The factors for human civilization also have to be just right?Right?
Yes, but those factors are much less than the ones of an underwater civilization
How would you know?Whats your logic?.Its thought that Aquatic worlds outnumber terestrial ones,so thers one factor in its favor.
I have one idea on how to be a (kinda) fully-aquatic species and be spacefaring, without Smeltling Metal.
You have to become amphibious, but with a cast that is fully aquatic and one that is a landlubber.
We already decided that amphibians can do metal smelting just fine. And also agreed that amphibians aren’t fully aquatic, so using amphibians is just going around the problem of underwater civs.
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Hey, limpet teeth are the strongest biological material on earth,and stronger than almost all metal, THEORETICLY underwater civilizations could make very tough structures, weapons, and use limpet teeth as the outside of a rocket, since they can resist the presure it takes for carbon to form a diamond.
Edit: And are very common underwater.
Therefor, you could get all necessary components for space travel, but only manual piloting and not much control
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you can’t launch a rocket underwater
Technically, if you have enough propellant and a strong enough engine, you could launch a rocket from anywhere
It doesnt need to launch from underwater, just launch it from a landing pad made of tin or lead, both of which you could collect frome ores then smelt around hydrothermal vents, but you would need bouyant material.
No? Cryolite has a melting point of ~1000C, more than a hydrothermal vent, and we still don’t know if our underwater civilization has electricity.
Also on the lead point, lead would be way more dangerous to an aquatic creature due to it dissolving into water, not impossible to work around but quite hazardous.
Im undergoing revision of my essay-ish thing I put in a group chat, after its revised I will post it here.
Ok?
Lets say our little aquatic friends had access to crude oil and could somehow get energy from it, would it be possible for floating Solar Farms (or even Organic Solar Farms) be possible?
Most likely, all they would need to keep it afloat would be bouyant material.
BOIS IVE DONE IT! After extensive research, ive come to know that limpet teeth are more durrable than metal, and can resist the same presure diamonds form under. And there are some rocket thrusters that are ONLY powered by hydrazine, and theres actually natural sources of that, ALGEA! With being able to get alluminum from bauxite ore by grinding it up, then, you can get alluminum. Thermite also requires 1 other ingredient: Ferric oxide, and suprisingly, its found naturaly as well! In the form of hematite ore. Hematite ore can be found in the ocean as well. When ground up its red iron oxide, the exact other component for thermite. With thermite you can weld for short periods of time the lead and tin to make the hull of the rocket, then make a hydrozine rocket thruster, and then lay limpet TEETH all over the rocket hull, and boom, you have a rocket, now all we need to do is figure out how to make the inner workings of it…aka the electronics
Edit: The Hall –Héroult process is the major industrial process for smelting aluminium. It involves dissolving aluminium oxide (alumina) (obtained most often from bauxite, aluminium’s chief ore, through the Bayer process ) in molten cryolite, and electrolysing the molten salt bath, typically in a purpose-built cell.
Hydrothermal vents coule most likely do this because of the salinity,
The rest could be done in an advanced machien such as this i think
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So the one problem that is left with the bauxite welding option is how a tropical, intelligent species could get to hydrothermal vents, or how a deep sea critter could get to the surface, and why. My answer? Why not both? Imagine if tropical octopuses mined bauxite for, say, building houses, and deep sea squid, say, roasted food over deep sea smokers, and the met. The squid merchants traded writings on hydrothermal vents and the fire elementals that lived within and the octopuses gave them tough bauxite bricks. Perhaps the squid might learn to smelt out lumps of aluminum with the help of the smokers, and crushed it up for it’s medicinal properties. They could then mix it with easy to find iron oxide (rust) and drop it into a smoker on accident, causing a violet explosion. After a squid merchant regals the tale to an octopus buying medical thermite, it might burn the stuff to weld other kinds of metal ore into spearpoints. But how probable is it for two intelligent species to evolve at once? It’s really super improbable. but, chance is on our side here. water worlds are plentiful. and they don’t have to be convergent, a civ that doesn’t get past the stone age could last long enough for it’s constringent species to diverge enough for some of them to live in the abyssal zone and others to live in a shallow sea.
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Good thinking, @Deathwake we are 1 step closer to proving that underwater civs can get to space! It may be difficult, but life always finds a way!
except you don’t just get alluminum from smelting bauxite, it needs a much more complex procedure.
Please look at my edit to my essay thing.
the first step requires the temperature of a black smoker and sodium hydroxide, which is electrolyzed and evaporated salt water. the next step requires a high temperature high pressure vessel at about 1000 (2200F) C, half the temperature thermite burns at, and hundreds of degrees less then the temperature of lava in an underwater lava tube. some ceramics can handle either temperatures, and aren’t that hard to make. dip it in lava. next up we need Cryolite, which is easily mined. and finally we need electricity. i’ll solve that some other time i don’t have a life, but this is exhausting.
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A simple way to get electricity would be using the hydrothermal vents smoke to turn a turbine to generate electricity.