Orbital Belts

[BigDogsRunning]

Picture a world with multiple beanstalks, say 6 or 8, with an orbital "Belt" connecting them creating a ring around the world.

Wouldn't have nearly the same TL requirements as a RingWorld, but you’d have huge amounts of space, cheap transport out of the gravity well, and you could send solar power down the beanstalks via superconductors to power the planet. This seems like it could be the standard for high population Sector/Subsector Capitals, especially by TL13 or so. Is it just cheaper to move on out to the next world? Is stuff like this what is waiting in the Far Future Era?

Why are Traveller ships/stations so small? I'd expect a Pop A or higher world would have Giga-ton orbitals at a minimum. A Type A starport with a naval and scout base at a Sector capital should dwarf even a wartime sector fleet. An industrial world at TL15, with a Pop of A+ would require Megatons of basic food stuffs on a daily basis.

 

[phavoc]

Picture a world with multiple beanstalks, say 6 or 8, with an orbital "Belt" connecting them creating a ring around the world.

Wouldn't have nearly the same TL requirements as a RingWorld, but you’d have huge amounts of space, cheap transport out of the gravity well, and you could send solar power down the beanstalks via superconductors to power the planet. This seems like it could be the standard for high population Sector/Subsector Capitals, especially by TL13 or so. Is it just cheaper to move on out to the next world? Is stuff like this what is waiting in the Far Future Era?

Why are Traveller ships/stations so small? I'd expect a Pop A or higher world would have Giga-ton orbitals at a minimum. A Type A starport with a naval and scout base at a Sector capital should dwarf even a wartime sector fleet. An industrial world at TL15, with a Pop of A+ would require Megatons of basic food stuffs on a daily basis.

A world wouldn't need more than 1, or 2 beanstalks. The rest wouldn't be necessary to hold the ring, or to generate the power. Beanstalks are fine for transporting cargo to orbit, but shuttles would be much faster for people. Unless the materials were super cheap, even a single beanstalk would be a major engineering project, not to mention costly at early tech.

Traveller ships are small because the bulk of them are PC-controlled. There are larger ships, but they are usually warships. Stations come in all sizes. Some of the supplements have some very large stations, with populations in the millions.

Large-scale transport of things like foodstuffs has never really been adequately modeled in the traveller canon. It's pretty expensive to ship bulk goods from star-system to star-system.

 

[BigDogsRunning]

Picture a world with multiple beanstalks, say 6 or 8, with an orbital "Belt" connecting them creating a ring around the world.

Wouldn't have nearly the same TL requirements as a RingWorld, but you’d have huge amounts of space, cheap transport out of the gravity well, and you could send solar power down the beanstalks via superconductors to power the planet. This seems like it could be the standard for high population Sector/Subsector Capitals, especially by TL13 or so. Is it just cheaper to move on out to the next world? Is stuff like this what is waiting in the Far Future Era?

Why are Traveller ships/stations so small? I'd expect a Pop A or higher world would have Giga-ton orbitals at a minimum. A Type A starport with a naval and scout base at a Sector capital should dwarf even a wartime sector fleet. An industrial world at TL15, with a Pop of A+ would require Megatons of basic food stuffs on a daily basis.

A world wouldn't need more than 1, or 2 beanstalks. The rest wouldn't be necessary to hold the ring, or to generate the power. Beanstalks are fine for transporting cargo to orbit, but shuttles would be much faster for people. Unless the materials were super cheap, even a single beanstalk would be a major engineering project, not to mention costly at early tech.

Traveller ships are small because the bulk of them are PC-controlled. There are larger ships, but they are usually warships. Stations come in all sizes. Some of the supplements have some very large stations, with populations in the millions.

Large-scale transport of things like foodstuffs has never really been adequately modeled in the traveller canon. It's pretty expensive to ship bulk goods from star-system to star-system.

