I know of newly built homes, where the builder also does road construction, and when completed, the local govevernment adopts the roads constructed, and it becomes public road maintained by the local government, I think a similar deal could be struck with the Imperium. If there is an uninhabited planet, then a local developer starts building homes for new colonists and then constructs a starport for the planet, and then sends in a application to get the starport adopted by the Imperium. That way the Imperium doesn't have to pay for the construction of the starport. I would say the Imperium likely doesn't construct most of the starports it operates, those are built by locals to meet their needs, and there are profit sharing agreements with the developer so they can get a return on their investment.steve98052 said:Within the Imperium, a starport is a system's primary port of entry, governed by the Imperial Starport Authority (or a local affiliate), with extraterritoriality. All other ports (if any) that serve spacecraft are spaceports, and operate under local rule.
A large, high population asteroid belt main-world might have hundreds or thousands of spaceports, because every populated world needs one. See the world book about Glisten for an example.
Outside the Imperium, a starport is still the term used for the primary port of entry. But details about management and law depend on the polity.
Can private entities build and operate a spaceport? That's up to the world (or national) government, and possibly also restricted by any interstellar polity with jurisdiction.
In my neighborhood, a developer used this to its advantage. There was a patch of land with a steep hill, and because of the switchbacks needed to satisfy street codes they could only fit five houses in the patch of land. So, they waited until the city's only (at the time) street code inspector went on vacation, laid the street straight up the hill, and dug and poured six foundations.Tom Kalbfus said:I know of newly built homes, where the builder also does road construction, and when completed, the local govevernment adopts the roads constructed, and it becomes public road maintained by the local government, I think a similar deal could be struck with the Imperium.
I don't think that's typically the case. There's a Class E Starport office module for modular cutters, and dropping one of those on a barren world and laying a slab is pretty simple.. . . I would say the Imperium likely doesn't construct most of the starports it operates, those are built by locals to meet their needs, and there are profit sharing agreements with the developer so they can get a return on their investment.
But I think it is not the Imperium what class of starport there is. Lets suppose a developer lands at a Class E starport, and he wants to invest some money to turn it into a Class A starport, the Imperium doesn't want to do this, but the investor has money to burn and he thinks it would be a good investment to upgrade the class E starport into a class A starport, he see's plenty of profit potential but the Imperium does not. So what does this investor do if he wants to risk his own money but not the Imperium's to upgrade the Starport he finds?steve98052 said:In my neighborhood, a developer used this to its advantage. There was a patch of land with a steep hill, and because of the switchbacks needed to satisfy street codes they could only fit five houses in the patch of land. So, they waited until the city's only (at the time) street code inspector went on vacation, laid the street straight up the hill, and dug and poured six foundations.Tom Kalbfus said:I know of newly built homes, where the builder also does road construction, and when completed, the local govevernment adopts the roads constructed, and it becomes public road maintained by the local government, I think a similar deal could be struck with the Imperium.
When the code inspector returned from vacation, he was not happy. He apparently didn't have the authority to order the cheating undone, and even the maximum fine cost the developer much less than the profits for adding the sixth house.
I don't think that's typically the case. There's a Class E Starport office module for modular cutters, and dropping one of those on a barren world and laying a slab is pretty simple.. . . I would say the Imperium likely doesn't construct most of the starports it operates, those are built by locals to meet their needs, and there are profit sharing agreements with the developer so they can get a return on their investment.
Condottiere said:As I recall, the Imperium has an entire bureaucracy dedicated to administer and run starports.
Starports said:iMperial starports
The vast majority of Starports in The Third Imperium are
managed by the Starport Authority – the SPA. Under their
guidance, travel between worlds remains a relatively safe and
reliable affair. People can get where they need to be and, more
importantly, trade continues to flow.
AndrewW said:Condottiere said:As I recall, the Imperium has an entire bureaucracy dedicated to administer and run starports.
Starports said:iMperial starports
The vast majority of Starports in The Third Imperium are managed by the Starport Authority – the SPA. Under their guidance, travel between worlds remains a relatively safe and reliable affair. People can get where they need to be and, more importantly, trade continues to flow.
I'm pretty sure that the distinction is addressed in canon, at least for the Imperium: the starport is the mainworld port recognized by the Imperial Star Port Authority, and others are spaceports. The starport isn't necessarily a single facility. It may be a single highport and a single downport, or many of each. As I mentioned, Glisten has lots of places that are recognized as starport.phavoc said:. . . The definition of what a 'starport' is vs. what a 'spaceport' is hasn't been addressed either. . . .