An issue about space freighters

[Shinova]

Normally, when one thinks freighters, they'd probably think large, super-huge ships that can transport lots of stuff per run.

Yet, there are also freighters like the Falcon, which are small and seemingly unsuited to any kind of really sensible commercial freight work.

Would there be any reason for some freighters to be small sized like the Falcon?

[Hotfoot]

Luxury items, courier services, private transportation, and so on. Besides which, not everyone can probably afford the huge bulk frieghters.

[Warspite]

Only for very time sensitive cargoes. (FedEx anyone?)

Air cargo is a very expansive business due to its time-sensitiveness, but still can't compete against the volume of goods carried by the world's shipping companies.

[Iceberg]

Yeah, what they said.

Personally, I have a hard time buying the idea put forth in the Star Wars RPG books that there was ever a time that freight hauling was dominated by hundred-ton light freighters with small holds. The number of those things you'd have to use in order to get a decent amount of cargo from place to place would be just unreal.

[MKSheppard]

Yeah, what they said.

Personally, I have a hard time buying the idea put forth in the Star Wars RPG books that there was ever a time that freight hauling was dominated by hundred-ton light freighters with small holds. The number of those things you'd have to use in order to get a decent amount of cargo from place to place would be just unreal.

Has anyone even thought up the brilliant idea that the 100 ton "capacity"
is really the weight limit the falcon can take before her decks buckle from
the strain?

The YT-1300 seems big enough to fit a fair sized amount of stuff in...think
of it as the Ryder truck of the SW Universe

[Sea Skimmer]

Smuggling drugs and other very compact items would be worthwhile, and small scale tramp operations would have a lot of demand on the rim with millions of remote worlds. There are a lot of areas in the world which have air freight service using nothing bigger then a C-47's.

But there's no way in hell most demand could be met that way. Luckily someone writing the RPG books had sanity and included freighters with tens of millions of tons of capacity. And then of course we have the Trade Federations vessels.

[phongn]

Has anyone even thought up the brilliant idea that the 100 ton "capacity" is really the weight limit the falcon can take before her decks buckle from
the strain?

I figured that it was the standard mass limit of the cargo hold, with some additional overhead rather than the total load limit.

The YT-1300 seems big enough to fit a fair sized amount of stuff in...think of it as the Ryder truck of the SW Universe

That may be true, but the SWRPG argues that the light freighter types dominated trade and was only later supplanted by large freighters, which makes little sense. Economies of scale dictate that a smaller number of large freighters would dominate the majority of interstellar trade.

[Knife]

You can also see it as a part of a larger distrabution system. The large freighters would carry the goods into centralized hubs and the smaller transports would take the goods from there to their final destination.

[Sea Skimmer]

You can also see it as a part of a larger distrabution system. The large freighters would carry the goods into centralized hubs and the smaller transports would take the goods from there to their final destination.

But even quite small worlds would have a quite high level of consumption. You might not need a two mile long ship, but a 100 tons isn't nearly enough. Such freighters could really only move small special cargos rather then day to day stuff, and its the day to day bulk shipment which should always be the vast majority of trade.

[Knife]

You can also see it as a part of a larger distrabution system. The large freighters would carry the goods into centralized hubs and the smaller transports would take the goods from there to their final destination.

But even quite small worlds would have a quite high level of consumption. You might not need a two mile long ship, but a 100 tons isn't nearly enough. Such freighters could really only move small special cargos rather then day to day stuff, and its the day to day bulk shipment which should always be the vast majority of trade.

Only if you assume a global economy or a ST style industry. Smaller ships (ala the Falcon) would assume the role of say a tactor trailer in todays distrabution of goods. Smaller companies in SW or small groups of people (depending on cargo) would utilise the small cheap transports to deliever their goods to specific locations instead of shipping large portions on larger craft and have those goods delievered to a central location and then arrange to have the goods sent via land transport (or local transport) to the specific location.

Bulk is cheaper but sometimes conveinence out does cheap.

[Sea Skimmer]

Perhaps, though the disparity in capacity between the Falcon and even the few hundred meter long WEG freighters is one or two orders of magnitude greater then that of the modern tractor-trailer and a moderate sized container ship. The Falcon is more like a city messenger service, and there's no way that kind of thing could ever dominate the market as the RPG's claim.

[Knife]

Perhaps, though the disparity in capacity between the Falcon and even the few hundred meter long WEG freighters is one or two orders of magnitude greater then that of the modern tractor-trailer and a moderate sized container ship. The Falcon is more like a city messenger service, and there's no way that kind of thing could ever dominate the market as the RPG's claim.

No, not as the RPG claims but a substansial market notch exsists for it though.

[Cpt_Frank]

In X-wing alliance the YT freighters could dock with containers and transport them through hyperspace to their destination.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Normally, when one thinks freighters, they'd probably think large, super-huge ships that can transport lots of stuff per run.

Yet, there are also freighters like the Falcon, which are small and seemingly unsuited to any kind of really sensible commercial freight work.

Would there be any reason for some freighters to be small sized like the Falcon?

