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Financing on a 40 year loan with government subsidies from the Directorate Mining Authority, the down payment for one of these tiny craft is 52,500 Credits - and they were often bought by partnerships of prospective owners/operators.
The idea was that in Ember system - primarily an asteroid belt, a gas giant, small scattered moons and trojan point asteroids orbiting a dim red dwarf star - a few independents and a small conglomerate called Ember Ore Company are trying to capitalize on the low gravity and abundance of nickel iron-ore rocks.
Ember Ore owns small mining ships will fly to a given rock, mine and process ore and spit out the final product in barrel sized containers with a mass driver. High acceleration shepherd ships will intercept and collect the ballistic ore and bring it into the closest asteroid bases for further processing or shipping to other star systems.
Prospectors like the one above, however, are used to constantly survey and resurvey the system for good quality rocks - placing ident radio tags that can be tracked more easily by the system's navigation satellites.
If a prospector wants, after the claims are confirmed as legal claims by Ember Ore's central offices, he may then mine it himself, or, as is more often the case, bring in a sample of the ore and sell his rights to the claim for a flat fee, or take a small portion (3-7% depending on the amount of ore and its quality on site) of the profits of the final product if Ember Ore is allowed to mine it themselves. The latter however, only starts trickling in when an actual EO vessel starts chewing up the rock and getting it to market - so the wait can be more than a marginal operator can handle - even if it means more income in the long run.
Studebakers are typical 'Tagger' ships, operating on so tight a margin, few owners ever have the resources or luxury to wait for the percentage deals, and they're not very well equipped for carving and retrieving large amounts of unprocessed ore. Though many belter ships have longer durations of onboard fuel (this one only having an endurance of 30 days out of base), the skimping of internal grav plates means that operators risk bone and muscle atrophy if they spend undue amounts of time out in one. The two bunk beds are slightly curved and swivel slightly to brace against acceleration, and have netting to hem the occupants into their private spaces for privacy and to prevent drift while in zero-g.
Experienced owners of Studebakers tend to slowly accrue a catalog of EO mined rocks they get a percentage of and eventually upgrade or retire, though many can't bring themselves to give up spacing despite the danger of this particular profession.
Heavily influenced by C.J. Cherryh's book Heavy Time - I wanted play around with the cheap end of space travel, and come up with, even at TL11 a means for an average person to scrimp and save and get access to their own starship. Accounting for 2 possible crews of 2 that can take turns going out on prospecting runs one month at a time, the 4 way split to start spacing is 13,125 Cr - relatively easy to get from standard Traveller mustering out tables.
Very handy for games where you want to throttle down the interstellar travel of the super rich and focus on say, belter life, intrigue and murder and corporate corruption of the space stations high above the gravity wells, claim jumping, planetbound vs. spacer politics, daily life in one of the least forgiving environments possible, insystem pirates, slow accel travel times, ballistic life, and a real potential to own a money making spaceship that doesn't involve skipping on payments, GM given lucky windfalls, or quite all the book-keeping of a purely merchanter campaign.
The idea was that in Ember system - primarily an asteroid belt, a gas giant, small scattered moons and trojan point asteroids orbiting a dim red dwarf star - a few independents and a small conglomerate called Ember Ore Company are trying to capitalize on the low gravity and abundance of nickel iron-ore rocks.
Ember Ore owns small mining ships will fly to a given rock, mine and process ore and spit out the final product in barrel sized containers with a mass driver. High acceleration shepherd ships will intercept and collect the ballistic ore and bring it into the closest asteroid bases for further processing or shipping to other star systems.
Prospectors like the one above, however, are used to constantly survey and resurvey the system for good quality rocks - placing ident radio tags that can be tracked more easily by the system's navigation satellites.
If a prospector wants, after the claims are confirmed as legal claims by Ember Ore's central offices, he may then mine it himself, or, as is more often the case, bring in a sample of the ore and sell his rights to the claim for a flat fee, or take a small portion (3-7% depending on the amount of ore and its quality on site) of the profits of the final product if Ember Ore is allowed to mine it themselves. The latter however, only starts trickling in when an actual EO vessel starts chewing up the rock and getting it to market - so the wait can be more than a marginal operator can handle - even if it means more income in the long run.
