Why did it take so long to deal with Silesia?

wastedfly wrote:

kzt wrote:What 1st world nations have absolutely no ship building industry and a sea coast?. Please name one that hasn't built a ship larger than 150 tons in the last 5 years.

Oh how droll. Nice placement. 150 tons. A tug boat? A freaking car ferry is your standard? A very small car ferry at that?

Common man. Drop the straw man routine. Set reality at a minimum of 10,000 tons. 1000 tons at a minimum!

Well, the UK doesn't build anything. They are are a 1st rate nation. Last 5 years they built a couple car feeries, a singular nuclear submarine, and a couple of destroyers. Last I checked they had a nice LONG coast line.

Could they build transports? No. No iron ore. No coal. No iron smelters capable of producing the quantity of steel required. Do they have the yards for modern sized ships? No. They have a couple naval yards and zilch else.

Does France build anything? No.
Does the USA build anything? No. Do we have the infrastructure to build any transports? No. Well maybe if one converts some of the oil platform building sites in Texas. Most of these buggers are bought elsewhere and towed in. I suppose you could go the retentive anal route and state we could convert all naval yards to civilian buildinng purposes.

Does Germany build anything? No
Does Greece build anything? No
Does Holland build anything? No

Do all of these nations have large merchant marines? Yes.

None of them have built a single freighter in 30 years. Any building yards/iron works/slips they do have are for SMALL freighters that are obsolescent along with the machinery for building said freighters.

So, sure, they could slowly, build some small, obsolete, inefficient ships. Or they could build completely new yards, machinery, dry docks that actually fit a modern world, and create/copy a modern design and eventually build a competent freighter.

This isn't 1940 kzt. A smidgeon of reality eh?

Aah.h. That's very incorrect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipbuilding_countries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipyard

Duckk wrote:Additionally, even though a freighter is mostly open space, you're still building a hellova lot more ship. A smallish sized freighter in the 2 million ton range is going to take longer to build than a 75,000 ton destroyer simply because it's a larger ship with more stuff to produce to get it - even if it's just superstructure.

This discussion need not go any further after you just pulled that whopper statement out of your nether regions based from complete ignorance of the real world in said subject matter. But lets just disabuse your assertion completely shall we instead of just laughing at your foolish statement?

Lets use a nice Historical example shall we? WWII

The USA was the predominant ship builder in WWII: Kinda how Manticore is portrayed in the books. Every harbor had a ship building yard. Every major family/business in Manticore side of the HV owned/operated/built ships.

Liberty Ships were on average built in 42 days. 1.3 months. This during the dawn of the manufacturing age. That includes the slow ships at initial production out of roughly 20 yards. The record was under a week. Under 2 weeks was common place.
[url]http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/industrialmobilization/p/libertyships.htm
[/url] Don't like this one there are plenty of others around
http://www.usmm.org/peary.html

For an example of how much time a mass produced destroyer in WWII took to build.
Here is a link or two
http://destroyerhistory.org/de/evartsclass/
http://destroyerhistory.org/de/buckleyclass/
http://destroyerhistory.org/de/cannonclass/
http://destroyerhistory.org/de/edsallclass/
http://destroyerhistory.org/de/rudderowclass/

From this site, one can crudely observe DD's, even DD's that were near identical to previous classes from the same yard, Philidelphia for example, took on average, about 2-6 months depending on the yard in question. The fastest DE yard looks to be around a month to build a DE compared to 2 weeks or less for a Kaiser shipyard for a Liberty Ship. Or, on average DE's took twice or thrice longer the average for a Liberty Ship Freighter. The freighter was MANY times the tonnage of a measly DE. Both were built on crash basis in WWII. Both were built in about 20 ship yards across the United States.

Roughly speaking: 10,000 tons deadweight verses 1000 tons deadweight. I used deadweight since Cargo ships are done via displacement long tons or tons with cargo, while military ships are done via deadweight.

