Non OTU: Galactic economics
- Thread starter Adam Dray
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mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Then we build O'Neill cylinders...
this week's Isaac Arthur video on colonizing Ceres, mining the asteroid belt is worth a watch.
Go to youtube and search.
this week's Isaac Arthur video on colonizing Ceres, mining the asteroid belt is worth a watch.
Go to youtube and search.
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Straybow
SOC-14 1K
Ok, that's the 200 dT limit, unless your ship has the proportions of an uncooked spaghetti noodle. And it's called "sungate" because ???
What percentage of the structure has to be made of the quantum paired matter?I would think that making identical machines out of quantum paired atoms would be even more phenomenally expensive. You're synthesizing large (above iron fusion limit) atoms? In pairs? And then capturing the two atoms individually and adding them onto a piece of technology entirely built one atom at a time?
Hmmm. Why build a factory where you have no infrastructure? Just send the stargate factory through the gate. One machine at a time if the whole factory is too large to fit through.
It cost the USA $13B (maybe $50B in today's money) to go to the moon for a short visit. Why did they bother?
Straybow
SOC-14 1K
Ummm, each of those probes is basically a '70s era calculator running off a radiothermal-electric generator. No life support, no complicated machinery. There are probably ocean-going vessels that are still operational after decades... but you don't die if something relatively minor goes wrong.
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
Cold war activity, PR, which system is the future communism or capitalism, etc.
This summarized stylized rant by Neil Tyson covers the reasoning and benefits pretty well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbIZU8cQWXc
So, to cover the OP's question, the functional equivalent might be a space race between the Paneuropean Federation and North American Combine nations (to use one game's future polities) for interstellar real estate and prestige.
There is no jump in the Main Sequence setting. Only sungates, which are 7-10-meter rings installed in the magnetic field of a star, in entangled pairs. They're essentially teleportation devices or instantaneous wormholes.
There is no 200 dT limit. Ships must be small enough to fit through the gate. The larger ships tend to be "needle" designs.
Around 100 metric tonnes per gate.
The process is totally hand-wavium, just as jump technology is. I threw out the "one molecule at a time" thing off-the-cuff. It probably won't stick. Assume there's some kind of sufficiently advanced technology to pair one gate with another, in the quantum entanglement sense. I do realize we can barely do that today with a couple small atoms.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Because it the was the first time and we had to stick it to the commies.
After a few visits, excitement about going waned. No one build a permanent colony there.
I'm not talking about visiting places. If the people in my setting wanted to visit Gliese 832c, they'd send a probe with a lot of ansible bytes. And they do that as part of the process for deciding where to send a sungate.
Thanks for bringing things back home.
I think that gets you to the next star, but not the next ten stars. I'm looking for a sustainable economic model that makes sense of expansion.
I'm coming to the realization that it just won't happen as quickly as I was hoping for the setting. It shouldn't be a deal breaker, but I was trying not to get too far out from "today," as that requires all kinds of predictions about society that I'm not ready to make.
Thanks for bringing things back home.
I think that gets you to the next star, but not the next ten stars. I'm looking for a sustainable economic model that makes sense of expansion.
I'm coming to the realization that it just won't happen as quickly as I was hoping for the setting. It shouldn't be a deal breaker, but I was trying not to get too far out from "today," as that requires all kinds of predictions about society that I'm not ready to make.
Hmm I guess in your setting, humanity would've been bottled up in the Solar System quite a bit longer than the 2070s or whenever Solomani developed jump drives in the OTU 3I setting?
What do you figure the current "year" would be in Main Sequence? Would the setting have its own special calendar, with Earth dates provided as well?
epicenter00
SOC-13
I would say that if humanity found an Earth-like world sufficiently similar to call it Earthlike people would want to go there. It's an instant sale, maybe with that guilty feeling of seeing something for sale online, realizing the price is a mistake, but you know they'll have to honor the price.
When I call it Earthlike, I mean it is a 'shirtsleeves' world. We will need to deal with the local biosphere in the realm of fantastic (and horrible) new diseases and so on. But otherwise, the amount of useable area would be pretty irrelevant. I personally find these Earthlike worlds where much of the world is habitable (like our Earth) would be very rare, so I tend to think worlds with some useable real estate might be more common. For instance, a world that is literally uninhabitable for humans at the equator and too hot overall, except for perhaps areas near the poles would be hot but habitable - this would be "earthlike" for me. Similarly, a world with an unstable eccentric orbit where it is pretty comfortable for a few months of its year but much of the time it is too cold (you know, it's unstable - this will only endure for about 10 million earth years) would still be habitable for humans.
