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I am reading Farseer, where a Navigator is one of the main characters, and it got me thinking about the role of Navigators in the Imperium of Man.

Warp jumps longer than a few light-years must be preformed by a Navigator. Navigators are also very rare, need a lot of highly specialized training and the Navigator Houses/Guilds are described as very powerful.

This leads to my assumption that each Navigator is very expensive to contract. Of course Space Marine chapters, the Mechanicum or a Rouge Trader can afford Navigators by paying in cash/debts/millitary power/exotic relics. But what about all the tramps and lugs that are mentioned in the various books, doing bulk transport (food from an ag world to a hive/forge world), looking worn and badly repaired. How can they afford a Navigator on such low profit margin? Why would a Navigator work for such an rag tag shipping company?

Of course I can think of some possible solutions:

* There is a A and B team of Navigators. The A team are the old and successful Houses that get the pristigigeous/profitable missions, while the B team have to take the boring/low profit missions. Something like pilots of today, where some really are "busdrivers in the sky" while others have far more prestigious missions.

* The Imperium subsidizes transports that are necessary but unprofitable, such as food transports. Planetary govenors, not the shipping company, are the one employing and paying Navigators.

* Bulk transports don't use Navigators on shorter runs, using short warp jumps.

Does anyone have facts, comments or speculations?

Speculate, I know there are multiple houses, some richer, some poorer, maybe the poor houses do the bulk runs jumps and such but if you use same route time after time it may be possible to run a preset jump run, short non guided segments

I'd not be too suprised if a lot of the big shipping networks where OWNED by navigator houses

If you want information about navigators, the Navis Primer is pretty much the number one source on how they operate.

Off the top of my head, it's important to remember that the majority of the most common forms of transport and supply would be done by chartist captains, who despite traveling relatively far distances, only travel along predesignated warp routes that are exceptionally calm and so don't require a navigator, that the ship's systems are good enough to perform the necessary calculations.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Navigator Houses get high-paying comfy jobs by doing a set number of less prestigious runs. They might also trade jobs with each other for whatever reasons - cold hard cash, marriage rights, alliances etc.

And ofc, seeing as Navigators are so rare and important you really really don't waste them unless they are irredeemably possessed or something equally dangerous. Shooting down an Inquisitor and a High Arbitrator General in the middle of the street just means getting to run a garbage scow for the next 20 years.

Navigators are necessary for long distance warp jumps. The alternative is to use computer calculated jumps. The latter means ships have to jump a short distance, exit the warp, then get their bearings and re-calculate a new jump. This extends the time needed for any journey.

An analogy would be ancient ships needing to hop along a coastline or island chain instead of crossing the ocean directly in one go.

My speculation on the low-end navigators is that if they didn't do that kind of work they'd price themselves out of a job. Remember, alot of planets are self-sustaining, and imported items aren't necessary in many cases.

The rogue trader books imply that there are many navigator houses, both the rich Terra based ones and the nomad houses that live on mobile fleets, as well as outcast houses that have to scrape by on whatever they can get.

With only one or two navigators per ship, that would still make navigators very uncommon by imperial standards. SM and the IN probably get dibs on the Terran houses, and the rogue traders probably hire the 2nd tier nomads. Everyone else works with the outcasts. Of course, the Mechanicum uses brains in a jar, and Dark Age humans had warp abacus which worked even better...