Affording a spaceship?

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

If your universe is concieved as a place where small and cheap starships are common then any system that tells you they should cost 10s of millions is _wrong_ (for your universe at least).

This is quite true.

The problem is that spaceship construction rules tend to assume "spaceships are like ironclads, container freighters or jumbo jets.", they're huge, equipped with lots of expensive specialized subsystems - multi-thousand horsepower engines, heavy cargo handling gear, powerful radars, guns - built and maintained by specialists at heavy duty industrial facilities, crewed by dozens, if not hundreds of people, and owned by corporations, governments, or maybe an occasional billionaire.

Spaceship *plots* tend to assume "spaceships are like sailing ships", those are small, don't carry much expensive gear (cannon excepted, and private ships *didn't* normally have more than a couple of those) built of about the same materials and skills to manufacture as a large house, crewed by a handful of people, and affordable by anybody who could pay for a large house. Note that modern yachts, which are still small and don't have much equipment you wouldn't put in a house, are still in the same price range as a mansion.

The two views are not really consistent with each other, you really need to decide which one applies to your setting's standard ships.