Let's say Planet Sahara needs water desperately because a colony is there to mine minerals or whatever. Planet Atlantis has plenty of fresh water. Let's say they're two jumps from each other, unless a different distance works better. Is there a way a free trader can transport enough water to make it worth the fuel and other overhead? Assume there's a limit as to how much anyone could feasibly pay for a drink, I guess, to make it worth their while as well. Is there a way to make this economically viable in Traveller? I know we have some number crunchers on this forum who probably also know Traveller! What's the largest size the colony could be, how much water would they need, etc? We'll leave out any industrial usage and assume it's for drinking and bathing and such. Presumably they could capture and recycle a lot of it, too, if it were cost-effective...anybody for any good speculation? I wss just thinking of Ice Pirates and Dune and the scenario reared its ugly head.
Is the planet totally devoid of water?
Might be cheaper to tow comets or something in space rather than haul it from groundside to space?
Quote from: Omega;993293Is the planet totally devoid of water?
Might be cheaper to tow comets or something in space rather than haul it from groundside to space?
No water at all.
I dunno, that's why I'm wondering if hauling water would ever make any sense.
Logistically no. Dramatically yes.
Why would you take water from a planet when comets are readily available?
You would probably need some kind of subsidized merchant line to make that work.
I'd see logistically transporting fresh water as being very difficult, and only a stop gap measure in any case. It world be more useful to bring over oxygen and hydrogen, as chemical components to start mass producing it, along with a plant colony to make it viable.
There is the idea in Frank Herbert's Dune of maximising the recycling of body fluids using a still suit and the like - but I think hauling a load of water itself would be tricky.
Not very likely. The optimal solution will almost always be redirecting asteroids, if there's a belt far enough out from the primary to have ice bodies. Or if that's not viable, mining the Oort cloud for comets. But since interplanetary distances are vast, and the Oort cloud is even bigger, that's a very slow solution. Months, at the very least. And years or decades is more likely, because that way you can use smaller drives to very slowly shift orbits. If things are more pressing, jumps might be a short-term solution. But that will almost certainly be specialized cargo ships.
Stepping back a bit, the place where free traders make sense is emergencies. Even if you have short and long term solutions in place, that's a very long supply chain. What if a mass driver is sabotaged? Or a refueling point catches fire? Or there's a fungus outbreak on one of the vessels? There might be a pressing need for parts or emergency medical supplies or whatever is needed to get the ice flowing again.
People have already posted the most economical method of mining the Oort Cloud or Kuyper Belt to supply water to planet Sahara.
There is another way to make hauling ice economically viable. Lets say that a valuable world is too far away to reach in a single jump, so ships can either haul extra fuel along with cargo and do two jumps or establish a Calibration Point at the midway between the two worlds. A Calibration Point is a waystation in deep space with no other bodies around that provides fuel and basic amenities to starships traversing the rift. Say you just want to get to the other world, you haul passengers and a load of ice - selling the ice at the waystation. You won't get rich doing this, but it makes pretty good sense (and a Calibration Point is something that players can reasonably create).
The Ice Must Flow!
Heh! :)
No. As far as we can tell there's no reason why every solar system wouldn't have an Oort cloud. Such clouds have virtually unlimited quantities of frozen water mixed with dust, minerals and other ingredients.
Fred Pohl wrote a novel called Mining the Oort. It's about a program which sends spaceship crews out to the Oort cloud. There they attach rockets to comets and calculate trajectories which would have them crash on to Mars. Even with a dozen such teams working steadily it would take over 100 years to make much of a difference.
Now, of course, you can do what ever you want in your game. Maybe for some bizarre reason your Sahara system has no Oort cloud. Or maybe something out there is destroying intruding space ships. You can always choose some other element that is of more value. "Chemical X is much in demand because Lifeform Y depends upon it."
One area where the OPs premise is viable is in an outpost situation. The mining is temporary and reliant on supplies and just mining the ice cloud isnt viable for one reason or another.
Basically look at the fuel costs in Traveller to get from A to B. Then the cost to buy the water at source. Then the profit of selling at the outpost.
Similar thing in Star Frontiers. One unit of water costs 30k. Sells for 40k. A ship with atomic drives uses one unit of fuel per jump and each unit costs 10k. So 40k spent round trip. Youd have to carry 8 units of water just to break even for the next trip. But you would not have made any profit to buy more water.
Instead what you would do is pick up whatever they are mining. Say for example that is mercury. You pick it up for 40k a unit and sell it back at the water supplier for 75k.
Round trip = 40k
8 units of water = 240k = 80k profit - Covers cost of fuel there and back. And enough to fully refuel the ship.
8 units of mercury = 320k = 280k profit - Covers buying 8 more units of water.
Final profit is... 40k per round trip.
Do the same in Traveller.
