Re: Interplanetary Economy

In message <IZyOe.11586$g47.5714@trnddc07>, Logan Kearsley <chrono.surfer@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes

Saturn's economy is primarily driven by exports from He3 mining in
Saturn's atmosphere.  The largest colony is on Titan.  With lots of
hydrocarbons, and energy from He3 mining, titan would be a significant
food producer.


So we're assuming easy, efficient fusion, then. Personally, I'd stick with
better proven stuff, but I'll just take this as a background assumption for
your setting.
Titan might be a significant food producer, but more than likely that'll
just end up making the residents fat. Look at the trouble we have moving
large amounts of food around on Earth- there's no way you're going to make
it practical to transport significant amounts of food from Titan to the rest
of the solar system. People might still want hydrocarbons and nitrogen from
Titan for ship atmosphere / propellant / whatever.

You can use either water or methane as a propellant in a fusion torch, depending on what you have to hand. I'm not sure whether the same ship would be able to convert from one to the other. Methane is a lot less corrosive than water. I've been considering whether light metals like sodium alloys would be usable as construction materials in space, definitely not if water is used as a working fluid.


The asteroid belt, being so diffuse, would probably not be a single
political entity.  I am assuming it would be home to independent
prospectors, and small private mining companies.  Energy would come
chiefly from He3 powered fusion reactors.  Mining installations very
near the Sun might use solar, but the ships would all be fusion
powered, in order to make deliveries further out, or prospect far-out
asteroids.  Exports would consist of whatever is found in Asteroids and
comets that wouldn't be readily available near Jupiter and Saturn.  I'm
not sure exactly what this would be, yet.  Both Jupiter and Saturn have
a lot of small moons, where you should be able to find a lot of raw
materials.


OK, so how near is "near the Sun"? Solar is still good way out to Jupiter,
you just need bigger panels/mirrors. And bigger panels aren't a problem in
zero-g. If you mean fusion-powered as in fusion-torch engine, I'd reserve
that for a few special torchships that really need to get places fast. For
just carting freight, you can get along with wasting a lot less energy and
taking more time. For slow electric-engined ships, fusion generators are
probably a good idea out around/past Jupiter, but inner-system stuff can
probably get by on solar. Or even beamed power, although that would require
the ship to depend on an entirely separate powerplant, and depending on the
attitude of the inhabitants of your setting, they may or may not feel
squicky about that.

There's a story in there somewhere. Rivalry between established solar sails and fusion torches might parallel the history of canals and railways (then rail and road) in the UK.


As for belt political structure, you might have some real nations set up
around some of the larger / more prominent asteroids like Vesta, Ceres,
Eros, etc. What I'm working with right now in building my own setting is the
idea that a bunch of belt-miners pretty much figure that their home-nations
on Earth or Mars or whatever are pretty much irrelevant to them (if I break
a law a million miles away, who's going to enforce it?), set up a loose
federation/co-op/whatever, and purposefully set up on a few prominent
asteroids (except one groups which builds a gigantic space station pretty
much by docking a whole lot of ships together and removing the engines) as
communications centers, and then that whole set-up eventually evolves into
three or four belter nations, but with citizens moving completely freely in
and out of them, retaining their national identities by and for not much
more than pride.

I'm not sure whether there really would be multiple "nations" in the belt. Comparing communication times I suspect the political structure would be similar to the USA or perhaps Australia in the late 19th century. I think that a federated structure would make sense. It depends on how easy it would be for a central government to send in a gunboat to suppress rebellion.

I suspect that a government system nearer to Australia's is more likely. The federal structure of the US was set up at a time when access to the coasts was relatively easy, but access to inland areas was relatively poor. In Australia all of the main towns were equally accessible, all being on the coast. That didn't allow any of the major towns to develop political independence.

--
Bernard Peek
London, UK. DBA, Manager, Trainer & Author.

.

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