Suspension of Disbelief.

kzt wrote:Economics are not the strong point of Honorverse stories.

Or economics works differently because industry, technology and society has developed along paths that have changed what is expensive and what is cheap.

Tenshinai wrote:Or economics works differently because industry, technology and society has developed along paths that have changed what is expensive and what is cheap.

Like the 300 million people out in the asteroid belt mining for materials with their picks and shovels?

kzt wrote:Like the 300 million people out in the asteroid belt mining for materials with their picks and shovels?

And where exactly is that mining described as being manual labor?

Tenshinai wrote:

kzt wrote:Like the 300 million people out in the asteroid belt mining for materials with their picks and shovels?

And where exactly is that mining described as being manual labor?

It's not. IIRC the basis for kzt's hyperbole goes back to the threads about what industrial resources Manticore had left after Oyster Bay (and specifically the "Unicorn Yards" where the Navy built their prototypes and most secret ships).

kzt please correct me if I'm misrepresenting your position on any of this; or even if I'm misremembering how it came together.


We had a population number for the outer belts prior to that (the 300 million kzt referenced), but David came along as said there were no shipyards out there and no industry; that they'd be basically no help rebuilding the destroyed stations, shipyards, and industry in the wake of OB. (Specifically that the Unicorn Yard" was on the Wayland station over Gryphon -- despite EoH giving the strong impression that it was out in the Unicorn Belt)
Which left a bit of a question of what the heck 300 million people were doing out there if the mining is presumably pretty automated; yet there's no other industry.

Tenshinai wrote:

kzt wrote:Like the 300 million people out in the asteroid belt mining for materials with their picks and shovels?

And where exactly is that mining described as being manual labor?

How else do you employ 300 million people who have no manufacturing capability? Considering that there were less than a million people who manufactured everything, from screws to starships, made in the manticore system, how many would you expect you need?

I'd estimate under 50k.

The whole manpower limitations on the RMN have the same issues. What critical functions related to waging war do the 2.7 billion people who are neither in the military or manufacturing mar materials?

Jonathan_S wrote:
kzt please correct me if I'm misrepresenting your position on any of this; or even if I'm misremembering how it came together.


We had a population number for the outer belts prior to that (the 300 million kzt referenced), but David came along as said there were no shipyards out there and no industry; that they'd be basically no help rebuilding the destroyed stations, shipyards, and industry in the wake of OB. (Specifically that the Unicorn Yard" was on the Wayland station over Gryphon -- despite EoH giving the strong impression that it was out in the Unicorn Belt)
Which left a bit of a question of what the heck 300 million people were doing out there if the mining is presumably pretty automated; yet there's no other industry.

Pretty much.

kzt wrote:

Tenshinai"[quote="kzt wrote:Like the 300 million people out in the asteroid belt mining for materials with their picks and shovels?

And where exactly is that mining described as being manual labor?

How else do you employ 300 million people who have no manufacturing capability? Considering that there were less than a million people who manufactured everything, from screws to starships, made in the manticore system, how many would you expect you need?

I'd estimate under 50k.

The whole manpower limitations on the RMN have the same issues. What critical functions related to waging war do the 2.7 billion people who are neither in the military or manufacturing mar materials?[/quote]


300 million people in the unicorn belt is not all that high a number if you figure in the supporting infrastructure of any mining venture. Look at any old west mining town they had all sorts of small supporting businesses like hotels, bars, brothels, banks, stores of various types, telegraph office, black smith, stables, assay and claims office and if able a railroad depot. Remember if you want to make money in a gold rush don't go mining open a business and remember the three B's Beer Beans and Broads. If you don't believe me, there are three companies that got its start during the California gold rush namely Levi Strauss and Co, Wells Fargo bank and Coleman Camping equipment. Also reread Hard Way Home.

saber964 wrote:

kzt wrote:How else do you employ 300 million people who have no manufacturing capability? Considering that there were less than a million people who manufactured everything, from screws to starships, made in the manticore system, how many would you expect you need?

I'd estimate under 50k.

The whole manpower limitations on the RMN have the same issues. What critical functions related to waging war do the 2.7 billion people who are neither in the military or manufacturing mar materials?

300 million people in the unicorn belt is not all that high a number if you figure in the supporting infrastructure of any mining venture. Look at any old west mining town they had all sorts of small supporting businesses like hotels, bars, brothels, banks, stores of various types, telegraph office, black smith, stables, assay and claims office and if able a railroad depot. Remember if you want to make money in a gold rush don't go mining open a business and remember the three B's Beer Beans and Broads. If you don't believe me, there are three companies that got its start during the California gold rush namely Levi Strauss and Co, Wells Fargo bank and Coleman Camping equipment. Also reread Hard Way Home.

300 Million is just shy of the current population of the US - In the US in 2012, 1.9 Million worked in jobs closely associated with the mining industry with ~650,000 working in Mines. World wide in 2012, 3.7 Million worked in full scale mining and 25 million worked in "small scale Artisanal Mining".

Considering the advances in technology and the relative ease of asteroid mining in the fusion/grav field Honorverse, I can't see a mining population in Manticore being much bigger than what the US has now, yet directly it and the related extraction and smelting businesses are only .6% of the population - and the rest of the US does much more than slap band-aids on the miners, serve them waffles, sell them jeans, take care of their extracurricular needs, and sell them retirement packages. Even if you were to take the entire 2012 world's extraction industry, it does not explain Manticore B's space presence alone.

Besides, you have to ask - where do all those habitats come from? Who maintains them? Who builds the extraction equipment, who maintains them? Somehow I don't think the answer is they return to Gryphon for every tune-up. Naturally, over time, a civilian based construction and repair industry would develop in the belts - to construct the habitats in place - to repair the ore ships and the smelters without sending them back to where they are not needed. And a civilian construction yard might not be able to build a SD, but it might be able to build a station module or parts of an assembly node.

But this is nothing we haven't said before.

Tenshinai wrote:

kzt wrote:Like the 300 million people out in the asteroid belt mining for materials with their picks and shovels?

And where exactly is that mining described as being manual labor?

Because even manual labor with a pick and shovel would be able to produce multiple times all the mining ore extracted today on earth with the numbers indicated.

Subtract all the coal miners today and the number of people in the mining industry is quite small. Obviously in the Honorverse no one is mining coal in the asteroid belts.

A good proxy for asteroid mining in the honorverse is the offshore drilling industry. It is insanely capital intensive, composed of extremely expensive platforms staffed by a fairly small crew of specialist who work long intense shifts for several weeks being paid very good wages for the danger, isolation and expertise needed. Then they get flown back to the mainland and do it all over again in a few weeks.

Where are the support staff for oil platforms located? On shore, dozens to hundreds of miles away. Why are there not floating cites out ther supporting the oil platforms? Because that would be very expensive and the density of platforms is very low, so there is no way to make money at it. And the density of asteroid mining platforms would be vastly lower.

How long does would it take in the honorverse to travel from earth to the nearest and farthest extents of the asteroid belt? Not very long at 500g for the near stuff, not outrageously long to the farthest extents. How long would it take to go from some point in the middle of the asteroid belt to the middle of the belt 25% of the way around the sun?