Faster-than-light transport

Faster-than-light transport is the phenomena of travel that takes place at speeds faster than the speed of light. This is one of the fictional technologies that exists in the universe of Wolf 359.
The technology behind this phenomena is currently unknown. It may utilize wormholes to reduce the effective distance travelled. There seems to be an upper limit to how fast it is possible to travel with human technology, although the Dear Listeners have much more advanced FTL transport.
== Human Technology ==
=== Transport to the Hephaestus ===
Based on the timeline in "Once in a Lifetime," Minkowski, Eiffel and Hilbert left Earth no earlier than 1 April 2013, and the mission timeline puts their arrival on 24 May 2013. This means they traveled a distance of 7.8 light years in less than 54 days, at a minimum average speed of 0.14 light-years per day, or about 51 times the speed of light.
=== Lovelace's Shuttle ===
In "Mayday," Eiffel describes the shuttle's supplies as:
"Full meals for about seventy days, more or less what it'd take to get to Earth if you have a nice VX3 on a sub-light arc."
This suggests that the shuttle can travel at about 0.1 light years per day, or 37 times the speed of light. The "sub-light arc" may suggest some kind of curved hyper-spatial path that allows the shuttle to cover this distance at sub-light speeds.
=== Urania's arrival ===
In "Sécurité," the SI-5 arrive aboard the Urania, having received a pulse beacon relay message ninety days earlier. Five days before their arrival, they pass through the airspace of the Hermes and pick up Eiffel, who has been travelling away from the Hephaestus at 17000 miles per hour for 193 days, putting him about 0.005 light days away from the station. This may suggest that the team traveled to a point nearer the Hermes via a wormhole or similar FTL technology, then proceeded to the Hephaestus at sub-light speeds.
== Dear Listeners' Technology ==
In "The Watchtower," Eiffel is transported from Wolf 359 to Gliese 163 (51.3 lightyears) through a wormhole transportation method that seemed instantaneous to him. He is absent for around twelve hours from the Hephaestus's perspective, meaning that this transportation method is capable of traveling at least 37400 times the speed of light. This technology works through pairs of connected stars, which may need to have similar properties for the process to work.
== Links ==
* Wikipedia article: Faster than light
Category:Technology