rust said:
I seem to have a problem to understand the economics of
interface transports in 2300AD.
According to the table on page 267 it costs 15,000 Lv to send 1 ton of cargo into orbit with a rocket. However, the "cheap, reliable and disposable" rocket on page 218 has a payload of 21 tons and costs 5.03 MLv, which results in a cost of almost 240,000 Lv to send 1 ton of cargo into orbit with it. There seems to be a difference of a factor of more than 10.
Besides, I wonder what kind of trade goods could be worth such a transport cost. In Traveller even Crystals and Gems, according to the description including (probably raw) diamonds, have a base price of only 20,000 Credits.
Could someone please tell me what I am missing ? :?
Well my half a Lv on the subject :wink:
The cheap disposable rocket is not something used for everyday cargo runs to orbit, for that I would use more expensive but re-useable cargo rockets that are then bought back down in gliders or ballistic drops. The engine section is reusable and the top mounted cargo pod is left in orbit. A reusable 50Dton rocket which makes one run a week and is fully reusable would cost mLv10. 50 lifts a year puts 1050Dtons a year in orbit. That drops the costs per Dton a lot even allowing for the return costs and support crew costs.
The disposable rockets are much more a case of “Oh crap, we need to get this in orbit by this afternoon and there isn’t a single shuttle available”, or “we need to get this satellite into high orbit and its cheaper to use a disposable 3G rocket than use a crewed ship to get out that far”. The 3G rocket has a lot longer range than needed to reach orbit from earth, in fact since it is a liquid fuel type it could be used to put cargos in lunar orbit as well.
In terms of what sort of cargo is worth the shipping costs, well any cargo that is needed really :lol:
The economics of 2300 are very different to those of Traveller. Earth is an environmental basket case, nothing is manufactured, mined, processed etc on Earth that could have the slightest impact on the environment. That means every single Dton of raw material comes from off world. The cost of getting stuff down to earth is cheap with gliders.
The high cost of getting things into orbit is high but not that much is going to be lifted to orbit unless absolutely needed. People are likely to be the main cargo carried. You move stuff orbit to orbit, mine it on MicroG asteroids or lowG planetoids, ship it to orbital refineries and factories and then orbit drop the goods to the final customer.
I cannot see much being lifted from one world and dropped onto another if cost is a factor. This leads to another point. Cost is a factor at the player level which is why the economics look odd. At the corporate/nation level they vanish into the accounts when you have one department providing the rockets, another shipping stuff out that has to go and yet another writing off the costs against some nebulous colony budget and hoping the auditors never notice (think Brussels :lol: ).
The costs per Dton in Traveller can be used for orbit to orbit trade but once you start talking about the cost to buy it on world, fly it to another world and sell it there the sell price becomes much higher. This becomes a seller’s market when shipping high end electronics or complex items colonies cannot manufacture. After all a single Dton of high end computers made on Earth cost say Lv100,000.
Say that these items need to be made on Earth and not in orbit for some reason. So they are needed out at the far end of the arm. Lv15,000 to get it to Orbit. Another Lv10,000+ to ship it up the arm, Lv2000 to get it to the market world. Add sellers profit and that Lv100,000 cargo is selling for Lv175,000 which nets the broker Lv50,000 before tax on a cargo that has been on his books for three months in transit.
Add in the shipping risks, add more middle men at stages up the arm and the end price could be over Lv200,000.
At the player level speculative trading is far more complex in 2300. You need to factor in all those shipping costs which are far higher. You don’t speculate on cargos worth a few thousand a Dton unless you are just shipping them orbit to orbit. For example you could pick up a cargo at Lv5,000 a dton from a high port, ship it two jumps and make a small profit selling it at Lv10,000 at another high port. You need to factor in the shipping costs onto the sell price.
I see the vast majority of cargo being orbit to orbit. Interface transport is going to be mostly people until you get to the level where nations are not looking at the cost and just need to ship that cargo from this world to that one.
