On Thu, 6 Jun 2013, Onno Meyer wrote:
Johannes replied to me:
I guess a lot depends on, what the costs of sending a ship to the belt and
around in the belt are, and how big the mining operation is.
Well, that depends on the size of the deep space industry :-)
Vehicles has some rules for one-of-a-kind designs, but when you
assemble an one-of-a-kind ship at Ceres, prices should skyrocket.
Unless there is a major shipyard in the belt, with supporting
industries and large populations. Then it becomes reasonable to
apply list prices again ...
If you have many small mining operations, you can have mass produced
ships, fitting for small operations. Maybe there are customers, who fear
a big mining operation is going to get leverage to control them, so they
rather each finance their own mining operation.
It would be still for a one ship operation.
You also could have larger mining operations there, which would lead to a
belt with population, and all operations done by non jump capable ships.
Why mine the belt? To extract materials for the spaceborne
industry.
Why have a spaceborne industry? To support the population
in the belt.
Why have a population in the belt? To mine the belt.
If the initial funding was a commercial venture on the
homeworld, they must have had some plan to get the
profits back to the homeworld.
It could have been colonists, or military bases, or a
non-profit scientific venture which provided the initial
impetus, of course.
I'm thinking of some sort of space-metals-to-Earth scheme.
Astereoid wars by Ben Bova is close to what you look for i think. If i
remember correctly though, they also don't have a distinction between
miners and prospectors, altough i have not given it that much attention,
when i read it. Though given how much attention was given to drive out the
competition, it's quite beleivable, that not so much attention was given
to optimize mining.
_______________________________________________
GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]>
http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
