Re: [OT]-Interstellar Trade: A new take

From: Bren Mayhugh <jygro@hotmail.com>

>Sure, I know that interstellar trade would probably only be
rare items or
>items of art, but where is the fun of that?

Much snippage.

  It CERTAINLY would be prohibitively expensive--given what we
know now.
  And we have a tendency to base our calculations on what we
know now.  However, that doesn't produce playable results.  The
way to work it is to decide what model you want to use, and work
out the implications from there.
  If it takes a year to get from Rigel Kent to Earth, then
products will have to be low mass, high value, and colonization
will be very limited.  But our model is that ships can jump a
few light years every day--call it 1LY per day to be
conservative.  Okay, how long does it take to get from Earth to
the planet you're interested in?  2-3 weeks? (Bear in mind that
some maps are in parsecs not LY).  Compare that to shipping
times in history and see what they shipped.  They shipped
LAUNDRY from California to Hawaii to be washed during the Gold
Rush ca 1850, and I'm willing to bet that was more than a two
week round trip.  UK colonized Australia and I'd suspect the
average trip was at least 2 months at that time.  Trip time from
Europe to North America was, IIRC, about 4 weeks when
colonization started here in late 1500's/early 1600's.	They
might not have shipped much cavalry--horses died enroute, a
problem tanks don't much worry about--but they could sure ship
infantry and find it economical to do so.