I agree that large-scale bulk cargo shipment has never been modeled, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. There are multiple agricultural worlds presented as providing the foodstuffs for much of their subsector, and high population hell worlds that are written up as importing the bulk of their foodstuffs. So, it has to be happening. I agree that PC's ships are the little ones that work the fringes, and don't get the big deals available to the large shipping companies with the bulk freighters. In the real world, cargo ships dwarf combat vessels. It seems like there should be 100Kton bulk freighters that carry many giant shipping containers, or stacks of smaller containers. take standard 100dton shipping containers, and stack them 5x5x20, and you've got a 50Kdton super container bound from an agricultural world for a hungry population elsewhere.

It seems that US trains are usually more than 200 container cars long, often 300 cars, and 70% or more are using double-stack, so two containers/car. This works out to 30,000 dtons for a 200 car train. There are multiple trains running on US tracks at any given time. I wasn't able to find any good estimates. the point being that just for moving materials and finished goods around here in the US, we're talking 100's of thousands of tons a day, easily. Multiply that out for a world with a population of 80-billion, and you're talking about Giga-dtonnage of materials and finished products daily. How many 2000 dton freighter would be needed to move these amounts of cargo? How many docking bays would be required. how many freight shuttles would be required to bring goods to and from orbit.

Once beanstalks are built, they are cheap to operate. I'm guessing you would use a lot of crystal-steel and carbon-fiber, graphene, and similar materials, shouldn't require anything that a TL-13 society couldn't easily fabricate out of common materials. You could have an automated factory in the asteroid belt chewing up asteroids and spitting out the necessary materials by the kilometer. and, once you've got grav technologies, building would be relatively inexpensive. I'm sure Ling Standard Products has a division that just builds beanstalks. You amortize it over 200 years or so, and you're good to go.

 

[Infojunky]

This works out to 30,000 dtons for a 200 car train.

Try closer to 2,600 dTons figuring on 45ft containers...

In general ports in the US move around 45 million TEU equivalents per year. in rough Traveller terms that would be 180 million dTons of cargo for the USA alone.

From that number one could say a worlds volume per year is one half of the Population multiple time Pop per year. Which amusingly matches the trade numbers as generated by T4's Pocket Empires and the Gurps:Traveller World Trade numbers.

 

[Condottiere]

I'm thinking that at some point you'd want to restrict orbital access to vital traffic, in order not to clutter it up, and if you happen to have a natural satellite, directing the bulk of it there.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Picture a world with multiple beanstalks, say 6 or 8, with an orbital "Belt" connecting them creating a ring around the world.

Interesting picture but beanstalks are not needed in a grav drive based society. By the time you have the material technology to build a beanstalk you have fusion power and grav technology.

I like your idea, by the way, but in a Third Imperium like setting you would have it as an oddity on a world that got to TL10+ in materials technology but never invented grav technology.

Wouldn't have nearly the same TL requirements as a RingWorld, but you’d have huge amounts of space, cheap transport out of the gravity well, and you could send solar power down the beanstalks via superconductors to power the planet. This seems like it could be the standard for high population Sector/Subsector Capitals, especially by TL13 or so. Is it just cheaper to move on out to the next world? Is stuff like this what is waiting in the Far Future Era?

It's far cheaper to just build fusion+ power stations for your energy needs; as to building the ring of stations we could do that today if we invested trillions and trillions of 'pick your currency of choice'. The raw materials to build the initial orbital stations would be cheaper if we mined the Moon or asteroids for them, so step one is an orbiting industrial base and/or an industrialised Lunar base. You could then construct your ring from station to station.

I'm sure Isaac Arthur has a video on this...

Why are Traveller ships/stations so small? I'd expect a Pop A or higher world would have Giga-ton orbitals at a minimum. A Type A starport with a naval and scout base at a Sector capital should dwarf even a wartime sector fleet. An industrial world at TL15, with a Pop of A+ would require Megatons of basic food stuffs on a daily basis.

