"Sod you lot, we're out of here" as a motiviation to colonization?

[jcrocker]

250,000 dollars is about Lv5,000 by value.

Movement to the frontier is a mainly government sponsored affair. Why would anyone want to buy a starship (if they could), it's expensive, and expensive to run. They'd be much better off buying passage on an existing ship (or letting the government pay for them on a colonial transport). They can get a person and equipment to a frontier world with change out of a million USD equivalents.

Where in canon is that exchange rate? Is this for the US now, or in the game?

I realize that France is the superpower in the game, but an exchange rate of 50:1 does not seem possible for the American dollar. 3:1 or 5:1 you could convince me of, but not 50.

If this exchange rate is for actual current US$, it's not a helpful comparison. Compared to people 300 years ago, I think it's a safe bet everyone on this board has a lifestyle that only the upper classes could have come close to.

Of course, if you carry that back, compared to people 5 or 10 000 years ago, we all live like gods...

 

[BMonnery]

Exchange rate isn't as simple as it sounds.

We're told to convert modern (1980) US prices to livre, divide by 3.

However, the wages given, and the low % employed mean there are not nearly as many livre floating around. In fact, as per the discussion recently, it seems that the calculations work better if we assume that it's 1980 specie money rather than 1980 fiat. The upshot being, to work out the affordability of capital items in modern terms, 1 livre = somewhere between 50 and 100 USD.

 

[jcrocker]

And what, exactly, does this have to do with the price of tea on Beta Canum?

Converting to rough modern equivalents is needed, I suppose, if it's something not in the equipment lists.

But I have yet to run a game where a player says, "Excuse me, are these prices indexed to the 1980 specie dollar or the 1980 fiat dollar? Because I'm noticing a few things you should look at if it's the latter..."

Players do not care if prices are indexed to South Pacific traditional seashell-based currencies, they want to know "how much is it on the [black] market, and how much does my character have in their account?" And if the prices and account balances are all in Lv, who cares?

As long as the game is pretty consistent internally with money values, what does exact modern value matter?

If your players can put down their actuarial tables long enough to enjoy a 2300 game with such discussions, please don't let me rain on your parade - by all means, have fun. But I don't think that has much to do with the origninal question in this thread.

 

[shanksow]

Without having access to my Beanstalk module to confirm this information, I'm just going by memory. Three tracks and only one capsule per track if the capsule gets its energy from the beanstalk itself.

If each capsule has its own energy source, then multiple capusles can be used. However, that would be unwise if there was a accident and a capsule got hung up somewhere. There are derailments all the time and the same thing will happen on the bean stalk. Now-if that were to happen, I'm guessing that the capsule can disconnect from the stalk and fall back to the planet for parachute recovery (in theory).

 

[Colin]

Dead gliders can be used to land passengers. One could imagine 'disposable' dead gliders, where the lander could be broken down for parts at it's destination. Massive colonization projects use such methods, and are particularly common with the Manchurians, who favour a sink-or-swim approach to colonization. No escape for you.

As for beanstalk traffic, I don't have any numbers handy. However, I would imagine that the stalk is used very heavily. One track is always down, one is always up, and the third is variable, though typically up. In 2320, there are two functioning beanstalks on Earth, with a third nearing completion. The Mataglap Beanstalk has six tracks, though only four are currently in operation. The limit on traffic is basically the load-limit of the beanstalk itself, which is very high.

 

[G. Fieendish]

Re: Chartering Starships
One possibility for raising the money to charter starships, for colonisation purposes, might be by running a (Biweekly ?) planetry lottery, with the "star prize" a place for your & your family on said ship...
(This is how the planet Arrarat was initally colonised, by the World Federation of Churches, in one of Jerry Pournelle's Co-Dominium stories, BTW).

 

[BMonnery]

Without having access to my Beanstalk module to confirm this information, I'm just going by memory. Three tracks and only one capsule per track if the capsule gets its energy from the beanstalk itself.

If each capsule has its own energy source, then multiple capusles can be used. However, that would be unwise if there was a accident and a capsule got hung up somewhere. There are derailments all the time and the same thing will happen on the bean stalk. Now-if that were to happen, I'm guessing that the capsule can disconnect from the stalk and fall back to the planet for parachute recovery (in theory).

There are multiple capsules per track, 40-80 usually, each on a five day journey. The capsules draw power from the track, which is powered by a dedicated solar array at the station.

Each capsule either carried 18 passengers and a small quantity of cargo, or 1,000 tons of cargo (at a very high density for packaged goods, only bulk materials are that dense), assume 200 people a day operating flat out (2 tracks, high rate) with a third of the capsules being people (at the same time delivering 32,000 tons of goods to orbit, which isn't a lot)

 

[BMonnery]

And what, exactly, does this have to do with the price of tea on Beta Canum?

Players do not care if prices are indexed to South Pacific traditional seashell-based currencies, they want to know "how much is it on the [black] market, and how much does my character have in their account?" And if the prices and account balances are all in Lv, who cares?

As long as the game is pretty consistent internally with money values, what does exact modern value matter?