A modern freighter today is built even faster than Liberty ships were in WWII. More much larger ships built from fewer yards.

Wastedfly, you said that "we have numbers". So, where did you get the numbers saying that it takes two weeks for an Honorverse freighter to be built? That's what Duckk was asking, and you have not answered. Right now, it looks like you are just pulling numbers "out of your nether regions." Comparisons with modern sailing ships are not necessarily useful.

*Sigh*

Some people either never read Shadow of Freedom or they have totally blanked it from their minds or they would know that in it is clear texttev that RAW materials are transported over intersellar space:

Thurso was a very different proposition—a gleaming, gorgeous sapphire of a world. Over ninety percent of its surface was water, and the widely scattered archipelagoes which were nominally dry land had to cope with tidal surges that reminded the captain more of tsunamis than anything most planets would have called tides. Not too surprising, she supposed, when Thurso’s “moon” was three percent more massive than Old Earth herself. Weather was…interesting on Thurso, as well, and it wasn’t too surprising that the planet’s population was tiny compared to Halkirk’s. On the other hand, Thurso’s gargantuan fisheries produced a startling tonnage of gourmet seafood which commanded extraordinary prices from Core World epicures. Probably not extraordinary enough to have attracted Star Enterprise Initiatives Unlimited’s attention to Loomis by itself, but enough to have made the star system a worthwhile trading stop even without Halkirk. The asteroid resource extraction industries and the gas mining operations centered on the star system’s trio of gas giants undoubtedly helped cover SEIU’s operating expenses, too, but the real treasure of the Loomis System lay in Halkirk’s groves of silver oak.

Francine Venelli was a professional spacer, accustomed to compact living quarters aboard ship or orbital habitats. She didn’t think in terms of planetary housing, or the kinds of huge, sprawling domiciles wealthy dirtsiders seemed to think were necessary. For that matter, she didn’t really understand the fascination “natural” materials exercised on some people’s minds. Durability, practicality, and appearance were far more important to her than where the materials in question came from, and wood was a pretty piss-poor construction material where starships were concerned.

Despite that, even she had been struck by the sheer beauty of Halkirk silver oak. The dense-grained, beautifully colored, beautifully patterned wood was like a somatic holo sculpture, deliberately designed to soothe and stroke the edges of a frayed temperament. Something about its texture—about the half-seen, half-imagined highlights that gleamed against its dark cherry wood color, like true silver deep inside the grain—was almost like the visual equivalent of barely heard woodwinds playing softly at the back of one’s mind or a gentle, relaxing massage. Just sitting in a room paneled with it was almost enough to make a woman forget why she was so pissed off with people like the Loomis System government. She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised that the price it commanded in Core World markets, as a medium for sculptors and furniture designers as well as a building material, was truly astronomical.

Chapter 2 SoF

That wood is a RAW material and they tell you that they haul it from way out in the Verge all the way back into the core of the Solarian League and make huge profits off it.

Some of you probably got hung up on the words raw materials and was thinking about only things like Iron ore which is everywhere but forgot that some raw materials are also very rare materials since they only come from certain places and climates. Also keep mind that in the Honorverse shipping something doesn't really cost that much as was explained later in SoF when Mr Westman ruminated over the fact that the Trifecta Corporation was looking to import Montana beef into the planet Mobius almost 200 light years away.

boballab wrote:That wood is a RAW material and they tell you that they haul it from way out in the Verge all the way back into the core of the Solarian League and make huge profits off it.

Some of you probably got hung up on the words raw materials and was thinking about only things like Iron ore which is everywhere but forgot that some raw materials are also very rare materials since they only come from certain places and climates. Also keep mind that in the Honorverse shipping something doesn't really cost that much as was explained later in SoF when Mr Westman ruminated over the fact that the Trifecta Corporation was looking to import Montana beef into the planet Mobius almost 200 light years away.

