Feeding Worlds

[grondak]

Space Grain Train

I did some rough math on an idea I had for this... if we have consistent grain crops on world A and consistent customers on world X, and a super-tech preservative (stasis?), we could take a very long term view.

We could avoid the use of Jump drives and go with "Not as fast as light" drives for hauling cargo. The NAFAL example in the T5 BBB shows a 0.2G NAFAL drive. I wanted to understand how long it would take to get the quadrotriticale from A to X with NAFAL. Let's say they are Jump 2, 3.26*2ly away.

51 weeks of acceleration
30844800 seconds in 51 weeks
0.2 fraction of G from the NAFAL example
9.8 m/s/s value of G
1.96 m/s/s computed acceleration
60455808 m/s, from v=at , velocity after 51 weeks of constant acceleration
60455.808 k/s conversion to kilometers/second
299792 k/s ( c) value of speed of light
0.201659177 %c attained after 51 weeks

3.26 parsecs per light year
2 parsecs distance
6.52 ly
32.3317792726 years to move the grain
51 weeks to speed up (nearly a year)
51 weeks to slow down (again nearly a year)
31.something years to deliver grain, counting some of the time under drive power to reduce the total 32.3 years at max velocity.



So, with my tongue firmly in my cheek, it is possible to get 31 year old grain (something less than 520 tons of grain (i.e. 240 dTons for fuel in and outbound for a 1000 dTon ship = total 480 tons of fuel , 1000-480 = 520 tons for other things and cargo) on a space grain train... maybe they launch a ship 6 times a year and hope for arrival. They'd need 186 ships to keep the train going, and twice that for the returns, and maybe a few more for spares.

For an empire that exists 1100+ years, who cares about 31 years?:file_21:

PS I'll finish out the NAFAL cargo ship and then build an equivalent-tonnage jump drive ship and play the efficiency game if requested. I can't tell from just the fuel displacement if the NAFAL or jump drive ship will win, so I left this as a sort of a farce.

 

[atpollard]

Classic traveller gives formulas for calculating trips using maneuver drive with acceleration to turnover at midpoint and deceleration to destination. It never says that a md is limited to STL travel, so just run the MD the whole trip and see how long it takes.

I bet you can get the grain train trip time well below one year.

 

[GrayPennell]

I did some rough math on an idea I had for this... if we have consistent grain crops on world A and consistent customers on world X, and a super-tech preservative (stasis?), we could take a very long term view.

We could avoid the use of Jump drives and go with "Not as fast as light" drives for hauling cargo. The NAFAL example in the T5 BBB shows a 0.2G NAFAL drive. I wanted to understand how long it would take to get the quadrotriticale from A to X with NAFAL. Let's say they are Jump 2, 3.26*2ly away.

51 weeks of acceleration
30844800 seconds in 51 weeks
0.2 fraction of G from the NAFAL example
9.8 m/s/s value of G
1.96 m/s/s computed acceleration
60455808 m/s, from v=at , velocity after 51 weeks of constant acceleration
60455.808 k/s conversion to kilometers/second
299792 k/s ( c) value of speed of light
0.201659177 %c attained after 51 weeks

3.26 parsecs per light year
2 parsecs distance
6.52 ly
32.3317792726 years to move the grain
51 weeks to speed up (nearly a year)
51 weeks to slow down (again nearly a year)
31.something years to deliver grain, counting some of the time under drive power to reduce the total 32.3 years at max velocity.



So, with my tongue firmly in my cheek, it is possible to get 31 year old grain (something less than 520 tons of grain (i.e. 240 dTons for fuel in and outbound for a 1000 dTon ship = total 480 tons of fuel , 1000-480 = 520 tons for other things and cargo) on a space grain train... maybe they launch a ship 6 times a year and hope for arrival. They'd need 186 ships to keep the train going, and twice that for the returns, and maybe a few more for spares.

