How common is space travel in Traveller

[far-trader]

18th & 19th century census immigration/emmigration between north america and europe.

Concorde vs 747 traffic along common routes (cost is no limit travel).

Based on (above) historic figures, in each year:

About 1-4% of the population will move (one-way trip) to a new world to live.

About 2% of the population will travel round-trip on a starship.

OK, thanks for the context. I can see a number of problems with that as a definitive statement. If that works for you, cool, but it doesn't really hold much validity.

First comparing Earth history to future sci-fi game history is full of problems on the face. Yes there's the whole (overused and abused imo) "age-of-sail" meme comparison but that is really only for communications issues and how that might affect governance. Applying it to other areas by just slapping the same catch phrase on doesn't really work.

Then there's the fact you seem to be suggesting using those figures for the whole of charted space when they don't even accurately reflect the whole population of Earth at the time.

There's really no comparison between travelling across an ocean circa 18-19c and travelling between star systems in Traveller. None. Really.

Nor is the comparison of transoceanic air travel any more valid.

Traveller already covers the difference in absolute Travel between two places by population and TL. Two factors your snapshot limited situations don't reflect. Now if you were to suggest that they were comparitive to a specific pair of TL and pop situations you might be closer to a good number.

The only real measure of absolute travel rarity comes from the cost compared to disposable income and factoring the need to travel.

Traveller has high cost (even low berth travel is not cheap) and low disposable income overall. With little need to travel for the vast majority.

1% - 4% is far too high as an average. There might be a few world pairs that support that extreme for a brief period of time, like the Europe to Americas move in the opening up of a new wide open frontier. I'm sure you don't suggest that the same percentages are in effect today? And travel is even quicker, cheaper (relatively) and safer.

I could go on but my interest is fading.

 

[atpollard]

There's really no comparison between travelling across an ocean circa 18-19c and travelling between star systems in Traveller. None. Really.

1. Travel times too long for a simple vacation.
2. Travel costs a year’s wages.
3. Europe and the United States are sufficiently resource rich that travel is not an economic necessity.
It seems like there are SOME similarities to me.

Nor is the comparison of transoceanic air travel any more valid.

I compared the ratio of (expensive) Concorde flight seats by British Airways from London to Miami to 747 seats by British Airways from London to Miami. This compares modern air travel demand (about which we have lots of data) to the number of passengers if the cost were exorbitant.
Using immigration as a measure of how many people want to travel to a place (like 747 seats), the Concorde seat ratio suggests what percent can afford to pay “High Passage” rates.

Traveller already covers the difference in absolute Travel between two places by population and TL.

Where? I might have missed it, but I didn’t see a (rules) definitive answer in this topic.

1% - 4% is far too high as an average. There might be a few world pairs that support that extreme for a brief period of time, like the Europe to Americas move in the opening up of a new wide open frontier. I'm sure you don't suggest that the same percentages are in effect today? And travel is even quicker, cheaper (relatively) and safer.

As of 2007, 36 million Americans were born somewhere else, suggesting that even now 0.5% to 2% per year choose to move to another country. It may reflect human psychology rather than 19th century economics (plus a lot more long term ‘visitors’ - 2.5% of current US population per year - than in the age of sail).

 

[far-trader]

Traveller already covers the difference in absolute Travel between two places by population and TL.

Where? I might have missed it, but I didn’t see a (rules) definitive answer in this topic.

No, you've seen it I'm sure, but I probably make it out more clear, and black and white than it's intended I'm talking about the CT trade tables where there are more passengers on higher pop worlds, and the TL difference influences them.

As of 2007, 36 million Americans were born somewhere else, suggesting that even now 0.5% to 2% per year choose to move to another country. It may reflect human psychology rather than 19th century economics (plus a lot more long term ‘visitors’ - 2.5% of current US population per year - than in the age of sail).

I didn't think it was that high but you're right. I'm sure it's still search of a better life driving it, not much different than it was hundreds of years ago. And the same is true of other places. However those are still cherry picked examples imo that can't be applied as a general average even on one planet. And certainly not for interplanetary or interstellar travel.

It still comes down to the few examples of wages and living expenses compared to the high cost of starship travel. Very few people will take even one interstellar trip in a lifetime. At least on their own credit.

