Over 11,000 worlds and several thousand years a huge number of charitable acts, philanthropic programs, advanced students' end-of-year projects and apprentice genegineer's master-pieces, open-source collaborations, and commissions to piece-workers from collectivist groups are going to produce a mind-boggling accumulation of non-commercial material. And it is all potentially permanent.
I don't disagree that what you're talking about is impossible - it's just that it wouldn't happen in the OTU as far as I'm concerned. History is replete with examples of techniques or technologies ignored or unused due to simple cultural bias, and I think that's what would occur in the OTU. It was well within the technology of China to reach the Americas to exploit long before the Europeans did. That they didn't was simply cultural bias (not against exploitation, but rather they didn't see the point of going and dealing with barbarians in the wider world when they'd come to them).
Remember, people are talking about small "autofactories" now - tiny factories you can have in your home to run off different parts provided you have the raw materials and you can trade with neighbors who have different autofactories in their homes to combine all the parts you need to make any device you might need - a village could basically meet all of its needs without ever trading outside except for raw materials. While the actual practical possibility implementation is probably still some decades away, I'm certain it's possible to do by TL12, wouldn't you agree? Of course, that occurs, and the entire basis of trade in the OTU collapses. Utterly.
That such things haven't occurred shows a cultural bias against it. As described in the trade model in
Hard Times, the TI frowns upon autarky. That a world is dependent upon imports and exports is the glue that holds the Traveller universe together. To have trade, it needs to be profitable. That megacorporations exist and do business throughout the Imperium using standardized designs suggests that there is protection against competition and copying. That's one hurdle - the university students might be able to do this, but it'd be considered more of an intellectual exercise than anything practical.
Dovetailing back into the main topic here before I wander too OT, another is that of technology. The way I see it, if a world's sustainable tech level is what shows its TL, most Agricultural worlds would probably have a TL around 5, maybe. Corporate-owned agri-worlds would probably have a TL around 0. The world would less resemble a farming state or province IRL and more of a farming village IRL, just spread over the world. Spare parts, new eqiupment, seed, and luxuries are imported into the world. The world exports foodstuffs. This makes it nicely interdependent with other worlds. Why have an "Agricultural University" when, say, a HiPop Ind world is only a jump away? White tower types like the amenties of civilization, not great cornfields of Iowa IV. Kids going to university spend one week going to university in the fall, and another coming back in the early summer. The great ships of the grain transporters come perhaps once or twice a year, massive hulls displacing tens of thousands of tons or even more, mostly empty but carrying some luxuries and replacement parts and new machines. They return with holds packed full of either raw grain or perhaps partially finished foodstuffs (ie; flour or hams or whatever). There's no need for dirtside factories to make stuff or educate the kids - in fact, the local Duke frowns upon that as it'd threaten the trade between the Agriworld and HiPop near it, which means less taxes to line his bulging pockets.
In short, that interdependence is in the best interests of those who make the laws and control the militaries and police would be a daunting hurdle for those interested in spreading their "spring break" genengineering.
