Retirement Age in the Honorverse

We have all sorts of reference to former Naval personnel who shifted to other jobs, with a whole lot of them going into intersellar trade. That would be owner/operators or partners in merchant ships, officers and crew on same. The 1st source of people to expand the RMN (several times) was retired Navy who had been doing something elce. Expanding Astro Control opportunities (all those wormholes that the Navy won't want to continue to manage but Manticore would prefer to retain an interest in even if it was partnerships with public/private corporations under treaty arrangement.

While we don't yet know how 2nd & 3rd generation prolong recipients will continue to work (even at different jobs) we are getting some idea of it today. Jobs and careers are changing and the average age/life expectancy is rising. Much of the old style pension option is just gone as compaies have shifted to 401k and other alternatives. How long do you have to work (to make enough and put it away plus invest it successfully) before you retire is an open question. One of the present major concerns and difficulties is medical problems- and we don't have the level of medicine of the Honorverse.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:About the only viable export products from primitive worlds should be some foods (Montana free range beef, fish) exotic woods and pharmaceuticals from plants that maybe for some reason can not be synthesized.

Theemile wrote:The only reason I can see for getting minerals from another system is

1) Your current extraction infrastructure cannot keep up with local demand - this is usually short term, but infrastructure is expensive and you may find yourself in a position where #2 occurs.

2) For some reason, it is more economical (or equally economical) to source minerals from another source.

3) Some required mineral in not plentiful in your system, but is in some other system. Which usually reflects back on points #1 or #2

tlb wrote:That all may be true for minerals reduced to the consistency of sand, but what about people who want granite countertops or marble walls? Exotic stone in large sizes will still need to be quarried and perhaps the core worlds would rather dig up someone else's planet to obtain it.

kzt wrote:Dust actually. Very, very fine dust.

And you can manufacture it. When you can nanoform a seamless SD hull meters thick making fake granite just isn't that hard.

Luxuries are certainly a feasible export. If someone wants to figure out how spend more money on something that is visually and tactilely identical to a manufactured product I'm sure there are people who will find it for them. But it's hard to run an economy on that.

Theemile wrote:I was really just referring to raw materials, but your item, would fall into the definition of the rare luxury good, that is only available from a single (or limited) locale, is the one item type (which was mentioned up thread) that would be traded due to it's rarity and inability to locally manufacture.

I have pulled in some other quotes in response, because KZT's correction about the consistency was something that occurred to me after posting, but too late for correction. Luxury goods were listed by TFLYTSNBN, but we still have not exhausted all possible items that could be included.
It is true that we can already synthesize some valuable materials: such sapphires, rubies (both just tinted aluminum oxide), small diamonds and granite; but people pay more as a luxury good, provided it is natural.
What I wondered was whether tractor beaming an asteroid into a wedge is the best way to extract bulk material? On the shooting range, when the pulser dart hits the backstop, the projectile is vaporized. Would quartz remain silicon dioxide or would it separate into the metal and oxygen, which could be lost? If the result is vaporized metals and volatile gases, then is that what we want?

You charge the particles coming out of the wedge and then use mag/grav fields to feed them into a mass spectrometer.

I suspect you won’t lose as much volatile stuff as you expect.

kzt wrote:You charge the particles coming out of the wedge and then use mag/grav fields to feed them into a mass spectrometer.

I suspect you won’t lose as much volatile stuff as you expect.

If it costs more to reconstitute whatever chemical after the wedge extraction than to add other collection methods, I would assume a series of processes to get those materials first, before the wedge extraction. Economics will drive.

kzt wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:About the only viable export products from primitive worlds should be some foods (Montana free range beef, fish) exotic woods and may be pharmecuticals from plants that may be for some reason can not be synthesized.

I've been told the biggest non-petroleum export from Russia is most commonly named Natasha.

Natasha the ballerinia?


Well it definately would not be Olga the tractor driver.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:

kzt wrote:I've been told the biggest non-petroleum export from Russia is most commonly named Natasha.

Natasha the ballerinia?

Yeah, she's a "dancer".

kzt wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:

Natasha the ballerinia?

Yeah, she's a "dancer".

Pole dancer.

kzt wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:

Natasha the ballerinia?

Yeah, she's a "dancer".

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Pole dancer.

I always thought Russia's most popular export was commonly named Smirnov - followed closely behind by the "Anna Kournikovas."

TFLYTSNBN wrote:

Natasha the ballerinia?

kzt wrote:Yeah, she's a "dancer".

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Pole dancer.

cthia wrote:

I always thought Russia's most popular export was commonly named Smirnov - followed closely behind by the "Anna Kournikovas."

From the site http://www.worldstopexports.com , Russia's top 10 exports are:


Mineral fuels including oil: US$173.3 billion (48.5% of total exports)
Iron, steel: $18.8 billion (5.3%)
Gems, precious metals: $11 billion (3.1%)
Machinery including computers: $8.5 billion (2.4%)d'
Wood: $7.9 billion (2.2%)
Cereals: $7.5 billion (2.1%)
Fertilizers: $7.2 billion (2%)
Aluminum: $6.7 billion (1.9%)
Copper: $4.7 billion (1.3%)
Electrical machinery, equipment: $4.3 billion (1.2%)

I don't see Smirnoff there unless it's included under cereals.

Natasha is not, of course, on that list. In a very cursory search, I couldn't find a list of exports of sex slaves by country, although the global totals are pretty high. The global total profits (2014) are approximately $99 billion. Another site says exports from "developed countries" are a small proportion of the total, so maybe $1 billion from Russia.

Send comments to the politics forum, please.

cthia wrote:I always thought Russia's most popular export was commonly named Smirnov

JohnRoth wrote:I don't see Smirnoff there unless it's included under cereals.

From Wikipedia: Smirnoff is a brand of vodka owned and produced by the British company Diageo. The Smirnoff brand began with a vodka distillery founded in Moscow by Pyotr Arsenievich Smirnov (1831.
Maybe you meant Stoli?