Barodrive

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> “Without the barodrive, humanity would most likely have fallen into destitution and despair, for we would have had no aspirations of ever venturing forth into the great unknown that we so cherish.”
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> — *ex-General Secretary Edoardo Colombera, speaking to reporters in the 2100s*
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 A **barodrive**, also known as a **gravity drive** or **graviton induction drive**, is a type of faster-than-light propulsion system that takes advantage of the nature of gravitons, the constituent particle of gravity, in relation to the nature of barospace. In essence, barodrives allow the manipulation of the "brane state" of any object within its influence field through emphasizing graviton expression, allowing these objects to experience higher dimensional physics and thus supersede the natural laws of the three-dimensional universe, such as the limit of light speed.

Barodrives, such as the first iteration known as the Tepiltzin-Csanád Drive, function by manually generating a unique, "opaque" gravitational field around the object it is hoisted within by the production of artificial graviton particles. To generate gravitons without having mass pressing into the fabric of space, a massive amount of energy is required to be channeled into a specific point, thus creating one to two kugelblitzes (the latter needed for actual drive systems). Although humanity cannot currently directly manipulate the created kugelblitzes for their energy for conventional means, that which they inevitably produce is significant enough in power to be tunneled through the host object and induce the transition of a brane state through powering gravity lasers that emit coherent gravitational radiation.

To prevent a total collapse of the object into the kugelblitzes as a result of the its intense gravitational field, the channeled energy is "tunneled" out of the reach of its host object; this process was first introduced by the Force-Tunneling Drive created during the Second Martian-Terran War, which "tunneled" the energy produced by the kugelblitzes into an artificial field of defined spacetime beyond the reach of the spacecraft, thereby avoiding the obliteration of the spacecraft and allowing military forces to reach near-light speed instantaneously. The tunneling is accomplished by rotating gravity lasers, which shunt the energy of the kugelblitzes into local spacetime. These gravity lasers are charged by penrose processes exacted on the kugelblitzes and fire optically pumped gravitons to ensure modulation of the artificial field, using nearby natural gravitational fields as mirrors for their gravitational potentials as a means of the persistence of the excited graviton emissions. The binary action of the two kugelblitzes within the drive allow for the supply of gravitons in the desired excited states, thus giving the graviton source and completing the function of the basic barodrive.

## History

### Force-Tunneling Drive

The Force-Tunneling Drive, created by a special Martian research unit in 2075, was the prototype to the current barodrive and was the first drive to physically expand upon the work of Dr. Vittore De Simone in regards to manipulating barospace. Although using pair-kugelblitzes generated by experimental Martian antimatter reactors to calibrate artificial gravity fields, neither the Martians nor the Terrans were able to perfect the gravity lasers, thus wasting an enormous amount of energy emitted by the kugelblitzes that were instead absorbed by spacetime. These "gravity flares" that the ships emitted after using their Force-Tunneling Drives often made them gigantic targets on enemy gravity detection systems; thus, they were not used by stealth ships in any capacity during the Second Martian-Terran War, and were only employed by certain heavy Martian and Terran warships for shock attack plans. Due to these limitations, the Force-Tunneling drive could only reach at most 0.89c in speed.

### Tepiltzin-Csanád Drive

The Tepiltzin-Csanád Drive was the first iteration of the modern barodrives. Created in 2083 following the proliferation of funding to nascent Coalition research projects, two Terran engineers named Marcos Tepiltzin and Sándor Csanád were able to perfect designs for gravity lasers that would effectively manipulate nearby gravitational potentials for the drive's ultimate purpose, including novel optical pumping and penrose processing methods for extremely precise modulations of product gravitons.

The first Tepiltzin-Csanád Drive test was done in September 2083, where a prototype automated vessel was ordered to warp from Earth to Mars in Project Odysseus. Using the gravitational interactions between the Earth and the Sun as mirrors, the Odysseus spacecraft was able to reach the orbit of Mars in 2.5 minutes; it reached speeds of 1.22 c, breaking the speed barrier of light upon entering a 4-brane state. With the entire experiment being televised, the sheer awe and amazement of human ingenuity breaking the speed of light led to the largest explosion of colonial fervor in human history, leading to the colonization of the world of Cherub in the Aton star system and the beginning of humanity's interstellar empire.

### Modern drives

Modern barodrives expand upon the principles of the Tepiltzin-Csanád by introducing better methods of graviton calibration, gravitational field modulation, and gravitational potential mirroring. This has led to the formation of three separate "classes" of barodrive, conferring increased warp range at the expense of the "endurance" of the drive based on the wear and tear of its components from the stresses of gravitational manipulation.

Unlike the TCD and FTD, modern drives do not need gravity laser pylons that extend beyond the hull of the spacecraft. Due to advances in engineering and physics understanding, gravity lasers now do not extend beyond most hulls, and instead have open graviton channel ports that are small enough to be hidden amidst normal plating. However, gravity laser pylons are often seen on older and cheaper spacecraft models.

