> Tomb wrote:
> 3) Regarding shipping things around in the GZGverse. Take a look at
> total tonnage of merchant shipping to military today. Then look at
It
> must in order to keep the economy functioning. Ergo shipping large
Don't know if I agree.
There's very little in first world regional economies on earth _now_
that is absolutely essential to be supplied from outside the region
(although many things are cheaper/easier done that way nowadays). The
modern world is, however, growing more interdependent and therefore more
reliant on mass shipping, but in the perios of interstellar colonization, new
colonies will have a high priority on gaining self sufficiency, so shipping of
large quantities of bulk materials will
_primarily_ be for colonization efforts. I don't imagine that there will
be a great number of Nike container vessels ambling between Albion and
Earth. I see non-colonial shipping as much smaller, than you're
envisioning, Tomb. I see interstellar trade in high tech, munitions, cultural
exports, exotic materials, luxury goods, but not things like
ore (or other raw materials) or cars (or other low-med tech consumer
goods).
All tolled, I wouldn't imagine the (non-colonial) civilian shipping
industry tonnage exceeds military tonnage by a factor of a couple or three at
most. Unless I'm missing something fundamental, which I've done
before.
> On 1/11/02 6:51 AM, "Noam Izenberg" <noam.izenberg@jhuapl.edu> wrote:
> All tolled, I wouldn't imagine the (non-colonial) civilian shipping
I would imagine that the inner colonies would have shipping patterns akin to
national patterns today, and that the outer colonies would have patterns more
like those of the 1800s.
On Fri, 11 Jan 2002 07:02:29 -0800, Sean Bayan Schoonmaker
> <s_schoon@pacbell.net> wrote:
> I would imagine that the inner colonies would have shipping patterns
It's hard to tell, as Jon hasn't given a lot of information about what caused
colonization. Folks aren't going to colonize a new planet simply because they
are tired of their choice in television channels.
Traditionally colonization has been due to several reasons:
- population pressure resulting in famine and disease. (This is the
traditional reason in sci-fi, though historically this been a reason for
populations to spread out, not set out for uncharted
islands/continents.)
- wealth. (This takes in a lot of stuff. Poor Scots immigrating to the
New World in order to acquire land, fisherman moving to Newfoundland to fish
the Grand Banks, colonization of eastern US for the timber, trading for furs,
etc. It could be because the mother country is out of resources, or because
people want to make money on new resources)
- escaping persecution. (Escaping religious persecution was a biggie in
the 17th and 18th centuries.)
- forced settlement. (Everyone thinks of the Australian penal colonies
when
thinking in sci-fi terms, but a bigger uprooting were the British
forcing the Acadians out of Nova Scotia.)
Note: these are reasons for colonization, not exploration, which has other
reasons.
The most likely reason for colonization in the Tuffleyverse would be
population pressure and wealth. I've heard that we've only got easily
attainable fossil fuel reserves until 2030 to 2050. After that, it gets much
harder to find oil (lets face it; they aren't making any more
dinosaurs...).
Pulling ore out of a planet and shipping refined metals and other goods would
be a big incentive for colonies.
Population pressure is harder to deal with. We obviously have a population
problem on Earth, but it's not universal. The population growth in first world
countries is actually shrinking. It's quite possible that India and China
would be able to deal with their population problems before colonization
becomes feasible. Africa, though, may be a much bigger problem, but I don't
see Africa having the resources to colonize other planets.
Jon hasn't really postulated why the mass colonization effort. A good
sci-fi
reason would be some super bug or virus that's ravaging the population, albeit
fairly slowly. That, however, would go against the whole idea of colonies
having close contact with Mother Earth.
The resource idea is probably the easiest one to live with. Food production,
ore mining, oil drilling (even if not used in fuels, it is still needed for
plastics and polymers), to name the obvious ones. Would these colonies be nice
places to live? I could see some worlds being essentially strip mined for ore,
leaving a desolate wasteland in a couple hundred years. I can see others as
being far more liveable.
