Those prices seem a bargain ... if you factor in 20th century cargo launch costs to LEO.
Sure but so do TL 7 automobile maintenance costs when compared to TL 0, pre invention of the wheel cargo hauling capability.
Starship maintenance costs... what are they?
- Thread starter andycowley
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Sure but so do TL 7 automobile maintenance costs when compared to TL 0, pre invention of the wheel cargo hauling capability.
esampson
SOC-13
Based on personal experience with taking my car in for annual maintenance I would speculate that the cost for parts is probably lower than 1/2. It is probably more like 1/4 to 1/3, but then the scale might change for things more expensive like starships (anyone have any idea of the breakdown for annual maintenance for a cruise ship?)
However, there are some other factors in there as well. One of the reasons that the 'labor' cost at a garage is so high isn't because that's how much it costs to pay the mechanics. Labor in that sense basically means 'everything the garage can't put an immediate price on'. So the 'parts' cost is suppose to be how much it costs the garage for the part (without markup) and likewise disposal fees are suppose to be how much it costs the garage to dispose of things (again without markup).
'Labor' on the other hand covers paying salaries for the mechanics, paying rent on the shop, paying interest on the loan that was taken out to set up the shop, amortization of expensive equipment, electricity, and that free coffee you drank while you were waiting for your car to be fixed.
That expensive equipment and the rent on the shop are actually pretty big deals. I'm not sure how much it costs in the real world to hangar an aircraft that measures 37.5m x 24m for a month but I'm pretty sure it's not cheap (rent for the shop).
Even more important than that are the tools. Some of them, like a hydraulic lift make certain parts of the job way easier. I change my own oil and brake pads and while the aren't horribly difficult jobs I know they would be ten times easier with a hydraulic lift. Drive the car onto the lift and up it goes. No crawling around underneath, no raising each side separately with a hand jack.
Other tools though don't just make the job easier. They are pretty much necessary. There's plenty of things where the engine needs to be pulled to do the work. Do I absolutely need an engine hoist to do that? No, but since the Darwin awards are full of people who decide to make their own block and tackles I think I will let the mechanics do that with the proper tools.
And that is for a chunk of metal that is about 1.5m3, or 1/4 of a dton. You want to pull a 10 dton jump drive? You're going to need something a lot bigger.
"But I could just do it in zero-g," you say. To which I reply "Don't start your sentences with a conjunction." Then I point out that NASA astronauts do tasks like these where they are replacing things significantly smaller than a car engine in zero-g and it is incredibly hard work. It isn't easy to torque a bolt or turn a screw when you are floating, and these are the kinds of bolts meant to hold panels together that aren't planned to have a lot of stress put on them. They aren't bolts meant to hold engines capable of exerting millions of Newtons of force.
Of course you could have highly specialized tools designed to help you with turning those massive bolts in zero-g, but now all you've done is traded one specialized tool for another. Economics says that you can safely assume that the mechanics will already be using the most efficient tool for the job (or reasonably close). If boosting the ship into orbit and pulling the engine in zero-g is cheaper than using a crane on the ground, in terms of both tool cost and time, then they are already doing that.
So if you've got players who want to do their own maintenance (which isn't completely unreasonable) then they would need to by the parts at a price between 1/4 and 1/3 of the cost of the maintenance and have access to tools. I couldn't really guess how much those tools should properly cost but just a stab in the dark I would speculate they should cost roughly the average cost of the ship they would be able to work on (so say 50 MCr per 100 dtons of ship, in T5 I think your estimate of 20 MCr for a Trader is pretty low). Pretty sure the tools in the garage cost more than my car (not all the tools, just the tools in the 'bay' that's being used) but it seems a good rule of thumb. If you amortize the cost over 40 years (machines in Traveller seem to be built to last) then you are looking at around 25 KCr per 100 tons per week. Figure that rent on such equipment would be double that so 50 KCr per 100 tons per week. However this gives us a rental rate that is way too high so I guess you need to invoke the Finagle factor and reduce everything by an order of magnitude (5 MCr per 100 tons, rental cost of 5 KCr per week).