I think worlds like this would be irresistible to humans. A few trillion dollars for a gate? It'd be pennies as far as humankind is concerned. Our governments and corporations would compete to build a gate to get there so we could look around settle, long before population pressures drove us off Earth.
Part of what I'm doing here is trying to back into a "current year" by understanding how long it'd take to get to 30-40 systems.
If we use population as the expansion pressure, and not energy consumption, then we're doubling every 100 years:
2100 - 1 system (Sol)
2200 - 2 systems (+Proxima Centauri?)
2300 - 4 systems
2400 - 8 systems
2500 - 16 systems
2600 - 32 systems
log2(30) = 4.91, so 30 systems at about 2591.
If we use energy consumption as the expansion pressure, then we're x10 every 100 years:
2100 - 1 system
2200 - 10 systems
2300 - 100 systems
log10(30)=1.48, so 30 systems at about 2248.
Earth dates work fine, until I want to introduce a splinter hegemony that wants to do things their own way, I guess. I don't see much need for a complication there.
I do not disagree. And yes, I'm saying Main Sequence has tons of these Earthlike worlds (at least 30 within 50 LY) just sitting there, ready for the taking.
However, I'm not asking about the 1st explored planet, or the 2nd. I'm asking about the 30th. And I'm talking about colonization, not "send a few scouts to check it out" or even "put a small permanent base there." Full-out colonization with millions of people.
What forces humanity to keep spending enormous amounts of time, energy, and money to expand outward? What causes millions of people to uproot their lives and move to a new place with new challenges, new diseases, weird food, and so on?
Assume that sungates aren't something that everyone has access to, so the average rich white dude can't just do it for the giggles. What makes governments keep building colonies on other planets?
One thing I haven't explored much is pressure for nobility landgrab. That is, with this new neo-corporate-feudalism happening, people want their own fief, so they push to get their own planet and get a seat at the table.
You could come up with a few reasons.
a. Group A has had it with group B. And C, D, E, and pretty much the whole planet. Look for a couple of Jonestown-style events in this category.
b. Tax Reasons. All those little nations get pressured into waiving their tax haven status? Fine. "Happy Corporation is pleased to announce that our Headquarters has moved to Zeta Omicron Plural Alpha."
c. Gold Rush. Might not be gold, but some deposit of some mineral or desired plant or animal species sends a lot of people to a planet, and many people go to mine. Others go to mine, er, support the miners, which from history can be a lot more secure income stream.
d. Just can't afford Terra. There was an article on the BBC where 'low income' in San Francisco was just announced to be $117 000 per year, US$, and Hong Kong real estate prices have been legendary for years. Some people when given a choice between Boise or the stars will pick the stars, maybe get in on the ground floor.
Any campaign is up to the ref & players, but it's not difficult to come up with a rationale for continued expansion for any number of reasons.
a. Group A has had it with group B. And C, D, E, and pretty much the whole planet. Look for a couple of Jonestown-style events in this category.
b. Tax Reasons. All those little nations get pressured into waiving their tax haven status? Fine. "Happy Corporation is pleased to announce that our Headquarters has moved to Zeta Omicron Plural Alpha."
c. Gold Rush. Might not be gold, but some deposit of some mineral or desired plant or animal species sends a lot of people to a planet, and many people go to mine. Others go to mine, er, support the miners, which from history can be a lot more secure income stream.
d. Just can't afford Terra. There was an article on the BBC where 'low income' in San Francisco was just announced to be $117 000 per year, US$, and Hong Kong real estate prices have been legendary for years. Some people when given a choice between Boise or the stars will pick the stars, maybe get in on the ground floor.
Any campaign is up to the ref & players, but it's not difficult to come up with a rationale for continued expansion for any number of reasons.
Demonstration of capability.
If you can build a rocket that gets a man (and necessary life support) into orbit and back down safely, you can do the same with a small nuclear weapon.
If you can do that with enough payload to reach the moon, land safely, take off again, and land back on Earth safely, you can put as many MIRVs on any arbitrary points on Earth as you want (demonstrates payload and accuracy).
And you get to plant flags, and claim it's entirely peaceful use of Space. The people who need to know better, already understand the implications.
Rereading this, what is the main indicator of wealth & status in yiur setting? Like what seperates a more powerful/wealthier noble from another? The ability to build and send out sungates?
