Freighters

[Whipsnade]

In Traveller the civilian sector would rush to be first with drop tanks. How long would the Navy be able to keep something secret that the megacorps really, really wanted? How long would the Emperor allow the Navy to keep something secret that could significantly stimulate the Imperial economy?

Both good questions that I have no real answers for.

We do know that the megacorps, like the IN, IISS, and Imperial government, have jump6 couriers the unwashed masses both cannot access and aren't supposed to know about. Perhaps the megacorps were content to limit drop tank use to their courier networks for political reasons and are only now using tanks "publicly"?

That's a pretty lame excuse and one I don't care for at all, but I'm just spit balling here.

I do now however that HG2 allows drop tank use at TL7 but the Imperium doesn't begin using them until the late 11th Century IE when it is at TL15.

That little wrinkle used to drive poor Hans mad...

 

[mike wightman]

HG1 has the capacitors that make drop tanks possible a TL12 invention. This was cut from HG2 but makes the civilian use of drop tanks in the OTU a recent 'breakthrough' more understandable.

 

[Hal]

Which makes me wonder why subsequent TRAVELLER canon ignored it? T4 I could see ignoring it on the basis of "History". Subsequent CT ignored it from when it was originally introduced until the introduction of MegaTraveller. MegaTraveller also ignores it but for the fact that the option for Drop tanks exist within the ship design aspects.

So, why in all of the years subsequent to when JTAS #4 was published, did not anyone produce anything in the way of Drop Tank ship plans really annoys me. It was as if the Drop tanks were expected to go the way of the Jump Torpedo <shrug>

 

[Whipsnade]

HG1 has the capacitors that make drop tanks possible a TL12 invention. This was cut from HG2.

Nice catch, Mike.

Sadly, it still doesn't answer the question of why the Imperium didn't start using drop tanks until it had been at TL15 for nearly a century.

 

[mike wightman]

I like the in universe suggestion that capacitor research was tied into reverse engineering black globe tech.

After all - who says everything in HG1 or 2 applies to the OTU or vise versa

 

[GypsyComet]

Certainly, but from estimates using ship designs we can see that drop tanks would revolutionise civilian jump shipping, long-range freight prices would plummet (or shipping line profits would soar), unlike current air transport.

In Traveller the civilian sector would rush to be first with drop tanks. How long would the Navy be able to keep something secret that the megacorps really, really wanted? How long would the Emperor allow the Navy to keep something secret that could significantly stimulate the Imperial economy?

At a guess, the answer lies in that dirty word you just used, and the cultural underpinnings of much of the Imperium. The deeply, almost comically, conservative Vilani do not react well to "revolutionary" ideas.

For starters, the drop tank revolution would immediately threaten a five thousand year old (at least) revenue stream as the primacy of the old Vilani ship designs (Hero/Beo (A), Akkigish (R), and likely many others) are challenged at a fundamental level.

In addition, the wording of that original TAS News item strongly suggests that the drop tank process had a lot of bugs to work out. That's the sort of thing you hand to the military, since they are being paid for inherently dangerous work, and let them figure out explosive bolt and/or separation charge patterns, necessary distances and thus jump charge hold times, and a thousand and one little technical challenges. All properly protected by millennial Vilani patent derivatives, of course.

I suspect that none of that was a secret to the megacorps; on the contrary, they were likely helping the process along by letting, if not demanding, the Navy and Scouts do the heavy R&D lifting.

Drop tanks also require some amount of trash collection, as I noted earlier. The Navy won't lose money chasing down prototypes precisely because they *are* prototypes and need to be dissected after use. By contrast, the megacorps got to be mega by not throwing money away if they could help it.

Once the processes are understood and the necessary infrastructure properly amortized, the use of civilian drop tanks will creep outward from the core.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

At a guess, the answer lies in that dirty word you just used, and the cultural underpinnings of much of the Imperium. The deeply, almost comically, conservative Vilani do not react well to "revolutionary" ideas.

The Imperium is built on an undefined(?) mix of Solomani and Vilani culture. I guess suppressing technology on thousands of worlds spread over hundreds of parsec would be difficult.

But there are a lot of other interstellar states and races. Why did no-one develop drop tanks, or why did no-one in the Imperium copy them, in the thousands of years it might have happened?

I suspect that none of that was a secret to the megacorps; on the contrary, they were likely helping the process along by letting, if not demanding, the Navy and Scouts do the heavy R&D lifting.

Given that the megacorps builds many (most?) of the Navy's ships, I guess the answer is that nothing is really secret.

Drop tanks also require some amount of trash collection, as I noted earlier.

Drop tanks would require a lot of infrastructure, and would most likely only be used on major trade routes. Free Traders need not feel threatened.

 

[kilemall]

The Imperium is built on an undefined(?) mix of Solomani and Vilani culture. I guess suppressing technology on thousands of worlds spread over hundreds of parsec would be difficult.

But there are a lot of other interstellar states and races. Why did no-one develop drop tanks, or why did no-one in the Imperium copy them, in the thousands of years it might have happened?

It was approximately 1800 years between the Roman Empire's toy steam engines and James Watt's version, technological innovation is not an inevitable march or a straight line.

