Faster-Than-Light Travel (A1-0)
Faster Than Light Travel, also known as Superluminal Travel and commonly abbreviated to FTL Travel, refers to any form of travel that exceeds the universal speed of light limit. In the millennia, many different species and civilizations have invented or discovered many different methods to allow for superluminal speeds. While each of these methods is different from one another, they can be divided into four broad categories, each with it's own common limitations:
Realspace FTL
Warp Field Drive
A Warp Space Drive, also known as an Alcubierre Warp Drive, uses exotic matter, dark energy manipulation, gravitometric manipulation or energy concentration to expand spacetime behind a ship, and contract it in front of it. This allows for the creation of a bubble-shaped field of isolated spacetime, known as a Warp Bubble or as a Displacement Field, that remains unaltered compared to the surrounding universe. The bubble can then move at speeds far exceeding the normal universal lightspeed limit, without breaking the laws of causality and creating closed time-like curves. The vessel inside the Warp Bubble stays effectively still, and does not suffer from time dilations or contraptions.
The generation of a Warp Bubble requires tremendous amounts of energy, that can be created from antimatter-matter total energy conversions, or by self-sustaining monopole enhanced fusion. To generate a stable enough Bubble, ships can either concentrate energy in specially designed external Nacelles, or can disperse energy more evenly throughout the ship.
Known Users: