On Sat, 3 Dec 2022 09:22:20 +0000, Timothy Collinson wrote:

>Jim V, with his Plankwell campaign, has had me thinking about startowns of
>late and I've been having fun generating one using Michael Brown's _Locale:
>Startowns_

[Propitiations to the Deitic Principle of Bandpass]

>Two questions arise:
>Would the Navy share a port like this with civilians?

[More Propitiations]

>The other question arose around startown policing.
>Who does it?

[Still More Propitiations]

Obviously, this is my take on it; please bear with me, there's explication
included.

Let it be noted that a lot of people first think 'airport' as a stand-in
for 'starport' because Stuff Flies In And Out Of It. However, in some
respects, 'seaport' may be better because Less Stuff Flies In And Out, And
What Does Usually Stays For A While.

Looking at USAF and USN practices since I'm from That Side of the Pond, I
can't find any examples of airbases co-located with civilian airports,
although there are civilian airports that were handed over for civilian use
from USAF (Stewart International Airport in Newburgh, NY used to be a USAF
base).

I'm less certain about USN ports co-locating with civilian seaports, but I
can see it happening; not any random seacoast location is going to be good
for a seaport, and no matter who owns the Big Floaty Things That Use It,
it's going to have some basic requirements that won't change when it's a
Military Big Floaty Thing vs a Commercial Big Floaty Thing. On the other
hand, if the Good Area For Making A Port is big enough, you _can_ have
separation between the Military Area and the Civilian Area that's large
enough for them to be perceived as separate ports, and not just a secure
military area within the larger port - an example of this is New York,
where the (Commercial) Port of New York and New Jersey and the USN's Staten
Island Homeport facility are separate.

I would consider co-location to be more likely with polities that have less
in the way of suitable coastal locations - e.g., it might me more likely in
the UK or France or Norway than the US or Australia or India.

But there's another factor that plays into it, one that doesn't actually
affect airports or seaports on Earth: Extraterritoriality ("Extrality", in
a lot of Traveller literature). When a world joins the Imperium (and, I
suspect, the Solomani Confederation), it cedes some territory to the polity
for the world's Starport. While I think the phrasing of the description of
the requirement for the cession doesn't specify that it's a single plot, I
believe that the current assumption is that it _is_, and the size isn't
actually specified.

There's really only one example here on Earth that I can think of that
applies, even partially: the State of Maryland and the Commonwealth of
Virginia ceded some swamp area - ten miles square in total - to the United
States as a place to construct a national capital, in accordance with
Article I, Section 8, seventeenth paragraph of the Constitution of the
United States. The portion of the area originally ceded by the Commonwealth
of Virginia has been returned thereto, but the remainder is still a direct
possession of the United States, and is known as "Washington, DC".

This area is NOT governed by the State of Maryland. It is directly and
exclusively under the control of the Congress of the United States. The
Congress has granted it a measure of "home rule", so that it has a Mayor
and a City Council, and it is the "home rule" government that controls
local services - but the "home rule" government is ultimately answerable to
Congress.

Rather than just being "official" facilities - archives, government
buildings, military bases, and so on - an entire city has developed in the
cession - which is why Congress felt it necessary and appropriate to permit
the formation of a 'home rule' government.

Now, here are two important questions: (1) How much space does a starport
_really_ need? and (2) How large is the planetary cession to the Imperium?

If a Class A starport (the port proper, not including the startown, but
yes, including fuel dumps, passenger and freight terminals, repair
facilities, etc.) doesn't really need much more space than a large
international airport - let's say twice the area of JFK in New York - then
a cession the size of Washington DC - really, a trivial area on a planetary
scale - is almost guaranteed to be the site for the civilian starport, a
*separate* Naval port (which may or may not include a Scout base), *and*
startown.

Both ports will have security around them. The military port may have a
fairly large "dead zone" around it to keep people from being able to
observe operations too closely (they'll refer to it as 'spying' or
'intelligence work'); the civil port may have less of a protected zone,
just for safety rather than to prevent 'intelligence work'. And both ports
may expand as needed within the cession.

