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Jan. 20th, 2009
Space Commerce
Jan. 20th, 2009 06:12 amSo I'm trying to figure out what exactly interstellar trade would look like. There's a lot of pure speculation here.
I'm going to make a couple assumptions. I'm going to assume that cyber-reality hasn't consumed the entirety of humanity and there are still people who will require goods. Preferably a lot of people who want a lot of stuff. I'm also going to assume that fusion is a fairly common technology at the time we're considering.
First, it's probably obvious that trade containers will be standardized after some point. I have the feeling that the bulk containers will be hexagonal on one face (and it's opposite). Hexagonal lattice structures are efficient at space-filling, and grinding out planar surfaces is easy manufacturing. Seems like a safe guess, it's also not really essential to later topics.
Society won't be needlessly bound to gravitational wells. As long as there are sources of power available (Solar or Fusion are likely candidates) people will be able to survive. With sources of energy you can reclaim waste water and turn CO2 back into atomic carbon and molecular oxygen. Raw materials are easy to come by: just swing by a gas giant, scoop up hydrogen, and use a fusion reactor to perform alchemy and get the elements you need. Nanomachines or even rather boring and primitive techniques like plain-old chemistry can assemble the elements into whatever molecules and structures you need. The only materials that might be difficult, or non-efficient, to create this way are trans-uranic elements. In a world where Fusion is common, however, I'm not sure those elements would be in great enough demand on their own to justify building ships to ferry such cargoes around.
Then it follows that unless society decides to locate itself in deep space, relatively far from any source of material, that there is little to no need for interstellar shipping. There is almost no reason to locate your space society away from a star: Building relatively near a star has advantages such as proximity to material and a long-term energy source in the star's nuclear furnace. (Of course if you have the ability to mine the star for all of its hydrogen maybe this is a faulty deduction. But that level of supertech is probably beyond even what we're discussing here.)
Then if we're building our interstellar society near stars, over the course of centuries, it's unlikely you'll need to send away to another solar system for materials. With hydrogen from gas giants, or heavier elements from terrestrial worlds or ice giants, you'll be able to make whatever good you have need of out of local materials.
Not enough Carbon for your greenhouse or organic synthesis? Tune your nuclear reactor up to Triple-Alpha burning and you'll have plenty of carbon. Need Oxygen? Take a bunch of carbon, a bunch of helium, and turn the heat way, way up. Granted it's not as simple as that, but one of our postulates is that people can run Fusion reactors effectively, so by assumption they can do this.
In the end trade in physical goods seems to be a relatively dead trade: unless some sort of unfrabicatable material comes along, like remnant supersymmetric particles or useful and manipulatable dark matter.
Which leaves us with the only other kind of trade: information and culture. In the absence of supraluminal travel of some kind information, news, music, movies, and so on are the only way for the various worlds of the future to trade with each other. Even with supraluminal (faster than light in my lingo) travel, given the discussion above, it's likely that information is still the primary trade good. If information thus is such an important good, protecting it will be vital. There are then two options for how such trade can be accomplished: radio and other telecommunication means or packet ships. The former is more likely but far less interesting. The latter adds a human element and is more exciting, but is predicated on the unlikely premise that computing power will be sufficient for non-customers to crack whatever ludicrous encryption schemes and pirate the information being sold.
From a story perspective then, a combination of supraluminal travel and ships carrying the vital cultural trade cargoes would be pretty interesting. Culture pirates hunting for new songs and books, data angels illicitly distributing information that begs to be free, and info-security officers trying to guard the local culture both from unwanted outside influences and from local thieves trying to spread it unregulatedly.
I'm going to make a couple assumptions. I'm going to assume that cyber-reality hasn't consumed the entirety of humanity and there are still people who will require goods. Preferably a lot of people who want a lot of stuff. I'm also going to assume that fusion is a fairly common technology at the time we're considering.
First, it's probably obvious that trade containers will be standardized after some point. I have the feeling that the bulk containers will be hexagonal on one face (and it's opposite). Hexagonal lattice structures are efficient at space-filling, and grinding out planar surfaces is easy manufacturing. Seems like a safe guess, it's also not really essential to later topics.
Society won't be needlessly bound to gravitational wells. As long as there are sources of power available (Solar or Fusion are likely candidates) people will be able to survive. With sources of energy you can reclaim waste water and turn CO2 back into atomic carbon and molecular oxygen. Raw materials are easy to come by: just swing by a gas giant, scoop up hydrogen, and use a fusion reactor to perform alchemy and get the elements you need. Nanomachines or even rather boring and primitive techniques like plain-old chemistry can assemble the elements into whatever molecules and structures you need. The only materials that might be difficult, or non-efficient, to create this way are trans-uranic elements. In a world where Fusion is common, however, I'm not sure those elements would be in great enough demand on their own to justify building ships to ferry such cargoes around.
Then it follows that unless society decides to locate itself in deep space, relatively far from any source of material, that there is little to no need for interstellar shipping. There is almost no reason to locate your space society away from a star: Building relatively near a star has advantages such as proximity to material and a long-term energy source in the star's nuclear furnace. (Of course if you have the ability to mine the star for all of its hydrogen maybe this is a faulty deduction. But that level of supertech is probably beyond even what we're discussing here.)
Then if we're building our interstellar society near stars, over the course of centuries, it's unlikely you'll need to send away to another solar system for materials. With hydrogen from gas giants, or heavier elements from terrestrial worlds or ice giants, you'll be able to make whatever good you have need of out of local materials.
Not enough Carbon for your greenhouse or organic synthesis? Tune your nuclear reactor up to Triple-Alpha burning and you'll have plenty of carbon. Need Oxygen? Take a bunch of carbon, a bunch of helium, and turn the heat way, way up. Granted it's not as simple as that, but one of our postulates is that people can run Fusion reactors effectively, so by assumption they can do this.
In the end trade in physical goods seems to be a relatively dead trade: unless some sort of unfrabicatable material comes along, like remnant supersymmetric particles or useful and manipulatable dark matter.
Which leaves us with the only other kind of trade: information and culture. In the absence of supraluminal travel of some kind information, news, music, movies, and so on are the only way for the various worlds of the future to trade with each other. Even with supraluminal (faster than light in my lingo) travel, given the discussion above, it's likely that information is still the primary trade good. If information thus is such an important good, protecting it will be vital. There are then two options for how such trade can be accomplished: radio and other telecommunication means or packet ships. The former is more likely but far less interesting. The latter adds a human element and is more exciting, but is predicated on the unlikely premise that computing power will be sufficient for non-customers to crack whatever ludicrous encryption schemes and pirate the information being sold.
From a story perspective then, a combination of supraluminal travel and ships carrying the vital cultural trade cargoes would be pretty interesting. Culture pirates hunting for new songs and books, data angels illicitly distributing information that begs to be free, and info-security officers trying to guard the local culture both from unwanted outside influences and from local thieves trying to spread it unregulatedly.
Tenchi Muyo GXP
Jan. 20th, 2009 06:47 amI've been taking in this anime a little at a time lately, and it's getting better as episodes go by. To be honest, the first episode almost had me stop watching it. But I decided to give it a shot, and it's been pretty funny since (up to episode 9 now). I give it a 6.5 out of 10 so far. We'll see if it gets better or worse! Or at least stays as silly and usually funny as it has been the last several episodes.