An industrial TL15 high pop world can more cheaply manufacture its own food using high tech industrial food production methods than import and distribute.

There is a picture in the original print copy of T5 which shows Regina highport, on one spur of which there are half a dozen Tigress class BBs docked - they look like limpets on a sea wall in size comparison. There is enough space for at least another half a dozen to dock , and that is just one spur of the station.
Put another way, highports and IN bases can be huge.

 

[phavoc]

Using rail as the example, you should also look at other countries. The US is kind of an outlier on rail traffic actions. We use longer trains 12,000 feet long isn't unusual, some are as long as 15,000). We do this because of crew costs. Japan doesnt. They cap most freight trains at 50 cars. They move their cargo much faster with speedier and smaller trains. Europe is somewhere between the two.

For starship this would translate into smaller ships instead of mega freighters. And the bulk cargo carriers move all the food and raw materials. Containers are used to transport the smaller consumer goods. So the shipping techniques and ideas are very different.

Which is why it would be cheaper to use beanstalk for time insensitive bulk cargo like grain, or iron or whatever. Who cares if it takes 2 days to make the beanstalk trip? But passengers would go by the 30min shuttle because they are time sensitive. So would high dollar items like jump engine parts.

 

[Reynard]

After a certain tonnage, ship and space stations become mega plot devices. They are as, or more, numerous as adventure scale vehicles but are very seldom interacted with. When was the last time players needed to board a mega-freighter? Gigantic stations get mapped more like a terrestrial city and the ref only needs to include the areas that the adventure calls for.

Beanstalks are a wondrous headache. Whose land do you take easement for that huge footprint location along the equator? If the beanstalks are also part of a ring support structure, how do you deal with oceanic locations as you evenly portion them? Where are you getting all the material to build both the ring and the stalks subsequently how do you justify such a structure?

 

[BigDogsRunning]

This works out to 30,000 dtons for a 200 car train.

Try closer to 2,600 dTons figuring on 45ft containers...

In general ports in the US move around 45 million TEU equivalents per year. in rough Traveller terms that would be 180 million dTons of cargo for the USA alone.

From that number one could say a worlds volume per year is one half of the Population multiple time Pop per year. Which amusingly matches the trade numbers as generated by T4's Pocket Empires and the Gurps:Traveller World Trade numbers.

I stand corrected, Sir! :lol:

I calculated things out in cu. meters, instead of actual dtons. (doh!) thanks for catching that. It's much simpler to have a discussion if everyone agrees on the data. 8)

 

[BigDogsRunning]

Using rail as the example, you should also look at other countries. The US is kind of an outlier on rail traffic actions. We use longer trains 12,000 feet long isn't unusual, some are as long as 15,000). We do this because of crew costs. Japan doesnt. They cap most freight trains at 50 cars. They move their cargo much faster with speedier and smaller trains. Europe is somewhere between the two.

For starship this would translate into smaller ships instead of mega freighters. And the bulk cargo carriers move all the food and raw materials. Containers are used to transport the smaller consumer goods. So the shipping techniques and ideas are very different.

Which is why it would be cheaper to use beanstalk for time insensitive bulk cargo like grain, or iron or whatever. Who cares if it takes 2 days to make the beanstalk trip? But passengers would go by the 30min shuttle because they are time sensitive. So would high dollar items like jump engine parts.

Thank you phavoc, this was exactly the direction I was thinking.

Obviously the higher priority cargos would be carried by smaller freighters, from tramp freighters with the small speculative cargos that we all know and love, to the larger subsidized freighters with their regular deliveries. But, the bulk non-perishables, ores, foodstuffs, textiles, etc. would be needed, and in huge volumes, from where the are cheaply produced, to where they are needed. If you use some of the starship build philosophies being bandied about in the appropriate threads, there are ways to drastically reduce the cost of shipping, if you need to consistently ship enormous volumes.

