In which I post about a TL9 solar system

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by Say, it isn't that bad!

The question I have is, without the fabricators/factories, how do they make money? I don't really see tourism, refuelling, or science producing enough revenue.

With the extra six open spaces, they can grow and export high valued crops to other space colonies. At TL9, many crops are possible for production in space, from the exotic (opium and saffron) to the mundane (hemp and maize). With the cost of tossing things up the gravity well from Earth being $25/lb, even maize becomes profitable in space. With 9 million tons of hanger bay capacity, 5 million tons of cargo capacity, and 5 million tons of fuel capacity, they can also offer transshipment, refueling, and maintenance services to spaceships, serving as a support hub for thousands of ships.

By adding 10,000 labs (+$10B) and 20,000 fabricator minifacs (+$10B), it could become a scientific and production hub, though this does increase the final cost to $468B. It could produce $10M/hr of products, which would translate to $87.66 B/year of products per year (more than enough to support its population and for export). With a final cost of $468B, the production capacity alone would represent a good fraction of its GDP.