My thoughts on this are that if you try too hard to justify interstellar trade, it tends to fall apart... So really, if you want to set up a scenario here, do it.
Is there no oxygen and hydrogen easily available in the system? If there's O2 but not hydrogen, really all you have to transport is LHyd since it's easy to oxygenate hydrogen into water (and you get energy out of it to boot... remember that the feasibility of this is such that space systems use fuel cells to generate power AND potable water...).
If the desert planet really needs water shipped in, the cost of water will be such that ships can make money doing it, so just set your own speculative cargo price for water, or if it works, assume the desert planet is willing to ship the water for 1 kcr/ton shipping cost.
One idea that comes to mind is if it is a covert mining operation that needs to covertly receive the water. The miners are posing/hiding as/in/under/near another planetary operation, and traffic in the system in monitored somewhat. So a free trader with discretion might be hired to bring in water from out of system while also bringing something else for some other purpose (personnel, tech). If they brought water from the same system, someone might observe them and it would spoil the cover story and/or violate some regulations.
Quote from: Skarg;993449One idea that comes to mind is if it is a covert mining operation that needs to covertly receive the water. The miners are posing/hiding as/in/under/near another planetary operation, and traffic in the system in monitored somewhat. So a free trader with discretion might be hired to bring in water from out of system while also bringing something else for some other purpose (personnel, tech). If they brought water from the same system, someone might observe them and it would spoil the cover story and/or violate some regulations.
I was thinking something along these lines. My thought was if you needed a short-term reason to jump water in, just make the jump with tanker faster than bringing in a comet/asteroid of water, this one time. (Water Comet X5-12R went off course and plunged into the sun. Nobody in-system can jump water in.)
Quote from: Skarg;993449One idea that comes to mind is if it is a covert mining operation that needs to covertly receive the water. The miners are posing/hiding as/in/under/near another planetary operation, and traffic in the system in monitored somewhat. So a free trader with discretion might be hired to bring in water from out of system while also bringing something else for some other purpose (personnel, tech). If they brought water from the same system, someone might observe them and it would spoil the cover story and/or violate some regulations.
That is an interesting twist.
Quote from: TrippyHippy;993346I'd see logistically transporting fresh water as being very difficult, and only a stop gap measure in any case. It world be more useful to bring over oxygen and hydrogen, as chemical components to start mass producing it, along with a plant colony to make it viable.
Is there a significant reason to bring in oxygen and hydrogen in separate cooled-to-low-temperature bottles rather than cart in a big lump of ice?
Quote from: Willie the Duck;993491Is there a significant reason to bring in oxygen and hydrogen in separate cooled-to-low-temperature bottles rather than cart in a big lump of ice?
Multi-purpose - you can use them as a fuel/oxygen supply. Bring plants too, and you have a self sustaining chemical system.
EDIT: Sorry, to add as a noteworthy point, frozen water occupies a much greater volume than frozen hydrogen or oxygen in any case.
Ok if the element on Sahara is valuable enough it can possibly work.
Say Sahara is at the end if a jump spur route that makes it accessible to free traders only by passing thru the Atlantis system. Traders go to pick up the valuable ore (Byzanium, whatever) and have to pass thru the Atlantis system. Anyway. They drop off water, get paid, pick up ore, get paid to deliver it to Atlantis, fine. Other freighters come to Atlantis which is along a main route and pick Up the ore when it reaches a large amount. The buyers subsidize the free traders as it is cheaper to do that and pick up the ore at Atlantis than go to Sahara.
Maybe the one planet that connects Atlantis and Sahara has little accessible water but a couple nice gas gaints that make fuel skimming easy.
Maybe Sahara has little water because a hot Jupiter swept most inner planets out if the system as it spiraled in. Another gas giant spiraled in slowly and had its atmosphere abraded away by solar wind leaving a rocky core loaded with the byzanium ore.
As to why there may not be an Oort cloud maybe another large Jupiter type planet was thrown out of the system and as it spiraled away it sucked up. A lot of the Oort cloud. .or a rogue planet drifted thru the Oort cloud from. Another system long ago and pulled it all in. Or a black hole ate the Oort cloud.
Sounds like most everyone agrees on no, not without changing the parameters. I always thought Ice Pirates made no sense on that level. But at least there are several other ideas to steal. Thanks!
Quote from: Willie the Duck;993491Is there a significant reason to bring in oxygen and hydrogen in separate cooled-to-low-temperature bottles rather than cart in a big lump of ice?
And Hydrogen is a pain in the ass to handle. Far better to bring in ice or water.
Quote from: estar;993837And Hydrogen is a pain in the ass to handle. Far better to bring in ice or water.
That would be my point, actually. Both hydrogen and oxygen have to be kept at crazy low temperatures to keep liquid (and I assume we're transporting this stuff as a liquid or solid, not gas). Space is generally cold (except the brief part travelling to planet Saharra, I guess), but ships with fusion plants generally aren't. Just seems more plausible to me to transport the thing as a big lump of ice (or water, with expansion room in case it freezes) in the cargo hold. I like Trippy's idea of bringing plants and just in general recycling the stuff as much as possible.
