[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Bengt

I'm fully aware that trade is Awesome! on earth, that doesn't necessarily make it so in space. My most basic SoD problem is that transport between planets can be within several orders of magnitude comparable to sea transport on a planet.

Launch costs are the problem. Once you have something in space moving it around really can be very cheap. You don't need wings to support it or a hull to float it, and there is no minimum thrust-to-weight ratio to keep it in the air. You don't even have to burn fuel to maintain cruising speed.

And then there is the fundamental impossibility of FTL, of course. If I assume it's possible, assuming that it's not terribly expensive is no worse.

It feels like one would need a whole stack of "big lies" for the costs to be negligible.

"Negligible" is an overstatement. Trade works fine with non-negligible transport costs, if the comparative advantages are large enough. The UK imports vegetables and cut flowers from Kenya by air freight, and that isn't even cheap, let alone negligible. Australia imports cherries from California by air freight on the longest air route in the world.

High freight costs produce low trade volumes, high fares and slow passage produce low passenger volumes. I have small trade volumes and low passenger volumes in FLAT BLACK.

Another issue is that the conditions on an entire planet is likely to be much more varied than they are in a single country on earth. The cosmic millinery supposedly takes care of this, but it still adds up.

Telecommunications. These planets have had them all their histories, and telecommunications are the reason that cultural and linguistic diversity on Earth are collapsing precipitously. 90% of Earth's 6,000 to 7,000 languages are projected to be extinct by 2100. Everyone plays soccer except the USA and Australia; everyone wears denim jeans; everyone wears baseball caps; everyone listens to pop. On planets with telecommunications it is cultural and linguistic convergence that is in evidence.

Now, when I read a book or watch a film with ludicrous science or silly economics I can usually flow with that if the characters are compelling, the story is engaging, and so on. But when sitting down to talk specificity about it there is nothing to distract me, so maybe I shouldn't.

Well then, it seems to me that you will never be satisfied by any setting devised to support serial planetary romances. You just aren't going to believe that a character can visit a series of human-inhabited planets or that planets can have vivid exotic cultures characteristic of them. FLAT BLACK is just not for you. I suspect that that means that I have to either give up on FLAT BLACK or give up on trying to meet your objections. I choose the latter. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh.