What possible motives for an empire? Economics are unlikely, there's very little to be traded once you have an FTL drive. After all, any solar system has iron. Ideology, alliance.
Energy and exotic matter.
A civilization capable of interstellar travel is also able to harvest a large percentage of a star's output. This energy can be beamed across interstellar distances via (various frequency, not merely optical) lasers.
That's a fundamental good, but it's not a "trade" because energy = energy, thus no comparative advantage. The "trade" part of it comes in with exotic matter (such as negative mass matter, macroscopic nucelar matter, and such like stuffs). Exotic forms of matter would both be creatable by energy and obtainable from unusual natural conditions (such as black holes, neutron stars, or large Jovians in system).
Exotic matter would be important because it would circumvent the limits of "mere conventional" nanotechnology and allow actual femtotechnological manipulation of subatomic particles and spacetime.
One of the obvious uses of exotic matter would be to build wormholes -- Einstein-Rosen bridges connecting disparate points in spacetime at FTL speeds.
Which gets nicely back to your original point. The wormhole network would unify the interstellar empire.
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Date: 2014-03-18 02:52 pm (UTC)Energy and exotic matter.
A civilization capable of interstellar travel is also able to harvest a large percentage of a star's output. This energy can be beamed across interstellar distances via (various frequency, not merely optical) lasers.
That's a fundamental good, but it's not a "trade" because energy = energy, thus no comparative advantage. The "trade" part of it comes in with exotic matter (such as negative mass matter, macroscopic nucelar matter, and such like stuffs). Exotic forms of matter would both be creatable by energy and obtainable from unusual natural conditions (such as black holes, neutron stars, or large Jovians in system).
Exotic matter would be important because it would circumvent the limits of "mere conventional" nanotechnology and allow actual femtotechnological manipulation of subatomic particles and spacetime.
One of the obvious uses of exotic matter would be to build wormholes -- Einstein-Rosen bridges connecting disparate points in spacetime at FTL speeds.
Which gets nicely back to your original point. The wormhole network would unify the interstellar empire.