Drift Drive

The **Drift Drive** (more formally known as the **Drift-accelerated Fusion Thermal Rocket**) is a design of fusion thermal rocket that makes use of the directional gravitoelectromagnetic fields generated by Drift to create a much more efficient engine.

Drift Drive-equipped spacecraft have both high thrust and high specific impulse, allowing for continuous-acceleration space travel. This allows for extremely quick flight times and permits journeys that would otherwise take months or years. The Drift Drive enabled Humanity's colonisation of its native Centrum System and expansion across the rest of the Tantalus Cluster.

## Concept

Drive Drives use artificial gravity fields to accelerate the exhaust plumes of conventional fusion rockets, allowing for previously impossible degrees of engine thrust and specific impulse. Drift Drives could be used to accelerate spacecraft to a significant percentage of lightspeed. The idea is to have ships equipped with drift drives accelerate continuously for half of the journey, before inverting and decelerating until coming to a rest at the target destination.

The greatest drawback of Drift Drives is that the system necessitates massive levels of electrical charge be forced through the small quantifies of Drift within the drive's coils. This ends up heating the substance to the point of spontaneous decomposition, rendering it useless. Thus, interplanetary spacecraft must be regularly resupplied with Drift in order to maintain the continuous use of their drives.

## History

Drift was discovered on the Centran moon of Lysara in 0005 BCU, and its unique gravitoelectromagnetic properties were described by a multinational team of scientists led by the Henshall Institute for Higher Learning in 0003 PCU. It was only five seasons before the first Drift-accelerated Fusion Thermal Rocket prototypes made their maiden flights. While definitely crude by modern standards, the operating principles of these first "Drift Drives" (as they were swiftly dubbed by the media) were essentially the same as those of modern engines. The invention of the first practical Drift Drive design is usually attributed to Mathew Moura, an engineer of the Centrum Multinational Aerospace Institute.

The first spacecraft equipped with Drift Drives began to chart and settle nearby planets and moons in the Centrum System only two years after Centrum unification. The Drift Drive's remarkable property of having both high thrust and high specific impulse made it possible for the first time for spacecraft to perform Brachistochrone flight trajectories, allowing flights that would otherwise have taken a prohibitive amount of time. This permitted the swift colonisation of Centrum's two moons, Lysara and Lysane, the neighbouring planet of Destrum, and the distant gas giant of Arasin Maxima. Further research into Drift led to the discovery of the Azevedo-Bessa Theory of Universal Relativity in 0008 PCU, which permitted the development of the first Drift Gate, which together with the Drift Drive, led to humanity making its first interstellar journey to the Pioneer System in 0017 PCU.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 The Sojourn: Drift and Drift Gates - Avalon Archives
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Gabriel Fonseca, *The Science of Drift*