FTL Travel

**Faster-Than-Light** **(FTL) travel**, also known as **superluminal travel**, refers to any method of travelling faster than the speed of light, that being around 300,000 km/s; doing so causes the starship to break the "Seam", the barrier between the subluminal and superluminal dimensions.

FTL travel is currently only possible via the generation of sagittarius fields, warped regions of spacetime created by roemer drives that are themselves powered by the poorly-understood Hammond-Zhōu quintessence. These fields coalesce into a four-dimensional cavity of "altered physics" known as a starbridge, within which the mass of the starship is decreased as is the relative speed of light in front of the craft.

Through the use of sagittarius fields, humanity has rapidly expanded from their homeworld, Earth, into a massive territory termed the Settled Systems in which numerous factions vie for territory and resources. FTL travel is still relatively primitive and dangerous; even a small miscalculation can result in the complete annihilation of the spacecraft and its crew. Crossing the Settled Systems from one side to another, a distance of approximately 1800 light-years, can take a starship 18-20 months on average at FTL speeds.

## History

### Prehistory

FTL travel was first discovered by the travellers, ancient, technologically-advanced humans that evolved alongside *Homo erectus* approximately two million years ago. How the travellers developed a spacefaring civilization is unknown due to the poor preservation of their technology and artefacts, but it is believed that they used wormholes to travel across the galaxy; evidence for this theory includes Hammond-Zhōu Quintessence (HZQ), the exotic matter found within the Bifrost and all other known wormholes, which is used by modern humans to power their roemer drives. By travelling faster-than-light, the travellers built a mighty empire that spanned far beyond modern humanity's current bounds before suddenly disappearing 150,000 years ago.

### Rediscovery

In 1998, in the midst of humanity's settlement of Mars and exploration of the outer planets, a black body was found at the edge of the Sol System (for years referred to as "Planet Nine") that was subsequently discovered to be a wormhole by the clandestine *Crusader* Program. Officially named Bifrost, the wormhole was studied for decades by a series of probes; a few were sent through the wormhole, but none ever returned. In the late 2080s the *Crusader* scientists discovered that Bifrost was almost entirely composed of an anomalous form of matter, one that did not behave according to the laws of conventional physics; this matter emitted negative energy fields dubbed "sagittarius fields" that warped the local spacetime, causing light to behave in unforeseen ways.

Finally, in 2191, nearly two centuries after the object's discovery, scientists Cameron Hammond and Zhōu Mǐn used antimatter and a kugelblitz to reproduce the material isolated from Bifrost - naming it "Hammond-Zhōu Quintessence" - and began reproducing it in bulk; to do so, antimatter production was swiftly accelerated despite the cost. In the following decades, despite numerous studies, most of HZQ's bizarre properties remained poorly understood.

By 2207, graviton loop arrays had entered mass-production and the HZQ-powered roemer drive could be built. Propelled by this new drive, humans stepped foot on a planet outside the Sol System (Proxima Centauri b, renamed Centaurus) by the end of the decade.

### Subsequent Developments

#### Grissom Disaster

> *Main Article: Grissom Disaster*
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On the 19th of May 2312, the superfreighter MV *Armstrong's Footstep* entered the Grissom system, a colony home to 450,000 people, carrying a massive cargo of antimatter bound for Grissom II. Before engaging the FTL jump, the *Armstrong's Footstep* suffered a reactor meltdown that compromised its cooling system, setting in motion a chain reaction that ruptured the antimatter containment field. As soon as the *Armstrong's Footstep* entered the system, the antimatter cargo interacted with normal matter and annihilated; the subsequent explosion was, at that time, the most powerful in human history. Catalysed by the explosion, the HZQ in the roemer drive escaped into space, warping the local spacetime for 3 light-years.

## Physics

### HZQ & McBride Process

    The only available method of FTL travel is the mass reduction and spacetime distortion - a starbridge - created by sagittarius fields. These fields are generated by Hammond-Zhōu quintessence, itself created by the McBride process.

HZQ is generated by crushing the energy output of a matter-antimatter reaction into a singularity called a kugelblitz; further compression from graviton looping causes the kugelblitz to form a "closed" wormhole (that is, it has an entrance but not an exit). HZQ leaks out of this closed system and interacts with spacetime to produce sagittarius fields. These fields create two regions of distorted spacetime - contract at the front and expanded at the rear - thus lowering the relative speed of light in front of the craft; at the same time, the mass of the starship - and everything else within the reach of the fields - is lowered, reducing the energy required to accelerate the mass beyond light-speed.

