Does removing modules allow longer jumps

[Vormaerin]

We had a long discussion of this already elsewhere. LASH wasn't successful on Earth because centralized large ports with railways and trucks were more effective at distribution than dropping off lighters at various ports. It is not clear that this has any relevance to space travel.

Rhylanor Highport is not connected to the rest of the subsector the way Rotterdam is to the rest of Europe. And it is not possible to go from Mora to Rhylanor in one trip like it is to go from Shanghai to Rotterdam. The vast majority of systems can't handle megafreighters docking if you go by the ratings of starports. You can certainly imagine that there are private commercial ports or other infrastructure not suggested by all those C & D ratings, but that's not a given.

Yes, lighters would need a bridge, maneuver drive & power plant, etc. But what they don't need is a jump drive and the huge fuel requirements involved. And if you have a system where the megafreighters just go from class A port to class A port and everything is unloaded there, it's going to have to go onto other ships that do have jump drives. And if its a system with multiple planets, the main starport will need lighter equivalents to ship goods from Earthport to Mars colony, etc.

Space LASh could allow a megafreighter to deliver goods to smaller ports along the way without those ports needing the infrastructure to handle that huge ship. Critically different from ocean travel, there's no alternate delivery than a jump ship. There's no space railhead.

Whether the mega freighter going from Mora to Rhylanor and then Rhylanor loading all the goods onto smaller freighters to ship to all the lesser systems around is more efficient than the megafreighter acting as a jump tender for 'freight riders' and trading with those other ports along its route while minimizing time in system is unclear. It depends on a lot of factors we can't know about how space travel and space trade actually works.

 

[phavoc]

Prior to the, possibly still current, pandemic, the global economy worked on off shoring and just in time logistics.

I wouldn't depend on just in time logistics for interstellar trade in Traveller.

Logistics over interstellar distances would work roughly the same as logistics today. However you'd have to take into account the inherent delays to timeframes that jumping causes. It's easy enough to overcome - you'd simply have to increase the onsite inventory for any imported parts or materials. Manufacturing that has tried to adopt extremely aggressive timelines (like delivery of the part is required the day of, or even within hours the part is required to be used) have found that they have gotten burned. Now you see the smarter companies keeping 1-3 days of materials on hand in order to minimize supply chain disruptions.

Near-shoring is more about services and less about logistics.

 

[phavoc]

We had a long discussion of this already elsewhere. LASH wasn't successful on Earth because centralized large ports with railways and trucks were more effective at distribution than dropping off lighters at various ports. It is not clear that this has any relevance to space travel.

Rhylanor Highport is not connected to the rest of the subsector the way Rotterdam is to the rest of Europe. And it is not possible to go from Mora to Rhylanor in one trip like it is to go from Shanghai to Rotterdam. The vast majority of systems can't handle megafreighters docking if you go by the ratings of starports. You can certainly imagine that there are private commercial ports or other infrastructure not suggested by all those C & D ratings, but that's not a given.

Yes, lighters would need a bridge, maneuver drive & power plant, etc. But what they don't need is a jump drive and the huge fuel requirements involved. And if you have a system where the megafreighters just go from class A port to class A port and everything is unloaded there, it's going to have to go onto other ships that do have jump drives. And if its a system with multiple planets, the main starport will need lighter equivalents to ship goods from Earthport to Mars colony, etc.

Space LASh could allow a megafreighter to deliver goods to smaller ports along the way without those ports needing the infrastructure to handle that huge ship. Critically different from ocean travel, there's no alternate delivery than a jump ship. There's no space railhead.

Whether the mega freighter going from Mora to Rhylanor and then Rhylanor loading all the goods onto smaller freighters to ship to all the lesser systems around is more efficient than the megafreighter acting as a jump tender for 'freight riders' and trading with those other ports along its route while minimizing time in system is unclear. It depends on a lot of factors we can't know about how space travel and space trade actually works.

