>The comments regarding space habitats are well considered, but I must
>disagree for several reasons....
Mark Gellis then proceedes to talk about Space Habitats as
constructable in the near future. Wait a minute. This is Traveller.
If you're going to talk reality then the economic argument I initailly
proposed counts double. The good news is that in Traveller my assumptions
were not wholly correct.
Over the holiday for my own satisfaction I decided to work out just
how much it would cost to build a space habitat (or space station) and thus
prove the cost prohibitive to normal inhabitants.
I took the largest hull size, assumed TL15 and made it an open frame.
No gravity but I left it with 1% G maneuver drives (attitude thrusters). I
just had accomidation with not industry or storage space. The result was a
pleasingly expensive 116 billion credits. However it housed 470,000 people
which made the cost per person (2 per stateroom) at just under 250,000Cr.
With a 40 year morgage it ammounts to just over 1000Cr per month. At my
normal exchange rate (10Cr = 1 IRL) that's less than my flat costs! Even at
1Cr = $1 it isn't *prohibitively* expensive. At the standard traveller rates
of 500Cr per skill level per week it is easily affordable to skill rank
2 (or even 1 if pushing it).
It is interesting to note that 200,000 of the 250,000 is just for
the stateroom (according to my uncorrected rules). Of course a better model
would include gravity and space for something to employ the people. It
would be interesting to seem a design my someone more interested in the ship
design rules. I am seeing what a TL9 space station (20 Subsidised merchant
berths, 20 far trader/seeker berths, 4 large (1000t) berths, warehousing
for the equivalent cargo, fuel storage for the equivalent, and staterooms
for the equivalent) looks like/costs.
Reality Check.
I'll quite hapily discuss the imposiblity of Space Habitats in the
*real world* with anyone but over private e-mail. Traveller defines its
own reality which rarely touches on our own.
Jo Jaquinta
[email removed]