TFL/Starship

A starship is a spacecraft capable of travelling between the stars in a reasonable amount of time. They are distinguished against spaceships, which only travel among locations in a single Star System, and SSTO Shuttles, single-stage-to-orbit shuttles that only move between a planet and an orbiting space station.

Starfighters are a subclass of starships. Starfighters are much smaller than other starships, and while they are fast enough to travel between the stars in a reasonable amount of time, they do not have the life support, crew habitat, or maintenance spaces to travel for more than a day or two. Starfighters are carried over long distances by starships with crew quarters and life support, and then briefly deployed and recovered.

## Layout

Modern interstellar starships are optimized for moving through the luminous ether of Hyperspace while surrounded by a Necklin Field. Efficient design makes for a roughly cylindrical or conical spaceship, with the Realspace engines and associated Necklin Rods on radially symmetrical nacelles.

Usually, the struts of the engines are placed around the midpoint of the ship and the engines themselves are attached to the strut at the midpoint of the engine. However, some designers optimize for slightly different characteristics, and the strut might be place closer to or farther from the nose of the starship, and the engine might sit on the strut closer to the engine's front or rear. In all cases, the front of the engine doesn't extend past the front of the ship, and the rear of the engine doesn't extend past the rear of the ship. Each strut is no longer than the diameter of the ship, but some are much shorter.

Starships travel for days or weeks in Realspace, and only a few hours of that is under acceleration. They typically spin while drifting to provide pseudo-gravity. The habitat decks are mounted on gymbals near the sides of the ship, and rotate under acceleration to align the floors with the direction of thrust. When coasting, the habitat decks rotate so the floor is parallel with the long axis of the ship. The decks are then extended on tethers as the ship spins to provide pseudo-gravity. Some ships have a rotation ring that rotates instead of the entire ship, but this is costly and requires additional maintenance.

Starships are commanded from the command deck (also known as the bridge or Astro & Con). On most designs, this is a flat disk around the center of the ship with the floor aligned in the direction of thrust. The command deck usually counter-rotates while the ship is spinning, though this isn't necessary on ships with rotation rings. In rare cases, the command deck is located in the habitat and spins with them.

Most starships are intended solely for vacuum and Hyperspace movement, and are not capable of landing in an atmosphere or taking off against any significant gravity. However, some are streamlined for atmospheric flight and load high-thrust hyperwater in some of their fuel tanks, allowing them to safely land and take-off. In general, an Orbital Beanstalk or dedicated shuttlecraft is used to transfer goods and people from orbit to planet. Some starships have hangar bays to carry their own shuttlecraft. Hangar bays are usually set up to not spin, as launching or recovering shuttlecraft from a spinning hangar bay is tricky.

## Interstellar Travel

Starships use the Necklin Fields of their fusion hyper torch engines to fuse and decompose hypermatter to achieve enormous thrust and delta-V. They use that thrust and delta-V to let them cruise from an orbital star port to a Toshido-Kearny transition point, where the Necklin field can transition them into Hyperspace. The same engines can then act similar to jet engines through the luminous ether of Hyperspace. Upon reaching the T-K transition point analogue in Hyperspace congruent with their target star system, they carefully collapse the Necklin field and return to Realspace at a controlled velocity vector. Finally, they cruise to their destination star point and decelerate using their engines and the last of their reaction mass.

Assuming no currents or vortexes in the luminous ether, a starship travels Realspace distances at the rate of 30.67/Hyperfactor light years per day, and thus can transit 1 light year in 0.0326 \* Hyperfactor days.

## Stock Freighters

These are sample designs of common freighters; there is substantial variation among individual ships. Multiple builders will offer different versions of the same design with some variation, so a Fuchida "Oni" is slightly different than a Galactic Shipyards "Atlas" but both are huge ships intended to ship huge amounts of low value goods over very long distances over several months.

Table of traits of common freighter designs

Rate is the typical charge to carry 1 ton of freight on a nearly full ship; rates will be adjusted by the risk from piracy or other mishaps while carrying the freight.

### Economics of Shipping

Slow bulk freighters dominate the long distance routes for time-insensitive cargo that doesn't need to be at the destination for a few months. Optimum bulk freighters are more expensive but cargo arrives 20-30 days faster and are the default shipping option. Fast bulk freighters and fast tramp freighters compete for priority cargo that needs to be delivered within 1-2 months, with the fast bulk freighters generally winning out. Slow tramp freighters are squeezed between the two - not fast enough to be competitive with the fast tramps, and not cheap enough to deal with the fast bulks - but slow bulk freighters are often sold cheaply by repo companies and an owner with more hope than sense tries to beat the economics. Blockade runners and fast couriers compete for the highest priority cargo, with blockade runners focusing more on smuggling, blockade running, or moving high-risk cargoes past pirates. Couriers are faster and cheaper than the runners for the safe jobs.

Data couriers are specialty craft that are maintained by governments, banks, and major corporations. They don't carry cargo or freight but instead transition into systems at low speeds and high exit angles, then loiter in the vicinity of the T-K point while sending and receiving radio data. After a few hours, they return to the T-K point and move onto their next stop. Pirates also use data couriers to alert their heavier ships of especially enticing cargo and set up ambushes.