LASH and lighters aren't quite the same thing. LASH barges are moved by a tugboat and the idea would be to have one tugboat move multiples (or in the case of river traffic to add them to regular barge traffic - though this was one of the drawbacks to them due to a number of reasons). A lighter is self-contained.

I think what you mean by the freighter arriving and dropping off it's load would be for the cargo itself, and not smaller spacecraft (is that a correct assumption?). If it is, then that idea of dropping off a container of containers upon arrival, picking up a new one and jumping after refueling has been discussed before. It's a possible scenario and it has it's pro's and con's like all the other logistic models.

Larger ships with larger loads tend to work point-to-point where the size justifies the ship, and then that cargo is transloaded to other locations. Even today you see Shanghai to Los Angeles containers where ships are carrying 20,000+ TEU's onboard, and then railroads like BNSF and UP will move 15,000 foot long trains of nothing but containers to NYC, Chicago and all points in between. Same model would, I imagine work using interstellar traffic. The large freighters drop off at the main port and cargo gets distributed on-planet and throughout the system. In some cases you'd see point to point where a smaller freighter taking a smaller subset could economically compete by cutting out some of the transfer traffic. Just how much and how often is unknown. But it would allow for tramp freighters to take smaller cargos and compete on price for at least some cargos (just like it happens today).

 

[Alqualonde]

LASH and lighters aren't quite the same thing. LASH barges are moved by a tugboat and the idea would be to have one tugboat move multiples (or in the case of river traffic to add them to regular barge traffic - though this was one of the drawbacks to them due to a number of reasons). A lighter is self-contained.

I think what you mean by the freighter arriving and dropping off it's load would be for the cargo itself, and not smaller spacecraft (is that a correct assumption?). If it is, then that idea of dropping off a container of containers upon arrival, picking up a new one and jumping after refueling has been discussed before. It's a possible scenario and it has it's pro's and con's like all the other logistic models.

Larger ships with larger loads tend to work point-to-point where the size justifies the ship, and then that cargo is transloaded to other locations. Even today you see Shanghai to Los Angeles containers where ships are carrying 20,000+ TEU's onboard, and then railroads like BNSF and UP will move 15,000 foot long trains of nothing but containers to NYC, Chicago and all points in between. Same model would, I imagine work using interstellar traffic. The large freighters drop off at the main port and cargo gets distributed on-planet and throughout the system. In some cases you'd see point to point where a smaller freighter taking a smaller subset could economically compete by cutting out some of the transfer traffic. Just how much and how often is unknown. But it would allow for tramp freighters to take smaller cargos and compete on price for at least some cargos (just like it happens today).

It has been mentionned several time, there is a difference between the real world model and the Traveller Model : Traveller ships have to refuel after each world, real world ships usually refuel at the major ports. This means that for Traveller, the ship either needs to refuel on its own or an infrastructure big enough to refuel at each stop.
The investment to make those refueling posts is huge (both to build and to maintain). This had to the operating costs of the container ships.
I can't tell if it is worth the investment, what are the breakpoints (if any) or if just making a ship capable of refueling on its own is cheaper. It might be worth in the Core, but in the marches, I guess it would require too many refueling posts. It will depend on the route the ships will take.
LASH & lighters are very nice ideas, same for external container ships. Where those ships are used you'll find a large range of infrastructure to load, unload, refuel & maintain them.

 

[Vormaerin]

Just like maritime navy is a poor model for interstellar navy, I don't believe that maritime shipping is a good model for interstellar shipping.

The Space Navy doesn't have the maritime division into submarines, surface ships, and aircraft with differing operating paradigms, so the Navy would behave differently. Likewise, a space merchant marine does not have differences in kind between transport modes. There's no rail or trucks. There's only ships. The interplanetary ships are the same either way. Trucks and trains go places that ships can't go and railheads are separate from slots in the harbor. This is NOT true of space transport. Space transport is 100% big freighter handing off to small freighter.