While you are technically correct that this is a raw material, it might be classed more as luxury goods than a bulk goods. The discussion is about bulk goods, not merely raw materials. Bulk goods generally have low value density, and that's what the infodump from RFC was talking about--not high-value density goods like this exotic wood.

Zakharra wrote:
Aah.h. That's very incorrect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipbuilding_countries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipyard

Hmm, ok, Seems Europe builds a few cruise ships at a slow pace.

Thanks to the Jones act we still build a couple tankers for intra state transportation of fuel/oil. Guess a couple ore transports on the Great lakes that can't leave the great lakes, and a couple small freighters to go to Hawaii and Guam.

All mass produced ships of any quantity are made by 3 nations, Korea, China, Japan and I believe Indonesia is starting to stick their toes into this arena as well. Though the world downturn quashed their aspirations.

SWM wrote:Wastedfly, you said that "we have numbers". So, where did you get the numbers saying that it takes two weeks for an Honorverse freighter to be built? That's what Duckk was asking, and you have not answered. Right now, it looks like you are just pulling numbers "out of your nether regions." Comparisons with modern sailing ships are not necessarily useful.

I never said two weeks. Duckk did.

As I originally posted, which you oh so conveniently forgot, or never read: RFC has posted construction times for DD through SD. I can't find it. I have seen it very recently. Someone has it.

As I recall It was:
23weeks SDP
20 BCL
18 CLAC
18 BCP 16?
12 SAG-C
10 DD

Real world says Freighters are built in half the time of DD's when both are built in quantity. The real world is very useful. It stops one from pulling foolish statements out of ones nether regions and presenting such statements as "fact".

SWM wrote:

boballab wrote:That wood is a RAW material and they tell you that they haul it from way out in the Verge all the way back into the core of the Solarian League and make huge profits off it.

Some of you probably got hung up on the words raw materials and was thinking about only things like Iron ore which is everywhere but forgot that some raw materials are also very rare materials since they only come from certain places and climates. Also keep mind that in the Honorverse shipping something doesn't really cost that much as was explained later in SoF when Mr Westman ruminated over the fact that the Trifecta Corporation was looking to import Montana beef into the planet Mobius almost 200 light years away.

While you are technically correct that this is a raw material, it might be classed more as luxury goods than a bulk goods. The discussion is about bulk goods, not merely raw materials. Bulk goods generally have low value density, and that's what the infodump from RFC was talking about--not high-value density goods like this exotic wood.

I think you better go back and re-read that chapter because that interstellar is clear cutting forests for that wood and they have enough groves to do it for at least another 10 years. That much wood is not a luxury item but a bulk good. Again people are thinking it costs more to ship something than it does in the Honorverse and remember these Verge planets are run under the old British style mercantilism of 17th and 18th centuries. Remember that one of the things that England did with the colonies was take our natural resources on the cheap and then sell us the finished goods in return at huge profits:

The British had an empire to run. The way that they kept their economy healthy was through a system called mercantilism. Mercantilism was a popular economic philosophy in the 17th and 18th centuries. In this system, the British colonies were moneymakers for the mother country. The British put restrictions on how their colonies spent their money so that they could control their economies. They put limits on what goods the colonies could produce, whose ships they could use, and most importantly, with whom they could trade. The British even put taxes called duties on imported goods to discourage this practice. This pushed the colonists to buy only British goods, instead of goods from other European countries.

http://www.ushistory.org/DECLARATION/le ... tilism.asp

That fairly describes how the Interstallars use the planets in the Verge where they set the pay of the workers (very low) and the price of the goods they sell back high. Just like it is more economical to buy raw steel today from China than it is to make it in the US because shipping it is cheap and the Chinese workers make squat. So where it says that the Interstallar is doing asteroid mining in the Halkirk system it isn't for ore to be used in that system but sent back to the Core Worlds, where it would cost a hell of a lot more to asteroid mine due to pay scales of the workers, and made into finished goods and sent back.

