Clinton replied to me: > 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.
Hello Clint, that was what I had in mind, I think ... small FTL prospectors going for the inner belts of another system rather than small STL prospectors going for the oort cloud in a settled system. > 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." Why would he bother with the oort cloud of barnard if there are unclaimed riches in the main belt of tau ceti, just one more week of hyperflight away? > 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). Well, if there is a collector's market, it wouldn't be used for industrial work. That's like taking a mint-condition 30's sedan for the pizza delivery service. Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
