Even with FTL civilizations you are likely to end up with small scale prospectors during periods of expansion as long as the FTL technology is not prohibitively expensive. As settled systems populate all the really good prospecting claims are going to be bought up and huge companies are probably going to own most of the best claims. That means that small venture groups willing to take high risk trips could to go to the next star over and make their claims out there in the frontier. Sure the big companies will likely be doing this as well, but their core business will be in the more developed system. The higher expense due to the additional risk and travel time means only the highest quality claims will be worth the effort in the short term. Most likely a prospector ship would go out, find the claims worth the additional effort, record all the information needed to present their claim back home, then return with samples and file the claim. Afterwords a larger longer term mining expedition could be more easily funded since a valuable claim has already been documented.
Out there in the frontiers of space lots of accidents can happen. System failures, human errors, greed driven over-extended trips, and don't forget the possibility of claim jumpers and pirates. All of these things could leave many ships out there somewhere floating in the void. The archeologists could be following these kinds of things much like modern treasure hunters do. "We know the Edmond Fitzgerald II went down somewhere in the Ort cloud of Bernard's star, the last communication we got via STL took 8 years to arrive but said they had found something big and were coming back rich, but that their return trip may be longer than expected due to fluctuations in their FTL drive. Using the best triangulation we can from the message arrival times at various locations in the system we estimate its last know position to be about here." The value of old industrial equipment can depend a lot on what it does. I know of many tool manufacturing plants still using drop forges from the 1930's. And basic ore processing hasn't changed much in the last 50 years - sure new things are more efficient but some places will keep using their capital equipment until the business case for a replacement practically slaps them in the face (and old equipment needs spare parts). Plus don't forget that the old equipment is likely to be valuable as archeological relics as well (either museum artifacts or just plain collectables amongst rich enthusiasts). And speaking of later mining expeditions, the possibility that one of these could be lost exists as well. If while mining out a large asteroid some accident happens (gas explosion, high mass high relative velocity impact, alien infestation, crazy anti-social miner goes postal) then you could have a partially completed asteroid ship or hollowed out asteroid suddenly take on an unknown and undocumented vector. Months later when an investigation/rescue ship gets to where it should be, nothing will be there but some debris. If the vector changed enough and the location has enough similar sized objects nearby then the place may be too difficult to find in the rescuers window of opportunity - which leaves a great mystery for later adventurers to research and track down. In this case the "derelict" could be quite large, practically a small space station with tunnels and rooms just like a proper "dungeon". Clint *********************************** Onno replied with: > These ships would > be small enough that small co-ops and venture companies could fund one, > they would head out to unpopulated areas especially in asteroid belts and > ort clouds where accidents can happen and ships get lost. You are assuming a STL civilizsation, right? With a stardrive, why go into the outback if you can jump to another system? > The could be > full of expensive industrial equipment, valuable ore samples, and > potentially lucrative survey study databanks of where high quality > comets/asteroids/planetoids are. All of this plus the archeological value > of an actual historic ship from the old prospector days. I fear it has either archaeological or industrial value, but not both. If equipment is young enough to be operational, or the orbits haven't been perturbed by passing junk, then it doesn't have that much historical value. _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
