Re: How much does FTL travel cost?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Laserlight" <laserlight@quixnet.net>
To: <gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu>
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2002 3:53 AM
Subject: Re: How much does FTL travel cost?

> > comparison to the prep time).  And I say IF they were resolved
> > because if you knew you were out-numbered and likely to loose an
impending
> > conflict you would settle at the last minute if at all possible.
Anyway, IMHO
> > for FT, DS2 and SG2 to be viable FTL travel must be affordable to
the
extent
> > that any reasonably placed colony can expect a ship from home every
year
> > at the minimum.
>
> Assuming there's anything to ship.  We don't ship a lot of stuff to,
> oh, say Somalia, because there's not much reason to.	We could, if it
> was worthwhile, send ships every day--we do for China, Taiwan, etc.

Not all shipping has to go direct from core world to destination. Minor
places are reached by small vessels carrying some cargo from a nearby
major
port. May even be a multi-stage process.

The same pattern has developed in the real world. In Western Europe, for
example, the big container vessels go to less than a dozen ports. All
container moves to the Baltic Sea are done by second-tier feeder
vessels. A
similar pattern exists in South-East Asia, with Singapore as the great
hub
and all of Indonesia and the Philippines being handled by waht we call
"Junks" in our company.

Greetings