So on a 50 MCr 100 ton ship the annual maintenance would be 50 KCr. For a DIY crew the parts would cost 12.5 KCr and tool rental (if they didn't own the tools) would be another 20 KCr (I think it is a month long, isn't it?) for a total of 32.5 KCr. Of course this assumes that the crew is able to do the work in 4 weeks. It could quite possibly take them longer (although if the crew is a decent size and all of them are fairly well trained they could possibly do it even faster since they wouldn't have any other ships to be working on). If a crew wants to own their own 'shop' the tools would run them 5 MCr but they would have to store them somewhere (I'm assuming you're as likely to put all the tools in the ship and haul them around as I am to put a hydraulic lift and engine hoist in the trunk of my car).
Of course all of this is still pretty much 'rule of thumb' stuff. If you've got players who are real gearheads there's probably a lot more expansion that could be done to this outline.
Someone may have already mentioned it, but they're actually in the LBBs and the the big Black book, although I can't remember off the top of my head. I think there's an annual maintenance fee of 2% or something (although I may be confusing that with the loan amortization).
Midgardsormr
SOC-10
Licheking said:
Is this for humans or, some species that has a metabolism that runs on gold?o:
I believe that's the cost of the equipment and installation when building the ship, not the monthly operational cost.
Okay, that makes some sense.
It's still too much. Using the standard Traveller loan scheme it comes to Cr5,000 per year plus operating expenses. Since populations with average per capita incomes of a good deal less than 10,000 credits can survive in space habitats, life support costs have to be down in the several thousand credits per year range, tops. So unless the operating expenses are practically non-existent, it's too much.
Hans
esampson
SOC-13
There's nothing that says that a space habitat uses exactly the same form of life support as a ship. Ship's life supports might be significantly smaller than a station's life support, have to deal with the energy fluctuations of the power system caused by the activation of a jump field and it is accepted that they have to be 'scrubbed out' every couple of weeks and can sustain far fewer individuals.
It is sort of like how the computers on a modern warship are considerably more expensive than the comparable desktop computers you might find on a cruise ship. Despite certain similarities they are still designed for very different conditions.
Of course that would imply that it is possible to make life support systems that would not have as much maintenance cost. They would just end up quite probably bigger and more expensive than the life support listed.
It is sort of like how the computers on a modern warship are considerably more expensive than the comparable desktop computers you might find on a cruise ship. Despite certain similarities they are still designed for very different conditions.
Of course that would imply that it is possible to make life support systems that would not have as much maintenance cost. They would just end up quite probably bigger and more expensive than the life support listed.
Midgardsormr
SOC-10
I agree. Making the calculation for the cost of general space habitats based on the cost for ship-borne life support is possibly making a lot of unwarranted assumptions. I particularly find it unlikely that the "standard Traveller loan scheme" is equally applicable to a space station as to a starship.
But let's leave the economics of a space station for another thread. This one is concerned with the economics of an interstellar ship.
Annual maintenance of a system that costs 100,000 Cr per person is 1,000 Cr per annum (based on CT rules, which I usually substitute for missing T5 rules). Assuming a stateroom occupied for 10 jumps per year (to make the math easy), the maintenance cost of the stateroom is 100 Cr per ticket.
The system needs to be recharged at every stop, but the recharge consists of what? Air, water, food, evacuation of waste, sundries, minor medical supplies, laundry service, and pillow mints. Did I miss anything? None of that sounds particularly costly to me. I'd put it at around 300 Cr per stateroom per month. If the cost of the loan for this system comes to 5,000 Cr / year (I didn't verify that number), then we add 500 / journey to the ticket, putting us at around 900 Cr operating cost for a mid passage berth. To make things simple, I'd double it for high passage. Most costs would be similar to the mid passage, but the luxury comestibles would probably make up the difference. For my games, I'll probably make it 1,000 / 2,000 for the sake of round numbers. I notice that that conveniently hits 1% of the cost of the system, as was originally proposed.
But let's leave the economics of a space station for another thread. This one is concerned with the economics of an interstellar ship.
Annual maintenance of a system that costs 100,000 Cr per person is 1,000 Cr per annum (based on CT rules, which I usually substitute for missing T5 rules). Assuming a stateroom occupied for 10 jumps per year (to make the math easy), the maintenance cost of the stateroom is 100 Cr per ticket.
