Starships use warp engines to travel both interplanetary and interstellar distances.
A warp engine consists of two parts:
Antimatter Pion Drive
The antimatter pion drive annhilates matter and antimatter to generate power and thrust. Hydrogen is continously accelerated iinside the acceleration chamber at relativistic speeds, the acclerator benifiting from superconducting materials to generate anti-hydrogen from hydrogen more cheaply, quickly and efficently than was previously possible.
The hydrogen and anti-hydrogen are then annhilated upon anti-hydrogen creation inside the annhilation chamber, with a combination of thermopiles and gamma-particle collectors— fiber-optic filaments of lead crystal doped with lathanide filaments which convert the gamma particle's energy into usuable electricity—with the resulting pions being directed by the engine's gravitic containment coils through the exhaust chamber, where they are then expelled to provide thrust.
The Drivefield Generator
The generator is a powerful grav generator—driven by the antimatter reaction—which energizes lathanide thermopiles embedded into the skin of the ship to create a field which warps spacetime around a ship, creating a pocket continuum where the ship's relativistic mass is reduced to and maintained at zero, at the same time the engine is generating thrust, creating imaginary relativistic mass, allowing for faster-than-light travel.
When the generator goes online, the ship disappears in a pulse of heat and radiation—harmless in space, but making for a pretty light show*—the alternate spacetime created by the drivefield being called drivespace, subpsace, or more commonly, the redundant term warpdrive.
The largest warp engines manufactured generate 7.5 million terawatts(TW)of power per second(or terajoules), with 99% of the power generated going to thrust and the creation of the drivefield, the remaining one percent going to power the ship's energy weapons and other systems.
Warp Travel
Time-Dialation & Warpdrive
A ship in warpdrive expiriences time-dialation, roughly fifteen seconds passing in warpdrive for each day in normal space.
All ships in warpdrive travel at different rates, depending on how much power the warp engine is capable of generating and how big the ship is.
The equation in question is:
vt=
vt=Warp speed in light-years per day.
mi=Imaginary mass generated by the thrust from a warp engine's antimatter pion drive, equal to accleration in gravities(ADF) times 100 tons.
kB = Bergenholm constant, equal to 62.5 tons/light-years per day(an SI unit of measurement also known as a Bergenholm, abbreviated Bg).
Hazards Of Warp Travel
The drivefield still interacts with normal space, meaning that solid objects of sufficient density impacting with the outside or the inside of the drivefield interface(including another drivefield) can disrupt the drivefield and completely destroy the ship.
This allows for the mining of known interstellar routes or entire stellar systems, a tactic shunned by the Commonwealth as a hazard to navigation, and employed widely by the Terranovans, who deploy System-Wide Mine Fields(SWMFs) to deny access to entire star systems.
The mines in question have proximity fuses which detonate upon detection of the heat and radiation pulse resulting from ships in warpdrive changing the density of local space-time as their drivefields interact with normal space. Starships can use their cams detect the mines in time to emerge safely from warpdrive, leaving them vunerable to ambush.
It also means that a starship cannot use its weapons, warpdrive transceiver or warpdrive lidar system while in warpdrive, since solid objects or other drivefields striking the inside of the drivefield interface will destroy the ship.
When a starship emerges from warpdrive, it will retain the velocity it had when it entered warpdrive, requiring the ship to decelerate upon returning to normal space if it wishes to dock or make planetfall.
*In atmosphere, the heat and radiation pulse from a warpdrive event is devastating, causing (HS×750)points of damage to everything within a 1,000 kilometer radius of the ship entering/emerging from warpdrive.
