CARGO CARRIAGE

            As the normal space distorting propulsion system is independent of the ship's mass, and the fuel that is used to power these ships is a valuable resource, ships make the best of it by carrying as much cargo as possible, which reduces the need for dedicated cargo carrying ships, and gives greater fuel efficiency as the same amount of fuel can transport an empty ship as well as a fully laden ship.

            For these reasons most craft rarely travel empty, and act as a courier service between Federation worlds with cargo that cannot not be carried through the standard wormhole links, or to worlds which do not have wormhole links. This service also means that Federation does not have many special cargo carriers or tankers.

            Most civilian craft travel between worlds than patrol deep through empty space, and it these ships rather than military vessels that perform the cargo carrying service. All large spacecraft contain storage areas and cargo holds, these hold the normal and emergency equipment of the ship but also provide large volumes for cargo carriage, the larger ships also have flight bays and hangars which can double up as storage bays, and make for easy loading as the palettes are simply transferred through the hangar doors. On smaller craft without the luxury of a hangar, cargo is usually teleported aboard, usually directly to a storage area or moved on a pallet trolley.

            Most of the Federation’s material is sent via the wormhole network which means the cargo carried by civilian craft is rarely for industrial use, most it is more personal items and products that one community would like to send to another. Though economy had long ago faded communities still like to vie for popularity and social edge, and sending locally produced products such as fresh fruit, flowers or other natural products still has a valuable gift value. Also the status that the goods have gained by travel by craft adds to the ‘value’, as anyone could merely shove stuff through a wormhole link, and of course your community would have to have friends with the craft to make that kind of run possible.

            Although cargo carriage could be essential in times of crisis, or aiding a downed wormhole link, most of the time it is used for these rather pointless purposes which the Federation does not discourage. The total carrying capacity of the entire spacecraft fleet if it were acting to replace the existing wormhole networks would still fall short of the current wormhole carrying capacity, but ship carriage of goods also avoids the certain problems with wormholes. These are mostly deal with the ability to contain a crisis, if a planet falls prey to a pandemic contagious disease, the last thing you want to do is open big wormhole doors to other worlds which could spread the disease, ships however are far more useful as they can practice containment, and as the travel time is in the order of days potentially infected escapees would develop symptoms and therefore can be contained aboard rather than released on another planet's surface.