The result would be shipping more in keeping with the 1700s, with lots of
resources heading back to the home worlds (and maybe manufactured goods, but
probably only stuff that's too hazardous or toxic to make back on Earth), and
some small amounts of goods for those people who are on the colonized planets.
The analogy would probably be close to that of New France and New England in
the early 1700s.
> Population pressure is harder to deal with. We obviously have a
Some parts of Africa have negative population growth due to AIDS and
associated diseases. Don't know what the population figures are for the whole
continent but between that plus Muslims killing Christians and animists in
Sudan, Nigeria etc, I don't know that overpopulation is as much of a problem
as people expected it would be. That is, the only famines I've heard of lately
have been when one group choked off food distribution to the other group, not
when the total food suply was short.
Of course, one man's "comfortably close" is another man's "way overcrowded".
And interstellar colonizing doesn't have to be just from a single cause.
I think the issue breaks down to economic cost to ship vs other costs. For
instance, one reason the sweetner on most soda pop says high
fructose corn syrup and/or sugar is that due to tariffs and such it is
cheaper to ship corn syrup to Thailand, add refined sugar to it and ship it
back than it is to import pure refined sugar directly from Thailand.
If governments do bizzare things like that you can see a market where people
ship "raw" materials or parts to a place to be assembled, then ship them on to
other places. Economically, one would think that it would make more sense to
have factories that could produce final products from raw materials on planet,
but some factors to consider:
a) the controlling power may not want heavy industries on that planet -
too much chance of it becoming independent and creating its own military
capacity.
b) economic control - if you control the tariffs, taxes and what you can
import/export from the planet, you can rake in more money. If traffic
is high, your take gets larger.
c) cost-effectiveness - there might be a technology or technique that
requires a high tech level to maintain the technique. The planet in question
might not be able to support that level, and so imports the
part or machines that require a high level to build - such as fusion
reactors but can maintain or complete the construction. A modern equivalent
might be titanium welding.
d) a rare raw material that is used in multiple applications - If there
is a mineral or organic compound that is difficult to obtain or process
but is used in a multitude of sci-fi applications - hardener for
plastic, release agent for metal casting, stiffener for concrete,
tracking marker for explosives, semi-conductor for imprinted clothing
circuitry, then it becomes more useful to bring the raw compound or
semi-processed compound for distribution to the different manufacturing
lines. A current example might be gold or diamonds.
--Binhan
> -----Original Message-----
Nice analysis. A few comments:
From: "Allan Goodall" <agoodall@att.net>
> On Fri, 11 Jan 2002 07:02:29 -0800, Sean Bayan Schoonmaker
> Traditionally colonization has been due to several reasons:
I guess the Irish potato famine and associated emigration might be quoted as
an example. Though that was more crop failure than population pressure.
> - escaping persecution. (Escaping religious persecution was a biggie
Looking at the present day situation, there may be quite a lot of people who
would like to emigrate to a cozy little planet for that reason - or to
any place on earth that would let them in.
> The most likely reason for colonization in the Tuffleyverse would be
The problem I see here is that most of these would require bulk shipping of
goods. Typically, it's high-value goods that drive initial trade and
colonization. Bulk shipping comes last. Very rare materials that are of value
in small quantities would be the first candidate.
> Jon hasn't really postulated why the mass colonization effort. A good
A slow acting virus ravaging the population? AIDS is not that far off this
mark.
> The resource idea is probably the easiest one to live with. Food
The model of space as a source of raw materials is, for me, fairly plausible
within the solar system. But over interstellar distances?
Greetings Karl Heinz
You can't really discuss this without some base information that doesn't
appear in the works of GZG.
For 300MCr I can have a mass 200 cargo ship with 150 mass for cargo (thrust
1).
This is my fixed cost. What we need to make money with this ship is the
following information:
Crew Costs Fuel Costs
Maintenance Costs/time
Round trip time
Without this information there is no real point to discussing wether or not
this ship can make its' shareholders a profit.
