Dean talks about caravans being a good model for space travel and there has
been some conjecture to this. Also, people have been wondering what would
prompt shipping of goods from other systems.
A few reasons why I think people will be dispersed throughout space, receiving
goods from other planets.
1)Overpopulation. The population on planets exceeds whatever TL exists in
the food industry. Either population control is instituted or people are
forced into space. One other way would be to import extra food from other
planets. As we are seeing today, large corporate farms are an extremely
profitable method of food production. A high scale of automation combined
with a huge amount of working area can provide food for many people at
relatively low cost (which translates to profitable business).
Finding a large amount of land in one area would be easy of the planet had
a low population, or low population in select areas. Either way, the
number of people on the planet do not exist to make business profitable .
2)The necessary support industry is not available and would be too costly
to transplant.
Unless you are providing a very basic good you will need support
industries to provide you with your raw materials. In the same light, the
people who manufacture raw materials need the other industry as customers.
Today, we have an extensively integrated industry, but this has grown from
smaller and smaller manufacturing facilities as the demand increased.
Raw materials plants today are being constructed to produce a huge amount
of material. One example is maleic anhydride which is used in a number of
petroleum products (lubricants, paints , etc). Maleic anhydride is
manufactured from benzene and usually using a vanadium oxide catalyst, but
it always goes to be made in other products. I read a report about a plant
being contructed to produce a 100 Million tons per year, which will cost
investors about 120 million dollars in three years.
A plant like this could not be easily built on a remote planet unless the
buyers were already there, or the source (in this case : benzene) could be
easily provided and there were buyers elsewhere.
One thing I am assuming is that space transport will be a cheap industry.
In the Traveller universe we can see this: there is extensive mining and
manufacturing in space to make the construction of space vessels relatively
cheap.
Land caravans were used instead of sea transport because of the danger
and thus relatively costly expense of sea transport. Improved navigation
techniques allowed for faster and relatively safer (less chance of getting
lost) routes. Also, there were many areas that could not be easily reached
by sea, and would need a land caravan anyway. People who already had the
resources of a land caravan were used from certain cities, as opposed to
going to theoretically closest city and hoping to get transport. Improved
transportation techniques and the development of roads changed this too.
Additionally, once you get a space faring population why would there be
interest in transplanting a whole society and making it self sufficient?
This would be extremely costly and unattractive to everone but the
extremely wealthy (individuals and organizations).
In conclusion, I think that as a society on a planet gets older and more
populated it will become more and more self-sufficient, but because of its
initial integration with off planet business it will always have trade with
off-planet interests.
Steven B. Fellows
[email removed]