Introduction
Well, although it probably only really matters to me, I thought I’d do a thought exercise with 2300AD trade. For the purposes of this article, we’ll be dealing with a simplified economy of 2 planets, how are 8 virtual light years (i.e. including insystem travel) apart. Both have 10 million populations and PC GDP of 5,000 livre. Both have exactly 1G of gravity. Trade is balanced.
Unfortunately, the authors never intended 2300AD characters to own ships (AG: 61), and so never gave total and complete running costs for ships, but did give us ticket prices. Since profits aren’t going to be that large, I’ve just used ticket prices.
Thus, all figures are from page 21, the 2300AD Adventurers Guide (AG: 21).
The High Cost of Shipping
To ship simple bulks like ore, the planets use a catapult/ dead fall system to and from orbit (Lv990 per ton). Manufactured and bulk agricultural goods use shuttles (Lv 3,300 per ton), while luxury goods use spaceplanes (Lv 4,950 per ton). Each person travelling between the two planets also pays Lv 4,950 to and from orbit. There is no beanstalk.
The cost of hauling ore from one planet to the other is Lv24 per ton. Manufactured and bulk agricultural goods Lv40 per ton, and luxury goods Lv160 per ton. Passenger accommodations are Lv800 for a 2nd class ticket, and Lv4,000 for 1st class. A 3rd class "steerage" ticket (live in the cargo hold) is Lv400.
Totalling lift and haulage costs, and giving a quick dollar conversion:
Starships
A typical 2300AD freighter (a Krupp 821, BC-4 etc.) travels warp 0.67 loaded, with maybe 4,000 tons of cargo. A bulk freighter (like an Anjou or Cargomax) also travels about warp 0.67 loaded, with about 25,000 tons.
The distance is 8 virtual light years, and the journey takes 12 days, plus 1.6 days to discharge the stutterwarp (which I’ll assume is done while loading/ unloading for simplicity). Taking KevinC’s 5/6th rule (which seems sensible) a round trip between the two planets takes 32.64 days, and each ship makes 11.183 trips per year.
This means that the haulage rates are:
Each world has a GPP of 50 billion livre. We’ll save that for later.
Every kg of manufactured goods imported costs an extra 3.34 livre (about $15). Now this means that most items are not going to be worth importing, they’ll never sell (Planet A built frying pan: $1, Planet B built frying pan: $16, which would you buy?). It is only worth importing an object if, after travel costs, it is cheaper at the destination.
So what can be traded?
For a start, items which can’t be obtained on the destination planet. If Planet B has no zinc, and it has a manufacturing base, it must obtain zinc from Planet A. Bulk zinc is cheaper to import than the manufactured goods containing zinc, thus zinc containing objects cost less on B after zinc trade than before.
High value items like computer chips can be traded.
However, if a world has no apples, can you bulk export apples to it? No. This comes under the heading of Luxuries, a kilo of apples from world A cost $24 on planet B, whereas locally grown oranges cost $1 per kilo. Trade in them will occur, but not at significant levels.
So, ignoring the cost of buying goods, how much of the economy would be spent transporting them?
Modern wet-trade estimates of 1 ton per person per year are plainly ridiculous. That 1 ton, if 50/50 ore and manufactured goods costs Lv2,177 per person in transport costs, about 44% of the economy would be invested in transport!
Better estimates can be achieved by just stating "we spend x% of GDP
on transport" and working from there. The below assumes the same 50/50
split as above.
| % of GDP | Trade (in kg) per person per year |
| 1% | 23kg |
| 2% | 45.9kg |
| 3% | 68.9kg |
| 4% | 91.9kg |
| 5% | 114.8kg |
| 6% | 137.8kg |
| 7% | 160.8kg |
| 8% | 183.7kg |
| 9% | 206.7kg |
| 10% | 229.7kg |
A safe bet level would be 100kg per person per year, about 5-7% of GDP once people and luxuries transport is taken into account.
Colonisation
Now, lets suppose planet A was located another potential ore-rich colony world, planet C and wishes to send colonists there. For the purposes of argument, A, B and C form a perfect equilateral triangle.
The York example shows how expensive a proposition this. Colonists require 10 tons of material (tractors, pre-fabs etc.) shipped with them. The cost is Lv39,150 per colonist just for the outbound shipping. Since the colony ship returns empty, this should be doubled to Lv40,000 per person. The materials shipped are likely to cost at least another Lv100,000 (if tractors and pre-fab housing). In addition, infrastructure to handle the colonists must also be shipped. It’s a huge investment, a colony costs at least 1 million dollars per colonist to set up, and potentially several times this.
Planet A constructs 2 Yorks (the same as Canadas colonial programme uses) and exports 91,200 colonists to C every year, and a transport cost of about 12.8 billion livre per annum (about 1/4 of their GDP is being poured into the colonial effort). After a few years the cost starts to decrease as the colonists start exporting ore, and eventually a profit is made.
2300AD Example: Doris
As an aside, how much does Canadas colonial programme cost? Transport for each colonist costs Lv63,387, plus the materials transported (Lv100,000+), so each York journey costs the Canadian government . Each of Canada 2 Yorks can make 5.75 journeys a year, delivering 900 colonists each time, so the total cost is at least 656.1 Million Livre (for a purely agricultural colony), about half of 1% of GDP (about US$118 per person in todays terms). Just over 10,000 new colonists step off the shuttle to Doris every year. Dorii population would be around half a million in 2300.
Trade with the colony would be on the order of 50,000 tons a year, each transport make 2.4 trips per year. The colony is too small for a bulk carrier to be employed, so a fleet of roughly 11 small freighters would ply the routes between Doris and Earth. Import costs for Ore (Principle Dorii Export) are Lv3,554 per ton (total cost Mlv177.7), while Export Costs of 50/50 Manufactured Goods/ Luxuries cost Lv5,183.375 per ton (MLv259.2). Transport costs are 436.9 Million Livre. Shipping between Earth and Doris (total) costs 1,093 Million Livre. The value of trade is difficult to calculate, but initial guesses give an income from trade of 2,500 Million Livre (for a 1.4 billion livre profit from the colony, about an extra $56 in every Canadians pocket), simply from the extra manufacturing that the ore gives terrestrial Canada, though this is the one figure in this article that is questionable, as it has a rather large assumption attached. The GDP of the colony is also around 2.5 Billion Livre.
Ship Numbers
Now, the trade between A and B is roughly 2,000,000 tons per annum (both ways). 3.6 Bulk Freighters would carry it, as would 22.4 smaller freighters. If 50% is carried by each (roughly) then 13 starships can carry the trade between these 2 worlds. Oh, plus those 2 Yorks.
With this in mind, you can expand the economy to 28 major colony worlds, 2 core worlds, and a host of outposts and bases.
Without pulling huge tables out, I’ll tell you that the 3,300 starships number given in the 2300AD Resource (but just pulled out of thin air by the author, I’ve read the gENIE achieves), can more than carry humanities travel requirement.
There, didn’t even mention tantalum once. Opps! ;-)