Quote from: estar;993837And Hydrogen is a pain in the ass to handle. Far better to bring in ice or water.
And its much easier to split water than join hydrogen and oxygen. And, so, the comet is 20% larger. The mass doesn't change and that's all that matters in space.
Quote from: Dumarest;993753Sounds like most everyone agrees on no, not without changing the parameters. I always thought Ice Pirates made no sense on that level. But at least there are several other ideas to steal. Thanks!
See my SF notes above. Its a matter of making the trip profitable. Buy the stuff they are mining and sell it. That should offset the costs.
Microbes. You need to transport a particularly fragile cargo of microbes and the only way to do it is in their native water habitat. They need the microbes on Sahara to jump start a viable ecology.
Quote from: Dumarest;993753Sounds like most everyone agrees on no, not without changing the parameters. I always thought Ice Pirates made no sense on that level. But at least there are several other ideas to steal. Thanks!
I think it would be a lovely idea in a stellar, rather than interstellar, sci fi rpg (one were the Oort cloud is "out there," rather than the next star system over). The idea that miners striking it rich by finding a buried vein of water instead of gold or something is a neat sci fi concept, so it'd be nice to be able to put it
somewhere. It'd just take a lot of suspended disbelief for it to happen in the Traveller universe.
Quote from: Tod13;993840And its much easier to split water than join hydrogen and oxygen. And, so, the comet is 20% larger. The mass doesn't change and that's all that matters in space.
Joining hydrogen and oxygen is easy. Mix and add spark. You even get power out of the deal. There
are upsides to the idea of transporting them separately. I just don't see them as superseding the need for near-0k cooling.
Quote from: estar;993837And Hydrogen is a pain in the ass to handle. Far better to bring in ice or water.
In traveller liquid hydrogen is an everyday commodity that is handled routinely. Apparently they deal with it fairly easily.
Again the main issue here is ''How valuable is the ore from this planet? ''
That and that alone really says how economically viable this setup would be. If it's something insanely valuable and crazy rare then this set up works.
I think it probably depends on how the water is marketed.
Right now the bottled water industry on Earth is apparently worth more than the soda industry and virtually everyone buying water can just turn on their tap for it.
Anyone seen Ice Pirates?
Quote from: Voros;994323Anyone seen Ice Pirates?
[ATTACH=CONFIG]1654[/ATTACH]
I forgot young Ron Perlman was in it!
Yeah I rewatched it recently and dug it. Lots of neat sf jokes.
I like the look of their technology. When I think Traveller, I imagine this stuff plus Blakes 7 and Alien and other '70s sci fi.
Quote from: Dumarest;993295No water at all.
Then mining will be very hard. They can dig up ores, but can't process them. So that ounce of gold in the ton of granite - well, you'd have to transport the granite. Thus, the problem isn't making transporting water economically viable, it's making the mining itself economically viable.
Humans don't need a lot of water just for drinking, cooking and washing - not much compared to what mining uses. And the water humans have used can be processed and recycled a lot more easily than mining water. So, lack of water would limit the mining much more than it'd limit the people.
If the planet has breathable air, it'll have water. Even if it's not breathable, so long as there's atmosphere, there'll be water, or the chemical building blocks for it. For example Venus with a surface temperature hot enough to melt lead and a pressure of 90 or so Earth atmospheres has carbon dioxide atmosphere and sulphuric acid clouds, and many of the rocks will be oxides - so they've got oxygen atoms and hydrogen atoms in plenty, the question is what's the best and quickest way to get the hydrogen and oxygen out and then together.
If there's no atmosphere there may still be ice in deep craters, like on our own Moon. Even Mars is known to have liquid water (very saline) flow on its surface from time to time in small amounts. And something like half the moons in our solar system either have water in some form, if only deep in the crust (Enceladus, etc), or are actually rock-ice lumps.
But the locals may be too busy mining to bother extracting the water and may want it brought in. Like if you have just 1,000 guys on the whole planet mining rare earths (lactanides etc) they don't want to spare 100 of them making water.
If the world's low-gravity and has no atmosphere, that's your best bet for having people just tow big chunks of ice up to them. But our best guess is that most systems will have lots of old comets floating around. Question is whether you want them to be towing the things through Jump - if you do, remember they may want to tow another ship one day.
Interestingly, this was related to the scenario in our most recent CT game. The scenario was that the mining planet was importing food from a distant world, they couldn't grow it locally because water was limited - not zero, but limited - and it was all used in mining. They discovered an underground aquifer which would have given them enough water to do both... so the agricultural world's guys put a deadly virus in it.