For an empire that exists 1100+ years, who cares about 31 years?:file_21:

PS I'll finish out the NAFAL cargo ship and then build an equivalent-tonnage jump drive ship and play the efficiency game if requested. I can't tell from just the fuel displacement if the NAFAL or jump drive ship will win, so I left this as a sort of a farce.

You probably dont have to do the build outs. The jump drive weight ratio is about the same so you will get the same tonnage delivered. The price might be higher but you will get your food much faster.

 

[Carlobrand]

Classic traveller gives formulas for calculating trips using maneuver drive with acceleration to turnover at midpoint and deceleration to destination. It never says that a md is limited to STL travel, so just run the MD the whole trip and see how long it takes.

I bet you can get the grain train trip time well below one year.

If he's limited to Einsteinian space, he can't ever reach C using maneuver drives. Ergo, minimum travel time for 2 parsecs is something under 7 years - more, after factoring in time to accelerate and decelerate.

Worse, long travel times and high velocities conspire to make interstellar space a dangerous place. A statistically remote possibility approaches certainty given enough years and enough trillions of kilometers to cross; if you're flying near C, the occasional tiny speck'll drill through your ship like a hot radioactive needle through butter.

 

[Selandia]

I wouldn't think there'd be much worry over competition either, in this particular case. A world of 26 billion with an elite class in the hundreds of millions, importing sea food from a world of 800 thousand - even assuming the Moughas economy's centered on industrial fishing and is harvesting massive quantities, it's still only going to be a rather small percentage of the calories needed by Rethe and therefore a luxury item; lots of room in the Rethian economy for vat-farmed tuna-helper for the riff-raff. Similarly, the 40 million of Inthe might provide a decent fraction of Rethe's caloric needs, but it's still going to be something "special" 'cause there's just too many people there for 40 million souls to feed; the Rethians're going to have to come up with some way to meet the greater fraction of their own needs.

Actually, there are more worlds beside Moughas (Roup is J2+J2 waterworld) and Inthe (Focaline is another J2 agriworld) that supply "real" foods to Rethe, however for reasons you so well put that leaves plenty to the vats.

What this example shows is the fact that starship traffic from a world's feeding need should really be a two way street analysis, based in some case more on what you export than you import. Moughas, Roup, Focaline and Inthe do have a ready market for any food they can ship out. If working a math formula, it would make sense for a planet only as a part of regional trade pattern.

have fun

Selandia
Selandia

 

[rancke]

Almost every world will import some amount of luxury foodstuff. There will be a few exceptions, but not many. So if a two-paragraph writeup of a world mentions that it imports food, I think the obvious inference would be that it imports unusually large amounts of foodstuff (relative to its population size). Contrariwise, if a writeup doesn't mention food imports, they're probably not unusually large.

Since we're in the realm of implications and inferences, you can probably fudge a bit if you really want to, but as a rule of thumb I think the proposition above applies.


Hans

 

[GrayPennell]

The problem with my example is the write ups say they need all the food from three worlds. That this also has local geopolitical issues as alliances have been built in the District around the issue.

 

[rancke]

The problem with my example is the write ups say they need all the food from three worlds. That this also has local geopolitical issues as alliances have been built in the District around the issue.

If you're talking about the Ag World Combine, I don't think there's any mention of Collace and Forine needing the food from Tarsus, Motmos, and Tarkine. Just that the three Ag worlds sell to them.


Hans

 

[Timerover51]

it has been written that planet A needs the agricultural goods from planets X, Y, Z.

1. How much is that?
2. How do they farm that?
3. How do they transport that amount?

I have quite a bit of data on crop yields at various tech levels, also food requirements over an average period of time, along with some extrapolations from current systems. In general, one acre of agricultural land in say the Midwest of the US or Europe will product sufficient food to feed 4 people for one year, assuming a 6 month growing season. That does allow for grazing meat animals and dairy production. Tarsus is going to have some odd growing seasons.