IMO and IMTU:

There are a rare few true Travellers, of which PCs are examples. Ex-services mostly who have through career been exposed to interstellar travel, like it, and have the skills and resources to pursue it. Most ex-services don't travel as much (muster vouchers are an indicator imo) and they apply their savings to retirement on a world. They both travel any way they can and may be found in High, Middle, or even Low passage.

Then there are the wealthy, who probably make up the bulk of regular passengers. They take trips for business and pleasure, because they can afford it. They are more numerous than ex-services travelling, but still a very small percentage of people on a world because most just don't have the need. They do just fine being minding business and being rich on their homeworld. When they do travel it is always High passage (excepting maybe the rare centicredit pincher who economizes by booking Middle but will upgrade to High if bumped).

Finally there are some who are sent offworld for various reasons. They rarely travel above Middle passage. Most travel, one way, and only once, by Low Berth. And even these are rare, most worlds don't need or want them.

No, I really don't see interstellar, or even interplanetary, travel approaching anything like 1% of the population on average. Again, in some rare paired cases perhaps. I may revise my opinion of the duration of such in light of the data, however, even in that we're talking some 100 years or historical records to apply to a setting (Third Imperium) that has a history of more than 1000 years. I think there may be a point at which such high immigration slows or even plateaus and stops.

 

[rancke]

No, you've seen it I'm sure, but I probably make it out more clear, and black and white than it's intended I'm talking about the CT trade tables where there are more passengers on higher pop worlds, and the TL difference influences them.

There are a few more passengers left over from what the regular shipping lines handles on higher pop worlds. Even if we assume that the figures are accurate (a very iffy assumption in the first place) it doesn't help much in establishing how many travel by regular passenger service and not by free trader. It's not even a whole lot of use in establishing the number who travel by tramp, since the tables do not tell us about any that goes to rival tramps that may be on a world at the same time as that of the PCs.


Hans

 

[atpollard]

I think there may be a point at which such high immigration slows or even plateaus and stops.

... or simply balances out - 1% per year leave and 1% per year arrive (or whatever figure is more accurate) so the net population remains constant. Sort of like workers moving among EU countries to follow the work - or some city dwellers choosing to move to small towns and some small town dwellers moving to the city.

What we do know is that 5% of the people who fly can afford to pay a LOT more to travel on a supersonic transport if it is available. So 5% of the world's airline passengers MIGHT be able to afford a high or middle passage - setting an upper limit on their number (the question still remains how many want to travel to another world).

 

[Carlobrand]

The Spinward Marches per Supplement 3 has a population of 872 billion among 440 worlds - actually, 439 (the page on Trin's Veil miscounted the number of worlds). That's an average of around 2 billion per world, seems rather high.

The Spinward Marches per Spinward Marches Campaign has a population of 382.4 billion among 439 worlds. Me, I suspect a lot of people were padding the number of dependents on their income tax forms the first time around. (And, yes, I counted them all. Excell's a useful little beast.)

Incidentally, that breaks down as:
17 pop-0 worlds; 18 pop-1 worlds; 20 pop-2 worlds; 39 pop-3 worlds;
57 pop-4 worlds; 77 pop-5 worlds; 76 pop-6 worlds; 55 pop-7 worlds;
38 pop-8 worlds; 31 pop-9 worlds; 11 pop-A worlds.

In the U.S. today, roughly 1% of the population are millionaires. In India, it's 0.04%. Let's say, ballparking it in a big way, that the proportion of wealthy in our sci fi future Marches is somewhere between 0.1% and 1%, good wide range. That means there are between 380 million and 3.8 billion well-off people in the Marches - a few of them fantastically rich, most of them just modestly well to do bankers and doctors and businessmen and such with a very nice house and a strong stock portfilio. That's the group that can plunk down 20 KCr without it hurting too much - at the lower end, it represents maybe 1-2 month's income, something they can do once every year or two.

Not all of them will be spacing about every year. Let's run with the lower end number - 380 million - and say 0.1% of them travel in any given week. So, maybe 5% travel per year. That represents 380,000 travellers at 10 KCr a pop in any given week, enough to fill the staterooms of 15,000 subsidized liners and another 8000 subsidized merchants flying among 439 worlds. And, those are averages - there are worlds that won't see more than one ship in a year, if that, and others that look a lot like La Guardia at rush hour. Suffice to say there's enough market share there to persuade the megacorps to step in and grab a lot of that traffic from the subsidy folk.

