Is your decision to omit Pluto from transit times implicitly saying that Pluto was also demoted in the BTU as well as the real world, or a recognition of there being no militarily or commercially viable reason to go to Pluto?
Yes. ;)
Note that most of the BT books to ever mention Pluto (Sol's planet-ish thing) were Campaign Operations and the ATOW:Companion in their respective system generation rules, and JHS:Terra's chapter on the Terran system, which I wrote.
In JHS:Terra, I specifically called Pluto a planet:
"Beyond and about Neptune is another asteroid belt of icy wordlets, the Kuiper Belt, of which the ninth planet Pluto is a member, and far beyond the Kuiper Belt is the prototypical Oort Cloud."Meanwhile, in the system generation rules of CO and ATOW:C, I referred to Pluto as a dwarf terrestrial planet. "
Dwarf terrestrial planets (in this document) are individual small bodies of rock or ice separate from an asteroid belt, but large enough to form a sphere due to their own gravity (for example, Pluto or PSR B1257+12’s companion A). Note that asteroid belts may come with dwarf terrestrials (see Step 3a)."
Apparently, I changed my opinion between Campaign Operations and JHS:Terra, and I don't remember which opinion was final. I'd say it's open to further interpretation. :)
Interstellar Operations (and identical wording in Liberation of Terra I) and a different author mentioned Pluto in the context of SDS Drones ("
M-6: This drone was a failed attempt to outfit a Texas battleship with an SDS control system. The size of the ship proved too daunting to wire with the advanced control systems and the only prototype was destroyed when it slammed itself into Pluto.")
Another Pluto is Quatre Belle's moon, and the Pluto Division (151st Mechanized) in the original SLDF. All other references to "pluto" appear either in the word "plutonium" or variations of "plutocracy."