 

[savage]

A little help from Star Trek and Science

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triticale


David Gerrold called "quadro-triticale" at producer Gene Coon's suggestion, and to which he ascribed four distinct lobes per kernel. A later episode titled "More Tribbles, More Troubles", in the animated series, also written by Gerrold, dealt with "quinto-triticale", an improvement on the original that apparently had five lobes per kernel.

There are many positive reasons to ship food around to different planets.

 

[grondak]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triticale


David Gerrold called "quadro-triticale" [...]

I was waiting for someone to notice that. :rofl:

 

[Timerover51]

There are many positive reasons to ship food around to different planets.

In a novel that I am working on, one of the big exports from a low-population world, which is about Terra-norm, to its nearest neighbor, which is more of an arid world with not a lot of water is luxury food stuffs, like smoked salmon, maple syrup and sugar, live lobster, and smoked hams.

Note: I am assuming that the Ancients did more than a little terraforming of the world, along with planning to use it as a zoological park. The idea for that sort of comes from Andre Norton's books, Beast Master and Lord of Thunder, where Ancient Aliens establish a flora biological preserve in one mountain and what was apparent an animal preserve in another.

 

[HG_B]

There are many positive reasons to ship food around to different planets.

For other than purely luxury goods, there are far more reasons to not be ship food all over the place.

 

[savage]

Darwin

The works of Darwin might be a good starting place. I can see a future botanist traveling and exploring flora on worlds assumed to be terraformed by the Ancients. The need for highly stable products is incredibly important. When Travellers go from planet to planet the "staples" of our diets would need minor variation. Vegetables that are eaten with washing but not cooking are a generalized example. We want the nutrition and not new organisms.

Furthermore, Star Trek briefly touched on its solution with 3d printing of food products with transporter technology.

On another note there may be natural transfer over centuries for example the materials between Mars and Earth when asteroids hit one or the other.

 

[Carlobrand]

For other than purely luxury goods, there are far more reasons to not be ship food all over the place.

One would think, and yet we do an incredible amount of food shipping in the modern era. One of many complaints about the modern agribusiness model is that local farmers often have trouble competing with food being shipped in to the supermarket from hundreds or thousands of miles away. Wheat finds itself halfway around the world, rice from halfway around the world finds its way here. And the definition of "purely luxury goods" gets pretty wide where food is concerned: more than half the produce in the local supermarket's produce section is stuff shipped in from Mexico, Florida, you name it.

In the Traveller setting, shipping costs at Cr1000/dTon mean no more that maybe a tenth of a credit surcharge per kilogram, quite low enough to support the local taste for rice from the next world over and to make a few extra bucks satisfying that world's yen for your local corn. Worlds are big and diverse places, but Trav populations don't tend to be big, so it wouldn't necessarily be practical for many of them to take full advantage of their world's diversity to meet demand for food types produced cheaply elsewhere, and factors of culture or local tradition will also influence the size and makeup of the local agricultural sector - not everyone wants to work in agriculture, and those that do will often favor growing the same familiar stuff that Dad grew. In some places, problems of local ecology may make it difficult to impossible to locally grow some off-world favorite.

 

[savage]

the colonial diet

In the Traveller setting, shipping costs at Cr1000/dTon mean no more that maybe a tenth of a credit surcharge per kilogram, quite low enough to support the local taste for rice from the next world over and to make a few extra bucks satisfying that world's yen for your local corn. Worlds are big and diverse places, but Trav populations don't tend to be big, so it wouldn't necessarily be practical for many of them to take full advantage of their world's diversity to meet demand for food types produced cheaply elsewhere, and factors of culture or local tradition will also influence the size and makeup of the local agricultural sector - not everyone wants to work in agriculture, and those that do will often favor growing the same familiar stuff that Dad grew. In some places, problems of local ecology may make it difficult to impossible to locally grow some off-world favorite.

Good call.
At one point Japan put a tariff on Rice from the US. Supposedly it was of a higher quality. Someone in China got in trouble for buying American chicken then processing it and sending it back to America. I could go on and on with historic examples that are Traveller adventure plots.

As for foods that cannot be grown there will always be hydroponic gardens and such.