Of course, that's not including the low berth set or the occasional soul who spends his life savings on a trip. That's just the Haves doing their Have thing while we Have-nots look on in envy.

Now, my numbers could be off by a factor of 10 in either direction, depending on how you prefer to see your universe. Perhaps there's only 1500 liners and 800 merchants plying the space lanes among the 439 worlds. The point is, when you're dealing with hundreds of billions of souls, you can have something be pretty rare from the viewpoint of the average planetbound joe farm-hand - a 1 in a million thing or worse - and still be pretty common from the point of view of the spacer.

 

[Enoki]

I'd add, as I stated before, on top of just the wealthy travelling there would also be businessmen on a company account, government, and military personnel traveling at government expense, as well as various couriers, and other people in self-owned businesses that require travel.
One reason for all that is simply how Traveller has communications set up. You cannot send messages quickly between systems. It takes over a week to transfer information between two close systems and longer if multiple jumps are involved.
Obviously, one cannot do business that way. Also there is the danger of people you don't want knowing about what you are doing looking at your message traffic. That only increases the use of face to face interactions. If you had to send a pile of cash along to close a deal then an armed party of couriers might be necessary rather than just either an electronic transfer (not likely if dealing with some backward planet) or sending the money via something like armored delivery vehicle, etc.

 

[aramis]

I'd add, as I stated before, on top of just the wealthy travelling there would also be businessmen on a company account, government, and military personnel traveling at government expense, as well as various couriers, and other people in self-owned businesses that require travel.
One reason for all that is simply how Traveller has communications set up. You cannot send messages quickly between systems. It takes over a week to transfer information between two close systems and longer if multiple jumps are involved.
Obviously, one cannot do business that way. Also there is the danger of people you don't want knowing about what you are doing looking at your message traffic. That only increases the use of face to face interactions. If you had to send a pile of cash along to close a deal then an armed party of couriers might be necessary rather than just either an electronic transfer (not likely if dealing with some backward planet) or sending the money via something like armored delivery vehicle, etc.

Actually, a LOT of business was done with month-long mail times... but most of it was speculation rather than order fulfillment.

 

[far-trader]

...One reason for all that is simply how Traveller has communications set up. You cannot send messages quickly between systems. It takes over a week to transfer information between two close systems and longer if multiple jumps are involved.
Obviously, one cannot do business that way.

Sure you can. It has been done in the past, with longer than a week and without hustling couriers back and forth. You have trusted people at the other end handling the business independently. There's no need for the kind of power-tripping micro-managing that so many in today's instant global communications world seem to think is the only way to do business.

I think the trusted partner out of communication is a far better model for Traveller interstellar operations than some modern day jet-setter analog...

...but then I don't really believe in a degree of interstellar trade and business that many seem to think exists where for example grain is so valued (despite being so very cheap) that small (pitifully so) quantities of it are shipped at great expense for little or no profit from one Ag world to another. Talk about value added merchandizing "Yep, this wheat is from over 3 light years away and has been through Jumpspace! Pretty special eh? Beats the same stuff you grow here. You buying it or what?"

 

[rancke]

...but then I don't really believe in a degree of interstellar trade and business that many seem to think exists where for example grain is so valued (despite being so very cheap) that small (pitifully so) quantities of it are shipped at great expense for little or no profit from one Ag world to another. Talk about value added merchandizing "Yep, this wheat is from over 3 light years away and has been through Jumpspace! Pretty special eh? Beats the same stuff you grow here. You buying it or what?"

People who eat squee day in and day out might well be willing to pay through the nose for a taste of fosk. And people who live on a steady diet of fosk might well pay a premium for a bit of squee.


Hans

 

[aramis]

People who eat squee day in and day out might well be willing to pay through the nose for a taste of fosk. And people who live on a steady diet of fosk might well pay a premium for a bit of squee.


Hans

Farmers would, as well.

Grain costs Cr300 per Td on average; Typically around Cr240 on an agricultural world. Shipping it, even on a ship you own, costs at least Cr500/Td per parsec...
And it seldom sells for more than Cr1200/Td (Seldom meaning only by Referee Fiat).

 

[far-trader]

People who eat squee day in and day out might well be willing to pay through the nose for a taste of fosk. And people who live on a steady diet of fosk might well pay a premium for a bit of squee.


