Archive for 2026 week 11
- Interstellar trade and bottlenecks - 09 Mar 2026
- Interstellar trade and bottlenecks, part 2 - 10 Mar 2026
- Affecting currents - 11 Mar 2026
- Bot aesthetics - 12 Mar 2026
- The Presidency - 13 Mar 2026
- The size of container ships - 14 Mar 2026
- J2 to J3 to J4 - 15 Mar 2026
Sometimes I have trouble visualizing interstellar trade as being justified. After all, Earth currently manages a lot of trade without needing any other planets to trade with - it feels hard to compete when you add interstellar shipping onto your goods. But I guess you might think the same thing about transoceanic trade, and then along came container ships.
Bapistacy-to-Therbings via Glorci (somehow left out of the current J-3 display) is going to be another important trade route. I've talked about Carlentia, just this side of Ringgate, but haven't formalized them in the wiki, and I don't think I've mentioned Glorci at all.
The next question becomes: is there any way for humans to make a current unusable? Do voidspace mines exist?
Spouse and I were watching Starfleet Academy and the characters visited the stereotypical Skeevy Night Market and I commented that it felt more like a Star Wars set (which may only be because I haven't watched much recent Trek) but with fewer random droids scuttling around.
I wrote the wiki page for the Terran Presidency awhile back but didn't specifically call it out. I'm sort of stuck actually specifying the President because... you know.
"Do you really grasp how big a container ship is?" is back in the news, and I'm back to trying to decide whether I want a 5000-dton cap again.
Part of the reason trade isn't struggling more is that the "discovery" of J3 was really just a software upgrade. Or at least a fairly trivial refit. J2 ships were suddenly(ish) able to make J3, so there wasn't a whole new fleet needed.