Sectors of an Ultra-Tech/Bio-Tech economy

[Fish]

Originally Posted by Brett

Yeah, that's it exactly. There are related industries that it makes sense to locate together to exploit economies of scope, resulting in production clusters like, with related firms sharing suppliers, attracting specially-skilled workers etc., so that an area becomes associated with a class of products.

All right, then, let me throw a few more out there, just to add some variety to the planets I've already mentioned.

Low-magnetism applications. On a world that has a limited (or even a null) magnetosphere, certain manufacturing could be done that is of a delicate or sensitive nature, and might involve incredibly small components or great precision. What kinds of technology could this be? Sensor technology; nanobot research; telescopy; antimatter.

What kind of planet would qualify for this? Take Venus, for instance. As far as we know, it has virtually no magnetosphere; its magnetic field is induced by solar wind and is only 1/100,000th the strength of Earth's. It has the weakest magnetosphere of any explored planet in the solar system. Another potential limited-magnetosphere "planet" is Pluto, given that it's probably an ice-core planetoid. Yes, you could create a limited-magnetism environment in space, but then you're dealing with heat, solar radiation, and shielding from the magnetism of the equipment itself.

High-magnetism applications. I can't think of any ultra-tech inventions off the top of my head which might require a strong magnetosphere. Nevertheless, it's worth considering. Could highly secure research be going on within the magnetosphere of a gas giant, a magnetosphere which might help to discourage espionage and disrupt sensors? Jupiter's magnetosphere reaches all the way to Saturn...

Liquid metal. On a planet with a high ambient surface temperature, some useful metals are naturally in a liquid state. On Venus, you would find liquid lead, zinc, cadmium, indium, gallium, thallium, tin, bismuth, lithium, sodium, potassium, rubidium, cesium, and francium. Phosphorus, sulfur, and mercury are gaseous. A very large-scale smelting operation might find it easier to cool down a small area for livable human habitation than to heat up the masses of raw materials for shaping, refining, or possibly just extraction. On Venus, you could extract liquid lead with titanium or tungsten pumps.

I'm just making stuff up here at this point, in the hopes it might be moderately useful. :)

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Fish

Low-magnetism applications. On a world that has a limited (or even a null) magnetosphere, certain manufacturing could be done that is of a delicate or sensitive nature, and might involve incredibly small components or great precision. What kinds of technology could this be? Sensor technology; nanobot research; telescopy; antimatter.

Superconductors? They do not like strong magnetic fields.

[Fish]

Good notion. Yes, superconductors. Also, potentially, gravimetric and artificial-gravity devices.

Of course, with super-science ultra-tech, we don't know what kind of a working environment is necessary to create — for instance — FTL drives, matter transporters, artificial gravity, or force fields. You could handwave any justification you liked to say that "oh, force fields have to be made in a location with low magnetism." Or high magnetism. Or low temperatures. Or dense atmosphere. Whatever you wanted, really.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Fish

I'm just making stuff up here at this point, in the hopes it might be moderately useful. :)

Thank you. Brainstorm away!

[Anders]

For High-Magnetism applications, I'd suggest setting up shop near a magnetar. They have surface magnetic fields of 10 GT and we know there are planets around some neutron stars. (Although if you are closer than, say, a 1000 km to a magnetar, the magnetic field is strong enough to rip apart water molecules, so I suggest you don't stray too close...)

[fredtheobviouspseudonym]

1.) You might be optimistic to think that an FTL starship doesn't need bio-research. Starships need computers (I'd hate to calculate a course between star systems with a hand calculator . . . ) At least one fellow c. 1997 was trying to devise a computer that used DNA as the yes/no switches.

2.) One of the unnoticed revolutions of the modern era has been the revolution in (of all things!) oceanic transportation. (Conway's "History of the Ship" has an excellent volume on this.) The standardized shipping container, barcodes thereof, energy-efficient engines for container ships, automation to allow huge ships to run with small (and often ill-educated) crews . . . basically the real cost per ton-mile of oceanic transport is a fraction of what it was in 1950, much less earlier. Without this, globalization would be pretty marginal (for better or for worse -- I'm not getting into this argument!)

So interstellar travel would have to match this level of ton-parsec efficiency for planetary specialization of production to occur. This is, of course, the GM's decision.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by martinl

FTL shipping moves stuff about 1000 LY/year.

