RE: Comunication & travel

Hello All 
<snip>
>1. The is no FTL communications.  The fastest way to communicate is by
>courier ship.	Regular transportation routes will between star will go
>from system to another system with 2 parsecs (this is a little over 6
>light years).	It represents 1 weeks travel (not counting getting into
>or out of the solar systems) for warships.  Twice that long for
merchant
>ships.
>Special courier ships can jump every 6 hours (they have specially
>trained crews and special (expensive) drugs), so they can make the trip
>in under 2 days.
Why do the couriers need crews.? We know AI exists in the FT universe,
so
perhaps communication would be by AI controlled express boats, which
jump in
system, download data to another boat, which jumps out, then recharges,
uploads
data and jumps out itself. Becasue they have no human crews, they could
jump
quickly, and there could be reqgular streams (say every hour) of these
arriving
and leaving, thus communications would NOT be insatntaneous but perhaps
only
half a day from one side of Human space to the other.

Geoffrey