David replied to Roger who replied to me: > > >It makes no sense from a strictly economic viewpoint. It is a > > >deliberate attempt to make the planetary settlement viable at > > >the expense of the profits of the belters and merchants. > > > > I must confess I can't see this being viable unless you have extremely > > cheap orbital lifters. What's the technology base of the local space > > fleet? > > > > (Otherwise the costs are going to real things - fuel, amortising the > > lifters, and so on, which don't necessarily help the surface > > settlement at all...) > > > > > It's traveller, so things are transported by magic. But the cost of > loading, unloading, and reloading is real, even in traveler.
Magic contragrav and magic reactionless thrusters. Both are TL8+, beyond the local manufacturing technology, so if they have to be imported one would buy at nearby TL10 Tremous Dex rather than more distant TL9 or TL8 worlds. Ore comes in from the outer belts and fuel (hydrogen) comes up from the surface, one of the gas giants or icy asteroids. There are three options: - Deep Space Highport as main port: Unstreamlined sublight craft carry ore from the belt sites to a central deep space location. Streamlined shuttles carry a similar amount of fuel to orbit, unstreamlined sublighters bring it to the port, alternatively there are fuel skimmers or ice miners. Interstellar ships go from their jump exit point to the port and jump soon after undocking on the return trip. - Orbital Highport as main port: Unstreamlined sublight craft carry ore from the belt to planetary orbit. Streamlined shuttles carry a similar volume of fuel from the surface to orbit. Interstellar craft go from jump distance to orbit and back. - Surface Downport as main port: Unstreamlined sublight craft carry ore from the belt to orbit. Streamlined shuttles carry ore from orbit to the surface. Interstellar craft go from jump distance to orbit, down to the surface, back into orbit, and back to jump distance. What the Orbital Highport saves compared to the Surface Downport are the starship landing and takeoff, but not the number of transfers, and while hydrogen has a lower mass than the same volume of iron, it is more difficult to handle ... There are many things in Traveller that defy disbelief, from the hexgrid starmap to the maneuver drives rated for the volume (since changed in GURPS Traveller), but cargo handling costs are not among them. Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
