Ursus Latex
SOC-7
I've long been going for mutliple star-ports in one system. It's only logical that the Imperium and local powers try to squeeze the maximum of profit out of a system. Especially since Traveller is a economically ridden world.
Look at a normal star system: Most systems are just suns, with some eccentricly flying pieces of matter around it. Humaniti however settled thousands of systems that contain bodies beyond the star and "left-overs". Take the Sol system as an example.
We have Venus and Mars close enough to Sol to arrange for habitats to live in and we have Earth in perfect distance for unsupported life. In addition there are 6 other planets and 139 moons (adding a few every now and then), one asteroid belt, the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud. Now that's enough recources to literally mine your ass of for some years. Actually the gross system product is only limited by the capital invested, including the money spent for labor power, read workers. The 3I is reigned by the megacorps, veiled as an aristocracy/oligarchy.
If a system is settled for the first time, why waste all the recources? Why not establish one full system colonization projectt instead of building a factory colony on star X1, a settlement colony on X2 and a prison planet on Y1, just to fill the subsector grid map? If we could recolonize the Sol-system with TL A or even the possibilities of today (fully used), Earth would make a wonderful settlement colony and the rest could be squeezed for goods. Small prospection colonies on the solid planets and the asteroids, gargantuan rafineries around Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, scientific research stations on comets, moons, asteroids etc. Military insatllations in the belts and the cloud. Giant sun-sails next to the sun (next in inverted commas). And every colony, settlement and base needs it's own facility. Some will not provide refueling services to outsiders, or will import fuel for thesemlves, others will have simply rocks to land on, and truly A and B starports will be scarce. But who cares? Major overhaules can be done in one type A port, since "A" qualifies quality, not size. Maybe all the facilities of a starport have to be together, just in the vicinity. Terra and Luna would qualify for "vicinity" and thus in Terras orbit you could have all the nice stuff, habitats and the needed docking facilities, while around and on Luna yards, rapair facilites and refueling takes place.
Consequently everything that has to be transported to Terra's population would be brought down to the "A" class star-port facilities above Terra, unloaded, distributed to small (compared: very small) shuttles (no you can't enter Terra's atmosphere with a 500,000 tons streamlined ship) and transportet to a network of ports on the surface. Preferably far away from the population. Baikonur, in the Sahara, Gobi-desert, Mongolia, Antarctis, inner Australia and so on. From Sahara everything goes to Europe, Gobi and Australia transport to the Pacific, Nunavut to North America, Antarctis to Pacific and South America and so on.
It's acutally foolish to go for only one (star) port only. And it's foolish to go for only one colony per star, unless there is only one body.
Buld cargo can be remote piloted easily from a mining outpost to a refinary, no one cares if the ore needs a year to go there, Traveller is slow anyways. Just use a cheap 1g thrusted big hull and push it on a steady course. A few buoys every week or so scan the freighter for damage and are equipped with powerful beacons to send the stuff to HQ. Every month or so a scout type repair ship drops by (jumping) to check the buoys, while the freighters head towards the target point.
Intra system jump is only valuable for goods that perish or living cargo (including humans) And here intra system jump is of great value, but it needs to be calculated. I would enter the Sol system via Zenith or Nadir. Here is the first huge space station that unloads the big freighters cargos and redistributes it on other ships, or just hands you out the newest data of the system and the bodies. This is necessary for precise calculation, since it's easy to calculate a nadir exit for jump space (it could be outside of the star's gravity), but it's more difficult to calculate a jump into a system (or "onto" the disk of planets and asteroids). After receiving the data, you jump towards the station that is close to your destination, then unload, or go the last couple of meters by thrusters.
A bit like in Freelancer, numerous waypoints define interstellar and interplanetar economy and goods exchange.
Of course it might take 50 years to build up such a giant colony in a system, but it's still cheaper than building ten colonies in 8 systems, and you can use thrusters for a lot of the stuff, which reduces upkeep costs greatly.