Studebakers are typical 'Tagger' ships, operating on so tight a margin, few owners ever have the resources or luxury to wait for the percentage deals, and they're not very well equipped for carving and retrieving large amounts of unprocessed ore. Though many belter ships have longer durations of onboard fuel (this one only having an endurance of 30 days out of base), the skimping of internal grav plates means that operators risk bone and muscle atrophy if they spend undue amounts of time out in one. The two bunk beds are slightly curved and swivel slightly to brace against acceleration, and have netting to hem the occupants into their private spaces for privacy and to prevent drift while in zero-g.
Experienced owners of Studebakers tend to slowly accrue a catalog of EO mined rocks they get a percentage of and eventually upgrade or retire, though many can't bring themselves to give up spacing despite the danger of this particular profession.
Heavily influenced by C.J. Cherryh's book Heavy Time - I wanted play around with the cheap end of space travel, and come up with, even at TL11 a means for an average person to scrimp and save and get access to their own starship. Accounting for 2 possible crews of 2 that can take turns going out on prospecting runs one month at a time, the 4 way split to start spacing is 13,125 Cr - relatively easy to get from standard Traveller mustering out tables.
Very handy for games where you want to throttle down the interstellar travel of the super rich and focus on say, belter life, intrigue and murder and corporate corruption of the space stations high above the gravity wells, claim jumping, planetbound vs. spacer politics, daily life in one of the least forgiving environments possible, insystem pirates, slow accel travel times, ballistic life, and a real potential to own a money making spaceship that doesn't involve skipping on payments, GM given lucky windfalls, or quite all the book-keeping of a purely merchanter campaign.
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Its decent - very much a product of the current events in which she wrote it - punk movement, and there's even a 'hacking' scene where the protagonists infect a whole space station with a rebellious virus incriminating the villain corporation of the story.
Several really good archetypes for belters are found in her characters in Heavy Time, which I won't steal, but will be inspired by :>
Oh, and the name Studebaker (same guys who founded the car company) - I didn't realize originally made wheelbarrows sold to a tiny mining community during one of several of the gold rushes until I was researching oddball little ghost-towns and mining town tourist attractions looking for a name. TIL.
Several really good archetypes for belters are found in her characters in Heavy Time, which I won't steal, but will be inspired by :>
Oh, and the name Studebaker (same guys who founded the car company) - I didn't realize originally made wheelbarrows sold to a tiny mining community during one of several of the gold rushes until I was researching oddball little ghost-towns and mining town tourist attractions looking for a name. TIL.
Hey now. Did you know that the original Studebaker company had it's start up in the California Gold Rush Country? They made wheelbarrows for the miners. I find your ideas on the "Less Luxurious" aspects of space travel intriguing, because few folks ever think about it. I've been a fan of stories featuring Space Truck Drivers and Asteroid Miners since my High School days and of course watching those Anime shows like "Outlaw Star" and "Cowboy Bebop."
Yeah, I discovered that tidbit while researching class and individual ship names for my game's belter ships
As to the less luxurious, yeah, my players are insanely wealthy right now (which isn't a problem in my campaign - there's always more to spend it on), but I started my game on a world that was playing 'catchup' to the the core Terran Confederation worlds, way out on the fringes, so the players have had to wait game years to get things like grav plates and reactionless thrusters and a couple decades for a 2 parsec jump drive without travelling months through the wilderness to contract from higher tech builders.
As to the less luxurious, yeah, my players are insanely wealthy right now (which isn't a problem in my campaign - there's always more to spend it on), but I started my game on a world that was playing 'catchup' to the the core Terran Confederation worlds, way out on the fringes, so the players have had to wait game years to get things like grav plates and reactionless thrusters and a couple decades for a 2 parsec jump drive without travelling months through the wilderness to contract from higher tech builders.
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