Why did it take so long to deal with Silesia?

wastedfly wrote:TWIT NIT:
A single one of those states make Washington look like a minnow.

Of course they will, for crying out loud. Washington State is comparable in size to each of the states listed, yet whereas each of the states listed consists mostly of fertile plains, Washington State consists of quite a mixture of geographical regions - mountains, deserts, forests. OF COURSE a mostly-plainlands state is going to outperform an only partly-plainlands state of a comparable size. That doesn't even consider climate, soil types and suitability, or the many many human factors that are involved.

wastedfly wrote:

Zakharra wrote:TWIT NIT:
A single one of those states make Washington look like a minnow.


The closest I could find to numbers lists Washington as being the 5th largest wheat producer in the US by 2004.

Yup, if you only look at wheat production, Washington looks pretty good. When all other grains grown into consideration, Washington is a minnow. Large, yes, but a minnow in comparison to Nebraska, Kansas, South Dakota, Iowa, illinois, etc.

Washington also produces a lot of other foods, and is at or near the top in production of raspberries and apples. But the discussion we were having, in context, was in regards to wheat. And Washington is near the top 5 in overall wheat production. Which is very good for a state that has a lot of forested areas, mountains and high arid plains/desert areas. Over all though, saying Washington is a piker in regards to grain (wheat) production is kind of being obstinate for the sake of being obstinate, when it does produce a lot of wheat and other foods itself.

runsforcelery wrote:No, but Oyster Bay missed by far the bulk of Grayson's orbital infrastructure . . . including its primary manufacturing base and orbital extraction industries. They killed the Blackbird Yards and the tech types working there; they didn't kill the people and industrial modules which built Blackbird in the first place. In fact, relative to its pre-Oyster Bay industrial capacity, Yeltsin's Star is better off than Manticore in many respects. Still not a good place to be, but better than it sounds like you were thinking.

Yes! Thank you, David!

I have had this debate with numerous people both on-line and in person since the pub of MoH, and I was always surprised that they didn't get it that Grayson wasn't as hard hit as Manicore in general industrial terms.

dreamrider

Others have noted that the distribution of elements may be inconsistent between planetary systems, but I can see instances where it is more economically advantageous to buy raw ore than mine it locally. A system that does not have a large scale orbital infrastructure that only needs a few million tons (or less) per year of iron might be better off buying what it needs from outside the system, rather than trying to set up all of the systems needed for asteroid mining. Not only do you need the extraction facility itself, you need the tugs and survey vessels, supply vessels, personnel transports, fueling station, etc. Plus maintaining and crewing costs. Replacement costs for lost or damaged vessels. The same system of delivery to the planet is still necessary, but if you buy from outside all of the other "stuff" is not. While the long term solution is to build your own extraction industry, until the need is there, why go to all that expense?

All that would be needed in this scenario is an orbital warehouse with the necessary handling and loading equipment. And that would be needed whichever way you went. Everything from the warehouse to the ground would be exactly the same either way.

While the total costs of the in-house orbital extraction system can be amortized over 100 years, the up-front costs are huge. From a startup cost perspective, it will always be cheaper to buy the ore from out-system until the demand is great enough to justify that cost.

Still another point to consider. Until the system is ready to move it's manufacturing off-planet, there is no incentive to build up it's orbital infrastructure. As long as the minimum it has is enough, that is all it will have. Only as the needs grow, will it become important enough to do the investing to support an extraction industry.

hanuman wrote:

wastedfly wrote:TWIT NIT:
A single one of those states make Washington look like a minnow.

Of course they will, for crying out loud. Washington State is comparable in size to each of the states listed, yet whereas each of the states listed consists mostly of fertile plains, Washington State consists of quite a mixture of geographical regions - mountains, deserts, forests. OF COURSE a mostly-plainlands state is going to outperform an only partly-plainlands state of a comparable size. That doesn't even consider climate, soil types and suitability, or the many many human factors that are involved.

I have no idea where Montana is on the list of grain producers. But I do know one thing that Washington has that Montana does not when it comes to growing grain (or any other crop). WATER. Lots and lots of WATER. We are having a wet year this year. We are an inch and a half ahead of normal for this time of year. That means that locally we have had eight and a half inches of rain, year to date. That is 8 & 1/2 inches over the course of seven months. (Yes, that includes the water totals from snowfall). As for the mountain part of your statement, Billings is just east of the center point of the state and I can see the outliers of the Rockies out my back door. Farther north, it is a slightly different story. Up there, they do have more agriculture, because they have more year-round rivers for irrigation. (And yes, I am talking about Canada. )

Up north in the Circle, Sidney Glasgow area of Montana you have wheat ranchers who measure their ground by the square mile (sections) I worked for a guy once who had a wheat field a mile square. He rotated the field between barley, wheat and alfalfa.