I figured out a way that I hadn't seen yet to decrease costs/increase capacity on dedicated routes using Jump Stations where zuchai crystals can be charged, and reusable drop-tanks attached to allow ships to jump without having to carry jump fuel, depending on which interpretation of jump requirements that you use.

I imagine the Mega-Freighters would be using giant containers and docking lugs, or jump nets, to move the cargo around. It's much more cost effective than internal cargo space for durable cargos.

Also, development of Jump Drive is presented as a fluke, which is why there are so many minor races who didn't happen across that particular non-intuitive technology. They wouldn't have developed gravitics, and possibly not even fusion, Beanstalks would seem a be a very viable option for these species/races. On the gripping hand, a beanstalk might be easier to maintain for a lower TL society that cannot sustain lifter, or thruster, technologies to get their goods into orbit.

 

[Condottiere]

It's probably cheaper to use experimental variants of manoeuvre and/or lifter drives.

 

[BigDogsRunning]

It's probably cheaper to use experimental variants of manoeuvre and/or lifter drives.

That is a simple, hand-wavium solution for the game mechanics of it. I'm looking more at the non-mechanical aspects of universe building, why. Once I've got the why, the how usually follows pretty readily. The point of Minor Races, is that they never got to the expensive prototype stage. They didn't develop the science that the applications are built on. Having not developed Jump drive, and gravitic technology, Minor races would use things like Beanstalks, Electromagnetic Orbital Launch Systems, and other work-arounds. It would lend a lot of verisimilitude to the setting if we saw more of these things. I'm guessing that once a Beanstalk was built, the upkeep would be considerably less than maintaining a fleet of grav lifter, or thruster based, cargo transports. I'm not looking for mechanics to build Beanstalks. I just want some references to them as existing in some level of frequency. If they are rare, then why? If they are common, then why? If you've destroyed your world's environment, but you now do all of your manufacturing with robotics, and remote machinery, why not move your population into orbit. you're going to need lots of space for the growth enabled by your newfound ability to exploit every square inch of the world below, so lets make it big. Let's make an orbital Plate, or Belt, instead of just a station. It's fairly inexpensive to nudge asteroids into an orbit where you can take them apart and use them entirely, metals, stony materials, everything. You don't just have to hollow them out, you can also grind them up and make concrete, or other aggregate materials. break them down further and make advanced plastics, and metallic-plastic laminates or alloys, and build your plate out of that. Use the early versions of you Gravitic forges that you will one day make bonded superdense with and manipulation the structure and strength of your stony materials. Make your station out of synthetic diamond laminate sheets.

How do you feed a subsector with a fully developed TL-7 agricultural world. Experimental and prototype technologies? No one would purposefully have that be the backbone of their economy for hundreds of years. They would either grow their own technology base, import it and its support infrastructure, or find another solution. The people they supply wouldn't want to risk disruptions because their food supplier is using experimental technology to deliver the needed foodstuffs. Some aspects of the Tech Level system, as presented just don't work very well. You would either have a rapid (decades or centuries) homogenization of technological capability, or worlds would develop low tech solutions for their problems. A Hydro and solar powered mass-driver to loft standardized grain containers into low orbit, for instance. Or the might pay to have a Beanstalk built, amortized over a century or two, with maintenance contracts. Purchasing and maintaining a fleet of high-tech spacecraft using fusion and grav technologies, would not likely be the most economically sound solution. At least it doesn't seem like it would be at scale.

If I'm building a world, it has to make sense. It might only make sense if you stand on your head, in a bucket, balanced on a rope suspended over something stupid but hungry, but the world needs to make sense in context.

 

[BigDogsRunning]

After a certain tonnage, ship and space stations become mega plot devices. They are as, or more, numerous as adventure scale vehicles but are very seldom interacted with. When was the last time players needed to board a mega-freighter? Gigantic stations get mapped more like a terrestrial city and the ref only needs to include the areas that the adventure calls for.