For instance, if a trip costs.1Mcr for crew for one trip, and 20MCr for
maintenance and fuel. If a trip takes two weeks our cargo needs to make
21.7Mcr per trip to give our investors a 5% return on their money.
Where you set these values _and_ how much money you can
make per mass of cargo determines profitability.
I still think that a lot of the religious tensions (as below) and other
conflicts are in *part* a response to population pressures (the "rats in
a box" theory).
> laserlight@quixnet.net wrote:
> Population pressure is harder to deal with. We obviously have a
One thing that has been approached, but perhaps not touched on, in the
discussion of shipping/travel costs, is closely related to the
exploration/colonization distinction. Remember that both the cost,
hazards involved, and types of ships required is going to be different for
exploring new regions of space than it will be for colonizing explored
regions, which will in turn be different than those for transporting between
two
colonized/settled points. The difference can be illustrated
historically, and actually seems to amplify itself as we progress in history.
Other than the nature of the cargo, crew, and passengers, the difference
between a merchant vessel and an exploration vessel in sailing ship days was
minimal -
that seems like a huge "Other than", but my point is that if you looked at a
ship and didn't know who/what was aboard it, you wouldn't know which it
was. Now compare a research vessel such as Beth might board to a modern
freighter, and the differences are more pronounced. How different will a
future exploration spacecraft be from a bulk freighter? The mind boggles. In
addition, the cost (In% of the entire US economy) of the Apollo program will
probably be considered staggering compared to the relative cost of shipping
corn to the moon, once regular shipping commences.
This discussion hearkens back to one I brought up over a year ago when I was
on-list the first time. I talked about "Push" and "Pull" pressures for
exploration and colonization. IIRC, my point was that in the early stages of
colonization (Not later immigration to establishred colonies), the TREND will
be that there's both a reason for someone to GO colonize (Escaping
persecution, 40 acres and a mule, etc.), as well as a reason for someone to
stake that person's going (development of markets, new resources, strategic
importance of the location of the new colony).
Brian B2
> From: KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de (K.H.Ranitzsch)
G'day,
> Population pressure is harder to deal with. We obviously have
But its fast heading that way with regard to resource use (you can't really
sperate the two issues).
> The population growth in first world countries is actually shrinking.
Unfortunately our resource use isn't and as the third world increases pressure
on those resources only grows higher as you use more as tech advances (at
least to a point).
> It's quite possible that India and China
China has already, but India has spent a long time pretending its not there
and has some serious catch up to play. Same with Algeria (if I remember
correctly) which will soon head off to be the most populous country on Earth.
> Africa, though, may be a much bigger problem, but I don't
Well it is 200 years down the track and it won't necessarily take that long
for them to cure their woes, especially since you're tarring an entire
continent with the same brush and not everyone is plagued by the economic and
social woes that grip places like Zimbabwe at present. Beyond that the African
nations have already created a "power bloc" that could lead the way
for the formation of a PAU like that of the GZG-verse.
> Jon hasn't really postulated why the mass colonization
Or the effects of global climate change (be it a natural or human induced
change). It looks the Antarctic Ice Shelf could be in REAL danger of breaking
up and as a result sea level will rise to the point the South Pacific and many
countries seaboards go under.... OK that'll knock out some people, but it also
makes the land available to the rest a lot smaller... and a lot less able to
support them as many agricultural plains are on the coastal deltas.
Cheers
G'day
> Some parts of Africa have negative population growth due to
Well the 1990 figs were 620 million or there abouts I think and while AIDS is
helping to keep growth in check its education that's seen growth figs for
Africa fall from 4% average to 2% (which sees the entire world projections
ease off too).
Cheers
> China has already, but India has spent a long time pretending its
Huh? Algeria has something like 31 million and a growth rate under 2%. Sure
you don't mean Nigeria? 126 million and a higher growth rate.
[quoted original message omitted]
G'day,
> Algeria ???
I wasn't having a good day was I?;)
I haven't got the document to hand, but I have a sneaking suspicion I actually
meant Nigeria (my African work mate is gonna kick my butt over that one!!).
Sorry
Beth