How Hyperspace Time Variances Could Affect Commerce

[Bab5space]

Scenario: Three types of scifi hyperdrives are available to you.
Class I: A small drive that can be fitted on small vessels. Hyperspace travel time is a lightyear covered per 30 minutes. Yet in reality, outside 30 days passes for every 30 min of hyperspace travel. So about 2 hours would get you to Proxima Centauri, but when you arrive 4 months will have passed.
Class II: A medium size drive for medium size vessels neither gigantic nor small. Hyperspace travel is a LY per 15 min, outside 15 days pass per LY traveled.
Class III: Large hyperdrives for large vessels. Five min per LY in hyperspace, equal to 5 days passing outside per LY.
Throttling down: You can also throttle down the hyperdrives to go lightspeed, in which there is no time variance. Useful mainly for interplanetary cruising.

My analysis: Class I hyperdrives are best for explorers I think, and Class II hyperdrives could be used for cheaper shipping for longer wait times, but by and large the Class 3 hyperdrives would reign supreme in shipping.
Big ships would be the fastest ever.
Did I miss anything that you can add to my analysis?

EDIT: I have no clue how close these travel times compare to modern sea shipping, but I have a feeling they are similar, and faster in some cases.

EDIT 2: I think the ability to skip several months into the future within a few hours woukd be nice ability to have, if only to see rapid progress.
Whoa... I just figured it out! Passenger ride fares would be a healthy source of income. Don't want to wait months for your package to arrive? Hitch a ride in hyperspace and the wait will only be a few hours.
Sure, months of time will pass outside, but who cares? You want your package ASAP!

 

[member 656954]

The cost of travel will impact how these drives are adopted, as well as the 'where' of travel. What motivates anyone outside of exploration to venture beyond the solar system? Also, given the 'throttle' aspect, there is no obvious reason why you can't have Class V or X or M, because the mechanism that drives the time variance seems linear. Certainly, if a large craft can propel itself with a Class III then a larger class can propel itself with a Class IV.

In terms of shipping times down here on Earth, the ODM Group has a list of routes and typical travel times and your Class III hyperdrive is slower than a container vessel for pretty much any other star system. Procyon A is similar to the Sun, is 11.402 LY away, and would take your Class III craft 57 days to get there. Plus, presumably, some maneuvering time at either end. But Gliese 433, at almost 30LY and with two known planets, requires 148 days of travel, which is more like an olde worlde sailing ship than a modern container ship.

Also, would passenger rides into the future really be that compelling? Unless that slow moving package is my freshly printed replacement heart and I'll die waiting for it to arrive, fast forward means you miss everything else going on your life. Believe me, I've done my share of travel for work, and that four week trip to the African gold mine with marginal wifi means you've missed a lot of stuff going on in your own backyard. Long separations used to be the norm, back in the days of Harry Flashman, but we're not so keen on such flickering relationships these days (and even Flashman used to stress that Elspeth was cheating on him while he was away saving the Empire).

Is this all for a sci fi story where you are concentrating on the commerce?

 

[Bab5space]

The cost of travel will impact how these drives are adopted, as well as the 'where' of travel. What motivates anyone outside of exploration to venture beyond the solar system? Also, given the 'throttle' aspect, there is no obvious reason why you can't have Class V or X or M, because the mechanism that drives the time variance seems linear. Certainly, if a large craft can propel itself with a Class III then a larger class can propel itself with a Class IV.

In terms of shipping times down here on Earth, the ODM Group has a list of routes and typical travel times and your Class III hyperdrive is slower than a container vessel for pretty much any other star system. Procyon A is similar to the Sun, is 11.402 LY away, and would take your Class III craft 57 days to get there. Plus, presumably, some maneuvering time at either end. But Gliese 433, at almost 30LY and with two known planets, requires 148 days of travel, which is more like an olde worlde sailing ship than a modern container ship.

