On 8/25/2014 12:19 PM, Phil Pugliese (via tml list) wrote:
> This email was sent from yahoo.com which does not allow forwarding of emails via email lists. Therefore the sender's email address (xxxxxx@yahoo.com) has been replaced with a dummy one. The original message follows:
>
> Actually, there's another issue.
>
> I just don't believe that there would be *that* much trade volume on even the *heaviest* routes.
>
> I mean anyone can produce a table that will indicate that there will a gazillion dTons 'tween here & there but anyone else can also produce one that will show almost nothing in the same situation. From what I've read it appears that T5 leans heavily towards the latter rather than the former but haven't there been differences amongst each morph of Trav in this regard?
>
> I can remember reading about that on this very list, back in first 1/2 of the '90's.
> Someone, in response to a question, posted about how MT changed the 3I (or TU, can't remember exactly) from a setting of smaller merchantmen to one of massively gigantic ones.
>
> Still, that's where the 17th century maritime analogy, that has always been the template for the TU from the beginning, comes in.
> Esp by the late 18th century you had the monster warships w/ smaller merchantmen.
>
> Then there's also the comm lag.
>
> Obviously that's not present these days so how would that affect things?
> I think it would argue for smaller ship & more frequent visits.

The "Age of Sail" analogy can only be pushed so far before it breaks.
(And I think that Weber did just that with his HH books. :)

I mean, we're not building these starships out of bonded superdense oak,
with ultrabronze cannons loaded with laser grapeshot.  Nor is the frozen
watch at risk of developing scurvy.

We can fudge the feel a bit, with "mains" and terrain chokepoints and
no-comms-faster-than-travel and all that, but what's unavoidable is that
the scale is many orders of magnitude greater.  We're not dealing with
regions on one world, but multiple worlds, thousands of them, some of
them exceeding even 2014 Earth in terms of population, technology,
industry/production volume, etc.

Back in 1650, sure, you probably could fit all of Puerto Rico's incoming
and outgoing cargo for a week into a handful of caravels.  I'm willing
to bet that its volume of shipping today is "somewhat" higher. :/

--
---------------
Kelly St. Clair
xxxxxx@efn.org