my son had the following thoughts about FTL freighters:
A freighter with a jump drive must use 10% of its mass for drive and an
aditional 5% of its mass is for a thrust one drive. Plus to make it worse 10%
of your mass must be hull. This means that a freighter can at best only devote
75% of its total mass to cargo. Now this seems like a huge ammount but when
compared to the 90 or so percent a modern oil tanker or bulk frighter gets it
makes an FTL frighter uneconmical for any sort of low value goods as the ship
is going to have to make something like 100 trips to pay itself off. By this
time its likly to have broken down. So if you have intersteller trade it must
be all non perishable high value goods.
posted for Matt by andy
> From: <apter@bellsouth.net>
samplr frighter
http://www.msnusers.com/ConfusionCentral411/shoebox.msnw?action=ShowPhot
o&PhotoID=271
> At 10:51 PM -0400 4/17/04, <apter@bellsouth.net> wrote:
It'd depend on the type of freighter. There are freighters that are designed
for fast transit with fast hulls and lots of engine plant. Those are usually
ships that transport perishable cargo or cargo with some kind of rush to it.
Some container ships fall into this category.
Bulk freighters are much higher on the scale of cargo to weight of ship with
regards to power plants.
The nice thing about space craft however is that you're not having as much
wear and tear on the ship. No salt water to rot out the ship in 20 years.
On Sun, 18 Apr 2004 04:56:41 -0700 (PDT) John Atkinson
> <johnmatkinson@yahoo.com> writes:
High value is relative.
To a world like SOL shipping in Tractors from Tyranius IV might be
unprofitable but shipping them to an Agricultural world with no industry (or
heavy manufacturing at least) either by design or 'youth' of the colony might
make them high value. If your PSB allows 'stasis fields' then fruit not grown
locally might be a high value V.I.P. item
[Pineapples for the O.U. ambassador to the desert covered planet of
Dirtball II] or single source items like a sample of a liquid medicine from a
local native plant (or the plant itself.)
Gracias,
> --- apter@bellsouth.net wrote:
> or bulk frighter gets it makes an FTL frighter
I have difficulty imagining what low value goods you
couldn't get/make with the resources of a solar system
to hand.
> At 6:41 AM -0500 4/18/04, <warbeads@juno.com> wrote:
Well, in the early part of the 20th century, it was profitable enough to
design ships to transport bananas. Refrigerated and fast. Some were speedy
enough to convert to ersatz warships (ie the Emden).
> At 4:56 AM -0700 4/18/04, John Atkinson wrote:
Machinery to make local goods? In WWII Austrailia was barely up to the task of
making tanks and had to have the specialized gear and machine cutting gear
shipped from England. This is 1940's technology.
Often times the tools to make the product need specialized tools to make them
and specialized tools to make those.
Hey, welcome back!
> --- Ryan Gill <rmgill@mindspring.com> wrote:
> Machinery to make local goods?
Anything they can't make themselves is by definition
high-value. :)