Reynard said:
Your 'colony' ships would be bloated fuel ticks with extremely tiny usable space and it still takes hundreds or even thousands of years to crawl between worlds. You take chances as to what is available in other systems since scout explorers would be impossible in any sane time frame. You would be sending suicide missions to colonize worlds with no real goal except maybe just to populate.
Well actually, if you assume a starship can operate for 4 weeks, and the low berths have a low power mode, a ship which can operate for 4 weeks and which has a maneuver drive of 6 can accelerate over two weeks to a cruise velocity of 72,576,000 meters per second. That is by accelerationg at 6-Gs or 60 meters per second squared, this is 0.24192 of the speed of light, which is not a bad cruise velocity. It would take 18.188 years to reach Alpha Centauri with this kind of maneuver drive. The Crew would live on board the starship while its acceleration, artificial gravity would shield them from the 6-Gs of acceleration. After two weeks of acceleration, they would put the ship's systems on a timer to automatically shut down, they would activate the low berths and climb into them. The low berths would inject drugs into their blood stream to induce unconsciousness, and they cryoprotectants and their body temperatures are lowered to prevent ice crystallization, then they are frozen solid, the ship's timer counts down to zero, the ship's power plant is shut down, and atomic clock on standby power ticks away the 18.188 years, and then powers up the ship's systems again, the life support system is activated, as the power plant powers up, the occupants of the low berths are thawed out, the cryoprotectants are removed from their systems, their pulmonary systems are given an electrical jolt to get the heart beating again. The occupants of the low berths slowly arise from their slumber, they put on clothes, activate the ship's maneuver drive to begin deceleration as they approach Alpha Centauri, they arrive with near empty fuel tanks, land on the planet's surface, deploy hoses to pump in water to the fuel power plant so they can make the return journey back to the Solar System, and the off load their colonists.
I'd say tickets are fairly expensive, because the owners of the starship, have to make payments to the bank that provided the starship load, each time they return, and this has to be financed by the sale of tickets over relatively few voyages. Each round trip takes 36.376 years, about three trips are needed to pay off the cost of building the starship.
The subsidized Merchant can be modified for STL Travel. (I'm using 1st edition rules here.) First we yank out the Jump drive, this adds 20 tons to cargo, which is now 225 tons. Fuel remains at 52 tons, the Subsidized Merchant has a thrust of 1, and it can operate for four weeks, it has a maneuver drive C. Looking back at page 107, I find that Maneuver Drive C consumes 6 tons of fuel every 2 weeks, there are 52 tons of fuel for it to consume, This means the starship can operate for an entire year using the jump fuel plus its original maneuver fuel. Accelerating for half a year at 10 meters per second squared gives us a cruise velocity of 157,248,000 meters per second, which is 0.52416 of the speed of light, it would take 8.394 years for that starship top reach Alpha Centauri from the Solar System. The Ship has 225 tons of cargo space, 56 tons are low berths for 112 colonists, each colonists gets to bring 1.5 tons of supplies to their new home in the ship's cargo hold. If you subtract the cost of the Jump Drive, the ship costs 67,182,000 credits, assume the owners of the starship took out a 100 year starship loan, over the life time of that loan the starship makes 5 round trips to Alpha Centauri and back. The interest rate of that loan is 3% annually. Five payments are made to the bank, once every 20 years Cr13,436,400 credits of principle, the interest payments are Cr10,831,233, Cr21,662,465, Cr32,493,699, Cr43,324,932, and Cr54,156,165 for total interest payments of Cr162,468,494, dividing this by 5, we get Cr32,493,698.8, add in one fifth of the principle and we get Cr45,930,099, divide this amount by 112 colonists an we get a ticket price of Cr410,090 per person. We can discount this a little bit, the payments are made once every 20 years. Assume a savings account earns 2% annually, over 20 years this comes to a 1.486 times what was deposited at the beginning of 20 years so we divide by this amount to arrive at a ticket price of Cr275,969 per person, for a family of four this would be Cr1,103,876.
Each family would only be traveling once in their lives, so they take out loans from the bank to buy their tickets.
How does this sound?
That said, the various races could keep developing the tech levels within their solar systems and exploit the resources within with the aid of the maneuver drive that makes interplanetary travel economical and efficient. It could take hundred or thousands of years to achieve jump technology but by that time, the home system will be at the top of science and its product thereof. We can only hope the advances make a focused effort to create a paradise throughout. It would be a big, pardon the expression, jump starting with the ability to cover 6 parsecs when jump drives are discovered and you expand with a TL 15 culture. It would be interesting if weapons technology would keep pace without the threat of external aggression for so long though there may be a history of interplanetary or even localized aggression on the homeworld.
Aslans could still develop their own drives with so much time to research just like the other worlds. Vilani might actually be the poor kid on the block as their conservative nature might suppress a need to develop their technology compared to Terrans. Terrans might be the big winners sweeping across the galaxy though the biggest competition could be the Hivers. The known galaxy could be a Terran empire rather than an Imperium and other 'major races' could become subjects. Be interesting to see the K'kree contained.
I think I would set a ticket price of an interstellar trip at Cr275,000 per person, with 3 trips going out and 2 trips coming back, the starship's don't come back empty, this covers a trip of out to about 1.4 parsecs. Each passenger it entitled to 1.5 tons of cargo space onboard the starship. Once the Jump Drive is invented, ticket prices go down substantially, but you see why the Solar System is such a crowded place under this scenario, it is much cheaper to go interplanetary and interstellar until the jump Drive is invented Homeworld systems of advanced technological races are very crowded with populations in the tens trillions, most people live in space colonies, not on planets. Further out this situation changes. Because relatively few people can afford to be interstellar colonists, the population of colony worlds tend to be low, older worlds may have populations in the billions, younger ones have populations in the thousands. The arrival of the Jump Drive produces disruptive change to his situation. Interstellar colonists flood the out worlds, an they are not always welcomed!
