The Emptiness of the Deep Beyond

[AlexanderHowl]

In Deep Beyond, the number of sapients who live beyond the orbit of Mars is truly tiny, around a quarter of a million, most of whom live either in the Main Belt or on Titan. In truth, the populations should probably be larger because of the importance of Saturn (due to the economics of the setting) and due to the relatively high delta-v of TL10 spacecraft. If nothing else, 16 Psyche should be exploited because it is one of the largest metal rich bodies in the Sol System (while it only has a density of 3.99, its deposits are on the surface rather than buried beneath molten rock).

By 2100, I suggest that the population of the Outer Sol System should probably be 10x as large as suggested by the Deep Beyond. For example, that would give Titan a population of 700,000, which would be comparable to Alaska. The Main Belt would have a population of 1.05 million, which would likely be centered around truly massive mining operations on 16 Psyche and the Duncanite center of 1 Ceres. With a mass of 24 quadrillion metric tons, 16 Psyche may possess trillions of metric tons of precious metals (including hundreds of billion metric tons of gold), meaning that it would literally be the largest gold mine in the Sol System.

[Anthony]

Given THS tech, there's no reason for there to be people out there at all. Just infomorphs, most of which don't need to more than NAIs.

[AlexanderHowl]

Humans are much more flexible than NAIs. If your business depends on producing and shipping billions of dollars of precious metals per year from point A to point B, it is worth spending the extra money on human labor. Otherwise, you are just asking for your competitors to hack your operations at the source or during transit.

For example, imagine that a company is processing tens of millions of metric tons of ore per year, producing thousands of metric tons of precious metals per year (including hundreds of metric tons of gold per year). Due to increased production, let us say that the average value of the precious metals drops 90%, meaning that the value of their precious metal production is tens of billions per year (billions per year in gold). It is worthwhile for that company to maintain a population of a couple of thousand humans at the production facility in order to make sure that nothing goes wrong at production, plus another population of a couple of thousand humans on the transfer vehicles to make sure nothing goes wrong during transit.

[Phil Masters]

Alaska has a population of 700,000... After being inhabited by humans for millennia, and subject to western colonisation fir centuries. Titan has only been inhabited for a couple of decades in TS.

And nobody says that you don’t need some full-sapient, possibly human, supervision in your outer-system ops. But a lot of the grunt work can be done by much cheaper NAI or LAI cybershells.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Humans are much more flexible than NAIs.

They're also much more expensive, and the vast majority of resource extraction jobs do not require all that much flexibility; what flexibility is actually required can be covered by a small number of humans, SAIs, or LAIs.

[AlexanderHowl]

Only if you really want to have your production stolen. If you have multiple firms exploiting 16 Psyche, each firm will have a vested interest in stealing the production of the other firms (especially since stealing precious metals is easier than processing ore). SAIs, LAIs, and NAIs can easily be hacked, it is an inherent weakness of the AI metatrait because they have Digital Mind and Reprogrammable (biological intelligences are much harder to hack). When you are talking about tens of billions per year in revenue, billions in labor costs are an acceptable expense.

Of course, an adventure could be based around characters who work a company who uses biological labor going up against a company who uses digital labor. Since the characters could easily liberate billions in precious metals, it would be worthwhile to loot to company who uses digitals. Their company might even pay their employees 50% of the value of any precious metals that they steal from their competitors, meaning that the characters could earn a quick turnaround without having to find a buyer. Since AIs have backups, the characters do not even have to feel guilty about killing off the digital workers (especially since most of them will be NAIs).

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Their company might even pay their employees 50% of the value of any precious metals that they steal from their competitors, meaning that the characters could earn a quick turnaround without having to find a buyer.

No, no, you need a level of deniability. "This is your quota for metal output. Each ton more than that which you ship out earns you this much. Wherever it came from."

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

SAIs, LAIs, and NAIs can easily be hacked, it is an inherent weakness of the AI metatrait because they have Digital Mind and Reprogrammable

Hacking is not magical. The Digital Mind trait can only be targeted over a communications channel that allows privileged access, which may not even be possible without physical hardware access. The Reprogrammable trait does not actually affect vulnerability to hacking.

[AlexanderHowl]

Computers are vulnerable through a number of methods because they generally require external stimuli. If you know how a computer transforms frequencies of light into digital information, you can write commands in light that activate within the computer as soon as the frequencies are translated into digital information. With the right software, you can create images that become viruses when they are translated back into digital information by encoding the virus into the patterns of shading and coloring.

As for quotas, who would have the authority to enforce them on 16 Psyche? The average figure for the value of 16 Psyche is $10 quintillion. Even if prices dropped by 90%, the value of the asteroid would be $1 quintillion, more than enough to trigger war if anyone attempted to establish a quota. China, the EU, and the USA would each be willing to go to war with any nation that attempted to claim authority over such a prize.

Anyway, a quota system would probably not be necessary. A SM+10 barge would likely be incapable of producing much more than a few hundred tons of precious metals pet year, so 16 Psyche could support hundreds of such operations. Each operation could have a few dozen workers and a few hundred robots, and the total combined production could be worth around $800 billion per year. Even in 2100, that is a fair chuck of change, and it would make the Duncanites seem small minded for having settled on Ceres.

[Fred Brackin]

[QUOTE=AlexanderHowl;2353460

As for quotas, who would have the authority to enforce them on 16 Psyche? .[/QUOTE]

If only one entity has an armed spacecraft the answer to that is pretty obvious. Even if multiple entities have armed ships the situation probably evolves into a joint treaty on quotas.

You are extremely unlikely to have hundreds of separate operations. The people without armed ships have a quota of zero. A cartel that keeps production low enough to not totally crash the market appears extremely likely to me.