A big freighter would probably be on a fixed route and schedule. Those big ships are very expensive, and the less risky a run they go on, the better. They would be poorly suited to transporting something that was time-sensitive, unless the time-sensitive items were first on the freighter's itinerary. So, in the large environment you'd need smaller transports that don't have to follow the sorts of fixed itineraries that their bigger cousins do. The can be used to convey small cargoes, mail, people, and underworld cargoes.

[Iceberg]

The analogy can be made for this between a superfreighter and a cargo jetliner. The superfreighter can get a hell of a lot more cargo from point A to point B, and do it far more cost-efficiently, but it's slow as hell, a gigantic target, can't get in to a lot of places, and MUST travel either under heavy escort or along the safest routes possible. And the loss of a superfreighter means a devastating financial blow, not just for the company operating it but for companies shipping on it as well. Meanwhile, Millennium Falcon-type light freighters are like the 737-400Cs or BC-17 Globemaster IIIs of the Star Wars galaxy - they can get a cargo from point A to point B on time and go where no superfreighter would or could.

The Falcon won't be replacing superfreighters or coal trains any time soon, but it's fast and versatile enough to have its own market niche.

[Wicked Pilot]

Even if large super freighters account for 99% of the transported cargo in the Galatic Empire, what's left is still one big shit load.

[The Third Man]

Maybe hyperdive scales poorly to a bigger vessel, or at least did at the time when "small freighters dominated". In other words, maybe the energy required to move an object is proportional to the cube (for example) of the mass. In which case it would be more energy efficient to make multiple shipments of lower mass; the opposite to how the transport systems we're familiar with behave, where it pays to make the vessel bigger. We know that the hyperdrive of a big vessel like an ISD requires a prodigious amount of energy (the total power output of a civilization).

Another explanation could be that in the GE, there simply isn't much call for bulk cargo transport between worlds. This would be the case if most worlds obtain their raw materials eg food, ores from their own globe, manufacture their own local brands of goods and export only a few, specialised high-value, low-bulk finished goods. Million-ton freighters would then only come into play for unusual cases, such as constructing death-stars, or shipping food to anomolous worlds such Coruscant, and transport would be dominated by small-cargo freighters. There's some evidence for this in SW - different cultures tend to have their own distinct homespun versions of clothes, weapons, ships rather than using a ubiquitous design from one manufacturer which is distributed galaxy-wide.

[Wicked Pilot]

Maybe hyperdive scales poorly to a bigger vessel,

More likely the reason is that the amount of time needed to load and unload a super transport scales poorly as the size of the transport increases. Go look at modern day super transports and the amount of time they spend at the pier getting loaded.

[Starscream]

Gee if I was a mod I stick this in PSW, oh well.




Anyhow just because we don't hear about them doesn't mean they don't exist. Most of SW is about war and such, no reason you'd hear anything about a supertanker or whatever equivalent they have. Although I seem to remember the X-Wing books talking about Bacta haules.

[Sea Skimmer]

Maybe hyperdive scales poorly to a bigger vessel,

More likely the reason is that the amount of time needed to load and unload a super transport scales poorly as the size of the transport increases. Go look at modern day super transports and the amount of time they spend at the pier getting loaded.

You'd be surprised just how fast they can unload a 40,000 ton container ship. That's the trick, leave the actually loading and unloading of the individual items to the sender and receiver. A ton ship laden with bags of rice could take massively longer then a container ship several times it size.

[Starscream]

And unlike most sea going vessels you could unload a spaceship from all angles, and if it were a modular vessel you might just be able to take it apart temporarily.

[Wicked Pilot]

Well think about it this way, you need to send an 100lb object of extreme importance and/or dubious nature from Klamath Falls, Oregon to Ithaca, New York. Your options are either FedEx or the guy at the airport who owns a new Cessna Citation. If you choose FedEx, the truck comes up and picks up your package and takes it to say Portland International. It is then loaded onto a DC-10 and shipped to Memphis. There all the cargo out of Portland is sorted, and your package is put onto a 727 and flown to Syracuse. There it is unloaded and put on a truck to Ithaca. If you choose the local pilot, you take it to the airport, put it on his plane, and he flies it direct to Ithaca. Upon arrival, he calls a cab and takes it to wherever.

Now which one of these methods is faster? Depending on the time of the day the package is ready to fly, the pilot in his Citation is faster by a few hours or even a day. Which one is cheaper? You bet your sweet ass FedEx is. What if what your cargo is extremely valuable and/or of a dubious nature, which shipping method would you use? Let's say you furthur complicate the issue by trying to get your stuff to a very obscure place outside of the civilized world, like say Mogadeshu. Then who would you choose?

[UltraViolence83]

I wanna be a freelance courier/transporter. It would be sweet to travel the country (or even the world!) and be my own boss.

[Hyperion]

Think about it this way: the huge bulk freighters can be compared to today's oceangoing freighters, and think of the small 100-ton fast freighters as today's semi-trucks, which still dominate trade (regional).

That is how I see it at least.