The Stars Our Destination

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

FTL also allows reactionaries, revolutionaries, and terrorists to be effective, especially if tracking is difficult or impossible. A ship used in an attack on a government base one month can, with an electronic and physical 'repaint', be used for smuggling weapons the next month, and can be used to lure government ships into a trap the following month. Due to the dangers associated with 'uninhabited' systems, I imagine that most government will maintain forward bases and/or listening stations in every star system, just to make sure that undesirable elements do not find a safe haven.

Or likely just the ones nearby them. This also makes sense from a self-defense point of view: You don't want foreign bases all over your back yard.



An pan-galactic listening post effort would only be made by the equivalent of a British Empire deciding to do away with piracy on a global scale.

[AlexanderHowl]

I am thinking more like a polity that encompasses a 50 ly radius (~1400 star systems and, depending on which estimates that you use, up to 200 million rogue planets). If we assume that they will colonize planets in 20% of the star systems, that leaves ~1120 star systems uncolonized, which is a problem for any government that wants to maintain control. Some of the uncolonized star systems will possess exploitable resources, but the nature of space makes it unlikely that there will be interstellar trade in anything other than exotics, so the exploitable resources will be for domestic consumption. Of course, the cost maintaining a military base of 10,000 will be insignificant compared to the economic output of a TL10 star system with 10 billion inhabitants.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

I am thinking more like a polity that encompasses a 50 ly radius (~1400 star systems and, depending on which estimates that you use, up to 200 million rogue planets). If we assume that they will colonize planets in 20% of the star systems, that leaves ~1120 star systems uncolonized, which is a problem for any government that wants to maintain control.

Why? What makes garbage systems with no economic or strategic value and therefore no habitation a problem?

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

but the nature of space makes it unlikely that there will be interstellar trade in anything other than exotics, so the exploitable resources will be for domestic consumption

This very much depends on your FTL and other tech assumptions, but if ships can move cargo fairly freely between systems, then systems will buy things that they could normally produce themselves because of comparative advantage. And counterintuitively, a system might import something they could make with fewer resources than the system they're importing it from, if there's another commodity that is even easier to make. You'll have to check the wiki article for details, coz otherwise I'm parroting it at this point.

In other words, if trade is free, trade will happen freely for a complete range of commodities.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

This very much depends on your FTL and other tech assumptions, but if ships can move cargo fairly freely between systems, then systems will buy things that they could normally produce themselves because of comparative advantage. And counterintuitively, a system might import something they could make with fewer resources than the system they're importing it from, if there's another commodity that is even easier to make. You'll have to check the wiki article for details, coz otherwise I'm parroting it at this point.

In other words, if trade is free, trade will happen freely for a complete range of commodities.

Excessive transportation costs can totally destroy comparative advantage. Of course those same transportation costs will make the creation of an interstellar polity equally pointless and impractical.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Excessive transportation costs can totally destroy comparative advantage. Of course those same transportation costs will make the creation of an interstellar polity equally pointless and impractical.

Note that he said "If trade is free".



Science fiction settings can be very hard to grasp economically, because many of their transportation assumptions are so foreign to us. And there is the compounded issue of a vocal group trying to bring the discussion to a "Hard science only" default when discussing these matters.



A few notes:

• Gravity wells are very expensive to get out of... under normal hard science limitations. There are many super science ways to get around this and I've heard orbital rings suggested as a cheap way to do it with hard science, though it relies on massive economies of scale. Pay attention to your cost per kilogram. It matters.
• Trade between planetary orbits is either fast and expensive or slow and cheap. Going between earth orbit and mars orbit can be done very economically if you're willing to take a year. Pay attention to your ship speed and your crew cost/degree of automation.
• Every Element we know of is either found in abundance in our solar system, or not found in abundance at all. If you have unobtanium, note that. Also note that while elements are found everywhere, factories are not.
• Stellar distances are huge. Forget the light speed barrier, we can't get rockets anywhere near the speeds where that becomes an issue. Super-science to ignore this is very common. check if its in your setting.

