Types of FTL Travel

The speed of light in a vacuum is 186,282 miles per second. Faster-than-light travel, properly referred to as superluminal travel, is a process by which the laws of special relativity which normally forbid such speeds are broken or circumvented. Technically, the laws aren’t broken – but certain solutions to the equations allow FTL travel in specified ways or “effectively” travel faster than light without actually doing so. Some special particles such as tachyons travel faster than light at all times. The types of FTL travel available may be dependent on the game setting or, in settings where multiple types of FTL travel exist, on location, species, or advancement level.

Unlike subluminal speeds at a large fraction of light speed, moving faster than light also avoids relativistic effects; the time experienced by the traveler is the same as that experienced by the observer, unless otherwise noted.

The 20th century physicist Geoffrey Landis of the NASA Lewis Research Center categorized FTL systems as follows:

REALDRIVE/JUMP GATES |Type 0

A drive which uses tricks of spacetime geometry (a la general relativity) to travel faster than light.

Jump gates are also known by a variety of names – stargates, wormholes, boomtubes, mass relays, hypergates, transwarp conduits, quantum gates, portals, and space bridges. A jump gate links two points of space-time so that a vessel can travel quickly between them by traveling through hyperspace. Naturally occurring jump gates are usually known as wormholes.

HYPERDRIVE |Type I

The ships enters some different space during the trip, whether or not time passes for the crew while in this space.

Hyperdrive relies on the concept of an alternate space where dimensions, distance, and time work differently. A vessel slips into this alternate space (named variously as hyperspace, null space, N-space, subspace, space2, phase space, nodespace, slipspace, irrational space, zero space, otherspace, and more), travels to its destination, and then slips out again into normal space.

ALCUBIERRE/WARP DRIVE |Type II

A bubble of different space is projected around the ship so that the ship can travel faster-than-light while still in realspace.

Antimatter engines are used to power warp systems which create a space-time bubble which is able to travel at superluminal speeds. These systems are most commonly known as warp drives, or Alcubierre drives after the 20th century physicist Miguel Alcubierre. The antimatter reactor is used to power the displacement field.

JUMP DRIVE |Type III

The ship travels from one point to another, possibly in multiple jumps, without occupying the intervening space and without the use of a different space to assist the travel.

A jump drive enables a vessel to travel instantaneously from one point to another. Rather than travel through hyperspace or accelerate a warp bubble, a jump drive teleports the ship. In most cases, the jump distance is limited, requiring long journeys to use multiple jumps.

FAKEDRIVE |Type X

Assume that special relativity or general relativity are incorrect in part or in whole, or just ignore them. Now you can just accelerate at constant gravity until you go faster than light.