CT Only: PTL - Personal Tech Level

[Condottiere]

If you know something is possible to construct and/or works, reproduction is a lot easier.

And if Just In Time isn't working out, I guess you'll have to stockpile.

 

[whartung]

Cell phones require a lot of infrastructure to be put into place to be viable.

The require a lot less infrastructure than land lines, which is why they're the most viable solution in under-developed areas of the world going forward. There's also satellite based phone service. Odds are high that in the realm of Traveller, any personal comms would likely be satellite based, as I hypothesize that by that time, satellite based comms would be even cheaper, and even less infrastructure than tower based cell service. If you can stand the ping rates, that is.

McPerth, have you ever tried to ship something to anywhere in the South Pacific? That might hold true in Western Europe, I would have reservations about Eastern Europe. I would be hesitant to make that statement about the U.S. There is no way I would make that about most of the Pacific, along with parts of Africa. I have friends in Papua New Guinea and also in Tanzania, and I know what they tell me of how long it takes to get material from the U.S.

I havn't, but I guess if you have enough money you can have it quite earlier than what you say, even if you have to cháater an airplane.

According to Expedia, I can catch a flight at LAX tomorrow at 10pm and be in Papau New Guinea in about 20 hours for less than $2000.

Fedex will ship 25lbs in a week from LA for < $700.

Yea, that's a lot if you're buying a DVD from Amazon. But if something is important, it can get there, and pretty quickly.

 

[Timerover51]

According to Expedia, I can catch a flight at LAX tomorrow at 10pm and be in Papau New Guinea in about 20 hours for less than $2000.

Fedex will ship 25lbs in a week from LA for < $700.

Yea, that's a lot if you're buying a DVD from Amazon. But if something is important, it can get there, and pretty quickly.

Does that only put you in Port Moresby, or does that get you into the uplands north of the Owen Stanley Range?

 

[Garnfellow]

I've found the recent discussions of tech level extremely interesting. It occurs to me that a personal tech level really requires a couple of different ratings. One for the homeworld itself, and one for the interstellar community the homeworld belongs to. Isolated or interdicted worlds have no effective interstellar community. The homeworld rating indicates tech that the individual is intimately familiar with and has used, while the interstellar rating indicates tech the individual has heard about and could reasonably use with training.

"I grew up on a backwater world that was barely able to manufacture Jump-1 drives, but we studied higher level jump theory in my trade school. I'd never actually worked on one of these J-5 units before, but between the maintenance bots and the autodiagnostic systems, this baby is probably easier to keep running than that junky old Zergon 860 drive I had to nursemaid on my last ship. I've been spending most of my downtime in jumpspace getting caught up on these higher tech models. And if there's anything I can't figure out myself, there's always one of these little wafer cheats -- they work fine but give me the damnedest headaches."