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Post by samchiu2000 on Feb 15, 2017 15:02:58 GMT
Is there any good your guy think that can make space trade profitable？
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Post by Enderminion on Feb 15, 2017 15:05:00 GMT
Cheap materials from asteroids, 0g manufacturing, cheap gas from Uranus (the planet).
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Post by newageofpower on Feb 15, 2017 15:08:24 GMT
Like today's mercantile trade? Unlikely. Heavy industrial shipments of ice, energy intensive feedstock (such as feramic materials) boosted by MPD barges/lasersail/EM launch, though, are probably perfectly viable.
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Post by bdcarrillo on Feb 15, 2017 15:17:38 GMT
With advanced manufacturing available almost everywhere, I'd guesstimate that raw materials would constitute the bulk of trading.
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Post by caiaphas on Feb 15, 2017 15:26:37 GMT
Like today's mercantile trade? Unlikely. Heavy industrial shipments of ice, energy intensive feedstock (such as feramic materials) boosted by MPD barges/lasersail/EM launch, though, are probably perfectly viable. Bit of a tangent, but do the polities in this settint even have a laser or laser array in the power range required for useful lasersail? Anyways, considering the timescales involved I agree with your assessment; I think it makes far more sense for them to ship bulk raw/refined materials to each colony and to process them there into finished goods. That lets them (for a time at least) ramp up or drop production in accordance with local demand for the good in question, keeps the economy smoother. |
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Post by bigbombr on Feb 15, 2017 16:00:21 GMT
Bulk materials might be transported, but it takes such a long time and takes so much propellant (or energy in the form of fissiles or beamed power) that it would probably be only used to get what your own rock lacks. The most common goods transported would probably be information (movies, tech, instructions for your assemblers on how to make product X, ...) and energy. These two are the only things moving at lightspeed after all.
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Post by newageofpower on Feb 15, 2017 16:13:00 GMT
Bulk materials might be transported, but it takes such a long time and takes so much propellant (or energy in the form of fissiles or beamed power) that it would probably be only used to get what your own rock lacks. The most common goods transported would probably be information (movies, tech, instructions for your assemblers on how to make product X, ...) and energy. These two are the only things moving at lightspeed after all. The thing is though, the amount of 'free' energy available around Mercury or Jupiter is so high that shooting payloads is pretty cheap. Add some efficient MPD barges for course adjustment and presto bingo stuff got exported! Venus is a great destination site, btw. Aerobreaking with that insanely dense atmosphere, yum dV savings. |
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Post by caiaphas on Feb 15, 2017 16:23:10 GMT
Bulk materials might be transported, but it takes such a long time and takes so much propellant (or energy in the form of fissiles or beamed power) that it would probably be only used to get what your own rock lacks. The most common goods transported would probably be information (movies, tech, instructions for your assemblers on how to make product X, ...) and energy. These two are the only things moving at lightspeed after all. The thing is though, the amount of 'free' energy available around Mercury or Jupiter is so high that shooting payloads is pretty cheap. Add some efficient MPD barges for course adjustment and presto bingo stuff got exported! Venus is a great destination site, btw. Aerobreaking with that insanely dense atmosphere, yum dV savings. Or Earth, now that we've Venus'd it in this setting. |
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Post by Easy on Feb 15, 2017 18:25:55 GMT
With advanced manufacturing available almost everywhere, I'd guesstimate that raw materials would constitute the bulk of trading. Additive manufacturing has its limits and a machine that coats a megaton ship in boron, rubber or aerogel won't have much in common with the machine that prints circuits and comptuers. And the machine that makes the mirror for the HumogoWatt laser won't be the same one that builds nuclear reactors. So you have a whole array of specialized "generalist" manufacturing equipment and the whole backend of feedstock and the parts that need special heat treatment or machining. You've got to break down the raw asteroid into its elemental parts. You've got nuclear isotopes that need to be transmuted and then separated. Not everything in a warship can come out of a black box waiting for you to cut sprues and snap it together. Plus you have proprietary parts that will self destruct if you try to steal their trade secrets. Ma' and Pop' asteroid mining might have to trade for parts they can't easily build themselves. |
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Post by bdcarrillo on Feb 15, 2017 18:31:43 GMT
For warship construction you'll obviously need different resources, tools, and machines.
For the overall civil population, you'll have a fairly common set of life support requirements and robust infrastructure. Beyond shipping the initial parts and infrequent spares, I'd say that the bulk of civil trading will be in raw resources. It's simply the most mass, thus cost, efficient way.
Heck, you could even have specialized ships that manufacture tools and equipment, and do so on their way to their destination from raw materials they load at point of origin or along the way.
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Post by Easy on Feb 15, 2017 18:54:05 GMT
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Post by caiaphas on Feb 15, 2017 18:59:01 GMT
Don't forget your SPACESANTO™ TERMINATOR™ seeds and SPACESANTO™ ANIMALATOR™ Livestock in a Bottle™. After all you wouldn't want to be stuck eating expired off-brand Spirulina cyanobacteria. PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Leaving cyanobacteria in a bioreactor for too long may result in undesirable mutations such as loss of nutrition, unpalatable flavor and unhealthy toxins. SPACESANTO™ has a wide array of products that generally outperform spacer heirlooms in both growth rate and food mass efficiency. WARNING: Do not attempt to germinate second generation crops from SPACESANTO™ TERMINATOR™ seeds or to breed SPACESANTO™ ANIMALATOR™ Livestock in a Bottle™. SPACESANTO™ reserves the right to send SPACESANTO™ ENFORCERATOR™ legal representatives to investigate and enforce SPACESANTO™ intellectual property rights*. SPACESANTO™
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*Penalties incurred may include but are not limited to indentured servitude for up to the rest of your life, the sale of your firstborn children, the forfeiture and seizure of all your property, and orbital bombardment. |
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