It has an internally consistent monetary value, it just isn't the same one as we have now. Food, for example, is much more expensive in 2300 both in absolute terms and as a % of income spent on. Steel is about 25-50 times more expensive using the simple Lv/5 equation, plastics are several hundred times more expensive.

Fuel (hydrogen) is Lv25 per MW-hr, an approximate 10 fold increase over the current (high!) cost of petrol in Lv per MW-hr.

Electronics OTOH don't need much materials and are dirt cheap.

Materials are more expensive. Meanwhile, labour is cheap, with unskilled workers earning 1-2,000 livre pa, while even skilled workers are only in the 10-15,000 livre bracket. This partially comes down to the fact that there is little demand for labour since society is mechanised. The factories are are robotic. The farms are robotic. The mines are robotic (see Kafer Dawn, even the mines on Aurore are robotic). The Mcburger shop is robotic. GAP is robotic. Labour is cheap because the pool of manpower is massively larger than the required workforce.

Society is decoupled from a work culture. It does not need a large workforce, only a small subset of one to run the systems. The limits to production are not workforce, but availability of materials (metals, plastics, textiles etc.) and energy.

This leads to the situation where economic expansion (i.e. feeding and clothing the folks back home) requires the exploitation of new resources, and these have to come from offworld. This means governments have to move skilled populations and robot workers offworld to exploit those resources

Thus a simple livre to dollar calculation doesn't really work.

 

[shaunhilburn]

Fuel (hydrogen) is Lv25 per MW-hr, an approximate 10 fold increase over the current (high!) cost of petrol in Lv per MW

Off-topic, but I'd like your take on H2 price/kg based on Lv100 per ton:

kg Lv/kg
H2 111.11 × 0.50 = Lv55.56
O2 888.89× 0.05 = Lv44.44
-----------
Lv100.00

 

[shaunhilburn]

Fuel (hydrogen) is Lv25 per MW-hr, an approximate 10 fold increase over the current (high!) cost of petrol in Lv per MW

Off-topic, but I'd like your take on H2 pricing based on Lv100 per ton:

H2 111.11 kg × Lv0.50 = Lv55.56 (H2 gets lion's share)
O2 888.89 kg × Lv0.05 = Lv44.44 (O2 carries a small but significant liquefaction cost)

 

[jcrocker]

Thus a simple livre to dollar calculation doesn't really work.

That's good to know, and useful for background.

But here's something a little more on-topic - I went digging and found, on page 7 of the Rotten to the Core module, a table that includes the following costs for the city ofLibreville:

Cost to orbit, Beanstalk: Lv500
Cost to orbit, Rocket plane or Scramjet: Lv3000
Cost to orbit, Shuttle: Lv4500

Which supports a 'heavy use' paradigm for the beanstalk, the other way didn't make much sense:

"Minister!"
"Oui, Mon Emperor?"
"Help me to understand this report. How much did the space elevator cost?"
"Untold trillions, Mon Emperor. So much that we needed financial assistance from almost every single nation on the planet, lest our economy collapse."
"Hmm, yes. And how many people per day can it take to orbit?"
"All of six hundred glorious Frenchmen per day, Mon Emperor!!"
"Hmm, yes... Now, we have a passenger ship, named the Marseilles class, do we not?"
"But of course, Mon Emperor!"
"And how much does it cost?"
"Please allow me to consult... ah, almost 32 millions, Mon Emperor."
"And how many people can it take to orbit?"
"500 glorious Frenchmen per trip, Mon Emperor!!"
"Now, correct me if I am wrong, but if we had built, say, *two* of these ships, that would both carry more people and cost almost infinitely less money, oui?"
"...Sacre Bleu!! And that is why *you* are in charge, Mon Emperor!!"


So, at 500 to orbit, and assuming something similar to ship cargo up, then yes, I would expect that a body of similarly minded would-be colonists could afford to ship themselves and a buch of gear to a colony world without ending up as slaves to Trilon to pay for it.

 

[BMonnery]

That's good to know, and useful for background.

But here's something a little more on-topic - I went digging and found, on page 7 of the Rotten to the Core module, a table that includes the following costs for the city ofLibreville:

Cost to orbit, Beanstalk: Lv500
Cost to orbit, Rocket plane or Scramjet: Lv3000
Cost to orbit, Shuttle: Lv4500

Which supports a 'heavy use' paradigm for the beanstalk, the other way didn't make much sense:

It is a cheaper way to get to orbit, but it's fairly low capacity. The Beanstalk's owner (France) gets a fairly major advantage in the cost of interface, up to a point. There was a major plot point in Beanstalk to do with Britain being excluded from access to the Beanstalk.

 

[BMonnery]

There are multiple capsules per track, 40-80 usually, each on a five day journey. The capsules draw power from the track, which is powered by a dedicated solar array at the station.

Each capsule either carried 18 passengers and a small quantity of cargo, or 1,000 tons of cargo (at a very high density for packaged goods, only bulk materials are that dense), assume 200 people a day operating flat out (2 tracks, high rate) with a third of the capsules being people (at the same time delivering 32,000 tons of goods to orbit, which isn't a lot)

Further to my last, the three rails are arranged as follows: 1 up, 1 down and 1 is a power line taking the solar power to the surface. So half the above rate (yes, I've been reading Beanstalk)