 

[aramis]

That "tenth credit per kilogram" is between 30 and 50 cents per kg, depending upon your preferred dollar to credit conversion; even using the 1977 dollar, a 5¢ per pound difference was profound... cheese was running 30-40¢ per pound - a more than 10% of price (which was, BTW, roughly the cost of in-US shipping of it.) Plus you have to add the cost of shipping from port to point of sale, so you've taken a nominally 35¢ item and made it a 40¢ item.

 

[Carlobrand]

That "tenth credit per kilogram" is between 30 and 50 cents per kg, depending upon your preferred dollar to credit conversion; even using the 1977 dollar, a 5¢ per pound difference was profound... cheese was running 30-40¢ per pound - a more than 10% of price (which was, BTW, roughly the cost of in-US shipping of it.) Plus you have to add the cost of shipping from port to point of sale, so you've taken a nominally 35¢ item and made it a 40¢ item.

As I recall - especially with cheeses - factors of flavor, distinctiveness, and so forth drive price variations well in excess of 10% of baseline. If it's sufficiently popular and the local varieties can't quite match the import for flavor and quality, they'll pay the extra cost and be glad of it. And, a 30 to 50 cent per kilo markup won't matter much if orange juice doesn't have any local competition - it just means a bit less demand.

 

[aramis]

As I recall - especially with cheeses - factors of flavor, distinctiveness, and so forth drive price variations well in excess of 10% of baseline. If it's sufficiently popular and the local varieties can't quite match the import for flavor and quality, they'll pay the extra cost and be glad of it. And, a 30 to 50 cent per kilo markup won't matter much if orange juice doesn't have any local competition - it just means a bit less demand.

I buy juice for $2.5 to $5 for 3.75L... and about 4kg+50g-500g of packaging. (Plastic vs glass). Adding 30¢ per kg adds about $1.20-1.35 - almost half the cost of low end juices (apple, orange). Adding 50¢ would be doubling the cost of low end juices in glass. Doubling the price really reduces demand. And if there is ANY juice that fills the same dietary role for the same cost at source, OJ suddenly becomes a luxury item, with almost no one locally buying it.

Now, for cheeses - you will see luxury cheeses. You might see staple cheeses - but shreds and such are likely to be shipped in block and locally sliced if there's a significant market.

And feather pillows - they're light but big. 1-3 KG, but 15-40L or so. It's about Cr1.5 to Cr4... depending upon conversions, $4.5 to $20. Foam pillows are cheaper and lighter - but the same size - and thus even more penalized. People will find the cheapest local analogue. Or will switch to a different kind of pillow - like a buckwheat or bead pillow.

Having lived in a state where shipping is still a major issue, many people don't use pillows - they use a blanket instead, folded. They don't buy juice; they might buy tang or equivalent. They don't buy soft cheeses - the handling precludes it - and often, powdered cheeses are used for sauces. (Kraft makes a killing on Mac-n-Cheese... it's the staple of many villagers for "white food". And it is relatively cheap to ship, can be safely transported hot, cold, or even warm cryogenic temps. Just not Wet...) Collared shirts are either made by mom, or are sunday clothes, but T-shirts (which ship much more readily) are very common.

There comes a point where price increases exceed local ability to afford sufficient volume for anything more than special orders; economies don't work on special orders except when communications are fast and efficient. (and even then, this only works when the retailer isn't buying them as special orders.)

 

[Timerover51]

As I recall - especially with cheeses - factors of flavor, distinctiveness, and so forth drive price variations well in excess of 10% of baseline. If it's sufficiently popular and the local varieties can't quite match the import for flavor and quality, they'll pay the extra cost and be glad of it. And, a 30 to 50 cent per kilo markup won't matter much if orange juice doesn't have any local competition - it just means a bit less demand.

Not just cheeses. Coffee and tea are just two items that differ based on where grown. And items that might be hard to get locally, like sea food on an arid world, or tropical fruit on an Ice Age world. Hydroponics can only do so much.