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why not transport your TL 15 nano factory components via STL - ships in the OTU can achieve 0.8 to 0.9c (Imperium, Dark Nebula) to transport critical components through normal space.
Or take the blueprints for building the infrastructure/machinery locally.
...I'm not ruling out the slowboat method, but I'm not buying 0.8c. Space is not so vacuumy when you're traversing 240 million meters every second. You're encountering hydrogen and helium atoms, sometimes grains of dust - and you're encountering them at 0.8c. At those speeds the individual atoms have the force of cosmic rays, and the overall intensity is several orders of magnitude more powerful than space at a standstill. The occasional grain of dust is like a needlepoint of superheated plasma lancing through your ship; does not sound like it would be healthy for the components along its path.
Further, the interstellar region varies from densities under a molecule per cubic centimeter to as dense as 10
6 molecules per cubic centimeter (still 1/10
13 the density of air). If you should encounter a dense patch, you're encountering impact energies on the order of 11,500 joules
per square centimeter per second. By comparison 14 thousand joules will melt a 7 cubic centimeter block of iron. Another way to view it is like having 30 kilograms of TNT go off per square meter of hull every second. In short, unless you're very, very good at mapping and avoiding such patches, or at getting rid of the excess heat when you hit one, the bow of your ship melts.
Adventure 5 describes a 2000 year flight to reach the Island Clusters, and that suggested a speed no better than about 0.1c. I'm not clear what they were doing for fuel on that route - possibly the ship was mostly fuel, but that's not our issue at the moment. Top safe speed might be as much as 0.2c. 16 to 32 years for your investment to arrive may be doable or not depending on your view of things. ...