## Functionality

### Antimatter power

Barodrives are powered by antimatter reactors; this is as a result of the power demand for the generation of kugelblitzes. With increased power supply, the longevity and gravitational power of the kugeblitzes increase, thus allowing barodrives easier access to higher brane states. Nuclear fusion was a proposed cheaper alternative, but the amount of fusion reactors and material required to supplant antimatter was seen as too extreme and cumbersome.

### Kugelblitz generation and function

The core power of the barodrive lies in the energy-borne black holes, or kugelblitzes, that it generates from antimatter-supplied energy. Most modern barodrive models come with two kugelblitzes arranged in a binary orbital system, as that is the minimum amount of black holes needed for proper modulation and amount of gravitons for breaching into higher brane states. However, scientists are working on ways to introduce exponentially more complex systems of three to four kugelblitzes in trinary and quaternary orbits within the barodrive.

Kugelblitzes are used in a two-fold manner: their orbital mechanics and their individual rotational properties are exploited to modulate the properties of the gravitons that they exert from their shared and individual gravitational potentials. These gravitons are then coupled with gravitons fired from the outer rim of the chamber inward, creating a stream of coupled excited gravitons that allow for stimulated emission from the gravity laser.

### Gravity laser

Although the kugelblitzes are the source of the drive's functionality, the actual "motor" for the drive lies in the gravity lasers that extend off of the drive. These lasers, often called "gravity laser pylons" due to sticking out of the ship's hull in older models, optically pump the supplied gravitons to induce an inverted population (where more excited particles exist than non-excited particles). This surplus of excited gravitons are then fired outward through the pylons and out into space, where they interact with nearby gravitational fields to become reflected, as if interacting with a mirror. This reflection and constant bombardment of gravitons throughout space allows their flow through spacetime to begin generation of an artificial field around the spacecraft, with the size of the warp bubble and the brane state of the ship being defined by the amount of modulation and excitation that the gravitons had been subjected to. Higher modulations and excitations of the gravitons leads to either larger warp bubbles or higher brane states, in turn leading to faster and faster speeds beyond the speed of light.

## Components

### Antimatter Reaction Energy Conversion Module

The "ARECM" is an important module that sits between the Kugelblitz Generation Chamber and the antimatter reactor. Considered a part of the barodrive itself, the ARECM serves to efficiently transform the explosive energy created by antimatter annihilations within the reactor, which exists initially as gamma rays, neutrinos, electrons, and positrons. Each constituent radiation is caught by different components within the reactor - such as neutrino netting for neutrino particles - and their reserved energies immediately delivered to the ARECM. There, the ARECM converts the radiations all into extremely high-energied photons that exhibit particle physics gamma ray properties. These are then carried to gamma ray lasers, or *grasers*, within the Kugelblitz Generation Chamber.

### Kugelblitz Generation Chamber

The Kugelblitz Generation Chamber, or "KGC", is the primary energy output device of the barodrive. The KGC hosts the kugelblitz(es), or "energy-derived black holes", required for the functionality of the drive. Kugelblitzes are created when the thousands of grasers in the chamber, powered by the AREC module, all concentrate their fire in one specific locale within the chamber. To create two kugelblitzes, the first kugelblitz is briefly "captured" by gravity hoist poles that reroute the gravitons it is producing, locking it in a location good enough for the grasers to once more fire and create a new kugelblitz.

To position the two microscopic black holes in favorable positions, an artificial intelligence is used to guide the hoist poles and lock the black holes in a semi-stable position, which can last for up to several days in a binary orbit.

The KGC is also equipped with high-powered *gravity emission poles.* These emission poles project a basic stream of gravitons, sourced from the very kugelblitzes that are generated, back into the wells of the black holes via proto-gravity laser designs. Apart from gravitational radiation, the KGC is also rated to handle extreme amounts of heat and electromagnetic radiation as a result of the existence of grasers and the one to two black holes within the chamber, which are kept stable by the constant feeding of energy from said grasers.

### Gravity laser pylons

The gravity laser pylons, or GLPs, are the gravity lasers that exist within the ship's hull and have direct connections to the KGC. These GLPs optically pump the gravitons generated by the KGC, ensuring that an inverted population of excited gravitons exist. These special gravitons are then fired from the body of the pylon, which acts as the beginning stage of the laser's optical path length.

Through special maneuvering of these pylon bodies via dedicated gyroscopes, the pylons can continuously fire upon a distant gravity field with an optimal gravitational potential that mirrors the graviton burst and amplifies its capabilities. This distant gravity field can be a star, planet, or other celestial object, but cannot be physically close to the barodrive (or else it will serve as a natural interdiction field). Due to needing a large lasing medium, old iterations of starships using barodrives often had gigantic pylons jutting out of the body of the ship; however, by the time of the Corporate Wars, most pylons had miniaturized. By the modern day, pylons now cannot be seen at all jutting beyond the hull, and can only be identified via their ports that allow graviton beams to fire into space.

The gravity laser pylons and their continuous cyclical firing and mirroring of the gravitons causes the induction of an artificial gravity field, also coloquially known as a *warp bubble*, to form around the craft, causing a shift in brane state.