What is the main "fuel" of ships in your setting you would say? The kind of thing that draws merchants, adventurers, etc to space stations or planets out on the frontier?
In fact, what is the frontier or core in your setting?
In addition, how do traders and such work in your setting? They work for a company or are they independents or what?
The main indicator of wealth is actual net worth in the interstellar economy. That is, not potential wealth (not "I own this planet, so I am worth all of its resources") but actual wealth ("I sold all the extractable precious metal on this planet to BobCorp, worth $2T, so I am worth $2T").
The main indicator of status is noble title. Better title = better status. Among the same rank, political and military power would break ties.
The ability to build and send out sungates is difficult, but not that hard. What differentiates people in this process is the ability to send out fast sungate ships (NAFAL, remember) to reach new stars before anyone else does and plant a flag on them. But then we get to why people would care about that if they had all the stars they need. And then we beg the question, full circle.
The main fuel of ships is probably deuterium and lithium (cheap aneutronic fusion) to power an Em-drive, so there's no fuel scarcity anywhere. Manned ships never pull much more than 1G.
The frontier of the setting is on the edges of the slowly expanding sphere of exploration (5-10 years per LY radius). Only Main Sequence stars are suitable for sungates but that includes a bazillion small M-class stars.
The core of the setting is Earth and a handful of nearby "early colony" star systems, plus maybe one or two more distant "hubs" that are controlled by the most powerful nobility.
Traders and such always work for someone: probably a corporation who is chartered by a noble. It's difficult to be unaffiliated in the Main Sequence setting, if you want to have any kind of power at all. Or if you want to have a starship (which is a special kind of power). Note that control of starships is managed not by buy-sell regulation, but by the regulated use of sungates. Sure, any wealthy schmuck can get their hands on an (illegal) space yacht to zip around a star system, but they need permission to traverse the sungates out of the system. If their yacht isn't chartered by a noble, they will quickly get into trouble and have nowhere to run.
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
If it was just the nuke lobbing the orbital missions would have sufficed. This was bigtime hearts and minds on the main stage, much bigger then just nukes.
It's a balkanized setting right? With the various nobles & territories being sort of like empires and such?
Do you have your own titles that correspond with the ranking system used in most Traveller rulebooks? Or would you just use the normal Traveller noble titles?
So pretty much only the wealthy can send out sungate ships? Wouldn't perhaps a good reason to send them out be not just for colonizing but also exploration?
So is it like the fuel is used for a small reactor for the EM drive while the main reactor powers everything else? Or is it more like it's used to help open a sungate when needing to go somewhere?
How many star systems have been colonized colonies are the main "worlds" when there are no Earth-like planets around?
Would most yachts or passenger ships or cargo ships be sort of like grapeships from Orion's Arm? I imagine they'll never be allowed to "own" a ship themselves?
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It's balkanized. There are a handful of competing empires of a dozen or two star systems each. Mostly, they fight Cold War style with occasional real battles for occupation of key systems.
I've added Rapport as the "charisma" skill and use Social Status as a true indication of rank. Everyone is ranked, from peasant to tradesman to emperor. Generally, PCs aren't starting as nobility.
Definitely only the wealthy can send out sungate ships. It's like who can send up orbital rockets in 2019, except it's way more regulated by the nobility.
For sure, people want to send out sungate ships and explore other planets. There's no question about that. But what makes people want to shuttle millions of people to those planets and turn them into true colonies?
(I think, ultimately, I landed on the reason of logarithmic population growth and exponential power consumption.)
All ships are NAFAL. Ships generally use Em-Drive technology, which has a ceiling and diminishing returns on acceleration. (It's all theoretical almost-science right now in 2019, but I'm extrapolating based on what we think might be true.) Em-Drives are great for getting for ground-to-orbit transfer (but are slow) and are great for really long trips because they don't need reaction mass. I suspect fighters and warships also have supplemental reaction drives for maneuverability and speed.
A ship really only needs one reactor to supply electrical power for the Em-Drive, computers, life support, etc. You could also use it to crack water to use as reaction mass.
All the time (weeks) in interstellar travel is spent transiting from planet to the star. Sungate-to-sungate is instantaneous. Then they spend more time (weeks) transiting from the new star to the new planet.
All of the Main Sequence, non-M-class stars they've visited have Earthlike planets. All of them. The M's have some ice balls and such and there might be bases there for repair, refueling, etc. but no significant populations.
All starships are chartered/licensed by nobility. There is no instance of a bunch of plucky adventurers tooting around the empire in their own tramp freighter, trying to make the mortgage.