Beanstalks are a wondrous headache. Whose land do you take easement for that huge footprint location along the equator? If the beanstalks are also part of a ring support structure, how do you deal with oceanic locations as you evenly portion them? Where are you getting all the material to build both the ring and the stalks subsequently how do you justify such a structure?

I agree entirely with your assessment of megastructures as plot devices. The intention is only ever that. I just don't see much of it.

I'm actually not interested in finicky rules for building BeanStalks, or even MegaFreighters. I think the freighters can easily be constructed using the existing mechanics, with some slight modifications to accommodate previously unrecognized needs. There are any number of interesting interactions that characters could have with a Mega-Freighter. They could need to have their ship transported elsewhere for repair, across a gap too large for them to jump, they could be tracking down a murderer/traitor/terrorist/hostage/alien/menace. There could be a live nuke ticking down in a cargo container buried somewhere in the last shipment from Efete, an Ancient artifact that they need to reach first, or get to before it activates and does "something"!

How do you see basing a Beanstalk on an ocean floor be any different than on "land"? It seems like the foundation will either be firm, or not. The beauty of an orbital ring is that you don't have to apportion the beanstalks equally, as they aren't supporting any weight, or constraining the orbital belt. The orbital would be in a stable orbit, unless you wanted it to be otherwise, held together by the same sort of materials a beanstalk is constructed from, the beanstalks are just connections to the planetary surface, likely they would have a counter weight that extends out far beyond the orbital ring, as they are usually represented in fiction. Although an orbital belt that "is" either supported, or constrained, by a series of Beanstalks creates some interesting problems for travellers to get involved in. Isolationists trying to breach one of the Beanstalks so that the Orbital, and the hated overlords, go flying off into space. Or, a threat to drop the orbital on the world below by an ambitious empire-building pirate admiral.

I like big plot devices.
I'm currently working with a World-Eating fleet in MTU. The travellers don't know how long they've been harvesting whole worlds for the materials to build their fleet(s), but they are slowly grinding in from the Rim towards populated space.
Who are they? What do they want? They are too big to fight, how can we possibly stop them?

 

[Infojunky]

This works out to 30,000 dtons for a 200 car train.

Try closer to 2,600 dTons figuring on 45ft containers...

In general ports in the US move around 45 million TEU equivalents per year. in rough Traveller terms that would be 180 million dTons of cargo for the USA alone.

From that number one could say a worlds volume per year is one half of the Population multiple time Pop per year. Which amusingly matches the trade numbers as generated by T4's Pocket Empires and the Gurps:Traveller World Trade numbers.

I stand corrected, Sir! :lol:

I calculated things out in cu. meters, instead of actual dtons. (doh!) thanks for catching that. It's much simpler to have a discussion if everyone agrees on the data. 8)

You were on a decent track, just the numbers were a little off.

Still it is a LOT of cargo even on a single freight train. But it pales in comparison to the volume of what moves through the ports which is why I gave y'all those numbers as well.

Circling back around to the Megastructure, I am a fan. Though I have always thought they would be a artifact of smaller Main Worlds with High Populations.

 

[BigDogsRunning]

Try closer to 2,600 dTons figuring on 45ft containers...

In general ports in the US move around 45 million TEU equivalents per year. in rough Traveller terms that would be 180 million dTons of cargo for the USA alone.

From that number one could say a worlds volume per year is one half of the Population multiple time Pop per year. Which amusingly matches the trade numbers as generated by T4's Pocket Empires and the Gurps:Traveller World Trade numbers.

I stand corrected, Sir! :lol:

I calculated things out in cu. meters, instead of actual dtons. (doh!) thanks for catching that. It's much simpler to have a discussion if everyone agrees on the data. 8)

You were on a decent track, just the numbers were a little off.

Still it is a LOT of cargo even on a single freight train. But it pales in comparison to the volume of what moves through the ports which is why I gave y'all those numbers as well.

Circling back around to the Megastructure, I am a fan. Though I have always thought they would be a artifact of smaller Main Worlds with High Populations.

