Part of my star port rules

[rust]

Though economically speaking, having a longer-term contract doesn't do anything really for the price of a commodity such as fuel. Since it's just water you won't get any long-term effeciences in cost savings that you can potentially pass on. In fact, assuming you factor in depreciation, at some point there will need to be price increases as you have to start replacing equipment.

True, but the reason for the more attractive long term contracts is that
the colonies get more reliable offworld trade contacts with better know-
ledge of the local markets and more incentive to invest in them. This is
well worth a couple of credits each month.

 

[atpollard]

Just to try to offer a different perspective ...

When you buy water on Earth, anywhere on Earth, you are actually more like renting the water.
It is unlikely that whatever you do with the water will make it unavailable to the Earth forever.

This is not so in Traveller.
When you fill up at the starport, that water is leaving that world forever. Gone. Forever.
In this case, a world with limited hydrologic resources and significant traffic that was concerned about avoiding moving from a dry world to a waterless world over the thousands of years represented in the history of the Imperiums, might want or need to replace that lost water. So the fair market value for unrefined fuel (water) leaving the world is set to reflect the cost of importing water from asteroids to replace it.

[Personally, I agree that the cost of water is probably too high and the ratio of refined to unrefined fuel costs seems wacky as well, I just wanted to offer a different perspective to the conversation: Consuming a resource forever should cost more than renting a recyclable resource, the real question is "How much more?"]

 

[phavoc]

Yah, it's a one-way trip for the fluids when refueling. I would think that once a world becomes established with a population then the potential drain on the ecosphere for fuel it would take alternate steps to removed the need for large amounts of fuel.

The options are adding water to the biosphere by tapping the Oort cloud or other forms of ice present in the system, or tapping your local gas giants for the fuel. I would suspect the latter since it makes more sense. I would treat the hydrogen just like bulk commodities are treated today - moved in large scale using the most economically possible means. For the hydrogen there is no need to babysit it, so just collect the raw stuff and sling it towards your station or world that needs it. It can be 'caught' at the end of the line, unloaded and the empties tossed back. If it takes 30-45 days to get there, so what? It's not perishable, plus if you were to toss in a few purifiers into the mix by the time it go there it would already be processed and ready to be put into a liner's or freighter's fuel tanks.