Quote:There are better sources of water than Earth. Sources like Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, the Kuiper Belt... or just manufacturing the damn stuff on-site with Jovian hydrogen.
Ahem.
Buying megatons of water from Earth makes no fucking sense unless you're planning on stripping that biosphere to feed the VTP - and that'll go over well with the 'danelaw, you betcha.
Quote:As opposed to the handwavium-free environment in which the rest of Fenspace lives in?
And so on; relying on handwavium tech for these things will create an ecosystem completely saturated in the stuff. Something people other than the most daring fen would be willing to live in takes hardtech, and hardtech takes cash.
No, skip it. That's not a slapfight I'm ready to take on yet.
Hardtech may take cash, but importing hydrogen to make oil (and why the fuck does it make sense to feed the mundane hydrocarbon addiction anyfuckingway?) is a stupid way of making it. If the VTP wants to depend on a single source of income with the 'danelaw - and in my dimly-remembered Econ 101 classes they called that a "bananna republic" - then the intelligent thing to do would be to set up a daughter organization mining hydrocarbons in the outer system and shipping it from there. With speed drives running at 0.01C the solar system is only a couple weeks wide if you'll recall. More than competitve for dirtside tankage.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"