To push down trade that far, you need widespread "super manufacturing"
-- nanotech, 3D printers, all-robot workforces, or the like. And any
of those break the Trav background much worse than do big container
ships.

On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 1:30 PM, Phil Pugliese (via tml list)
<xxxxxx@simplelists.com> 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:
>
>
> --------------------------------------------
> On Mon, 8/25/14, Kelly St. Clair <xxxxxx@efn.org> wrote:
>
>  Subject: Re: [TML] expected ship traffic
>  To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com
>  Date: Monday, August 25, 2014, 12:57 PM
>
>  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
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> I, myself, have also previously expressed the opinion concerning "pushing the analogy".
>
> So then what it comes down to, IMO, is this;
>
> How would the super-tech (compared to the present day) levels w/i the TU affect trade volume?
>
> IMO it would be much, much lower than MT levels.
>
> And, from what I've read, T5 seems to indicate that it's even lower still.
>
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--
Craig Berry (http://google.com/+CraigBerry)
"Eternity is in love with the productions of time." - William Blake