Total $Tax Rates$ In The Honorverse? ...

yes our (UK) travel network is crap and so it is not quite as quick and easy as PalmerSperry suggested but the general point is still valid.

day trips to the surface are quite feasible. regular shuttles will run from the station, likely to at least the 3 biggest cities of the planet.

get an early shuttle say 8am, go to the equivalent of Liverpool or manchester, land by 10. spend until 4pm playing tourist and catch the shuttle around 5pm (shift change) back home (the station).

fairly straight forward, and one thing that might have saved a fair amount of station inhabitants not on shift

munroburton wrote:Are you from the UK? I ask because in my experience, it's about four to six hours from Glasgow to London by rail or road(and that's for an express or overnight run, when traffic levels are low). A friend makes a road journey from Aberdeen to Lincoln every December - each way, it's at least seven hours, occasionally rising to nine.

Air travel is quicker, of course, but comes with a number of hindrances. Advanced reservation. Check-in. Airport security. Overpriced junk. Flight delays. Diverted flights. Lost luggage. Your car, which could probably have made the journey more cheaply(even if you travelled solo) and provided you with flexibility, isn't at the destination.

Everywhere on Manticore is at most an hour or so from anywhere else. Any point in orbit around Manticore is at most 90 minutes to any point on Manticore. In 4-6 hours you can go from anywhere on Manticore to anywhere on Sphinx.

Given that I know people who commute over an hour each way I tend to find David's explanation as to why people would usually raise their kids in tiny expensive windowless rabbit hutches instead of on the planet kind of unconvincing.

I also would trade some heavy long commute time for the necessity of living someplace nice where we could raise the kids on the surface of the planet in a traditional fashion.

Everything would have to be considered. Perhaps also a weekly trip to and from the surface and home might work as a compromise. "We owe, we owe, off to work we go". HB

munroburton wrote:Are you from the UK? I ask because in my experience, it's about four to six hours from Glasgow to London by rail or road(and that's for an express or overnight run, when traffic levels are low). A friend makes a road journey from Aberdeen to Lincoln every December - each way, it's at least seven hours, occasionally rising to nine.

Air travel is quicker, of course, but comes with a number of hindrances. Advanced reservation. Check-in. Airport security. Overpriced junk. Flight delays. Diverted flights. Lost luggage. Your car, which could probably have made the journey more cheaply(even if you travelled solo) and provided you with flexibility, isn't at the destination.

Aberdeen <-> London is ~7 hours on the train (on the 3 direct trains a day), longer if you take the sleeper. But flying it's less than 2 hours (how much varies depending upon which London airport you land in), check-in online on your smartphone on the way to the airport, the airport security theatre is admittedly a PITA but the overpriced junk is entirely optional. With careful packing you can go for a weeks holiday and still only take carry-on luggage so no lost luggage worries.

Anyone contemplating driving from Scotland, let alone from Northern Scotland to London is a total loon IMHO!

To put it back into a Honorverse perspective, I imagine the stations had some form of mass transit so time from your bunk to a shuttle station was probably pretty minimal. Drop down the gravity well, again probably not that long. Catch that performance by your favourite artist, stay overnight in a hotel and back up the following day after doing some shopping[1] ...

[1] I'm sure Hephaestus had all/most of the big name stores, but did they have a Whisky Store?

This, btw, is part of why tests and attention to detail matter a lot when building aerospace systems, and why these lessons often are written in blood.:

Loose nut costs Air Force $62.4 million in accident

kzt wrote:This, btw, is part of why tests and attention to detail matter a lot when building aerospace systems, and why these lessons often are written in blood.:

Loose nut costs Air Force $62.4 million in accident

That kind of thing happens more than you might think. In 1992 2 squadrons of F-14's were grounded for a week when someone forgot to order a $2.50 part. My ship was on reduced fresh water (2 of 3 water distillation plants OOC) for six weeks when a drive belt broke cost $23.00. We got the problem solved when a guy called his wife and she went to NAPA auto parts and purchased 6 fan belts of the correct size and FedExed them to the the U.S. Embassy in Oman.