Space law on rescue and salvage
Mar. 13th, 2011 05:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI've been trying to figure out a big disaster that could land my spaceship owning merchant protagonists in the situation they're in at the start of the story. It is, naturally, turning into a whole other story. And I discover I need to understand about what happens to a spaceship when it is wrecked and then invent some law about finances if you rescue a ship or salvage a dead ship. Also, is it a dead ship if it arrives in two halves and the people are in one half and the valuable engines in the other? Everyone that owns it is still there, physics says all the parts keep going, they might be sitting right next to each other, they're just not technically all one ship any more on account of the middle part went crunch or boom or something.
I also need to figure out what happens to the course and speed in the crunch or boom or something.
I just wanted to write about families in space having an argument! Now I need to know physics! And vaguely understand economics, which may well be beyond me. And, now, law.
And add to the pot that the law in the nearest space station is derived from Islam and has particular Words to say about not nicking stuff from orphans, and most of the survivors are now orphans. There's a whole legal story there about jurisdiction and salvage claims and stuff.
And all the property in question belonged to their mothers and is now in the control of their uncles, with no fathers on record or vaguely in the picture in the kids lives. There's places that will crunch into laws set up with other assumptions.
... I know what happens in the other story. It's a nice simple action plot. It probably fits in a movie.
But the more I worldbuild to figure out the setting and how everyone got to that point the more story necessarily exists in the background or around the edges...
I also need to figure out what happens to the course and speed in the crunch or boom or something.
I just wanted to write about families in space having an argument! Now I need to know physics! And vaguely understand economics, which may well be beyond me. And, now, law.
And add to the pot that the law in the nearest space station is derived from Islam and has particular Words to say about not nicking stuff from orphans, and most of the survivors are now orphans. There's a whole legal story there about jurisdiction and salvage claims and stuff.
And all the property in question belonged to their mothers and is now in the control of their uncles, with no fathers on record or vaguely in the picture in the kids lives. There's places that will crunch into laws set up with other assumptions.
... I know what happens in the other story. It's a nice simple action plot. It probably fits in a movie.
But the more I worldbuild to figure out the setting and how everyone got to that point the more story necessarily exists in the background or around the edges...
no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 07:05 pm (UTC)