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Works for me!

thank, Carlos, I'm gonna' save this!

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On Tue, 3/29/16, xxxxxx@mail.de <xxxxxx@mail.de> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [TML] Relic tech and Scarcity-Driven Imperium (was: Salvage Operations (and Submarines))
 To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com
 Date: Tuesday, March 29, 2016, 11:43 AM

 I actually meant
 something simpler with the "relic-tech" idea.
 Assume energy is cheap and abundant via fusion. However,
 energy alone without the technology to transmute elements
 does NOT yield a post-scarcity society. Most of interstellar
 space travel in Traveller is a handwave which does not
 really interact (AFAIK) with the key technologies which
 imply the capability to transmute elements. The two elements
 of Traveller which imply a capability to tweak the basic
 forces are, I think, antigrav and nuclear dampeners. But
 antigrav can be handwaved away as implying only a control of
 gravity, not, say, the strong nuclear force. Maybe I am
 missing something here, but it seems to me that the problem
 are nuclear dampers
 (http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Nuclear_Damper). But those are
 not really such a fundamental element of the setting, just a
 defensive device. They are not really necessary to explain
 interstellar travel in Traveller (are they?).
  
 So assume that nuclear dampers are far above TL15/16.
 However, the imperium has them because of reverse-engineered
 relic tech. This does not mean that you need to put together
 your dampers with actual relic tech, merely that you can
 construct them, but you have no idea why they work. So you
 have no element transmutation and no replicators. It is a
 small step from there to large-scale interstellar
 trade.
  
  

 --
 Carlos Alós-Ferrer
 Chair of Microeconomics, University of Cologne
 http://www.decisions.uni-koeln.de