To be realistic, there are numerous FULL ship loads of lumber from SA/Africa/Indonesia to the US/Europe for making furniture. This is common and cheap. Not quite as cheap as oak of course, but still common and cheap as those making furniture prefer, Mahogany, Koa, Paduk, Bubing, Bolivian Rosewood/cherry from everything from floors, cabinets to violins, and outdoor decking that is pretty and does not rot. Just as there Hundreds of ship loads of logs going the opposite directions for building materials as northern climates have pine/fir making for lightweight but strong structural materials for ease of construction.

Not everyone wants to live in a ceramacrete house in the honorverse. Then there is the practicality that ceramacrete is impossible to modify after it is installed making housing as a practical solution for Billions of people rather dubious. People want their own personal touch. People want their individuality. Ceramacrete will never be used as a houses structure other than its super structure. Homes will be built on top/around it. All interior walls, ceilings will be made from something else so one can run wire/plumbing where one desires. That is a GIGANTIC tonnage. True, quite a bit will be nothing more than HV equivalent of sheetrock made locally, but like everyone else in this world, will want wall paneling, flooring, cabinets.

A simple marketing solution: If said wood is from Somewhere, ANYWHERE, else, it demands a higher price and is "thought to be better" not that is actually IS better. The USA exports a lot of Oak/Cherry. In the USA, both of these woods are thought to be "cheap" (they are), but in other places of the world, they are thought to be of high quality(they are). Both are right. To the right person the grain structure of this wood is beautiful. To those used to its "common" appearance, it is not. Never forget the raw potential of marketing campaigns.

Look no further than marketing campaigns put on by home developers for only "half" height brick on the fronts of houses. This is thought to be "high class". In reality it is not "high class" at all, but rather only the appearance of "high class" done on the cheap as low level brick work is very cheap to install while high brick/stone work is VERY expensive! A real high class home would have brick/stone all the way to the roof on all sides.

There will Billions of tons of "exotic" stone/wood from tim-buk-tu traveling in HV ships. Some of it actually will be exotic. Most will be very common, passed off for the appearance of exotic.

SWM wrote:

boballab wrote:That wood is a RAW material and they tell you that they haul it from way out in the Verge all the way back into the core of the Solarian League and make huge profits off it.

Some of you probably got hung up on the words raw materials and was thinking about only things like Iron ore which is everywhere but forgot that some raw materials are also very rare materials since they only come from certain places and climates. Also keep mind that in the Honorverse shipping something doesn't really cost that much as was explained later in SoF when Mr Westman ruminated over the fact that the Trifecta Corporation was looking to import Montana beef into the planet Mobius almost 200 light years away.

While you are technically correct that this is a raw material, it might be classed more as luxury goods than a bulk goods. The discussion is about bulk goods, not merely raw materials. Bulk goods generally have low value density, and that's what the infodump from RFC was talking about--not high-value density goods like this exotic wood.

JohnRoth wrote:The devil, as they say, is in the details. What people are trying to tell you is that once you do a reasonably decent economic analysis bulk interstellar trade makes no sense - it's far cheaper to do the resource extraction and so forth locally.

The way MWW has set up the physics of starship operations, it IS economical in some situations to haul bulk ore interstellar distances -- especially ores of elements that are in short proportions in one system vs excess proportions in others.

The tipping point is probably the extent of indigenous industry that needs raw ore vs the cost of maintaining an indigenous resource extraction industry. Plus there may be political considerations, such as a Green Government that won't allow indigenous resource extraction, or aggressively agrarian planets like Refuge.

If you only need ten or twenty megatons of raw ore each year, you can start a boom/bust cycle in an indigenous extraction industry or you can contract for one or two ore haulers to visit your system.

I doubt that interstellar ore haulage is going to be more than a fringe of interstellar trade, but under MWWs rules for starship operations it can be profitable, especially for very heavy or very light metals.