Hop Drive

Interstellar space is vast. The independent development of Jump Drive technology by various space-faring species including the Humans of Terra made it possible to visit nearby systems, but even with numerous advancements that have made longer and longer jumps possible, travel across regions as large as the Firstfall Collective takes a lot of time. Technohistorians equate our ability to traverse space with the use of horse and wagon to traverse Terran continents in the past. Our best Jump Drives today are at best the old Terran equivalent of steam locomotives.

Scientists are now beginning to experiment with concepts and technologies that would do for space travel what the development of aviation did for travel on old Terra. This technology is commonly being referred to as "Hop Drive".

Background

Despite the technology being over a thousand years old, there are still disagreements over the precise details of how and why Jump Drives work. What is agreed upon is that the Jump Drive essentially creates a bubble of "otherspace" around a ship - essentially a parallel universe of some sort. The location of that bubble can then be moved relative to our universe, that movement not being subject to physical laws that limit acceleration and speed in our space. When the bubble decays, the ship finds itself a vast distance from its starting point in far less time than it would take light to travel the same distance.

Advancements in Jump Drive tech over the past millenium have resulted in improvements, but today, the best a conventional Jump drive is capable of is a six parsec transport in approximately seven standard days. There have been many reported instances, however, where misfortunes have occurred that resulted in ships ending up far from where they intended - occasionally involving traversing much greater distances than the ship's jump drive should have been capable of.

Research and Conjecture

Research into those mishaps gives science more clues about exactly how Jump technology works, but it has also shown that , at least in some instances, greater distances - and hence faster travel - should be possible. A team of researchers at the Firstfall Science Institute is investigating the hypothesis that the "otherspace" into which jump drives inject ships is not temporary, but is a full fledged alternate universe - and it is the wormhole-like connection between these universes that is propelled to the ship's destination before the ship is ejected back into our space. Further, the hypothesis conjectures that while properly working Jump Drives all access the same parallel universe, the mishaps represent an accidental connection to a different parallel universe - one which allows the connecting wormhole to appear to move much faster still.

Early Experimentation

Early experimentation is showing that, if this technology ever can be developed to produce interstellar drive units for ships, there will likely be significant limitations. Two are noted here:

Gravity Well Sensitivity - All spacefarers know that jump drives are sensitive to nearby gravity wells; stars and planetary bodies have "gravity shadows" extending outward around them within which operation of a jump drive at worst impossible and at best unpredictable. The size of these shadows depends on the mass of the body involved. Early experimentation and analysis of past jump accidents suggest that this sensitivity is exponentially higher for drives to be able to access the alternate universe that permits faster travel.

Jump Precision - While it would be theoretically possible to traverse distances as much as ten times greater than conventional jump drives, it is unclear that astrogational plotting for such drives will be precise enough to permit a ship to target a specific star system and actually arrive close enough to rely on its maneuver-drive engines to complete the trip. Part of this is due to the aforementioned sensitivity to gravity wells - even the most precise astrogation will require "landing" much farther from a target planet than is the norm today. Part also has to do with the sheer relative speeds of travel. A slight mis-timing of bubble ejection could mean missing a target by a parsec or more.

The Future

Researchers and technologists have little doubt that the unknowns of today will be unraveled, and the limitations resolved in the future. "Hop Drive", will one day be available, and its impact on interstellar travel and commerce will be as revolutionary as was the development of aviation on old Terra in the era it called the 1900s.