Hello all,

I'm in the middle of taking Asimov's description of Trantor and trying
to Travellerise it.

Long story short, the food imports account for ~12 million dton/day of
cargo that needs to be shifted from orbit to groundside.

GURPS Traveller: Starports, p 63, mentions both beanstalks and catapults
as alternatives to shuttle service for transferring cargo, but doesn't
go much further.  I get the impression that both are substantially more
capital-intensive than shuttle service but substantially cheaper to run.

As I'm the type of obsessive wombat who wants to figure out how much it
_costs_ to import that food, does anyone have any ideas on how much such
an array of beanstalks would end up costing at GTL 11/12?  (TTL D-F, if
I've got it right).

Sure, for trivial amounts of cargo, shuttle service might work out
cheaper (although shuttle service will need ~3 million dton of shuttle
cargo volume, per GT:SP p64).  This is feeding a _planet_.

Alex

--