### Wormholes

In the age of the travellers, wormholes were the only known method of FTL travel; the few cultural texts recovered from their civilization suggests that they had a network of wormholes that spanned the galaxy that disappeared along with the travellers themselves. The only known remnant of this network is the Bifrost at the edge of the Sol System.

## Overview

### Requirements

A spacecraft requires several things to travel faster than light. First is a HZQ-powered roemer drive to warp the surrounding space with sagittarius fields; second is a graviton loop array to stabilise the kugelblitz that powers the roemer drive; the third is a propulsion system with sufficient output to accelerate beyond *c*; and the fourth is an intelligence that can calculate both the spacecraft's route as well as any variables such as debris.

#### Propulsion

    The third variable - a propulsion system to accelerate beyond *c* - is accomplished by pion rocket engines or other antimatter-powered rockets. In a pion engine, charged pions - a type of meson - created by the annihilation reaction of hydrogen and antihydrogen, are directed to the rear of the spacecraft, thus providing immense propulsion; while less efficient than other antimatter engines, pion rockets produce exceptional energy per gram of antimatter.

#### Navigation

Until the Crash of 2402, navigation and variable calculating was accomplished using artificial intelligences (AIs), which could calculate jumps of tens of light-years with few errors. In the aftermath of the Crash, however, most AIs went rogue and disappeared into cyberspace, forcing spacefarers to seek alternatives; such an alternative was found in the quantum program, an intergovernmental effort to enhance selected humans to the point that their mental capabilities rivalled that of supercomputers. The result was "quantums", hyper-intelligent humans stripped of almost all emotion.

#### Reaction Control System

Controlling a vessel at FTL speeds is almost impossible, primarily due to the inability to send signals to the front of the warp. Inertia dampeners are also essential to reduce the physical strain of FTL speeds.

### Method

Despite it being commonplace since the early 23rd century, FTL travel remains the most physically and psychologically stressful activity that the human body can reliably undergo. In addition to exposure to exotic, poorly-understood matter, energy and radiation, FTL travel greatly increases chances of cardiac arrest, stroke and blood vessel damage due to physical and mental stresses. The psychostimulant colloquially known as "jump juice" serves to alleviate some of the stresses, but even into the mid 25th century no starship has ever crossed the Settled Systems - a distance of 1800 light-years at a minimum - in a single "jump".

As a result, FTL travel is limited to two techniques: the Bridge Relay Procedure and hypersleep. Both carry their own advantages and dangers but they remain the two safest methods to travel faster-than-light.

#### Bridge Relay Procedure

Instead of a single jump over a large distance, which would kill most of the crew via stroke, cardiac arrest or psychological break, most starships take the "Bridge Relay Procedure": jumping between various isolated systems in order to allow the human body to acclimatise to the stressful conditions of FTL travel via constant injections with jump juice. Over a distance of 600 light-years, a starship performing this procedure can travel through 5-10 different star systems, effectively zig-zagging across the galaxy towards their destination. The BRP also allows a crew to take a break from FTL and stock up on needed supplies.

The various systems used for this procedure - and its namesake - are known as the Bridge systems; unlike other areas of the Settled Systems, such as Kepler Space, Corpo Space or the Home Systems, the Bridge systems are not a single continuous territory of space: they are every star system outside of these set boundaries and are scattered across the Settled Systems. Most of the Bridge systems are sparsely populated, mostly by farmers, homesteaders, independent spacers and occasionally pirates, and receive little government interference; as a result, the Bridge Alliance, a division of the Transport Union, usually wields control within these systems.

#### Hypersleep

An alternative to the Bridge Relay Procedure is hypersleep, the technique preferred by colony ships or long-distance freighters. A form of suspended animation, hypersleep effectively puts a human in a medically-induced coma, slowing or stopping their biological functions so that physiological capabilities are preserved. Under the watchful eye of nursebots, humans can travel over a thousand light-years at FTL speeds without suffering any of the detrimental stresses. However, hypersleep is difficult, expensive, relies too heavily on robotic assistance and is extraordinarily impractical for small crews. There is also the risk of never waking up from one's coma, as well as irreversible psychological damage - such as amnesia, mania or psychosis - in those that do.

## Notes & References

1. ↑ The current record is the UCS *All Under Heaven*, which travelled 270 light-years in a single jump as part of Operation Broadsword