FTL Travel

**Faster-Than-Light** **travel**, abbreviated as **FTL**, refers to any method of travelling faster than the speed of light, that being around 300,000 km/s; doing so therefore breaks the "light barrier". It can be achieved through several methods, the most common of which are lightfolding and traversing wormholes.

## Methods and Physics

### Lightfolding

> *Main Article: Lightfolding & Lightfold Engines*
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Lightfolding, also called "foldspacing", was the first tech-based method of FTL travel developed as a way to cross galaxies. It is now a common feature on starships and the most widely-used method of FTL travel, allowing a starship to travel over 100 times the speed of light. Lightfolding is most often used for interstellar travel, while more powerful methods are used for intergalactic travel.

#### Lightskipping

> *Main Article: Skip Drive*
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Lightskipping is a method of FTL travel that, similar to lightfolding, utilizes foldspace. However, lightskipping involves travelling only a short distance - usually within a few tens or hundreds of metres - in order to dodge strikes during space combat.

#### Lightleaping

Lightleaping involves a lightfold engine producing enough power to allow the starship to travel vast interstellar distances, with the potential to reach around 100,000 light-years in a single jump.

### Warping

> *Main Article: Warp Drive, Warping*
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Warping is the process of achieving faster-than-light travel without the spacecraft itself travelling near the speed of light. Warping involves subjecting exotic matter, most commonly gravitons, to immense levels of electricity. This causes the space in front of the starship to contract and the space behind it to expand.

### Wormholes

> *Main Article: Wormhole*
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Wormholes are by far the fastest method of FTL travel, enabling a starship to travel millions of light-years in a matter of seconds or minutes. The only difficulty is finding a natural wormhole that leads to the desired destination, as most will place a starship at a random location in the Universe. If the ship has sufficient energy, a wormhole leading to the desired destination can be generated using a graviton core, although the process is very dangerous and unstable.

### Mass-Reduction

> *Main Article: Mass-Reduction*
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Mass-reduction technology was the second method of FTL travel that was developed but is often considered the most difficult. This method involves constantly reducing the mass of the ship, enabling it to travel beyond the speed of light without suffering time dilation.

Like wormhole generation, mass-reduction is possible through the use of a graviton core.

### Black Holes

> *Main Article: Black Hole*
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Black holes act as links between two constant areas of spacetime and are only accessible by lightfolding into their singularity.

### Tachyons

> *Main Article: Tachyons, Tachyon Drive*
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Tachyons are a type of exotic matter that always travels faster than light. They are utilized in tachyon drives, gigantic engines that allow for far larger starships, such as the GTN *Saulkar*, the largest starship ever built as of the early 30th Century.

### Nexus Network

> *Main Article: Nexus Network, Nexus, Conduits, Hyperspace*
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## Engines

### Lightfold Engine

A lightfold engine is any type of starship engine that utilizes a foldspace crystal; by subjecting the crystal to immense amounts of electricty, the crystal opens a tunnel in space-time that allows four-dimensional foldspace to enter three-dimensional space, allowing the starship to travel through foldspace and far beyond the speed of light, without issues caused by time dilation, i.e., any time that passes inside the starship also passes outside of it, with the starship technically being inside another dimension.

Lightfold engines are extremely efficient and stable, and by the 29th Century are installed in virtually every model of starship. The only two instances where a lightfold engine cannot function correctly are within dense atmospheres (atmospheres interfere with the formation of the foldspace tunnel) and during intergalactic travel, with the distances being too great to sustain the electricity-input to the engine. However, when a lightfold engine has been amplified by the Nexus, the energy output is near-infinite, allowing the starship to travel between galaxies by moving within the Nexus Network.

### Graviton Core

A graviton core is a starship engine that can use electricity to interact with gravitons, the physical quantum of gravity. This can be used for two methods of FTL travel. The first is warping, where the space-time in front of the starship is contracted and the space-time behind is expanded, allowing the starship to travel beyond the speed of light without the vessel actually going beyond the speed of light; the second is the ability to generate wormholes in conjunction with the navigation system to specific locations. Graviton cores are the preferred method of propulsion for larger starships and for use in intergalactic travel.

### Tachyon Drive

The most recently developed FTL engine as of the 29th Century, the tachyon drive is a revolutionary engine that utilizes tachyons, exotic particles that always travel faster than light. Developed by the Gekoids, a tachyon drive allows a starship to travel so fast that it leaves behind a temporary space-time anomoly.

## Travel Speeds

By the far the fastest method of FTL travel in terms of speed is lightfolding, which can take a starship beyond the speed of light within a matter of seconds. This method utilizes foldspace, a four-dimensional chaos plane where the laws of general and special relativity. Lightfolding is specialized for galactic travel, enabling a starship to cross an entire galaxy within a matter of hours without the problem of time dilation.