The Sol system alone can tell myriads of stories.
Urs
Look at a normal star system: Most systems are just suns, with some eccentricly flying pieces of matter around it. Humaniti however settled thousands of systems that contain bodies beyond the star and "left-overs". Take the Sol system as an example.
We have Venus and Mars close enough to Sol to arrange for habitats to live in and we have Earth in perfect distance for unsupported life. In addition there are 6 other planets and 139 moons (adding a few every now and then), one asteroid belt, the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud. Now that's enough recources to literally mine your ass of for some years. Actually the gross system product is only limited by the capital invested, including the money spent for labor power, read workers. The 3I is reigned by the megacorps, veiled as an aristocracy/oligarchy.
If a system is settled for the first time, why waste all the recources? Why not establish one full system colonization projectt instead of building a factory colony on star X1, a settlement colony on X2 and a prison planet on Y1, just to fill the subsector grid map? If we could recolonize the Sol-system with TL A or even the possibilities of today (fully used), Earth would make a wonderful settlement colony and the rest could be squeezed for goods. Small prospection colonies on the solid planets and the asteroids, gargantuan rafineries around Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, scientific research stations on comets, moons, asteroids etc. Military insatllations in the belts and the cloud. Giant sun-sails next to the sun (next in inverted commas). And every colony, settlement and base needs it's own facility. Some will not provide refueling services to outsiders, or will import fuel for thesemlves, others will have simply rocks to land on, and truly A and B starports will be scarce. But who cares? Major overhaules can be done in one type A port, since "A" qualifies quality, not size. Maybe all the facilities of a starport have to be together, just in the vicinity. Terra and Luna would qualify for "vicinity" and thus in Terras orbit you could have all the nice stuff, habitats and the needed docking facilities, while around and on Luna yards, rapair facilites and refueling takes place.
Consequently everything that has to be transported to Terra's population would be brought down to the "A" class star-port facilities above Terra, unloaded, distributed to small (compared: very small) shuttles (no you can't enter Terra's atmosphere with a 500,000 tons streamlined ship) and transportet to a network of ports on the surface. Preferably far away from the population. Baikonur, in the Sahara, Gobi-desert, Mongolia, Antarctis, inner Australia and so on. From Sahara everything goes to Europe, Gobi and Australia transport to the Pacific, Nunavut to North America, Antarctis to Pacific and South America and so on.
It's acutally foolish to go for only one (star) port only. And it's foolish to go for only one colony per star, unless there is only one body.
Buld cargo can be remote piloted easily from a mining outpost to a refinary, no one cares if the ore needs a year to go there, Traveller is slow anyways. Just use a cheap 1g thrusted big hull and push it on a steady course. A few buoys every week or so scan the freighter for damage and are equipped with powerful beacons to send the stuff to HQ. Every month or so a scout type repair ship drops by (jumping) to check the buoys, while the freighters head towards the target point.
Intra system jump is only valuable for goods that perish or living cargo (including humans) And here intra system jump is of great value, but it needs to be calculated. I would enter the Sol system via Zenith or Nadir. Here is the first huge space station that unloads the big freighters cargos and redistributes it on other ships, or just hands you out the newest data of the system and the bodies. This is necessary for precise calculation, since it's easy to calculate a nadir exit for jump space (it could be outside of the star's gravity), but it's more difficult to calculate a jump into a system (or "onto" the disk of planets and asteroids). After receiving the data, you jump towards the station that is close to your destination, then unload, or go the last couple of meters by thrusters.
A bit like in Freelancer, numerous waypoints define interstellar and interplanetar economy and goods exchange.
Of course it might take 50 years to build up such a giant colony in a system, but it's still cheaper than building ten colonies in 8 systems, and you can use thrusters for a lot of the stuff, which reduces upkeep costs greatly.
The Sol system alone can tell myriads of stories.
Urs
