Deuterium Trade

The Deuterium Trade in The World began around A.Y. 3500 when advances in FTL technology made commercial access to interstellar travel economically viable for the first time. While further advances in technology would make the trade completely obsolete within 500 years, it became a well-established institution that hung well past the economic need.

History

Pre-Trade

Prior to the mid Third Age, space-based trade was rare and mainly carried about between governments. Only valuable, highly-economical trades were made, as travel could and did take years. While journeys between relative close solar systems were easy, trips on the order of a few thousand light years were very arduous and costly. Most trade was based around colonization, with ships carrying finished goods that could not be produced locally.

This all changed dramatically in A.Y. 3442. Following the encounter with the Adam Cadman II, the Gudersnipe Foundation released a new class of FTL drive with a ten-fold increase in speed. While the technology would take some time to filter down through the market(for at least a century, the Foundation were the only ones with FTL works capable of constructing them), it eventually brought about an explosion in space-based economies.

Journeys that had once taken years could now be completed in mere months. The technology to cut that down even further existed as well, in the form of the Deuterium Drive. Deuterium-based systems, as opposed to then-inefficient ion-vacuum systems, allowed for dramatic improvements in sublight speeds. The end result: a ship fitted with the new "fast FTL" and a deuterium-fueled N-space drive could cover a distance that might have taken years in just a couple of weeks.

This made trade, tourism, and casual exploration economically viable for the first time.

The Trade Begins

The downside to the new confluence of systems was the need for refined deuterium. This was expensive to produce planet-side but quite common in space. The problem was that gathering, refining, and storing the materials was time-consuming and somewhat technologically-challenging. While a ship could be made self-sufficient by gathering its own deuterium, doing so slowed travel-times down to the point where ion-vacuum engines were still better.

Thus, the free-market economy stepped in to fill the void. Mobile deuterium refineries began to ply the major trade routes, selling fuel. Because the technology to do so was common, competition was fierce, and prices stayed manageable. Trade ships found they could easily buy deutrium to power their engines, make trade missions faster, and still have a tidy profit margin.

The earliest refineries were old ships which already had Bussard Collectors and could be modified cheaply. Some did not even have functional FTL drives. Old cargo freighters were a favorite fit; private operators could, at a price achievable by men of modest means, purchase a derelict ship, get it running, and begin selling deuterium. This made many private citizens rich, the trade was even heavily supported by the Gudersnipe Foundation for a time.

By the mid 3-600s, private operators had largely been supplanted by consortium's and government-sponsored collectives, but the trade was still thriving strongly enough to keep prices and wages competitive.

Bottom Drops Out

Ion-vacuum technology had been improving all the while. When deuterium-drives first became standard, a typically civilian-grade ion-vacuum engine had a maximum exhaust velocity of around 24-PSL. A deuterium drive could easily double that, so they were the obvious choice. By the 3-700s, the commercialization of space had brought may private developers into the starship market, and in turn made for vast improvements in technology. Ion-vacuum engines could now achieve 30-PSL, but deuterium drives were still at double, now 60.

Then, the first hybrid drives were introduced. Based on ion-vacuum technology, they used deuterium-injection and could reach 50-PSL on a fraction of the fuel required for a pure deuterium drive. While retrofits to existing engines were difficult and expensive, the hybrid drive became the must-have item for all new ship construction. The stiff competition at first forced out the few remaining private operators, but brought them back as many of the larger corporations either left the industry or folded entirely. The biggest change to the industry was a shift to mobile stations. Instead of semi-stationary refineries that ships would need to visit, dedicated deuterium-haulers were built to carry the fuel directly to customers.

In A.Y. 3864, the Condor first flew. This reconnaissance fighter was capable of a staggering 70-PSL+ on pure ion-vacuum