The part of the cession that's not directly within the ports will probably
have a marked border - though how _controlled_ the border would be is
unclear. I would expect some sort of minimal control from the Imperial
side, just to emphasize that the planetary government is _not_ in control
and has _no_ authority within the cession.

So, how does Startown get started? That is, how does it come into
existence? There are several possible reasons, and it's likely that more
than one will come into play:

1. Certain vices are going to be cracked down on within the ports proper,
but may have a blind eye turned to them as long as they're not in the ports
proper and aren't causing problems _on_ the port or with personnel on-duty.
That can lead to a "red-light" district and some "'shine bars", which in
turn might lead to "flophouses" for the customers to "sleep it off" and go
back to the port not unfit for duty.

2. The presence of 'spacers', whether military or civilian crews, will
likely attract people looking to sell them stuff. Even if all the stuff is
"legal" by planetary law, sales within the cession are not going to be
subject to local taxation and need not be done in local currency (at
government-defined exchange rates). Barter and off-world coinage - but not
off-world paper/plastic money, _except_ maybe Imperial Credits - will be
the likely main means of exchange, and the sellers will gravitate into a
'flea market' or 'bazaar' type of location.

3. On the commercial side, you might have the occasional traveller who is
looking to try his luck on a new world, but fails - or is denied entry. Or
the occasional expired "working passenger" who the ship doesn't want to
hire permanently, and who doesn't want to settle on this world, but is
looking for another berth. Either might stay in a 'flophouse' until their
money runs out, and then subsist doing menial jobs that are needed in the
not-yet-really-a-startown.

4. If the nascent cession community starts getting rowdy, and exporting the
problems onto the planet, the planet may set up 'harder' border control,
leading to some travellers being denied admission. It may also lead to the
planet trying to 'take over' the community and policing it, but that will
likely be firmly, though likely not violently, resisted by the Port
Authority (and the Navy/Scouts, if present). To keep the world government
from getting too annoyed, the Port Authority and/or the Navy Shore Patrol
may set up some sort of watch force to crack down on the worst of what
happens - or, if the members of the cession community hear that it might
happen, they may try to pre-empt such action by starting a 'vigilance
committee' to deal with the worst of it.

5. There are always going to be profitable activities that are not allowed
by the planetary government - or at least not allowed to be done by
non-governmental operators. Some of the more important operators - the
bosses - may try to 'hide' in the cession to avoid being shut down by the
planetary government. You can't arrest Mr Capone, the known-but-not-
provable bootlegger, for tax evasion if he's not within your jurisdiction,
after all. These people are going to want their areas to be 'nice', and
will pay to have decent homes built, and will pay people to keep the worst
of the riff-raff and their problems at a decent distance. This can evolve
into "real" operations and policing forces.

6. If the world is lower-tech - say, early industrial or pre-industrial -
the Imperium may deliberately build "Star City" on the cession to serve as
a showcase of what Imperial technology can accomplish, and to serve as a
place where the planetary government can send people to learn the basics,
or to contract for Imperials to come out and build and train on-site in
other planetary locations. Star City, naturally, would have its own
government and police force, not subject to planetary law, and not
controlled by the Port Authority, whose job is to manage and secure _the
port_.

7. If the world is named as an Imperial fief for a noble - or is the 'best'
part of a fief, the noble may choose to have an estate built in the
cession. This will act as a 'third center' (commercial port, military port,
Imperial Seat) for people to do people-y things that might not be
appropriate for where they Really Spend Most Of Their Time.

®Traveller is a registered trademark of
Far Future Enterprises, 1977-2022. Use of
the trademark in this notice and in the
referenced materials is not intended to
infringe or devalue the trademark.

--
Jeff Zeitlin, Editor
Freelance Traveller
    The Electronic Fan-Supported Traveller® Resource
xxxxxx@freelancetraveller.com
http://www.freelancetraveller.com

Freelance Traveller extends its thanks to the following
enterprises for hosting services:

onCloud/CyberWeb Enterprises (http://www.oncloud.io)
The Traveller Downport (http://www.downport.com)