[gurps] Re: Starship Maintenance

[Ben Finney]

"Onno Meyer" <Onno.Meyer at gmx.de> writes:

> I always thought that GURPS Traveller: Far Trader under-estimates
> the cost of starship maintenance to 'subsidize' adventure parties
> who don't have the time to earn their upkeep. But googling shows
> the pricetag of a 777 airliner around $230M and the cost of a C 
> check (roughly equivalent to annual maintenance) at $250k (the 
> latter is just one non-official posting). 
> 
> The numbers for a NASA shuttle launch are of course much higher.

The difference between them being, of course, that there are far fewer
NASA shuttle launches than Boeing 777 airliner flights. That means
that NASA's fixed overheads (for e.g. infrastructure and skilled
personnel) must be divided between far fewer maintenance runs, making
them much higher per run.

That is, there are huge differences in the scale of
number-of-maintenance-runs, and thus corresponding differences in the
economies of scale.

I think it's reasonable to assume that Traveller's universe has
economies of scale for starship maintenance even *greater* than those
of current-day airline maintenance, making them lower.

-- 
 \     “This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending |
  `\      the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the |
_o__)           hopes of its children.” —Dwight Eisenhower, 1953-04-16 |
Ben Finney