We discovered this, and then slipped the virus into the water supply of the Agr world's freighter heading back. That should send them a message.
The best thing I've read by Isaac Asimov is his novella The Martian Way where they tow a huge chunk of ice from the ring of Saturn to a Mars colony.
Quote from: Kyle Aaron;994412Then mining will be very hard. They can dig up ores, but can't process them. So that ounce of gold in the ton of granite - well, you'd have to transport the granite. Thus, the problem isn't making transporting water economically viable, it's making the mining itself economically viable.
Humans don't need a lot of water just for drinking, cooking and washing - not much compared to what mining uses. And the water humans have used can be processed and recycled a lot more easily than mining water. So, lack of water would limit the mining much more than it'd limit the people.
Not to bust on your post but in all fairness traveller tech may have developed to a point water wasn't needed for mining. Lasers might replace drills and don't need water cooling like drills do, and the processing might be done by using fusion produced heat to vaporize ore and a centrifugal process to separate the elements of the ore while it's in a vaporized state.
Has anyone ever done a piece on mining tech in traveller?
Belt Strike maybe? I think industrial uses are usually a tech level or two ahead of military applications due to larger size and slower deployment. So maybe
7 Drills and Grinders
8 Hydrovac
9 Laser Cutting
10 Plasma Cutting
11Cyclonic Laser Cutting (laser cutting heat creates a mini tornado that sucks out debris)
12Gravitic Fracturing
13 Gravitic clearing (gravitic field used to suck out debris)
14 Gravitic Pulse (shifting gravitic field grinds and clears)
15 Gravitic Plasma Cyclone (gravity field clears molten debris)
Quote from: David Johansen;994432Belt Strike maybe? I think industrial uses are usually a tech level or two ahead of military applications due to larger size and slower deployment. So maybe
7 Drills and Grinders
8 Hydrovac
9 Laser Cutting
10 Plasma Cutting
11Cyclonic Laser Cutting (laser cutting heat creates a mini tornado that sucks out debris)
12Gravitic Fracturing
13 Gravitic clearing (gravitic field used to suck out debris)
14 Gravitic Pulse (shifting gravitic field grinds and clears)
15 Gravitic Plasma Cyclone (gravity field clears molten debris)
Excellent post. Seems like in traveller water may not be vital to. Mining.
Quote from: Voros;994414The best thing I've read by Isaac Asimov is his novella The Martian Way where they tow a huge chunk of ice from the ring of Saturn to a Mars colony.
I'm not familiar with that. Is it a book by itself or part of a collection of anthology?
Quote from: Schwartzwald;994435Excellent post. Seems like in traveller water may not be vital to. Mining.
It would all depend on the tech level on the planet, which isn't set in stone as this is essentially hypothetical. Tech in Traveller isn't consistent from world to world, or at least not if you are generating subsectors randomly as per the rules. So, could go either way depending on random roll or referee choice.
Quote from: Dumarest;994443I'm not familiar with that. Is it a book by itself or part of a collection of anthology?
Not a separate book. It can be found in November 1952 issue of
Galaxy Science Fiction,
The Martian Way and Other Stories (1955),
The Best of Isaac Asimov (1973),
Robot Dreams (1986), or
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two (1973).
It had some neat ideas.
Quote from: Dumarest;993753Sounds like most everyone agrees on no, not without changing the parameters. I always thought Ice Pirates made no sense on that level. But at least there are several other ideas to steal. Thanks!
I'm late to this party, but something I wanted to point out is that it's almost certainly cheaper to
manufacture water locally as long as they have supplies of hydrogen and oxygen. Since hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe by far, I don't see that being scarce, and since humans need oxygen to breath, that can't be too rare, either.
Quote from: Edgewise;994561I'm late to this party, but something I wanted to point out is that it's almost certainly cheaper to manufacture water locally as long as they have supplies of hydrogen and oxygen. Since hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe by far, I don't see that being scarce, and since humans need oxygen to breath, that can't be too rare, either.
Yep. The Traveller universe assumes that liquid hydrogen is a common commodity, as is oxygen. Otherwise, the entire idea of spaceships moving around from place to place just wouldn't be viable. Hydrogen accounts for about 75% of the material universe (mainly in stars) and is easily the most abundant chemical. Both frozen Oxygen and Hydrogen have a lower volume than frozen ice (water being peculiar for expanding when the temperature drops). It's cheaper to manufacture water from hydrogen and oxygen, with heat, than it is to seperate water molecules through electrolysis, and both hydrogen and oxygen have other uses too.
Quote from: Dumarest;994443I'm not familiar with that. Is it a book by itself or part of a collection of anthology?
It is often reprinted in the better sf anthologies but is also out there as the title story in a short story collection.
Oh, I see Willie already answered. Thanks Willie.
Quote from: Willie the Duck;994541Not a separate book. It can be found in November 1952 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction, The Martian Way and Other Stories (1955), The Best of Isaac Asimov (1973), Robot Dreams (1986), or The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two (1973).
