Flareium

Flareium is a noble metal, a metal that hardly reacts with other atoms. As the name would suggest Flareium has a link to fire and heat. Flareium is the best conductor of heat, able to handle close contact with stars for over an hour before beginning to melt. However, it is a rare substance and ship engines (where it is mostly used) are only coated in Flareium, not built out of it.

## Information

### Naming

The name originated from Flame and the common word after metals, ium.

### Properties

Flareium is the best conductor of heat, able to handle extreme temperatures. It is mostly found near the cores of planets although some specimens including the ones humanity first found were found near an active volcanic region. Flareium has been used in ship engines, usually only on navy vessels and rich passenger lines because of its rarity and cost. Not only this, the maintenance cost for Flareium is expensive. Because of its prolonged exposure to ship engines, it will begin to melt after a day or two. This is why most starships stop at certain planets to clean and repair the Flareium and then set off again.

## History

When mining a volcanic planet found on the far widths of the Milkyway Galaxy, Helena Kask made a discovery that would benefit humanity. Flareium was found near lava and it was taken. More samples were taken by her and she would then leave to report her signings. Scientists immediately got to work analysing it and the planet was eventually mined of all it's surface Flareium. It was discovered in tests that the metal was able to handle all sorts of flames and so with permission from the government, the government broadcasted Area 51's Sol-Flareium test, one of the only times in history that Area 51 was not doing a classified mission. The world watched as the metal was shown to Sol. The drone began to burn up (piloted by AI) but the metal stayed intact. This was then followed up by another broadcast event of a drone made of flareium. A ship watched it and zoomed in. Humanity watched as the ship managed to stay in proximity to the sun for over half an hour before finally starting to melt. The government had an idea of what they would do. Cloning machines worked to replicate Flareium, however, a problem arose. The cloned Flareium should have realistically had the same properties but some burnt quicker. It was concluded that Flareium may just be too complex. In reality, it ended up as pure unluckiness. 30% of cloned Flareium is deemed redundant (not pure) and sold to other empires whilst pure Flareium is kept safe. Eventually, the Company Flareium Act in 2932 legalised big enough companies to buy the metal and coat their starship engines. Stellar Star in particular used it a lot and broke speed records. They did, however, find out that the metal was worn down so they started by having their crew do maintenance. That is until the government decided to make Flareium Engineering its own thing and put many workers in major spaceports. Eventually, every spaceport had its group of Flareium workers, the amount depending on size.

There was one incident however which showed why Flareium was so important. The IPS Space Falcon had been loaned out to the Terraform Venus Project, a group funded by the Green Party to help terraform the planet Venus. The CEO however decided to ignore Stellar's warnings of Flareium and didn't bother repairing the Flareium from the Space Falcon's last outing. When Captain Berger found out the Falreium had not been fully cleaned and fixed they were already 15 minutes in. The CEO had deemed the repairing of Flareium to be a waste of money for a mere 30-minute trip. The trip however would go wrong and the Falcon would crash near Acoset with no survivors. The CEO was put on trial, Terraform Venus Project was fined and a new rule was put in place, all ships using Flareium are to be checked before takeoff. Flareium was also used to help extract Fauthaxium from it's star.