Yet more Container/Cargo Numbers...
- Thread starter infojunky
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kilemall
SOC-14 5K
That sounds right for consumer end products, but not things like car parts, home repair, food etc.
Course the latter would be largely shipped by small craft/grav vehicle from world/ local sources.
Assuming that applies in our future, 1 million people generate 3 million cubic meters, divide that by 365 days and that’s 587 dtons per day.
That would mean a busy busy sky for Pop 7+ worlds. Billion pop worlds would be shoveling in 587,000 dtons a day, making for a LOT of big ships.
Perhaps you use that metric for Non-Ind worlds and 1 cubic meter for larger pops, being locally sourced. 1/3 tonnage still makes for more ships then we usually imagine.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Recycling and swap meets.
Technically the 3 cubic meters is just what in Container Shipping. As that is what I could get a reliable Volumetric number from.
In terms of mass it's about 1.5 tons per person. Which honestly isn't out of line, too much from the volume measurement.
As such it is a good ballpark.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Are you postulating there is as much interstellar trade in the Third Imperium?
I'm going to agree with Mike here. This is correct for Earth standard on-planet trade. Based on numbers from different sources the amount of Interstellar trade is a tiny fraction of this amount. Mostly to serve the needs of the tiny fraction of people living on the low and medium population worlds.
Indeed, because I'm pretty sure that I manage to toss out more then 3 cu. m. in solid waste each year (which, granted, is not compressed), and that's not including green waste which actually grows, but does include stuff in the blue bin. That's all stuff that I purchased, moved into my home, consumed, and discarded.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
Actually, there are "balance points" in the trade codes.
Agricultural exports to importing Non-agricultural.
Industrial exports AND imports (both ways!) with Non-industrial.
Rich and Poor worlds aren't quite as "linked" as the other two, but each hosts their own skew of preferred industries (pharmaceuticals are remarkably cheap when sourced from Poor worlds, for example).
I would even go so far as to add ... Agricultural world exports to importing Poor world ... as an additional (obvious) interstellar trade flow.
So there are going to be some worlds out there that simply can't maintain their standard of living (or even habitability) without trade network support.
One thing to bear in mind is that 3 m^3 is a worldwide average. Our experience, living in "Western" consumerist societies is vastly different to that of people living in Asia, Africa, Central & South America so although 3 m^3 might seem absurdly low for us, it will seem astonishingly huge to the vast majority of the world's population.
I do agree that as far as interstellar shipping goes, it would be a fraction of our current levels of (wet navy) shipping. The big question is what that fraction should be, along with the volume of shipping needed to transport it. My own belief is that it will be a decent amount, maybe 5-10% of our current shipping level as interstellar trade; some products that we currently ship wouldn't be shipped between systems, but other things that we don't need to ship now would need to be shipped in the TU (eg water from water worlds to desert worlds).
I do agree that as far as interstellar shipping goes, it would be a fraction of our current levels of (wet navy) shipping. The big question is what that fraction should be, along with the volume of shipping needed to transport it. My own belief is that it will be a decent amount, maybe 5-10% of our current shipping level as interstellar trade; some products that we currently ship wouldn't be shipped between systems, but other things that we don't need to ship now would need to be shipped in the TU (eg water from water worlds to desert worlds).
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
I would say that you have a good grasp on what interstellar shipping would be like. You would not have the bulk shipments of iron and other ores, raw and refined petroleum, and coal. You may have some bulk shipments of foodstuffs, at a rate of 5 tons mass of general foodstuffs to a Traveller dTon, but the largest shipments would be consumer goods and vehicles. I already have a premium for water delivered to a primarily Desert World.
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Honestly, 3 m^3 is a huge number from my prospective, in that the majority of the volume of goods I use in a year travel less than 1000km from me.
But, when I include sourcing of the all the parts and feedstocks that go into my consumption it looks reasonable.
Note, the 3 m^3 is just from Container trade, which constitutes 16% of all cargo tonnage. Thus a reasonable metric.
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
More to the point, high value differential enough to merit spending the money to ship 1000-8000+ miles from source to destination.
But mass low value cargoes can ship in containers. Example, animal feed ships back to China at low rates as it is better then shipping empty or making a new container every trip. Our shipping game fees are not that granular, pun unintended.
