Interstellar Travel

Super-Luminal propulsion is a relatively new science as far as practical application is concerned. There are currently two very different technologies in use by space craft. Gravitic drives, and Traction drives.

Gravitic drives harness the power of gravity to propel a space craft faster than the speed of light. By focusing a beam of focused gravitons, the craft is able to push itself away from solid matter with great force. Initially gravitic drives only worked while in relative close proximity to large celestial bodies such as stars and planets, but as the technology was refined it became less dependant on such ‘anchor points’ and is now capable of propelling itself through open space by repelling its graviton beam off of free roaming particles in space. Gravitic drives offer high acceleration characteristics but overall low speeds when compared to traction drives, capable of traveling from twenty to fifty times the speed of light allowing voyages to Sol’s closest neighbors (Around 6 light years distant) to be made in the extremely short time frame of two to five months instead of the previously unheard of time frame of ten years.

Tracton Drives use a relatively new discovery to provide propulsion. Recently (In the last hundred years or so) it was discovered that there are several ‘layers’ of space, both above and below (relatively) our own‘real space’. These layers of sub-space offered numerous new scientific possibilities as it was discovered that particles behave differently in different layers of space and sub-space. One of these new technologies was sub-space communications, which allows instantaneous communication between extremely distant points in space over dozens of light years. One of the newer developments is a starship drive system that creates an energy field around the ship that allows it to grab on to or ‘grip’ a near-by layer of sub-space and crawl along through real space using that connection to sub-space as traction. Traction drives provide a smooth, constant acceleration and an extremely high (Still unknown at this point) maximum velocity. There is theoretically no maximum velocity for a traction drive; they can keep accelerating indefinitely using a constant amount of energy. With their slow acceleration and deceleration Traction drives are sometimes looked down upon but their unknown maximum velocity tends to help some people overlook the drawbacks. Traction drives can make the same voyages as Gravitic drives in five to sixty percent less time depending upon the distance, the further the trip the faster the drive can go.