Starport
From Traveller Wiki - Science-Fiction Adventure in the Far future
Establishment for the landing, servicing, refueling, and control of starships. Starports range in quality from A (the best and most extensive) to E (the worst, little more than a spot of cleared ground).
Starports generally have two components: a surface facility and an orbital facility. The surface facility includes cargo handling installations, a landing field, control towers, and other necessary areas. Surface starport components are frequently called Down (as in Regina Down Starport). Orbital facilities are present (usually in stationary orbit above the surface component) to enable handling of unstreamlined ships, and to allow construction of heavy craft in orbit. The orbital component is often called Orbital (as in Regina Orbital Starport). Type D and E starports have no extensive orbital facilities, but usually have navigational satellites or similar equipment. Non-streamlined ships at these starports must be serviced by shuttles. Starports, being the primary point at which starships interact with a system, are usually the location for additional bases, such as scout bases, naval bases or other military installations, and for shipyards.
Starports are given codes in the UWP for systems. The codes in general use are:
| Code | Quality | Shipyards | Repair | Refuel |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A (Starport) | Excellent | Starships | Overhaul | Refined |
| B (Starport) | Good | Spacecraft | Overhaul | Refined |
| C (Starport) | Routine | Major | Unrefined | |
| D (Starport) | Poor | Minor | Unrefined | |
| E (Starport) | Frontier | |||
| F (Spaceport) | Good | Minor | Unrefined | |
| G (Spaceport) | Poor | Superficial | Unrefined | |
| H (Spaceport) | Primitive | |||
| X (Starport) | None | |||
| Y (Spaceport) | None |
[edit] Starport vs. Spaceport
In order to facilitate free trade, the Imperium requires the member worlds to grant a space to allow trade to take place. This extra-terratorial land grant is the Starport within a system. The system starport is maintained by the Starport Authority, as part of the Ministry of Commerce. The IISS tracks the starport facilities as the world star port. On populous worlds or worlds with a great deal of trade there may be more than one starport.
Worlds are allowed to build additional facilites to handle in-system traffic called spaceports. In practice, these private port facilites are usually capable of handling both in-system only space ships as well as jump capable starships. The Imperium makes no guarantees about ship safety nor enforces any Imperial trade laws at these facilities. It is rare, but not unheard of, that spaceport facilities are better than the Imperial starport facilites.
Conditions vary outside the Imperium. The IISS uses the largest or most frequently used port facilites to assign a Port code for the UWP. The Zhodani, Hive Federation, and Two Thousand Worlds build only one port in a system for efficency purposes. The Aslan Hierate and Vargr worls usually have only one starport per system, unless it is under contol of more than one clan or leader. Independent balkanized worlds (or systems) may have more than one starport.
See also Extrality
| This article was copied or excerpted from the following copyrighted sources and used under license from Far Future Enterprises and by permission of the author. |
| – Supplement 11 Library Data (N-Z) |
| – MT Referee's Manual |
[edit] Non-Canon
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