Interstellar Communications and Travel

Interstellar Communications

While light-speed communications are fine for intrasystem communications, it would take years for such signals to reach between systems, in most cases hundreds or even thousands of years. Fortunately, a decentralized system of tachyon beacons allows instantaneous communication across the Known Sphere. Each kilometer-long beacon simultaneously sends and receives billions of signals per second. There are presently over 200,000 beacons in the Known Sphere, allowing anyone to talk in real time to anyone else in the network, regardless of the distance. Like the old Internet and the old cellular phone system, if one beacon goes down, the system will automatically re-route communications to an alternate path. This means that the system is very hard to disable or to shut down. However, also like the old Internet, as system traffic increases, individual communications slow down, and sometimes the system dumps users without warning.

Additionally, the tachyon beacons serve as navigational guidepoints in hyperspace. Ships in hyperspace can use their distance from various beacons to calculate their position in normal space.

However, many of the beacons were damaged or fell into disrepair during the Second Unification War. As a result, the tachyon beacon system's coverage becomes increasingly unreliable as one approaches Wild Space. The system is down across many parts of Wild Space.

Hyperspace

In Wild Sphere, relative Faster-Than-Light (FTL) travel is possible by moving through Hyperspace (H-Space). Hyperspace is a primordial universe that exists in a parallel dimension. Although there is a one-to-one correspondence between every point in H-Space and Normal Space (N-Space), H-Space is much smaller than N-Space (H-Space is a very tiny fraction of the size of N-Space) and a vessel that travels a certain distance in H-Space travels a much greater relative distance in N-Space. For example, if a vessel travels 1 million kilometers in H-Space, upon dropping into N-Space, it finds that it has traveled 2.3 light-years (see diagram below).

Note: the diagram is not to scale.
If it were, the N-Space circle would have to be
almost 550 kilometers in diameter.

To stay in H-Space, a ship must maintain at least a speed of 10 m/s. If a vessel slows below that speed, it will automatically drop out of H-Space into N-Space. Space Pirates take advantage of this property of H-Space by trying to slow down passing traffic with gravity mines, forcing the ships drop into N-Space, where the pirates pounce on the ship.

A Hyperspace Jump Vortex is required to pass from N-Space to H-Space. The precise amount of power necessary to create a Jump Vortex depends upon the size and duration of that particular Vortex, as well as the amount of matter passing through the Vortex. However, without using Catalytum, the minimum amount of energy that must be discharged into a Tesla Vortex Generator to generate an H-Space Jump Vortex is 1.21 terawatts. This is beyond the power generation capability of most ships. The few true starships are between 10 and 30 kilometers long, and lined with hundreds of fusion reactors. The cost to build and maintain starships is prohibitive for all but the largest governments and corporations. As a result, most ships use Hyperspace Gates (H-Gates) or Catalytum to jump into H-Space.

Following the creation of the vortex, it continues to exist for 20 to 50 seconds, depending on how much energy was discharged into the vortex generator. After this period, the vortex collapses in upon itself and disappears from both N-Space and from H-Space.

Once a jump vortex as been created, any craft can use the vortex to pass into hyperspace as long as the vortex exists. Thus, a cruiser can deploy its fighter wing, create a jump vortex, and then both the cruiser and its fighters can jump into H-Space.

All matter that enters H-Space from a particular Jump Vortex at a particular time takes on a distinct frequency derived from its time/N-space coordinates at the moment of entry. Objects of different frequencies do not interact with each other. Thus, two ships that jump into H-Space at the same time but whose Jump Vortexes are 10 kilometers apart in N-Space do not collide because they are out of phase with each other. Ships, however, can use their hyperdrives to move into phase with other ships in H-Space. This is how pirate ships attack their prey.

Matter that emerges from H-Space into a part of N-Space that is occupied by other matter (e.g., if a ship emerges from H-Space in the middle of a planet) explodes at the speed of light. Thus, unless there is an emergency, ships usually take care to leave H-Space in the middle of deep vacuum of N-Space.

Although FTL travel through hyperspace makes interstellar travel practical, it is still relatively slow. For example, a starship departing Terra takes over four months to reach the frontier.

Prior to the Second Unification War, scientists from all three superpowers were working on alternate methods of FTL travel. The most promising was an attempt to create a network of artificial wormholes. However, all these efforts came to a halt with the war and have been shelved indefinitely as the Core Worlds rebuild from the devastation of the Second War.