It had some neat ideas.
I'll have to keep an eye out for it. Thanks to you and Voros for the info.
Well, technically, there is a way to make up for this, depending on setting's technology and for a limited time. If the jump or jumps would be faster than going to the belt and mining asteroids or comets, and the Belt is far enough, it might be economically viable just this once, if there was some reason a big share of the water already on the desert planet would be lost, or couldn't be used.
People are willing to pay a lot in order to drink, and a few Free Traders might be the difference between people going without water or not.
Actually there might be a way to make this economical and sensible. Have there be water on the world, but make it contaminated with something biological (virus or bacteria or byproduct of either) that also taints the atmosphere. On world sources of water can't be used and water shipped in becomes contaminated within a few (1D) days.
Quote from: AsenRG;994798Well, technically, there is a way to make up for this, depending on setting's technology and for a limited time. If the jump or jumps would be faster than going to the belt and mining asteroids or comets, and the Belt is far enough, it might be economically viable just this once.
Well certainly. If were making a space station instead of an on-planet mine, we wouldn't bat an eye at them shipping in the water any more than we would the atmosphere or bulkheads that made up the station.
I think the overall argument is that hydrogen is abundant in all star systems. Oxygen is abundant in all star systems with the potential for mining. The idea of shipping in the bulk elements from however many jumps away (where you have to burn 10% of total mass of ship in hydrogen per parsec moved) just doesn't seem like it would make sense for any length of time. Obviously we can all dream up counter-narratives (after all, we have oil-producing countries in our world today who import gasoline). It all depends on whether the technological hurdles (and investments, in time and money) required in extracting H and O from the system vs. the investment of transit. And shipping stuff around in the Traveller-verse is actually relatively costly.
Quote from: Willie the Duck;994832Well certainly. If were making a space station instead of an on-planet mine, we wouldn't bat an eye at them shipping in the water any more than we would the atmosphere or bulkheads that made up the station.
I think the overall argument is that hydrogen is abundant in all star systems. Oxygen is abundant in all star systems with the potential for mining. The idea of shipping in the bulk elements from however many jumps away (where you have to burn 10% of total mass of ship in hydrogen per parsec moved) just doesn't seem like it would make sense for any length of time. Obviously we can all dream up counter-narratives (after all, we have oil-producing countries in our world today who import gasoline). It all depends on whether the technological hurdles (and investments, in time and money) required in extracting H and O from the system vs. the investment of transit. And shipping stuff around in the Traveller-verse is actually relatively costly.
That's why I specified it would work as a one-time event in case of emergency:).
Quote from: Schwartzwald;994430Not to bust on your post but in all fairness traveller tech may have developed to a point water wasn't needed for mining.
Maybe. But the continued presence of shotguns and cutlasses and multi-tonne computers in the original game doesn't suggest that. Mostly it's like
Aliens - "late 20th century plus fusion power and jump drive".
Some things are just chemistry. And chemistry needs water. If cheap abundant heat and electricity helped mining it might be less lasers and centrifuges, and more being able to make water from local minerals and atmospheres.
I'm all up for the PC's ship towing a massive iceberg in space - or towing a derelict ship. Whether it makes economic sense or not doesn't bother me. "Well, this is the price they'll pay you for it."
"But that doesn't make sense because -"
"So you're turning down 100,000 credits? Okay."
"Well no but -"
It's like when people are thinking about a postapocalyptic world, how did it get like that? My answer is, "Interesting question, dear players: now how will your characters go about finding out?"
It doesn't have to make perfect sense. The real world certainly doesn't.
You guys have given me some good ideas, thanks! That was really just a thought off the top of my head after thinking about some sci fi tropes of desert planets like Dune and Tatooine and then thinking about the Ice Pirates movie. I was thinking about some interesting worlds for a Traveller game. Another I want to rip off nearly wholesale is Scar, from The Jester at Scar. Harvesting dangerous fungus to scrape by...
Just run the numbers Take a J2 200T free trader strip out everything, think crew of 2-4 one cabin. This is sweat work. How many runs per quarter? 4x3=12, no maintenance or just in flight. Or maybe 11 per quarter. So 44 per year. What the yearly payment on the ship, the rules give it. Yearly salaries for crew, that given too. Add it all together to get yearly cost divide by liters hauled to get credits per liter. Go on google n see how various lifestyles consume water. But bare min is a liter per day. Say 400 liters year min for a human.
Water Connoisseurs. An economy that is shipping out a commodity much more valuable to a majority of economies than to their own. The ships are coming back anyway. Sure there is plenty of enough money being provided to produce water on world, but there is also enough money to provide exotic off world water. Coffee shops, ice, spa treatments, etc.. Water is a status symbol worth the cost.
I agree with Gunslinger.