Jump drive range limitations make the "point to point" shipping of something like Shanghai to LA or Rotterdam not a thing. Shanghai to LA has to refuel at Guam and Honolulu (or whatever small port in on the path). So you have to zigzag around following the refueling stations. So, is it worth it to have cargo transference capability even though Guam and Honolulu can't handle a big ship?

And, while maritime shipping is a tradeoff between speed and cost, this is massively different with jump drives. Faster is cheaper in space ships from a certain perspective. Mora to Rhylanor is 7 jumps at J2 and 140% of the ship's displacement in fuel. Mora to Rhylanor at J4 is 3 jumps and 120% of displacement in fuel. BUT the problem is that the J4 run is only able to carry half as much cargo because of the huge fuel demands of jump drives. And if you just skip through those smaller systems, some OTHER ship has to spend that jump time and jump fuel to deliver the cargo there after you deliver it somewhere else.

Whether you have container ships that use tugs to swap containers or you have the smaller freighters carried by one large jump ship that can swap out the smaller freighters at each stop, that has a high chance of being more efficient than having separate ships expending jump fuel to get to these worlds you are already passing through.

Or you can decide that all those C & D starports actually have the ability to handle megafreighters, despite what the descriptions say.

 

[phavoc]

It has been mentionned several time, there is a difference between the real world model and the Traveller Model : Traveller ships have to refuel after each world, real world ships usually refuel at the major ports. This means that for Traveller, the ship either needs to refuel on its own or an infrastructure big enough to refuel at each stop.
The investment to make those refueling posts is huge (both to build and to maintain). This had to the operating costs of the container ships.
I can't tell if it is worth the investment, what are the breakpoints (if any) or if just making a ship capable of refueling on its own is cheaper. It might be worth in the Core, but in the marches, I guess it would require too many refueling posts. It will depend on the route the ships will take.
LASH & lighters are very nice ideas, same for external container ships. Where those ships are used you'll find a large range of infrastructure to load, unload, refuel & maintain them.

The infrastructure question is quite valid. In other discussions it's been mentioned that for fast-turnaround ships, there'd probably need to be infrastructure right at the 100D limit so ships jumping in would minimize their time in-system. None of us really know if that'd be economical or not since we have de-nada for what economies would look like (the game model is nowhere near complete to make that kind of assumption).

This is one of those IMTU decisions for refs. Does it make sense or even matter for their group to discuss such things? It's certainly ok to do it either way for the really big/busy systems or else the transit points. For everything else you'd reasonably expect the ship to fly to the orbitals around the planet to do all this.

As I see it, the chief economic argument for/against LASH pods being implemented is the same reasoning for/against making the newer, more massive container ships. They (usually) work on certain traffic segments. But only on those. Otherwise they are just too big and have too much empty space to justify their expense. Smaller, more frequent ships work better for other routes - except during boom times. LASH containers would have a similar concept - say your LASH was 100 Dtons. Your ship has to depart as scheduled, so if you don't have enough cargo to fill that container on your route you are losing money (arguably the same issue is for any regularly-scheduled cargo ship, or even passenger liners).

There was something similar for TNE (the clipper ship?) that was your jump drive and carried the smaller spacecraft w/o jump drives between systems.

 

[phavoc]

Just like maritime navy is a poor model for interstellar navy, I don't believe that maritime shipping is a good model for interstellar shipping.

The Space Navy doesn't have the maritime division into submarines, surface ships, and aircraft with differing operating paradigms, so the Navy would behave differently. Likewise, a space merchant marine does not have differences in kind between transport modes. There's no rail or trucks. There's only ships. The interplanetary ships are the same either way. Trucks and trains go places that ships can't go and railheads are separate from slots in the harbor. This is NOT true of space transport. Space transport is 100% big freighter handing off to small freighter.

