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Old 12-29-2018, 03:08 AM   #2
hal
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Buffalo, New York
Default Re: Shipping in a Traveller Universe

Remember my original calculations above were based on the laser rifle taking up TWICE the volume that the M1 Garand required. CT would have us believe that the back pack battery weighs 4 kg in mass, and costs 1500 credits. As always, when one has to determine how much volume a given "thing" takes versus its weight, we go to the density formula that specifies that Density is equal to Volume/Mass. So, at 2.66 grams per cubic centimeter for a Nicad battery (calculated density of a D-cell battery at 33.6mm diameter by 61.5mm height), the volume of the battery pack would be roughly 1500 cubic centimeters in volume. You could pack roughly 10 of those batteries in a half cubic foot of volume.

Now, those are back of envelope calculations, and in all probability, the density of the battery pack will be HIGHER per cubic centimeter than what we use for today's NiCad batteries. The energy density of those power packs have to power 100 shots after all...

In any event, my conservative "doubling" of the volume for shipping purposes for laser rifles was, if anything, TOO conservative. At 600 rifles per dTon volume for the M1's, chances are good that we're not going to get only 300 laser rifles per dTon volume as I originally estimated, but probably closer to perhaps 400 to 500 INCLUSIVE of their battery packs. If shipping battery packs separately, even assuming that you need 1 cubic foot of volume per 10 batteries (instead of getting maybe 18 per cubic foot) - a single dTon of roughly 500 cubic feet is going to be able to carry roughly 5,000 battery packs. Let's be nice and double the packaging requirements and lower the number of 2,500 battery packs per dTon (Just for giggles).

That works out to a per battery surcharge of .4 Credits per parsec jump under the old Classic Traveller rules. In order to DOUBLE the cost of those self same batteries worth 1,500 credits per battery, we'd need to ship those batteries roughly 1,500/.4 or 3750 parsecs.

This puts it in a whole new perspective when it comes to just how worth while it may be to ship any given "goods" any given distance from a world to its outlying markets. I happened to pick the M1 Garands because I had stats on them, and could find the shipping crate stats that carried 10 rifles to a crate, and in turn, could determine its overall volume requiements and then try and figure out how much a dTon could carry.

Other consumer goods such as radios, medicines, vehicles (although vehicles end up getting the worst of the situation because the ratio of value to volume is worse).

600 rifles worth 200 credits each has an overall value of 120,000 credits (not the 30,000 listed in book 2 for speculative cargo). But were the original rules subjected to the same level of analysis just performed above - chances are good that the economics of shipping goods across interstellar distances would have been a touch more interesting. How many BIC pens could one pack into a dTon of space? Going to Amazon, looking up BIC pens, I find that I can buy a box of 36 pens whose case dimensions are 2.8 x 3.8 x 6 inches or 63.84 cubic inches. Assuming that the packing cases are somewhat larger, I'm only going to assume 400 cubic feet's worth of product to fill 500 cubic feet of volume to account for the thicker packaging for the bigger cases containing the packs of 36. That works out to 388,800 pens per dTon of volume, worth $21 per case x 27 cases per cubic foot x 400 cubic feet or $226,800. (Note that this isn't wholesale costs, but retail!). What would it take to double the price value of those pens assuming that $1 today was equal to 1 credit? (not the case I'm sure, but just doing the math)

1000 credits per dTon carrying 10,800 "cases" of 36 pens each - would spread the shipping cost per unit to .092 credits per case. To double the value of a $20 case, we'd have to ship it roughly 216 parsecs.

So, the whole point of this thread is to give you an idea of just how effective it is to ship goods in a Traveller Universe. Divide the cost of 1 displacement ton shipping by the number of units carried in that same volume, to determine the actual markup required to break even for the cost of shipping. Even BIC pens shipped at large quanties would benefit from such a shipping price assuming that the market has a demand for the product in question.

If you factor in the exchange rates for currency as originally set up in Classic Traveller, low tech worlds with poor starports would end up having to pay a higher "local price" for the goods they can't manufacture using their low tech manufacturing base. I largely suspect that BIC pens will outsell quill pens any day. ;)
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