I suspect there would still be bulk shipments of various ores to the industrial worlds that can use them - some systems will be lacking in and others have rich deposits of certain essential elements such as lanthanum. Other bulk commodities being shipped would be food, chemicals, etc.
It's certainly true that container cargo has a higher value per
I did realise it was just from container shipping. Looking at the Equasis world fleet stats for 2020, container ships make up 19.4% of the world cargo fleet (by Gross Tonnage), 11.6% by number - I don't have DWT figures, sadly.
It's certainly true that container cargo has a higher value per
Kakistocrat
SOC-12
As TamsinP noted, I’d imagine that there would be some amount of interstellar bulk shipments — shipping fresh water to desert worlds and asteroid belts, foodstuffs to non-agricultural worlds and asteroid belts, and refined fuel to worlds with class A and B starports that lack economical in-system sources were the first categories that came to mind.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
What is cheaper
shipping food with a surcharge of 1000Cr per ton
or
building agriculture domes/stations?
What is cheaper
shipping refined minerals at a surcharge of Cr1000 per ton
or
build your own asteroid mining infrastructure?
shipping food with a surcharge of 1000Cr per ton
or
building agriculture domes/stations?
What is cheaper
shipping refined minerals at a surcharge of Cr1000 per ton
or
build your own asteroid mining infrastructure?
Hmmm, it looks as though the end of my last comment disappeared. It should have been:
"It's certainly true that container cargo has a higher value per ton than bulk cargoes. Container ships also have a higher cruising speed and faster turnaround times than bulkers, so in the time taken for a bulker to make a one way trip (load, travel, unload), a container ship can be most of the way back on the return leg of the same route. That, in combination with the percentage of shipping that they make up, suggests a much higher % of total cargo shipped than the 16% figure quoted earlier."
That will be situation dependent - a system may have, for example, lanthanum deposits but they may be very small, low concentration or difficult to access and therefore uneconomic to extract.
As for agricultural domes/stations, having the technical capability to operate & maintain them may not be present, there may not be any suitable space available for them to be built or there may not be enough available personnel to run them. Even if they are, certain resources would still need to be imported to replace things over time, eg soil, fertiliser.
As for the surcharge for transport, that could actually be much higher, depending on which version of the rules you are using and how far they have to be transported.
"It's certainly true that container cargo has a higher value per ton than bulk cargoes. Container ships also have a higher cruising speed and faster turnaround times than bulkers, so in the time taken for a bulker to make a one way trip (load, travel, unload), a container ship can be most of the way back on the return leg of the same route. That, in combination with the percentage of shipping that they make up, suggests a much higher % of total cargo shipped than the 16% figure quoted earlier."
That will be situation dependent - a system may have, for example, lanthanum deposits but they may be very small, low concentration or difficult to access and therefore uneconomic to extract.
As for agricultural domes/stations, having the technical capability to operate & maintain them may not be present, there may not be any suitable space available for them to be built or there may not be enough available personnel to run them. Even if they are, certain resources would still need to be imported to replace things over time, eg soil, fertiliser.
As for the surcharge for transport, that could actually be much higher, depending on which version of the rules you are using and how far they have to be transported.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
No matter what you do, there will always be niche role markets for imports/exports in specific segments for specific products. The reason being that resources are NOT evenly distributed "on average" everywhere. There are going to be specific locations where resources/infrastructure/knowledge will get concentrated, which makes those locations difficult to compete with using local resources available elsewhere.
Yes, a Non-agricultural world could invest in building agriculture domes/stations ... but it can't produce the bounteous wealth of agricultural products that an Agricultural world can. That imbalance of resources creates an import/export market trade route opportunity, simply due to supply vs demand. And where you have that kind of an imbalance appear, merchants will arise to profit from the opportunities for arbitrage between the two markets (as well as engage on some speculation on the side, building up their reputation as deal makers).
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
As long as you vertically integrate, you have some control over the costs.
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
Star Fleet has missed out on Ferengi, best yard goats in the quadrant.
So what is that as a proportion of average consumption per person per year? Though this would be a pretty rough figure, you could use the same proportion again to guesstimate interstellar shipping, given that’s likely more expensive than just building planets to make things in a system (TL depending)