How far are Suite planets from each other, roughly?

Mostly 20–40 light-years, though Eden II and Vanaheim (32.6 LY apart) are far (45–90 light-years) from some of the others.

What is the cost (by mass or volume) of FTL shipping?

I haven't re-done the costings since switching to GURPS Spaceships, but under Foresight it was cheap compared with air freight today but very expensive compared to surface shipping.

Is this cost dominated by the cost of running the ship or the cost of making sure the cargo can't be used to hijack the ship?

Dominated by amortisation of the ship and monopoly profits to Imperial Spaceways.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by fredtheobviouspseudonym

1.) You might be optimistic to think that an FTL starship doesn't need bio-research.

Quite. Many, perhaps most, final products likely include materials, fabrications, components, and sub-assemblies from all over the place, elaborately combined.

2.) One of the unnoticed revolutions of the modern era has been the revolution in (of all things!) oceanic transportation.

Indeed.

So interstellar travel would have to match this level of ton-parsec efficiency for planetary specialization of production to occur.

The degree of specialisation (and the difficulty of progressing to the highest tech levels) is tunable by generalised shipping cost. If the generalised cost of shipping were zero there would be no regional specialisation because there would be no advantage in locating near specialised suppliers etc. If the generalised cost of shipping were too high economies of scale would not be able to overcome transport costs and there would be no trade at all. Somewhere in between zero cost and zero trade is a level that will promote specialisation on a planetary scale.

But really, I'm not interested in a discussion of whether my setting is more plausible or less plausible than, say Yrth or the Star Wars setting, and I shan't take part in any further debate on the topic. I'd like to talk about general divisions of ultratech and biotech.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by martinl

RE: Planned economies in FB. Flat Black has psychiatry as reliable as our physics, and has demonstrated fledgling psychohistory (a rich individual isolated every single one of the potential revolutionary leaders on a politically seething planet.) With the addition of TL10 computers, they can probably do considerably better at planned economies than we can.

Note also that the people in the best spot to exploit the Empire's monopoly - the officals of the Empire itself, are canonically incorruptible, competent, and selfless [1], primarily motivated by the desire to prevent massive deaths via WMDs in a setting where planetbusters are at least one full TL old. They are undoubtedly manipulating the planned economy away from economic optimums, but their manipulations are quite arguably absolutely necessary.

Note that what you are talking about is not a "planned economy" in the sense in which the Mises critique of socialist economic calculation means it. It seems to have markets and trade; rather than the products of planet A being shipped in certain amounts to planets B, C, and so on because a government agency has assigned each planet a certain proportion of the output, it seems to be shipped commercially by merchants firms seeking profits from buying and selling. And planets are not assigned to economic functions by an Imperial bureaucracy, or developed at a centrally specified pace. Rather, each planet has the ability to seek to increase its output and change its specializations in such a way as to become one of the rich worlds with advanced technology, rather like the growth paths of South Korea and Singapore. All of this looks like centralized organizations trying to compete more efficiently in a larger market economy, and not like a single central planning agency that takes the place of a market economy as a whole. And it was the latter that the "economic calculation" argument is directed at.

And since each of those competing planetary economies is going to have the best computers its government or industrialists can buy, trying to plan in such a way as to gain an edge in competition . . . any hypothetical central planning body would need to have computers powerful enough to model the planning of all those other computers, including their planning ways to influence its decisions in the favor of their owners. So the problem of planning becomes that much harder as computer technology advances.

Bill Stoddard

[Fish]

Originally Posted by whswhs

And planets are not assigned to economic functions by an Imperial bureaucracy, or developed at a centrally specified pace. Rather, each planet has the ability to seek to increase its output and change its specializations in such a way as to become one of the rich worlds with advanced technology, rather like the growth paths of South Korea and Singapore.

In other words, each planet's ascendancy is organic — ugh, how I hate the way that word has been corrupted — and unplanned.

I feel that's all the more reason to follow the lines that I'm suggesting, that a certain type of world has a natural advantage for a certain type of manufacturing. All planets being equal, you'd expect a certain amount of migration of talent; good research and talented researchers could be snapped up, hired away, or depending on the level of ultra-tech available, even duplicated (which gives a new meaning to corporate headhunting). Given enough people, the variations in human talent would level off — there would be enough geniuses to go around. Macro factors such as climate or geography may tilt the balance toward one planet or another.