I was born and raised west of Bozeman, starting out on a wheat/cattle op a lot smaller than what you find in ne Mt.

Don

Pedantic Nitpicks:
Well, no, a ships size is also limited by:

1) the depth of shipping straits, channels and harbors it is intended to navigate
2) the width of those straits, channels and harbor basins
3) the depth and width -and- length of the locks of the any canals that are to be navigable by the vessel. *
4) the available tonnage of freight per round-trip on the intended trade route. (building a ship that sails half-empty most of the time is not a profit enhancing venture).


*: @ 2&3 e.g. Aframax, Chinamax, Malaccamax, Panamax, Q(atar)-max, Seawaymax, & Suezmax.

wastedfly wrote:[snip]
PPS. If we were building railroads today from scratch without the historical legacy of the cart industry and lack of power equipment able to move RR ballast easily, railroads would all be over 3 meters wide today. Probably over 5. If we had stronger steels able to be welded cheaply, all Ship bulk carriers would instantly triple or quadruple in size if not more. A ships size today is only limited by the materials available to us. They would be Mtons large if we could build them. An Mton of cargo is not that much when one starts looking at the gigantic tonnages being moved to centralized distribution centers.

KNick wrote:I have no idea where Montana is on the list of grain producers. But I do know one thing that Washington has that Montana does not when it comes to growing grain (or any other crop). WATER. Lots and lots of WATER. We are having a wet year this year. We are an inch and a half ahead of normal for this time of year. That means that locally we have had eight and a half inches of rain, year to date. That is 8 & 1/2 inches over the course of seven months. (Yes, that includes the water totals from snowfall). As for the mountain part of your statement, Billings is just east of the center point of the state and I can see the outliers of the Rockies out my back door. Farther north, it is a slightly different story. Up there, they do have more agriculture, because they have more year-round rivers for irrigation. (And yes, I am talking about Canada. )

KNick, that's exactly the point I was making, namely that there are so many ecological and other environmental factors involved, not to mention human ones, that it is rather foolish to compare one region to another.

Thank you for making the point even clearer.

Btw, Montana sounds like beautiful country. Although I do believe it gets a bit frisky in wintertime

n7axw wrote:Up north in the Circle, Sidney Glasgow area of Montana you have wheat ranchers who measure their ground by the square mile (sections) I worked for a guy once who had a wheat field a mile square. He rotated the field between barley, wheat and alfalfa.

I was born and raised west of Bozeman, starting out on a wheat/cattle op a lot smaller than what you find in ne Mt.

Don

I know. My family is from the Poplar/Culbertson area. My grandfather took his railroad retirement from the Northern Pacific Railroad Co. in land in that area. My cousin still farms all five sections. It takes that many to support a family. It is all dryland farming with the lower yields that implies. The farm was set up before the building of the Fort Peck dam, and was never included in the irrigation district from the dam. (Mainly because it is a couple of hundred feet above the maximum height of the reservoir). One of the features of "flat" land is that the rivers have carved their channels down into the rock, leaving the farmable land high and dry. Any irrigation setup for his land would have to start somewhere around 100 miles upstream.

My uncle's ranch (west of Great Falls) gets the water for the irrigated portions from the Rockies, over thirty five miles away. This is in spite of the fact that you can throw a rock into the closest river from the edge of one of his grain/alfalfa fields. It is "only" two hundred feet below the property.

KNick wrote:

n7axw wrote:Up north in the Circle, Sidney Glasgow area of Montana you have wheat ranchers who measure their ground by the square mile (sections) I worked for a guy once who had a wheat field a mile square. He rotated the field between barley, wheat and alfalfa.

I was born and raised west of Bozeman, starting out on a wheat/cattle op a lot smaller than what you find in ne Mt.

Don

I know. My family is from the Poplar/Culbertson area. My grandfather took his railroad retirement from the Northern Pacific Railroad Co. in land in that area. My cousin still farms all five sections. It takes that many to support a family. It is all dryland farming with the lower yields that implies. The farm was set up before the building of the Fort Peck dam, and was never included in the irrigation district from the dam. (Mainly because it is a couple of hundred feet above the maximum height of the reservoir). One of the features of "flat" land is that the rivers have carved their channels down into the rock, leaving the farmable land high and dry. Any irrigation setup for his land would have to start somewhere around 100 miles upstream.

My uncle's ranch (west of Great Falls) gets the water for the irrigated portions from the Rockies, over thirty five miles away. This is in spite of the fact that you can throw a rock into the closest river from the edge of one of his grain/alfalfa fields. It is "only" two hundred feet below the property.

Why don't they install a pump system to get water up from the river level? Sorry, it's just that there are parts of Africa where people have devised manual systems to move water in sufficient quantities from rivers to farmlands several hundred meters above.