Transport the Traveller equivalent of EVIAN. Amazon lists Evian for $22 for 6 half-liter bottles.
Here's an article explaining why Evian is expensive.
http://dollarsandsense.sg/3-reasons-why-evian-water-is-so-expensive/
Ok, using the Classic Traveller trading rules and selling the colonists Evian we get this business model;
ESS Sun Bride - Traveller Water Hauler, 200 Ton Type A Free Trader
Ebay currently has Evian going for $4 a liter.
So if we go dollars to credits, we get;
985 Metric Liters equals 1 Metric Ton.
So 1 Metric ton of Evian goes for 3,940 Cr
So you average Far Trader with a cargo space of 82 tons can make 25 2j shipments a year providing a desert planet with 2,050 Metric Tons of Water.
This will support approximately 4,000 colonists providing a water ration of 1L a day (With considerable high-efficiency recycling as well as moisture conservation, of course, this can turn entire swaths of a desert planet green).
So, this water transport will earn $8,077,000 Credits just hauling water. On the return trip from the desert planet to the water planet, good cargoes would be Petrochemicals 10,000 Cr/ton Radioactives 1,000,000 Cr per ton, Crystals 20,000 Cr per ton, and Pharmaceuticals 100,000 cr per ton so…
My average purchase Dms ensure I can buy the cargos at 50% of the listed values so… a typpical haul would be
Start on the Water planet
Buy 82 tons of water at $1,970 Cr per ton
$161,540 Cr
Fly 2 Jumps to the Desert Planet, this takes a day to travel out, two weeks for two jumps, another day of travel to dock One day to trade cargoes. Sell the water for 3,940 Cr per ton and earn 323,080 Cr
Buy cargo at the desert Planet for the water planet.
2 Tons of Radioactives, 1,000,000 Cr
6 Tons of Pharmaceuticals 300,000 Cr
3 Tons of Crystals 30,000 Cr.
71 Tons of Petrochemicals @ 5,000 Cr per ton 355,000 Cr
Total Price 1,685,000 Cr
Then 1 day to travel, Two weeks for the two Jumps, and a day of travel to dock yet again.
Sell the cargo at 100% of price on water planet.
2 Tons of Radioactives 2,000,000 Cr
6 Tons of of Pharmaceuticals 600,000, cr
3 Tons of Crystals 60,000 Cr
71 tons of Petrochemicals 710,000 Cr
Gross Earnings 3,370,000 Cr + 323,080 for a grand total of 3,693,080 Cr in four weeks and four days. Ten trips a year like this are possible, so;
Gross Annual Income for the Sun Bride is 36,930,800 Cr.
Now our expenses.
Cargo costs per trip
1,685,000 Cr + 161,540 Cr =
18,465,400 Cr per year.
Net Profit: 18,465,400 Cr per year
Now let's take a look at Sun Bride's Annual Operating Expenses
Annual Jump Drive Fuel Costs 30 tons per jump @ 4 jumps = 120*10 trips = 1200 tons
Annual Maneuver Drive Fuel Costs (see above)
600,000 Cr. Annually
Staterooms (Life support, etc.)
400,000 Cr Annually 10 staterooms * 4,000 Cr per round trip
Ship's Maintenance
37,080 Cr annually
Crew Payments
Captain 1,475,454 Cr (10% of the Net Profits)
Pilot 72,000 Cr Annually (+2.5% of net profits as bonus)
Engineer 48,000 Cr Annually (+2.5% of net profits as bonus)
Medic 24,000 Cr Annually (+2.5% of net profits as bonus)
Steward 36,000 Cr Annually (+2.5% of net profits as bonus)
Crew Total: 180,000 Cr per year (not counting the Captain and bonuses)
Standard 30 year Mortgage payment on the Sun Bride
37,080,000 Cr Purchase price.
29,664,000 Cr @ 30 years 7.5% Mortgage (this is the financed amount -20% down payment).
207,415 cr per month or
2,488,980 Cr annually
Standard Berthing Costs 400 Cr per month
4,800 Credits Annually
Total Annual Expenses
5,186,314
Captains Annual Salary
1,475,454 Cr
Net Annual Profits (after profit sharing with the entire crew)
11,803,632 Cr
Sun Bride can also sell and transport an additional 60 High or Mid passenger Tickets and 400 Low passage tickets for Interstellar Travellers to earn up to an addition 600,000 Cr (high passage) or 480,000 Cr (Mid passage) and possibly an additional 400,000 Cr for low passage passengers, between the two worlds. So possibly an additional 1,480,000 cr may be earned annually.
Little known facts
Total cost of this thirty year Starship Mortgage (premium + interest);
74,669,397 Cr
A far Trader being a Jump 1 ship, requires a fast refueling station that needs to be established 1J out where the starship can be refueled as the second jump is plotted, all this need to happen in about twelve hours or so, in between jumps twenty times a year.
