Oolite Bulletins

Ah but the bar's customers are earning $250,000 to 9 Million USD per 'job'. So $2500 to $8,000 for food and drink is still pocket change!

back to tons and kg,

yes, a kg is a kg, and thats in weight as we would understand it, BUT a ton is to do with the space taken up.

there is no heavy and light in space, weight is a function of gravity and mass. so a volume measurement is used- after all the canisters are all of the same size

that volume is roughly 14 cubic metres

so a ton of food is the ammount that fits into that space, as is a ton of computers, alien items, and slaves

Hmm, I always figured that the ton was the actual mass, and that the containers had a lot of padding in them if they had very dense materials inside...

But who knows for sure, really!

Thats only kind of true: momentum and kinetic energy are related to mass, so knowing the mass you are hauling does matter for handling, and possibly fuel use, and indeed even physical constraints of the ship structure, if you are too "heavy" and slam on the brakes you might rip yourself apart.

That said, you are right that a t is a unit of volume. It is the standard size of a canister, which presumably can hold approx 1 ton of something (probably water knowing how standards tend to be set).

considerring how close our ooniverse is to the traveller universe- from what i remember, it is either water or hydrogen(in one of its states)

i do wonder what marc miller thought of it all when elite first came out