The system needs to be recharged at every stop, but the recharge consists of what? Air, water, food, evacuation of waste, sundries, minor medical supplies, laundry service, and pillow mints. Did I miss anything? None of that sounds particularly costly to me. I'd put it at around 300 Cr per stateroom per month. If the cost of the loan for this system comes to 5,000 Cr / year (I didn't verify that number), then we add 500 / journey to the ticket, putting us at around 900 Cr operating cost for a mid passage berth. To make things simple, I'd double it for high passage. Most costs would be similar to the mid passage, but the luxury comestibles would probably make up the difference. For my games, I'll probably make it 1,000 / 2,000 for the sake of round numbers. I notice that that conveniently hits 1% of the cost of the system, as was originally proposed.
esampson
SOC-13
I only brought up the difference because Rancke was saying that the prices being given didn't make a space station sustainable (which is true). I can certainly understand how you might want to use the Starship rules for building stations but there's always a danger of things like this coming up.
Actually, the annual cost is 100 Cr. 1,000 Cr would be 1% instead of .1%.
Quite possibly. The question of air on a ship isn't simply one of compressing air in tanks. Levels of CO2 will become dangerous long before the amount of oxygen has been used up. Doing some quick 'back of the envelope' calculation based on the prices for Micropore ExtendAir EP canisters used to scrub out CO2 from closed circuit rebreathers has 1 week's worth of filters as costing about $1000. Then of course there's the bottled O2, scrubbers for water (because you probably don't just take enough water for everything and have to recycle it), food, medical supplies, disinfectant for all your systems, and of course all the labor involved (with 'labor' meaning more than just the wages of people).
Of course there's also issues of translating dollars to credits, the fact that most of the time the resources are probably being manufactured by people with a higher TL than ours, and that buying in larger volume would reduce prices, but I can certainly see how it would be possible for the cost of a week's life support to be at least in the general neighborhood of 2000 Cr.
On nuke subs they use a substance that absorbs CO2 and can be made to release it on demand (Monoethanolamine). It needs no replacement. That is TL 7. By TL 11+ it'll be even easier and cheaper.
esampson
SOC-13
Doing some quick Googling of MEA makes it appear that it acts as a transfer agent, taking the CO2 out of the air and then dumping it elsewhere. The subs don't seem to carry enough MEA to absorb week's worth of CO2. While a sub can vent the CO2 into the water that may not be possible for a ship in J-space, so you are still looking at some kind of chemical that has to be disposed of. And of course it does appear that MEA does have a lifespan so sooner or later you're going to have to get around to replacing it.
But yeah, you're right, filters like I was mentioning probably aren't the most efficient method. I would imagine that by TL 11 or 12 you would use a process to bond the CO2 to hydrogen and turn it into a carbohydrate. Rather than using ship's fuel you would just use plain water and the oxygen would go back into the atmosphere (which is essentially what plants do).
However a system that is too advanced could also pose its own problems. Trying to do maintenance on your TL-12 system when you're on a TL-8 planet might be problematic, so it is entirely possible that even though the TL-12 system is a much better system ships need to be built with simpler systems.
It all goes back to abstraction. We could probably produce a second 650 page book for all the things that could be done to make starships more real, with different tech levels of life support, rules for players doing their own work, rules for finding people to do the work, rules for systems breaking down and redundant systems, etc.
And I'm not saying this to be negative. I would actually kind of like a book like that that digs deeper into the operations of a ship. I'm just saying that I think some of the numbers may not come across as 'real' sometimes because people are thinking of them as handling a certain case when they are written to handle a lot of other cases as well.
But yeah, you're right, filters like I was mentioning probably aren't the most efficient method. I would imagine that by TL 11 or 12 you would use a process to bond the CO2 to hydrogen and turn it into a carbohydrate. Rather than using ship's fuel you would just use plain water and the oxygen would go back into the atmosphere (which is essentially what plants do).
However a system that is too advanced could also pose its own problems. Trying to do maintenance on your TL-12 system when you're on a TL-8 planet might be problematic, so it is entirely possible that even though the TL-12 system is a much better system ships need to be built with simpler systems.
It all goes back to abstraction. We could probably produce a second 650 page book for all the things that could be done to make starships more real, with different tech levels of life support, rules for players doing their own work, rules for finding people to do the work, rules for systems breaking down and redundant systems, etc.
And I'm not saying this to be negative. I would actually kind of like a book like that that digs deeper into the operations of a ship. I'm just saying that I think some of the numbers may not come across as 'real' sometimes because people are thinking of them as handling a certain case when they are written to handle a lot of other cases as well.