Each crew member on the water hauler will receive an annual profit sharing bonus whose average value will be 368,863 Cr
Game Daddy, thanks for crunching those numbers! I never expected this thread would get so many interesting responses and ideas. Good job, everyone! I'll have to bounce more ideas off this wall...
Traveller is not a simulator.
Shawn is not a stimulator.
Quote from: Dumarest;995023You guys have given me some good ideas, thanks! That was really just a thought off the top of my head after thinking about some sci fi tropes of desert planets like Dune and Tatooine and then thinking about the Ice Pirates movie. I was thinking about some interesting worlds for a Traveller game. Another I want to rip off nearly wholesale is Scar, from The Jester at Scar. Harvesting dangerous fungus to scrape by...
You're welcome;)!
Quote from: GameDaddy;995293Ok, using the Classic Traveller trading rules and selling the colonists Evian we get this business model;
ESS Sun Bride - Traveller Water Hauler, 200 Ton Type A Free Trader
Ebay currently has Evian going for $4 a liter.
So if we go dollars to credits, we get;
985 Metric Liters equals 1 Metric Ton.
So 1 Metric ton of Evian goes for 3,940 Cr
So you average Far Trader with a cargo space of 82 tons can make 25 2j shipments a year providing a desert planet with 2,050 Metric Tons of Water.
This will support approximately 4,000 colonists providing a water ration of 1L a day (With considerable high-efficiency recycling as well as moisture conservation, of course, this can turn entire swaths of a desert planet green).
So, this water transport will earn $8,077,000 Credits just hauling water. On the return trip from the desert planet to the water planet, good cargoes would be Petrochemicals 10,000 Cr/ton Radioactives 1,000,000 Cr per ton, Crystals 20,000 Cr per ton, and Pharmaceuticals 100,000 cr per ton so...
My average purchase Dms ensure I can buy the cargos at 50% of the listed values so... a typpical haul would be
Start on the Water planet
Buy 82 tons of water at $1,970 Cr per ton
$161,540 Cr
Fly 2 Jumps to the Desert Planet, this takes a day to travel out, two weeks for two jumps, another day of travel to dock One day to trade cargoes. Sell the water for 3,940 Cr per ton and earn 323,080 Cr
Buy cargo at the desert Planet for the water planet.
2 Tons of Radioactives, 1,000,000 Cr
6 Tons of Pharmaceuticals 300,000 Cr
3 Tons of Crystals 30,000 Cr.
71 Tons of Petrochemicals @ 5,000 Cr per ton 355,000 Cr
Total Price 1,685,000 Cr
Then 1 day to travel, Two weeks for the two Jumps, and a day of travel to dock yet again.
Sell the cargo at 100% of price on water planet.
2 Tons of Radioactives 2,000,000 Cr
6 Tons of of Pharmaceuticals 600,000, cr
3 Tons of Crystals 60,000 Cr
71 tons of Petrochemicals 710,000 Cr
Gross Earnings 3,370,000 Cr + 323,080 for a grand total of 3,693,080 Cr in four weeks and four days. Ten trips a year like this are possible, so;
Gross Annual Income for the Sun Bride is 36,930,800 Cr.
Now our expenses.
Cargo costs per trip
1,685,000 Cr + 161,540 Cr =
18,465,400 Cr per year.
Net Profit: 18,465,400 Cr per year
Now let's take a look at Sun Bride's Annual Operating Expenses
Annual Jump Drive Fuel Costs 30 tons per jump @ 4 jumps = 120*10 trips = 1200 tons
Annual Maneuver Drive Fuel Costs (see above)
600,000 Cr. Annually
Staterooms (Life support, etc.)
400,000 Cr Annually 10 staterooms * 4,000 Cr per round trip
Ship's Maintenance
37,080 Cr annually
Crew Payments
Captain 1,475,454 Cr (10% of the Net Profits)
Pilot 72,000 Cr Annually (+2.5% of net profits as bonus)
Engineer 48,000 Cr Annually (+2.5% of net profits as bonus)
Medic 24,000 Cr Annually (+2.5% of net profits as bonus)
Steward 36,000 Cr Annually (+2.5% of net profits as bonus)
Crew Total: 180,000 Cr per year (not counting the Captain and bonuses)
Standard 30 year Mortgage payment on the Sun Bride
37,080,000 Cr Purchase price.
29,664,000 Cr @ 30 years 7.5% Mortgage (this is the financed amount -20% down payment).
207,415 cr per month or
2,488,980 Cr annually
Standard Berthing Costs 400 Cr per month
4,800 Credits Annually
Total Annual Expenses
5,186,314
Captains Annual Salary
1,475,454 Cr
Net Annual Profits (after profit sharing with the entire crew)
11,803,632 Cr
Sun Bride can also sell and transport an additional 60 High or Mid passenger Tickets and 400 Low passage tickets for Interstellar Travellers to earn up to an addition 600,000 Cr (high passage) or 480,000 Cr (Mid passage) and possibly an additional 400,000 Cr for low passage passengers, between the two worlds. So possibly an additional 1,480,000 cr may be earned annually.
