More on Spacer economics
The distance is what is eating me up. That and the fact that I’ve set up the ACCs to be self-sufficient.
Say that the drive technology is lost to the Terrans (so they are limited to 0.25c) and the Spacers just do not have the infrastructure. Still no reason to trade - what would they have that each other needs?
The Spacers could do limited trade with the Terrans - perhaps the mercy runs.
Perhaps the ACCs are not self-sufficient. They would want metal-rich stars with Asteroid belts. They would not want to go down gravity wells to mine. So they would need to ship goods between the various Spacer colonies.
That would see the Clans become a subset of the Spacers. I.e., the Spacers would want to settle in a system and the Clans would not.
This goes to there has to be strife within a culture/society. Look at Limbo by Rich Cook - both the Colonists and the Humans initially lost out because they failed to realize that there were factions in the other party. Captain Jenkins was not as able a leader as he would have been if it were just Space Force personnel on board. He couldn’t deal with the paradigm shift necessary to deal with the scientists.
The hijackers have factions explicitly between the Spacer crew and the popsicles. The Spacers have factions in the crew on both ships. Those on The Dizzy Dean could either feel abandoned because of the fear of the Plague or torn from getting their possibly infected family off of the Earth.
The Plague, the quarantine, and the Great Breakout have to influence both Terran and Spacer culture. At a high level it is easy enough to paint with large brush strokes, but the reality is that there are Terrans who want the stars, that there are Spacers who want to help Terrans, etc.
But that still doesn’t get me a reason why the Clans would be traveling years each way for a delivery. Perhaps if they had a great route (aka the year long trade cycle of the Dutiful Passage, Miller and Lee) it would be acceptable, but you would never get back to where you started.
Perhaps I’m still pushing the society too fast. Assume that the emotional scars are too fresh and that both Terrans and Spacers stay away from each other. The Terrans are busy rebuilding their world (and perhaps limiting population growth, or did they not learn their lesson?), don’t have fast interstellar travel, and don’t care to mingle. They are busy securing the Terra System.
The Spacers are busy surviving. While they are self-sufficient, they will need to expand and perhaps take care of their Grounders (Note: If 2000 can go up awake, 5000 can come up sleeping, which would be about 7.3 million popsicles and not 2 million. Also, it would take about 150 ACC sleepers at 50k each to ship them out. And that still works into the 3000 total ACC ships.), etc. They would also want to have Q ships outside/inside the Terrran System to warn them of either a technology boost or an armada. The Terrans can do 0.25C, the small Spacer craft can do 0.5c, and the ACC can do 0.75c.
Let 100 or 200 years pass - the societies settle into their stereotypes. Consider Andre Norton’s The Stars are Ours! with the Free Scientist versus the Pax. Dard gets to the stars and the planet Astra. In Star Guard, Kana is told about the Astrians, who are conjectured to be an early colony of humanity. I.e., the descendants of the Free Scientists got back to space before those of the Pax. But despite rejecting science under the Pax, humanity does finally go to the stars.
Perhaps in that period the Terrans finally figure out how to get to 0.5c and then 0.75c. But the Clans discover how to get a sub-FTL drive at 0.9c. And part of it will be a new fuel source. Even with the new drive, things will move too slow.
The start of the next era has to be the discovery of the Slingshot drive. And there has to be one in the Terran System. The congruency points are discovered first - ships starting from there can get to 1.5c. But their routes are significantly reduced. The weird time dilation effects would also kick in. Someone would need to discover up and down spin. Hmm, this might also give the Grubbers time to develop.
This has been going on for 12 years and finally a Clan researcher realizes how to make a new drive that allows near instantaneous travel. You have to enter the congruency hole at near light speed, it takes 2 months to achieve it, you spend an indeterminate amount of time in transit, but on average from 2 weeks to 4 weeks, and then you spend a couple of weeks decelerating. This gives you perhaps 3 months to suffer normal dilation effects and a fudge factor.
The Holy Grail, which the secret Grubber society achieves, is being able to accelerate for a couple weeks, transit for about a week, and deaccelerate for a week. All without worrying about a congruency hole. Or perhaps going from a standstill to your next stop. (The Maxwell from Rich Cook’s Limbo is too fresh in my mind.)
Hmm, as far as static warfare, you know where the congruency holes are located in other systems that will go to your system, so you could guard them. But you have no clue where ships emerge when they take them. So you can’t guard the exit point.
