Re: (1913) Re: Interstellar Trade

 In message 1913, [email removed] (Adrian Hurt) writes:
 >
 >One thing I haven't seen in Traveller is any equivalent to the old
 >clippers.  Their function was to get tea from China to Britain as fast
 >as possible, to get the best prices.

     Probably due to differing circumstances.  Back in the last century,
there were good economic reasons for having some ships travel from A to
B as quickly as possible while others were able to take more time
reaching their destinations (presumably, things are still that way--I
don't know, since what I know about ocean travel is primarily military).

     In deep space, however...  In one of Larry Niven's Known Space
stories (I *think* it's "Borderland of Sol"--one with Beowulf Shaeffer,
anyway), the protagonist makes the comment that hyperdrive has only
one speed, and *there is never any reason to dawdle in space*.  Human
beings can adapt to a wider range of environments than most people
would think, but vacuum is notoriously low in vitamin content.  ;-)

     The same factors obtain in the Traveller universe.  There are
different distances that individual jump drives can traverse, but as
far as the ship is concerned, they all move at the same speed:  one
jump per week (assuming quick refueling and a need to get somewhere
in a hurry).  Half that if the ship in question wants to spend some
time in port for trading, laying in supplies, performing simple
repairs, and whatnot.

     There *could* be the equivalent of clipper ships, but that form of
travel would be so ruinously expensive (since the ship won't be making
any money along the way) that the cargo had better be *extremely*
valuable (possibly more valuable than I can imagine, and, like Han Solo,
I can imagine a *lot*.  :-) ).

     Actually, now that I think about it a little bit, there *is* (well,
at least *was*) something like a clipper route in the Imperium.  The
IISS operates an _Azhanti_High_Lightning_ class cruiser to do nothing
but carry wine from Earth to Capital for the Emperor's table (I'm told
that tokay is very good, but *really*...).  Note that it takes a *large*
agency of a major government to be able to afford this.

     Now the question becomes "Is there a commodity valuable enough to
justify special multi-jump dedicated shipping?"


- - --
     Brent

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