Little known facts
Total cost of this thirty year Starship Mortgage (premium + interest);
74,669,397 Cr
A far Trader being a Jump 1 ship, requires a fast refueling station that needs to be established 1J out where the starship can be refueled as the second jump is plotted, all this need to happen in about twelve hours or so, in between jumps twenty times a year.
Each crew member on the water hauler will receive an annual profit sharing bonus whose average value will be 368,863 Cr
Then throw out some other Free Traders who want in on the sweet deals, and are willing to shoulder-push you out of them, for extra fun. Who says economics can't drive a fun game:D?
Quote from: Dumarest;995333Game Daddy, thanks for crunching those numbers! I never expected this thread would get so many interesting responses and ideas. Good job, everyone! I'll have to bounce more ideas off this wall...
Hrmm? Yes! I did miscalculate the total volume of water to be shipped though figuring initially twenty-five 2j trips each with water instead of ten round trip jumps with a single transport, including the two week downtime for annual maintenance. While the finance calculations are basically correct for the operation of the
Sun Bride, the ten annual shipments from the water planet will provide only 810 Metric Tons of water which will support only 797,850 Liters of water which is enough to support 1,994 colonists instead of 4,000.
...So, a single Type A Far Trader can support just a hair under 2,000 colonists annually.
A few additional notes;There are about 5-7 days a year extra in a calender year where the starship is not required to be in service or maintenance. These off-work Holiday dates can be at the discretion of the ships Captain.
With the net profits from this regularly scheduled trade run, three additional Type-A Free Traders can be purchased and put into service every two years, adding enough water for an additional 6,000 or so colonists, so the colony is limited to growth to about +3,000 colonists a year, on average. In ten years the colony would grow from 2,000 to 32,000 plus whatever the difference is between local childbirths and deaths. Historically in the last century, the population growth rate has been about 1-2% for the last century, so there would be approximately 32,120 after ten years at the colony. This number can easily change though if additional merchant companies build starships and ship water to the desert planet.
About 10% of the initial colonists, or 200 or so, would be required to work in the Industries that provide desert planet exports of Radioactives, Crystals, Pharmaceuticals,and Petrochemicals. of the other 1,800 or so initial settlers, I figure about half would be required to maintain and administer the colony, so that leaves 800 who could pick their professions (Mining, Agriculture, industry/manufacturing, Military/Mercenary Service, Science, or R&D) which would have the desert planet colony generate resources and additional exports which would be available as cargos.
The real moneymaker in this process is the extraction and refinement of radioactives which generates almost 1/3 of the total and more than 1/2 of the net profits for the colony. Next most profitable export would be, of course, the pharmaceuticals, although once manufacturing was ramped up, finished medical and science equipment, vehicles, aircraft, watercraft, robotics, spare parts, and spacecraft would all be good economic bets as desert planet exports.
There's also an excellent opportunity for one or more water recycling, water storage, and water distribution companies to be built. Any long-term disruption in the water transport service could prove hazardous to the colony, unless of course redundancy is built in with water storage and distrubtion facilities that could continue to provide water until whatever transport crisis exists would be over. Note also the local population would be highly motivated to ensure the continuance of the water supply, because water equals life for the colony... as well as freedom (a secondary benefit).
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;995391Traveller is not a simulator.
And you have nothing to contribute and feel left out of the conversation and desperately want affirmation as an authority on Traveller. Be sure to pout about that on YouTube where it will be duly ignored, much like your pointless blog.
Quote from: Dumarest;995425And you have nothing to contribute and feel left out of the conversation and desperately want affirmation as an authority on Traveller. Be sure to pout about that on YouTube where it will be duly ignored, much like your pointless blog.
Is there no more Traveller Mailing List? That, historically, was the place for pointless arguments, like mapping 2-D hexmaps to real 3-D star maps, and the like. Hmmm, twenty years ago, I guess...
Quote from: Kyle Aaron;995504Is there no more Traveller Mailing List? That, historically, was the place for pointless arguments, like mapping 2-D hexmaps to real 3-D star maps, and the like. Hmmm, twenty years ago, I guess...
No idea. I never visited many RPG sites or fora until recently
As for two-dimensional hex maps, I always assumed that since we're mapping distances based on jumps rather than actual spacial/spatial relationships, the maps weren't meant to be representational of actual locations. But we can argue pointlessly about it if you like. :p
Still going.
https://archives.simplelists.com/tml
All such questions I only answer in-game. I say, "It is indeed a mystery. Now what will your character do to solve it?" It usually turns out the player's not that interested after all.