Timeshared Starships ?

[domingojs23]

Dear Friends,

I'm not really too much into the merchant style of adventure, but I was a bit struck by this recent reference to "Fractional Jets" - a sort of time-share ownership option for corporate jet aircraft, as a possible option for affordable merchant ship finance.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_Jets

I came across this when reading about the New York Senate candidates, one of them was the CEO of NetJets which advanced the concept.

Cheers,

Gary

 

[rust]

This sentence raises some doubts concerning the idea:

"According to a 2006 Halogen Guides Jets survey, not one company
boasted of sustained bottom-line profitability."

 

[BP]

Timeshares for Planes? :lol: :roll:

Not only have the companies providing the service not reported a bottom line 'profit' - for most 'owners' it sounds like a loss as well.

But for a very small percentage of customer there might actually be financial or other benefits...

Fitting this into Traveller:

So the Traveller gets a hologram about how they just won a free trip with hotel and dining next to the resort space docks at Regina Keys... and all they have to do is go to a few 'conferences' while on the trip...

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Fractional ownership of aircraft has been around for a while.

One popular use is for smaller, propeller driven private planes.

Rather than buy a plane and have it sit most of the time while you are at your day job, several people go in together and buy a plane and "timeshare" the plane.

There are management companies that take care of the scheduling and maintenance, so the owners can just fly it.

I don't think it would work for a starship though, due to the travel times involved. Do you trade months or something?

 

[BP]

Yeah - the Wikipedia article went over all that - and even though its been around a long while, it sounds like it doesn't neccessarily work out in reality near as well as the theory (of course, its a Wikipedia article...).

The same could be said of Condo timeshares for most con(ned)sumers (though the companies surely profited).

So - yeah - probably wouldn't be very practical for Traveller starships - which doesn't mean it wouldn't be an option.

Does present an interesting set of possibilities though... Consider:

* Players can get access to all sorts of different ships
* Players can get in all sorts of trouble due to past users
* Ships can have hidden stuff (castaways) too
* Players can be stranded when they need a ship

 

[Treebore]

The reason it does not appear to be "profitable" is because everyone is using this as a tax write off, including the companies that appear to not be making a profit.

You can usually tell when a company is being used this way when they have not been profitable for years, but are still around for some strange reason.

There are reasons why rich US people, like the famous Mr. Buffet, pay less taxes on their billions than his secretary paid on her $35,000, its called the US Tax laws.

 

[BP]

The reason it does not appear to be "profitable" is because everyone is using this as a tax write off, including the companies that appear to not be making a profit.
...

Quite true - hence my use of quoted profit earlier...