David replied to me: > > SpinDevCorp Stormbird Amphibian Seaplane v1.0 (Late TL6) > > Copyright 2006 by Onno Meyer > > > > SpinDevCorp sells kits and plans for the Stormbird on underdeveloped > > worlds which cannot maintain contragrav technology or jet engines. The > > seaplane needs only a river or lake, a pier and a few fuel tanks as an > > airport, and ordinary mechanics should understand the manuals for the > > internal combustion engines. > > This is what bugs me about traveller. "We'll import low-tech crap!" > Not a chance! You might be able to sell a vehicle like this, but > you'd do it with TL9 or so tech, which would give a maintance interval > of roughly the time before someone would fly it into a mountain, > anyway. > David Scheidt
As long as cargo transport is cheap enough - and a displacement ton of cargo are something like 12.5 stons of engine parts or 100 stons of steel plates - people might import cheap low-tech crap if it is more cost-effective than the advanced stuff. To calculate cost-effectiveness, you have to look at the cost and the effectiveness. I think that late TL6 hits a sweet spot in this regard, it starts to be marginally effective when it comes to cars and trucks and boats and planes, TL6- gear has an inflation adjustment written into the base cost and on top of that come the exchange rates from GT Far Trader. I don't think TL7 or TL8 aircraft are cost-effective. This seaplane is about Cr116,000 in TL12 Imperial Credits or $375,000 in TL10 credits. An air/raft or g-carrier for that price has probably a higher payload capacity in stons, but less passenger space. It will be roughly twice as fast, so that evens out. Neither one needs specialized runways. The seaplane needs two pilots, a steward and a mechanic (or rather two half-time mechanics at either end of the trip), all trained at TL6. The g-carrier needs one or two pilots and and maybe a quarter of a mechanic, all familiar with TL10 technology. Summarized, this would be build on low-wage TL6 worlds for export to other TL6 worlds, not for export to TL8+ worlds. In a TL6 world well connected to interstellar trade, you'd probably dump the TL6 long-range radio and navigation instruments and take a TL10 short-range radio and GPS instead, but not when the nearest qualified maintenance tech is two jumps and four weeks away. Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