Also, would passenger rides into the future really be that compelling? Unless that slow moving package is my freshly printed replacement heart and I'll die waiting for it to arrive, fast forward means you miss everything else going on your life. Believe me, I've done my share of travel for work, and that four week trip to the African gold mine with marginal wifi means you've missed a lot of stuff going on in your own backyard. Long separations used to be the norm, back in the days of Harry Flashman, but we're not so keen on such flickering relationships these days (and even Flashman used to stress that Elspeth was cheating on him while he was away saving the Empire).

Is this all for a sci fi story where you are concentrating on the commerce?

In theory you are right... but no one has figured out how to make a Class 4 hyperdrive yet.

Class I are relatively cheap, Class II is expensive but not so much that only rich can afford it. Class III is the reserve of rich folk and companies that own freighters.

Yet I do find the time skipping to be fascinating, since the crew can travel forward months of time as it were while only aging a few hours.

The story itself does feature some commerce, as I am seeking to show notgalactic heroes, but average joes, making the best they can out of a scifi universe with aliens, religion, and an alternate take on humanity where religion as we know it does not have the same backstory. Namely... in this timeline there was no christianity, no judiasm, no Jesus... and things just went from there. Yet due to the human desire for life, the belief in an afterlife persists while both agnostics and atheists both are popular.
Aliens of various types are based on themes and expounded upon, and that effects their ethics. For example one is all about being positive, another is about truth, and still another is about optimal physical fitness, and then there is one that is about repaying debts owed. Only one of them actually favors using human style prisons (the fitness ones).EDIT: When vessels drop out of hyperspace, they may not have to maneuver a lot if they drop out of hyperspace close enough to a planet to mass lock.

Mass lock in my verse means your vessel drops out of hyperspace at a speed and trajectory matching the planet it is nearby. Of course if too far away, you would not mass lock and would have to either manuever with sublight engines or get closer by throttling down at lightspeed to mass lock properly.

 

[BWV]

The story itself does feature some commerce,

the question that never gets asked is what economic rationale exists for interstellar trade? A society advanced enough for interstellar travel can cheaply manufacture any goods itself and any solar system like ours has more than enough raw materials, so what does that leave? Luxury goods, exotic lifeforms?

Aliens of various types are based on themes and expounded upon, and that effects their ethics. For example one is all about being positive, another is about truth, and still another is about optimal physical fitness, and then there is one that is about repaying debts owed. Only one of them actually favors using human style prisons (the fitness ones).

Be careful, aliens that are all one narrow human character trait are a horrible cliche

https://www.mmoreau.net/post/51729858409/10-worst-science-fiction-cliches

8. Homogenous alien species
So if Klingons are all warriors then who developed warp drive for them? Who works in their retail stores and daycare centers? Why is it that every alien race has to be all one thing. They’re all warriors, all academics, all priests/priestesses….wouldn’t they be like people here on Earth? Wouldn’t they have many different lifestyles, ethnicities, traditions, religions, languages, etc…? Oh, and while we’re at it, pretty much every alien species has a worldwide government run by a “high council”.

 

[Bab5space]

the question that never gets asked is what economic rationale exists for interstellar trade? A society advanced enough for interstellar travel can cheaply manufacture any goods itself and any solar system like ours has more than enough raw materials, so what does that leave? Luxury goods, exotic lifeforms? Be careful, aliens that are all one narrow human character trait are a horrible cliche

https://www.mmoreau.net/post/51729858409/10-worst-science-fiction-cliches

I will address each subject separately.

1. Passengers? How about animals you can't naturally find on your world? Same goes for animals. Same goes for technology. Anything alien has value in of itself.

2. The Klingons are more varied, it's just that warriors are what you always see. DS9 had a klingon lawyer and a chef.

They view everything as a battle or fight. Scientists fight against the unknown and ignorance, whereas cooks fight against blandness and the competition of other chefs. I could go on... but it is unnecessary.