On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 05:37:33PM +0000, Phil Pugliese (via tml list) wrote:
> p.s. Anyone ever think about a situation where a planet might have a
> HiPort but no DownPort?
IMTU at least, there is always at least one official downport on each
inhabited body held by a government belonging to the Imperium, even if
it's just a flat bit of ground next to a mostly unstaffed Imperial
office. The conditions of joining dictate that some small part of the
body is under the direct jurisdiction of the Imperium and not subject
to planetary law. It may be completely disused, and there may be
thousands of non-Imperial ports, but there will always be at least one
Imperial port. For most planets it will be on the ground, but in some
cases it may be floating on water, hovering in atmosphere, attached to
excavated asteroid tunnels, or whatever is appropriate for the body in
question and within some clearly Imperium-owned part of that body.
This need not hold for bodies that are privately owned, unclaimed,
uninhabited, held by governments not belonging to the Imperium, or too
small to bother about.
Also IMTU, a planet will almost always have some sort of high port
established first. Space travel and construction has been cheap and
routine for millennia, and having a base of operations outside a
planet's jump limit, gravity, and the vagaries of atmosphere is very
useful.
I expect the most common case for a planet having a highport but no
downport would be where the planet is uninhabited. Such a highport
might even be a fairly major facility, if the system is in a location
where trade routes make refuelling useful, or at a convenient junction
between routes for transshipment. Ports distantly orbiting small
planets with substantial hydrogen sources would be particularly
likely, with the planet below only inhabited by transient workers
running mining operations. Most planets will not have breathable
atmospheres or habitable temperatures, so the benefits of living on
the surface vs a highport would be negligible for most.
- Tim