As I addressed in my first post. To quote:
"Granted that short-term life support can be expected to be a bit more expensive (more expensive solutions and greater waste), Cr52,000 per year is just not plausible. MgT halved that, which is still on the high side (especially since one trip will consume ten days worth of life support, not 14), but better. "
Hans
Annual maintenance is 0.1%, isn't it? That would be Cr100 per year. A stateroom is going to be occupied a good deal more often than 10 times a year. A ship canonically makes 25 jumps per year. (Personally, I believe that only applies to tramp ships and that regularily sheduled ships can do 35 jumps per year). A regular passenger liner will do it's best to have all its staterooms filled every jump, including selling the last ones at a discount, but in my own calculations I usually assume a 90% coverage, just to be on the safe side.
Hans
Yes 0.1% is right i missed out the 0. in my post. Yes it is for just the installation of the Life support and yes that's the norm so humans presumably.
Ships do 25 jumps a year because it takes about a week in jump and 1 week to load/unload passengers and freight and cargo including the buying and selling of such. The other 2 weeks is spent on the annual maintenance which is mandatory for subsidized and government vessels or any requiring some sort of regulation which i imagine would include any vessel wishing to carry passengers.
A pure passenger liner with no freight or cargo may be able to embark/debark passengers quicker than the 1 week turnaround and could then make more trips per year, but i guess the mortgage would be based on 25 jumps per year as a standard business model.
Ships do 25 jumps a year because it takes about a week in jump and 1 week to load/unload passengers and freight and cargo including the buying and selling of such. The other 2 weeks is spent on the annual maintenance which is mandatory for subsidized and government vessels or any requiring some sort of regulation which i imagine would include any vessel wishing to carry passengers.
A pure passenger liner with no freight or cargo may be able to embark/debark passengers quicker than the 1 week turnaround and could then make more trips per year, but i guess the mortgage would be based on 25 jumps per year as a standard business model.
Tramp ships spends five days lining up freight, passengers, and cargo because they come to a new world cold and have to start from scratch. Regular ships canonically spend the same amount of time, but they ought to be able to do much better because they can employ a local man (know as a factor) to buy cargo and line up freight and passengers ahead of time, enabling them to load freight and cargo and embark passengers as soon as they unloaded and disembarked the incoming load.
If anything, the 10 days I use to arrive at 35 jumps a year (which leaves 15 days over for the annual maintenance) is set high. An average of 9 days for 39 jumps per year (with 14 days left over) ought to be possible as long as there are no unexpected delays. But as there probably will be unexpected delays on occasion, I usually go with 35 jumps per year.
The mortgage is based on 12 payments per year. That would be the same whether the ship does 10, 25, 35 or 39 jumps per year.
Hans
Yes, but when the owner originally approached the bank for the mortgage they would have had to submit a business plan/model, to prove they could afford the mortgage, and i was saying that the plan would be based on 25 jumps per year and if it was viable to pay back with that specification then the bank would lend the money.
Fair enough. From that perspective I submit that, for reasons set forth in my previous post, most mortgages would (or rather, ought to) be based on a business plan involving 35 jumps per year. I've recently been convinced that tramp freighter type business plans could conceivably be accepted by banks[*], but I still think tramp shipping would be a niche activity.
This, incidentally, improves the financial viability of a number of canonical starships tremendously.
[*] Convinced by actual analogous historical ship loans -- it still seems strange to me that banks will approve business plans that essentially say that the applicant plans to jump around semi-randomly and see if he can find enough business to stay in the black, but apparently banks are sneaky enough that bankruptcies don't bother them since they have security in the ship and can sell it to the next optimist.
Hans
Hotels use 80% occupied as 'full occupancy' for economic planning purposes.
(Not an argument against your figures, just a fact that I deal with at work and offer as a single point to compare against.)
In MT you had to show that with 25 jumps a year you could cover all the payments through the year and make a small profit. Subsidized types didn't have this issue as much since up to half of the ship belonged to some corporation or government so they only had to find their part of the mortgage giving them quite a bit of leeway, although they are tied down to a specific route or collection of worlds. (The Traveller Adventure)
I don't see your point. In MT (and every other Traveller version) you're running a tramp ship. That's inherent in the basic trade rules. I'm claiming that if you were running a regular shipping line, you ought to be able to plan on doing 35 jumps per year. Unless there was some other reason that regular ships had to spend five days on the ground between jumps. Such a reason would, IMO, be highly contrieved ("Wotta coincidence") and would leech some of the verisimilitude out of the setting, leaving it a little bit more bland and unconvincing.
Hans
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