 

[flykiller]

It was approximately 1800 years between the Roman Empire's toy steam engines and James Watt's version

in the roman empire 80% of the population was slave and the majority of the remainder were not particularly educated and the technology lacked significant power sources. in the imperium there are tens of billions of highly educated free peoples and massive highly-capitalized megacorporations who understand the personal and economic benefits of increasing technology and who have at their disposal essentially limitless computer and cad/cam and energy to power their research and inventions and applications.

observe how in just the last few decades information technology expanded faster than the developers' conceived uses for it. remember "no-one will ever need more than 640k of memory"? recently heard someone say that modern chips have over a gigabyte of REGISTERS.

no. for the imperium to advance so slowly, there has to be some kind of reason never yet explicated. hard to imagine what that reason could be.

 

[Condottiere]

Bread, circuses, and the Imperium's Got Talent.

 

[flykiller]

planet-wide mmorpg's.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

no. for the imperium to advance so slowly, there has to be some kind of reason never yet explicated. hard to imagine what that reason could be.

We know the Imperium is technologically stagnant. The Terrans advanced from TL9 - 12 fairly quickly, yet the Imperium take many centuries to advance a single TL.

The Imperium is also rather poor, much poorer per capita than the industrialised world today.

Maybe it's more like Rome than we want to think...

 

[flykiller]

I propose that it's technological advancement itself that holds back technological advancement. observe how some cities have started installing pedestrian walk/don't-walk signs on the sidewalks so the kids don't have to look up from their ipads. observe all these altered "historical" photographs being advertised on the net. observe how the kids will hold a $100 bill up to the light to see if it's "real" but they'll believe anything that appears on their iphone screen.

heh. we get japanese tourists out here that see a line on their virtual map indicating a major highway, so they just keep driving the dirt track out into the desert ....

 

[mike wightman]

no. for the imperium to advance so slowly, there has to be some kind of reason never yet explicated. hard to imagine what that reason could be.

It is my long held view that TL advances require a paradigm change in understanding the laws of physics and engineering.
It's not just cumulative development, it is actually a breakthrough in understanding how stuff works.

 

[mike wightman]

We know the Imperium is technologically stagnant. The Terrans advanced from TL9 - 12 fairly quickly, yet the Imperium take many centuries to advance a single TL.

The Terrans advanced from TL9-12 rapidly because in the early ISW period they could:
reverse engineer captured Imperial technology
during lulls they could trade with Imperial worlds (especially the Vegans) for the freely available TL10 stuff
they could sent agents to steal Imperial secrets from the hidden technology archives (which I am delighted to see are now canonical in MWM's novel)
So the Terrans go from TL9 to TL11 as fast as they can build the industrial base to do so - they then make the jump to TL12 using stuff the Imperials themselves could have developed had they not taken the deliberate decision to halt technological advances since they were worried about reaching the point where the machines would start to take over...

The Imperium is also rather poor, much poorer per capita than the industrialised world today.

That's so the rich can maintain their wealth and status - one of the reasons that Dulinor initialled his rebellion.

Maybe it's more like Rome than we want to think...

Rome was always more of a model for the Imperium than most think - there are interviews with the designers where it is mentioned.

 

[kilemall]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO87vtK7kQY

 

[aramis]

One professor I once studied under noted, "Innovation needs a sufficient density of bright minds with sufficient education each, and a problem which urgently needs solving."

The Imperium seems to lack "problems which urgently need solving."

 

[Condottiere]

The CoDominium intelligence services deliberately corrupted databases, especially scientific ones.

CoDiminium.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

The Terrans advanced from TL9-12 rapidly because in the early ISW period they could:
reverse engineer captured Imperial technology
during lulls they could trade with Imperial worlds (especially the Vegans) for the freely available TL10 stuff
they could sent agents to steal Imperial secrets from the hidden technology archives (which I am delighted to see are now canonical in MWM's novel)
So the Terrans go from TL9 to TL11 as fast as they can build the industrial base to do so - they then make the jump to TL12 using stuff the Imperials themselves could have developed had they not taken the deliberate decision to halt technological advances since they were worried about reaching the point where the machines would start to take over...

And here I was feeling good about being the Terrans... At least we have polished off a few TLs the last century or two. Catching up with tech is not trivial, as we can see in the world today, most of the world have failed with that.

Suppressing tech from your own empire, but giving it to your enemies is pretty suicidal.

That's so the rich can maintain their wealth and status - one of the reasons that Dulinor initialled his rebellion.

A rich economy has more rich people, and richer rich people. A poor economy has cheaper servants. If I were the Emperor I would go for a richer economy.

Keeping the economy intentionally strangled seems a bit dangerous, the Imperium has neighbours and some of them are hostile...

Rome was always more of a model for the Imperium than most think - there are interviews with the designers where it is mentioned.

The First Imperium, finished off by the invading barbarians, followed by a dark age, seems rather obviously inspired by Rome.

The Third Imperium as Rome is not quite so obvious.

 

[flykiller]

Catching up with tech is not trivial, as we can see in the world today, most of the world have failed with that.

nonsense, it's easy. what's hard is accepting the culture that does so - THAT is what gets rejected. the "chinese" discovered gunpowder, but the controlling ruling class had no use for it and so tossed it aside, and there was no "middle class" to pick it up. the soviets had a magnificent computer science program and produced thousands of highly educated phd computer scientists who really knew their theory, but who had never touched a computer because the communist party wouldn't allow anyone but certified party members to operate one. and while everyone in the middle ages knew what a longbow was and could make them and understood the role they played in battles, only the english employed them because no other ruling class would tolerate the yeoman peasantry necessary to employ them.

Suppressing tech from your own empire, but giving it to your enemies is pretty suicidal.

happens all the time. the cannoneer who built the cannons used to break constantinople's walls went to the byzantine emperor first offering his services, and when the emperor refused to pay he went to the turkish sultan and built the guns for him instead.