Currency launched to cover the cosmos

"A red Pentagon! Salamander, your move"

I am glad I am not the only person left to remember the adventure game, when I talk about it most folk just go "Huh?" and scratch their heads.

that said, on the subject of currency, how many deciduous forests to one ships peanut?

BBC Technology correspondents strike again

Once again the media studies graduates in the BBC's technology department take a press release issued by a company and regurgitate it wholesale thinking they're informing the world.

This is a solution groping in the darkness for a willing problem.

There is no problem because a: there are no space tourists, b: there's nothing to spend money on up there.

But in any event it would be much easier to adopt the approach used on cruise liners. When boarding the passenger's credit card is swiped and they are issued a payment card for use on the ship. The ship only accepts the onboard payment system and everything is reconciled at the end of the trip. Extending this to the Starship Titanics of the future hardly seems impossible.

Monster currency

This looks like a remarkably silly idea:

- the quids are too big and thick.

- not many quids to a pocket, even at 6.25 to the pound.

- let go of them in space and you couldn't see them.

Something like a set of rings, each denomination a different size, colour and texture would be equally non-damaging to yer space suit. If they were split rings, you could use another ring, anchored to said space suit, as a purse.

Gronda gronda!

That is all.

Call me old fashioned

but I don't accept anything less than gold-pressed latinum.

The Adventure Game

Another pointless waste of our money.

Anyway, onto other pointless tasks... I clicked on the link to the Adventure Game and came to the BBC cult TV classics site and 'tis great to see all the old favourites such as Blake's 7, Bagpuss and Rentaghost (Ms Popov... pop-off!!! - classic indeed); but does anyone remember an old Channel 4 show called "They came from outer space..?" It was part of their very first line-up schedule and all I remember is that it was a bit like "The day of the Triffids" but with giant pink prawns...

Although, it may just be that I've eaten one dodgy pink prawn too many.

Neigh!!!

@Mike

The ubuitous "credits" were used in "Star Trek" also - they were used to purchase tribbles in the original series ...

Coins? In the space age?

Considering much of our financial transactions are already made with credit and debit cards, are we really going to still be carrying coins? What a waste of effort.

Have they considered

whether usury is acceptable with the locals?

Stuck inthe past as usual

Of course the British came up with this. If I were an intergalactic space traveller I would want everything done electronically. Leave it to the British to use pre-roman technology in the future. Stuck in the past as usual.

Quid pro Quid

I always thought a quid was one pound. Now we have a quid for six pounds (plus), which is six quid, which is 36 pounds....Sounds like another plot of the Eurocrats to do in the venerable sterling through hyper-inflation.

The only economic reason...

...to go to another planet, is to mine for raw materials of intrinsic value - which will become money (via barter/exchange) of it's own accord. As for this invention...

1. The coin has no locator beacon in it. (A bit of a problem when your change decouples from you, whilst spacewalking in Jovian orbit.)

2. The constituent materials are not rare enough to justify the object's value. (Credit cards, banknotes, coins of no intrinsic value, numbers on a computer screen etc. only have an easily-broken promise to pay, to back them up immediately - ask Northern Rock depositors.)

In all, the raw materials for barter/exchange are already in place in whichever planet anyone chooses to go to; just take a geologist & a mining team. Some bunch of suits in an Earth-bound central bank can sod off from manipulating the value of what's in my spacesuit pocket - or in the Martian dust, for that matter! I'd like to see how a computerised & liquid market could be made to run, with even a two light minute time delay. Rapid electronic transactions can work down here, or planet-local, but they won't work with the vast distances of 'up there'.

The Adventure Game

...starring Moira Stewart, apparently:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/classic/adventuregame/trivia.shtml

FAH!

Only currencies I'll accept are Earth Alliance credits or Centauri ducats!

Honestly, we haven't even got a burgeouning space tourism industry and some total dicks are already saying "and here's the currency the whole world will use in space."

Bollocks! When we do get motels, casinos and B&Bs on the LEO satelites/moon/Mars/asteroid belt t'll wind up like everywhere else - electronic transactions on your (RFID chipped) VISA/MasterCard/Diner's Club,

What currency is accepted is determined by those performing the transaction, not by some bunch of Earth-bound ninnies making a decision on behalf of everyone.

Which means if the Mare Imbrium B&B or the Olympus Mons Hilton are prepared to accept Euro, US dollars, Flanian Pobble-beads and ducats (Centauri or otherwise) as well as VISA, then that's what currencies are going to be used.

And I thought we were in October

Is it the 1st of April already ? My how time flies !

You'll always need to think about the distance matter.

re:You won't need to worry about the distance issue...

"Simple enough?"

No; it reeks of the middleman wanting his undeserved cut, again. If humanity's planning on taking it's capacity to be unselfsufficient into space, then it's not going to get very far. When the west of North America was settled, there were supply lines back to civilisation, yet, for the most part, it was 'every man for himself', on the way to fully settling the land. Space will be like this, except that there's no west coast which forces one to stop at - ever! i.e. Never full settlement. Self-sufficiency will be the only thing that'll get a significant population into space, combined with the carrot of resources to exploit (the reason Antarctica is still, pretty much, empty - the resources are there, but people are scared of altering the place!). The old European seagoing explorers knew this, too. Consideration of wilderness survival, & the history of Earth's exploration, will go a long way to understanding how things will work, in the future, up there.

If you want to trade with me, I'd rather keep my materials, & supplies for exchange, onboard my transport (it'd better have a big cargo bay!); like was done on a wagon train, Drake's Golden Hinde or Cook's Endeavour, for example. I wouldn't exchange something of genuine use (an ion engine, air scrubber, water, LOX, sheetmetal, dehydro'd rations etc.) for something of no genuine value.

Put simply; do you think that fiat currency was any use to Amundsen or Scott, on the way to the South Pole?