The economics of interstellar invasions

Hi,

 First, are we talking in general terms, or are you only interested in
the
Official(tm) GZG-verse? Well, I'm not, and AFAIK very little hard data
exists on it anyway.

Roger:

>You can either have space colonies with intersteller trade and a profit
>being made, in which case you need to have an intersteller military,
>or you can have shipping costs be unsupportable, in which case you
>will have no intersteller military.

Yes. But the degree of trade can vary widely.

>So what I am really saying is your transport costs cannot be so
>extravagent that only an ultra-high tech force can be fielded.

Why not? As Greg Costikyan pointed out in his article, interstellar
trade
is likely to be exclusively in luxuries and hyper-rare materials. 

E.g. "spice", vital to interstellar travel, can only be found on planet
Arrakis(sp? sorry Herbert-fans...) Thus it makes sense to import it,
because it can't be made locally at any cost. 

But something like food can be made everywhere -- it makes no sense to
ship it across the sea of stars.

Thus it makes sense to fight over Arrakis, but not West Bumfuck the corn
world.

There are already such items: take clean water -- there are places
where a shortage exists, and places where it is found in abundance. But
still, it's not cost effective to fill a tanker with clean water in
Helsinki and ship it to Sahara. 

>It looks to me like you need a better reason for the NAC to take
>that max-tech force out to planet Y to put down the rebellion than
>"Travel is expensive".  I personally would think it would be a 
>political thing, "Losing people is expensive politicly".

Well, I already talked about the political cost of body bags.
It is an important consideration. But travel cost is another.

I'm sorry, but "it just is" just doesn't hold water for me.  If I can
"just assume" A, why can't I "just assume" B? There are no signs
suggesting interstellar travel would be cheap.

Heck, just getting off the ground is expensive! Let's assume aliens came
to visit us and placed an automatic jump gate in earth orbit. How many
tank divisions could Clinton send to Betelgeuse? Zilch. He can't get
even
one M1 in orbit.

Forget FTL for a while -- just getting into orbit is bloody hard. About
the only way getting into orbit could become cheap is if energy was
radically cheaper. But abundant, cheap energy would make manufacturing
things *here* cheaper too. In the end, most economics boil down to
energy
expenditure...

To know what kind of force it is reasonable to send to another planet,
one
must know what getting there would cost, per ton. This cost also
determines what kind of trade is likely to be made, the kind of planets
likely to be colonized and to what extent.

E.g. assume it's worthwhile to send kitty litter from West Bumfuck
across
the galaxy to Earth. Bags of sand? The cost of travel must be very, very
low. Travel is energy expenditure. The cost of energy must be very,
very,
very low. Manufacturing is, especially of hi vs. lo-tech items, is
essentially a question of energy expenditure. Since energy is sooooo
cheap
it makes sense to import kitty litter from West Bumfuck, making
super-duper hi-tek tanks is also very, very, very, very cheap. Why would
you send anything else?

Assume the only reason there are people on West Bumfuck is that
ultra-rarium, vital to modern anti-matter reactors, is found there and
only there. Even with ultra-rarium, energy is expensive, especially in
levels required for interstellar travel. Thus travel is expensive. While
this does also make manufacturing those super-duper tanks more
expensive,
it is still cheaper than going to West Bumfuck. How could you not send
the
best you have?

Is there an equilibrium between these two extremes? Frankly, I don't
know... but I refuse to "just assume" there is. 

There's a lot of fuzzy stuff and things we can only guess at, but the
cost
of putting things in orbit is a good place to start.

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