Jump drive range limitations make the "point to point" shipping of something like Shanghai to LA or Rotterdam not a thing. Shanghai to LA has to refuel at Guam and Honolulu (or whatever small port in on the path). So you have to zigzag around following the refueling stations. So, is it worth it to have cargo transference capability even though Guam and Honolulu can't handle a big ship?

And, while maritime shipping is a tradeoff between speed and cost, this is massively different with jump drives. Faster is cheaper in space ships from a certain perspective. Mora to Rhylanor is 7 jumps at J2 and 140% of the ship's displacement in fuel. Mora to Rhylanor at J4 is 3 jumps and 120% of displacement in fuel. BUT the problem is that the J4 run is only able to carry half as much cargo because of the huge fuel demands of jump drives. And if you just skip through those smaller systems, some OTHER ship has to spend that jump time and jump fuel to deliver the cargo there after you deliver it somewhere else.

Whether you have container ships that use tugs to swap containers or you have the smaller freighters carried by one large jump ship that can swap out the smaller freighters at each stop, that has a high chance of being more efficient than having separate ships expending jump fuel to get to these worlds you are already passing through.

Or you can decide that all those C & D starports actually have the ability to handle megafreighters, despite what the descriptions say.

Comparisons still work, and there all we have. Depending on what you are wanting to model, you can go back in time to different era's and different forms of shipping. Traveller shipping is kind of more of a match to the early 1900s - naval vessels use armor for defense, battles are generally slug fests and the side that gets the most hits (and sometimes, the most luck) wins. There were no subs or aircraft carriers to bother with. But with any comparison there are limitations and extrapolations that have to be taken into consideration. Even going further back to age of sail you can model certain things (like no radio to announce your trip, just time tables previously shared).

Jump range is a thing, but ships have always had that sort of limitation. If you want a more comparable model then go back to the age of coal and colliers/coal stations that more severely restricted operational radius of a ship before it had to put into port to refuel. The technology changes but the limitations don't. Instead of parsecs you consider miles/days at sea while under power.

Trucks/trains can be replaced with in-system freighters, or even space tugs. Rails on planets may still be a thing outside of a city, and trucks/roads may replaced with grav trucks, but the concepts remain similar. And you could be very right - costs may be prohibitive to match our current system today. All we can do is speculate on how it MIGHT work. My preference remains using history and extrapolating into the future based on what we know, what has been proven to work (and what hasn't). Traveller has many nifty tech features, but essentially the entire game is the world today with jump drives and fusion reactors. We could do the same with our society today and take it back 1,000 years - sails and wagons.

The tech has changed, the time frames have changed, and we do all the things we did then today - just more efficiently. Seems like that's how the 52nd century game works as well.

 

[Sigtrygg]

57th century, the 1105 start date of the MgT Third Imperium is the 57th century.

 

[Condottiere]

At some point, this is pretty much iceberg and Heighliner territory.

If you want to have a megafreighter, construction, commission, and routes would have been figured out decades before, meaning cargo space allocation would have been bought, booked, or downpaid, years before the megafreighter turns up insystem.

 

[Vormaerin]

The reason that the shipping situation on Earth is more or less the same today as in the past is that the Earth is pretty much the same as it has always been as long as humans have been doing stuff on it.

You know what isn't like the Earth? Space. And you know what the big difference is? There isn't different modalities of travel. You aren't optimizing between land, sea, and air routes for shipping. You are optimizing for the only type of shipping there is: on a space ship. You aren't deciding whether it is easier to ship by water or by land. You are deciding whether its more efficient to jump your freighters on big mother ships or having every hull have its own jump drives. And some of this is based on stuff we can't evaluate, like cost of infrastructure, volume of traffic, and types of goods that actually merit interstellar shipping.

And just for fun the ports move. Sometimes Earth to Mars is 55 million km and sometimes its 400 million km.

Anyway, we've had this discussion before and it isn't the topic of this thread.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Old timer sayings:

"A jump ship not jumping is wastin credits"
"A maneuver drive not maneuvering is wastin credits"

 

[Condottiere]