Hans

You might have a winnable argument (with me) there

Most people I know are in the "Bah, squee was good enough for my folks, it's good enough for me!" crowd. And quick with a "I don't trust that foreign stuff, fosk you say it's called? Even the name sounds unappetizing."

Though you might have hit on the key to the low shipping rates and expensive value added. On the squee abundant world there may well be a small minority who will pay a substantial premium for foreign fosk just because it is foreign (exotic). It becomes a bit of a status symbol. And the folk back on the fosk abundant world wonder what those squee eaters are so crazy for fosk about.

However...

Eventually fosk becomes more accepted, news spreads, others try it and like it. Soon some percentage of squee production is switched over to fosk. Killing the fosk import market as locals can undercut the importers and still charge more than for squee.

Somehow in a millennial old market I wonder how there's anything new under anybody's sun to support such a "new and different stuff" argument. So I'm still not quite convinced.

 

[Carlobrand]

Some things may not grow well on worlds alien to them. Some of Terran flora, for example, need bees - if you can't get bees or some other acceptable pollinator buggie to flourish there, your Terran food is going to be a hothouse-grown delicacy carefully pollinated by hand. On a world without jalapenos, a Terran could get a powerful hankering ...

 

[Whipsnade]

What we do know is that 5% of the people who fly can afford to pay a LOT more to travel on a supersonic transport if it is available.

Nonsense. If SST travel were actually profitable, then more than 20 Concorde jets would have been built, they wouldn't have bee flown for nearly 30 years until they fell apart, and they would have seen competitors and succeeding generations of SST transports following them. There simply weren't enough potential passengers for the service provided and so the service stopped despite substantial government subsidies.

Your analogy of the Atlantic immigration trade is also wholly false. That "market" lasted for less than two generations and, like the SST project, was subsidized in numerous ways by the various governments involved through both direct and indirect subsidies and policies.

Using outlier examples of historical passenger traffic provides your ideas no support.

 

[atpollard]

Nonsense.

Your dismissal by fiat is in error.

1. Cost was not the primary cause of Concorde's failure.
2. Check modern rates of immigration/emigration.

 

[Whipsnade]

Your dismissal by fiat is in error.

Bullshit.

1. Cost was not the primary cause of Concorde's failure.

"Cost" goes beyond dollar signs. Environmental concerns are often cited for the Concorde's failure but the SST's environmental impact was shown early on to be much less than initially thought and the aircraft proved less noisy than many subsonic transports. Despite that, no new airframes were built and the Concorde's successors remain the aviation equivalent of vaporware.

If the market for SST transport was large/important enough, there would be SST transports flying today. Seen any lately?

2. Check modern rates of immigration/emigration.

Again a wholly faulty assumption.

The rates you quote include both "undocumented" movement and refugees too. While counting the millions squatting various camps in central Africa does help the UN raise funds and undocumented people can stroll across the US border to the tune of 12 million, both cases do nothing to help your argument for large scale interstellar travel.

Among many other mistakes like ignoring the direct and indirect impetus given to migration by government subsidies, policies, and even inaction, you're taking outlier examples of people moving across a planetary biosphere they evolved within and porting that movement into a situation where life support is required for at least 168 hours. The two simply cannot be compared.

Instead of checking world total immigration/emigration rates, you should be looking into those rates for nations which have strict immigration/emigration policies.

Twelve million people can "wade across" the Rio Grande, but not one can "wade" between Regina and Ruie just as no one can "wade" to New Zealand.

 

[atpollard]

If you discount all 'real world' data because it is not a perfect analogy for a fantasy space opera rules system, then you are left with no basis of discussion.

No person has ever visited a star, so no person wants to visit a star and no person will ever visit a star ... is that the 'logical' conclusion to be reached? How does that help?

Each year a group of people equal to about 0.4% of the current US population choose to leave their homes forever and become citizens of the US ... and it is your opinion that those people have absolutely nothing in common with the unknown number of middle and low passengers who (theoretically) choose to travel between star systems - one way - for reasons not explicitly stated in the rules. If that is your position, then we have nothing to discuss since no common frame of reference is possible.

I seem to have missed your answer and supporting clarification to the question of "How common is space travel?"


