's not smooth enough for waste to pass over properly. Pieces would be getting stuck all over the place, and it would be a huge sanitation issue. And they can't be used for conducting electricity because there's no way to thin one down to an efficient wire (more on that later).
Problem is, this is still a floating city. Ponies have to be choosy about when they do and do not use solid, non-floating materials. That's partially to avoid weighing down the city (though that's not a huge concern; it's too big and too buoyant), but mostly to minimize the threat of things falling out of the sky. Remember, most of this is water vapor; if some clown doesn't install a floor properly, that set of pipes underneath the bathtub is gonna plummet. So metal, as Rainbow says, is used only in absolutely essential places: machine chassis, occasional protective barriers for sensitive areas (like the supercooled water in the snow coil), and pipes for heating or cooling fluids. Oh, and the comparatively tiny amounts in wiring or light bulb filaments, but that's not important here. Most machine parts, the sewage system, and residential miscellanea (furniture, et cetera) are made of hardened plastic. Things that can shatter easily, like glass or ceramic, are discouraged.
On the topic of electricity, safety is a huge concern in a city made almost entirely of condensed water vapor. The construction-grade clouds form the entire city base, with regular clouds forming most of the buildings and roadways. So even though the clouds are conductive, the amounts of electricity that it would ordinarily be exposed to are simply too small to damage more than the immediate vicinity. That isn't to say that electricity is harmless up there; you still don't want to be caught with an open wire in your house, because even if the electricity disperses before it hurts anyone else, you're probably close enough to get a dangerous shock. Excepted from this are the larger electrical generators, the kinds used to charge up thunder clouds or power larger factories. Those live on their own satellite clouds, so, in case something goes wrong, the city doesn't get cooked. All the electrical wires wind up running through non-construction clouds, which comprise a large portion of the city exterior—sidewalks and walls, mostly.
What about the sewage system? It's largely plastic, so no heavy pipes, but all that waste water has to go somewhere. The answer is actually kind of disgusting. All the sewage flows through the city base until it winds up at the bottom, where the water is treated and the waste is separated out. Some water is recycled back into the city and used in massive hydroponic or aeroponic systems, while the rest is condensed along with the waste and shipped to a terrestrial waste-disposal plant. Yes, there are airships that are specifically for flying tons of condensed waste down to the planet. It's not a very pleasant job.
And those are some of the basics.
hmm... interesting.
2559960
I like to fill out the universe as much as I can.
Not bad... very well done
2560100
Thanks bud. I'm just glad someone is actually reading the stuff I put up here.