Campaign:NHNE/General/Shipping
Description[edit]
Trade Patterns[edit]
Freight Shipping in New Earth System is dominated by the World of New Earth.
| Route | Route Type | million containers per year | Union Lines |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Earth - New Earth | International Freight | 159 | 110 |
| Belt - Belt | Interrock Freight | 34 | 10 |
| New Earth - Poseidon | Interplanetary Freight | 26 | 25 |
| New Earth - Belt | Interplanetary Freight | 16 | 10 |
| Poseidon - Poseidon | International Freight | 14 | 4 |
| Poseidon - Belt | Interplanetary Freight | 2 | 1 |
| All other routes | <1 | 0 | |
Of all this freight (252 million containers per year), Union Lines moves some 160 million or so. It only doesn't dominate in the International Freight markets on New Earth (Where there are many National Flagged Air-Freight Operators); on Poseidon (Where many deliveries are sea-landed or sub-sea landed) and in the Belt (Where small local operators tend to move volumes smaller than the Union Lines vessels find economic).
Containers[edit]
The standard container is, notionally 5 dTons in external volume. 3m x 3m x 7.5m. (Double-Containers are notionally 10 dTons. i.e. 3m x 3m x 15m.)
Containers are mostly Sealed (So as to be Airtight against Vacuum) and Temperature Controlled. As such they require power sources when transported. They may be just insulated or may contain full life-support for animal transport. Some are open to the external environment. A few are fully submersible. In 1G, most can be stacked up to 4 containers high.
About 20 million containers are manufactured per year.
Ports and other Transfer Points[edit]
Dis, Poseidon,New Earth, Ares and Sapphire maintain orbital ports and The Belt is a micro-G port by definition.
Major cities (100,000 inhabitants or more) almost all have some form of nearby landing field capable of handling vessels of up to 10,000 dTons.
Ports and landing fields will typically have transfer facilities to Maritime Ship/Submersible and/or Hyper, Rail or Road transport for delivery to local destinations.
Ships[edit]
The inter-planetary orbit-orbit ships have no physical upper limit on size, although the largest are limited by the volumes of cargo available.
Those ships that land at planetary landing fields are mostly limited to 10,000 dTons by the practicalities of streamlining and mass distribution in a gravity field; and the physical size of the hard-standings provided by the cities.
Local deliveries are limited to much smaller sizes (typically less than 1,000 dTons or even less than 100 dTons)
Crews[edit]
Crews are recruited from throughout the system with various locations dominating. Belters are often found on the interplanetary routes; Poseidon also provides many crew. Union Lines main training facilities are on, or in orbit about, Ares and thus a high proportion of that world's population find their way into space at some point in their careers.