Pay attention to the details of your setting. They greatly change trade. And pay attention to the assumptions of anyone telling you anything about trade in space, because what they are saying strongly relies on their assumptions.


You can shape space settings where trade is limited to only the lightest of products (information), and settings where grain is shipped in from the other side of the universe.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Excessive transportation costs can totally destroy comparative advantage. Of course those same transportation costs will make the creation of an interstellar polity equally pointless and impractical.

Transportation is one barrier to trade, among others. But indeed, if we're talking about FTL allowing effective "reactionaries, revolutionaries, and terrorists", then it would presumably be effective enough for free trade as well.

[AlexanderHowl]

Not necessarily. Free trade depends on economic benefits to manifest, and people will not trade where they will not make money (governments might subsidize trade in that case, but it becomes a form of government funding monopoly). Political operatives care about political gains rather than economic gains and, since they are usually outside of the law, they can engage in the illegal trade of high value goods (drugs, software, weapons, etc) to generate funds.

For example, a star system that is just a half dozen asteroid belts with a half dozen gas giants will likely not be colonized because it has nothing that could not be found in other star systems or on the rogue planets of interstellar space. A revolutionary group could, however, grow opium in orbital colonies for a profit if they need money. Even a modest orbital colony could produce wholesale $1 billion per year of opium, which the revolutionary group would exchange to criminal groups in exchange for weapons, ships, etc. The other needs of the revolutionary group would be supplied by the star system which serves as their base of operations.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Not necessarily. Free trade depends on economic benefits to manifest, and people will not trade where they will not make money (governments might subsidize trade in that case, but it becomes a form of government funding monopoly).

Yes, but if interstellar transport is cheap those will almost inevitably exist.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Political operatives care about political gains rather than economic gains and, since they are usually outside of the law, they can engage in the illegal trade of high value goods (drugs, software, weapons, etc) to generate funds.

For example, a star system that is just a half dozen asteroid belts with a half dozen gas giants will likely not be colonized because it has nothing that could not be found in other star systems or on the rogue planets of interstellar space. A revolutionary group could, however, grow opium in orbital colonies for a profit if they need money. Even a modest orbital colony could produce wholesale $1 billion per year of opium, which the revolutionary group would exchange to criminal groups in exchange for weapons, ships, etc. The other needs of the revolutionary group would be supplied by the star system which serves as their base of operations.

So many strange assumptions there.

(A) Do you really think it's easier to go to another solar system than find a way to hide in an inhabited one? If so, transport is definitely cheap enough for interstellar trade to exist.

(A1) If interstellar trade is exclusively the domain of criminals, how can it possibly avoid being shut down by governments? Depends on your space rules but usually you don't want things set up so that you can easily fly from out-system to population centers without being detected at all.

(B) Since when do terrorists have the means to found major population centers from scratch?

(C) But apparently only agrarian ones. On space stations. Not, say, their own arms factories so they could skip the whole drug smuggling thing.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Not necessarily. Free trade depends on economic benefits to manifest, and people will not trade where they will not make money (governments might subsidize trade in that case, but it becomes a form of government funding monopoly). Political operatives care about political gains rather than economic gains and, since they are usually outside of the law, they can engage in the illegal trade of high value goods (drugs, software, weapons, etc) to generate funds.

For example, a star system that is just a half dozen asteroid belts with a half dozen gas giants will likely not be colonized because it has nothing that could not be found in other star systems or on the rogue planets of interstellar space. A revolutionary group could, however, grow opium in orbital colonies for a profit if they need money. Even a modest orbital colony could produce wholesale $1 billion per year of opium, which the revolutionary group would exchange to criminal groups in exchange for weapons, ships, etc. The other needs of the revolutionary group would be supplied by the star system which serves as their base of operations.

Such a scheme would require interstellar travel to be cheap and therefore profitable and therefore common just to set up space habitats in a system with no pre-existing infrastructure.