So let's compare Apples to Apples ... EVERY seat to space commercially available has been sold ... for a lot more than a typical year's wages ... and many people have purchased flights on sub-orbital shuttles that do not yet exist. From an economics perspective, that sounds like a hell of a demand curve.

 

[Ishmael]

by the UWP procedure, 1 in 6 worlds will have a pop of less than 1,000; 1 in 12 will have less than 100.
without immigration/emigration, any population growth, even just to balance out mortality rates, will eventually involve inbreeding on such worlds.*

therefore, it would appear that the level of space travel for individual citizens might be inversely proportional to the pop of the world that they live on.

* this might be an adventure seed for some worlds where megacorps have 'tailored' the population for research purposes, perhaps without the citizen's knowledge or consent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_mouse#Laboratory_mice

 

[atpollard]

The rates you quote include both "undocumented" movement and refugees too. While counting the millions squatting various camps in central Africa does help the UN raise funds and undocumented people can stroll across the US border to the tune of 12 million, both cases do nothing to help your argument for large scale interstellar travel.

Among many other mistakes like ignoring the direct and indirect impetus given to migration by government subsidies, policies, and even inaction, you're taking outlier examples of people moving across a planetary biosphere they evolved within and porting that movement into a situation where life support is required for at least 168 hours. The two simply cannot be compared.

Instead of checking world total immigration/emigration rates, you should be looking into those rates for nations which have strict immigration/emigration policies.

Twelve million people can "wade across" the Rio Grande, but not one can "wade" between Regina and Ruie just as no one can "wade" to New Zealand.

The 1%-4% rate quoted in my initial post is for immigration from Europe to the US from 1790 to 1910. That is a lot more than 2 generations, there was no wading involved, and time and cost of travel was far closer to the Traveller Starship values. [As an aside for our Canadian friends, some of those early years of the USA involved a 1% Emigration rate from the US to Canada.]

The purpose of the modern figures was simply to point out that even with modern travel, the immigration rate is still significant and excludes many modern 'visitors' who (IMO) would have made only a one-way trip if it required a month at sea and a year's wages (analogous to star travel).

 

[Carlobrand]

Whipsnade makes an important point - in a rather crude and decidedly undiplomatic way. Means are at least as important as motivation. The fact that folk can get to the U.S. by walking, boating from Cuba, or paying 500 or 600 bucks for a confortable flight on a safe airline (or a month's salary for a steerage ticket on Titanic), does not mean all of those folk are up to paying $10,000 for a jump flight - or would pay $1000 if there was a fair chance of death associated with it.

When using immigration rates as an argument, you're going to have to factor in means: what percentage of that group walked, took a short boat ride, or otherwise used free or cheap means that are flatly unavailable to someone trying to cross a parsec of space, and what percentage of THAT group - if balked from the free/cheap alternative - could still have come up with the resources to manage the trip. Some would; one need only consider the folk coming up with the money to pay coyotes to lead them on dangerous crossings of the Western U.S. desert. But, not all would.

I can (and did) show that there are a lot of rich folk with the means to support interstellar travel. That gets a lot trickier with poor folk. There are a LOT of variables involved, and planets tend to be rather big things with a lot of options available without ever leaving the atmosphere - at least within certain population ranges, and depending on the climate and type of government and law level. Certainly if you're facing serious persecution, low passage might be a better option than staying within reach of the persecuting government/culture, but if all you want is opportunity, odds are good there's SOMEPLACE on a 6000 km sphere with a breathable atmosphere where you can find opportunity without gambling your life on a low-passage roll. (Does MegaTrav do that too?)

A better analysis than overall immigration rates might be to ask the question: what percentage of Americans made the westward trek beyond the Mississippi before trains made it easy? That doesn't compare at all to space travel, but it does give an idea of what percentage of the population was willing to take big chances in the pursuit of their goals - it was known to be a tough and potentially dangerous trek by the people of the time. I suspect that, as with those millions of millionaires, we'll find that while the percentage is quite low, the aggregate in a sector of 382 billion will be high enough to keep the low passage berths filled in those ships the millionaires are taking staterooms in.

... it would appear that the level of space travel for individual citizens might be inversely proportional to the pop of the world that they live on. ...

I like that. It makes a lot of sense. Climate plays a role too. If there are a couple hundred folk on a frigid ice world with a chlorine-tainted atmosphere, odds are good that a larger percentage of that group is saving up for spacefare than might be the case on sunny Regina.