Indeed, I hadn't forgotten shipping, and air transport, but was just concentrating on the high-bulk, low priority deliveries. There has to be a cheaper way to move that stuff around. You could have a dozen of the "MegaFreighters" that travel routes to move the bulk of non-priority cargos around a given subsector. If you got a population of more than a few tens of billions in the subsector, it should be economically viable. The MegaCorps would have locked that action down centuries ago, but it's there if you need to transport your brand new 10kdton fusion plant designed as a tertiary backup for a HiPop industrial world, or primary on your shiny new Dreadnought. How big is the powerplant on a Tigress? Where is it manufactured?

Another consideration, which just occurred to me, is one of security. Many HiPop worlds have decently high Law levels. They might not want their citizenry to be able to hop on a spacecraft, or hop into an air raft an get to orbit and gone. Also, if you've got a massive quantity of transatmospheric traffic, how to you prevent terrorists dropping starships into your population centers? shooting them doesn't keep them from falling on you, and when do you start shooting? You could use Gravitic lifts on your Beanstalks to allow lots of fast surface to orbit traffic, and slower cargo, going up in freight elevators. this would make it easier to maintain your Imperial extraterritoriality zones, and have actual checkpoints. otherwise, if you have a stealthy ship, it would be pretty simple to land where you want, do what you want, then leave. This doesn't exclude the possibility of having express lines that take you directly from the orbital, to a variety of downports, even cargo expresses. Your traffic is now much more controllable, and you can put stringent requirements for planetary approach in place to prevent the aforementioned aggressive actions using star/spacecraft as weapons.

 

[PsiTraveller]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fountains_of_Paradise

At the end of the book the several different beanstalks that have been built all connect to the circumterra orbital.

Now THAT orbital would be able to mount a lot of bays and turrets.

 

[BigDogsRunning]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fountains_of_Paradise

At the end of the book the several different beanstalks that have been built all connect to the circumterra orbital.

Now THAT orbital would be able to mount a lot of bays and turrets.

I'm in, I'll take two!

 

[Sigtrygg]

Found it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E

 

[Linwood]

I agree with Infojunky - massive civilian orbital facilities would likely be most common on smaller high-pop worlds (or worlds with limited usable area). One of the central worlds in my current campaign is just such a place. And was a great setting for the first adventure where the Travellers were caught up in a habitat where things were going very wrong.

I also agree mega freighters almost certainly exist - for moving bulk cargoes if nothing else. Such ships would likely run with the smallest crew sizes possible and maybe with the most efficient drives available to maximize cargo capacity and keep operating costs to a minimum (someone else can run the numbers and see where the shipping cost/ton sweet spot is). Depending on the worlds it visits it may or may not have “small” craft to haul cargo between ground and orbit in low-tech systems. Or maybe a Class A or B star port would have suitable facilities or perhaps the shipping company operates its own - YMMV. But carrying cargo shuttles costs money so if you can minimize the need you will.

Likely such freighters would carry minimal- if any - weaponry. Weapons and highly capable sensors cost money. If piracy is a problem either the company would arrange for escorts or it would switch to other options.

And I like the thoughts and using mega freighters as adventure seeds. Arrival of one of these ships might be a huge event on the worIds they visit with massive celebrations and frenzied activity. I could see a Traveller’s ship tasked with ferrying a replacement crew or a repair party (complete with large repair drones and parts) in some situations. Or taking a page from today’s headlines maybe the Travellers observe a collision between a mega freighter and a much smaller vessel and respond - and then try to figure out how such an “impossible” event could have happened. A combat-oriented ship could be hired as an escort in a high-threat environment. Maybe a gang has figured a slick way of stealing from these freighters and the Travellers are hired to stop them. Lots of ideas....

 

[AndrewW]

Maybe a gang has figured a slick way of stealing from these freighters and the Travellers are hired to stop them. Lots of ideas....

Or unwiting to help them...