Quantum Shift Drive

Overview

The Quantum Shift Drive, abbreviated as QSD and oftentimes called Hyperdrive, is a cutting-edge faster-than-light propulsion engine used primarily by the United Confederacy of Nations for effective interstellar travel. The Quantum Shift Drive allows a starship to attain lightspeed and travel through the gap between stars in the Ascension Plane, a higher plane of reality. As an outcome, the Quantum Shift Drive has played a crucial role in shaping the galactic society, trade, politics, and war of the United Confederacy of Nations.

The Quantum Shift Drive operates by propelling a spacecraft into the Ascension Plane using the fuel of Quantum Photonic Hypermatter while maintaining the vessel's mass and energy profile. The spaceship then travels along a manually or automatically set trajectory until it reaches its target and returns to Realspace. In terms of numbers, the Quantum Shift Drive enables travellers to journey across a galaxy like Charybdis, which spans 35 thousand light-years, in just a few hours or days, depending on a variety of parameters such as destination, place of entry, route, and Quantum Shift Drive class.

Because Quantum Photonic Hypermatter´, the fuel of a Quantum Shift Drive, can only be produced in Charybdis, Quantum Shift Drives would only be used in that galaxy. Small Quantum Shift Drive imports have been made in recent years, but there are currently no plans to deliver this sophisticated warp engine to extragalactic societies on a widespread scale.

Ascension Plane

File:Ascension Plane Inside.jpg

An image taken inside of the Ascension Plane

The Ascension Plane, also called Hyperspace is an alternate plane of space-time that can only be accessible through intricate interactions between various artificial and natural particles. It is identical to Realspace, with each unique place in Realspace providing a distinct point on the Ascension Plane. While several aspects of the Ascension Plane remain a mystery to astrophysicists and navigation experts, it is clear that it decreases travel times, allowing starships equipped with Quantum Shift Drives to travel light-years in minutes or even seconds. As a result, the United Confederacy of Nations' galactic community, commerce and trade, politics, and conflict all rely on Ascension Plane travel.

When Ascension Plane is entered, the starship has left the conventional universe, or Realspace. The whole visible universe seems to be a multicolored tunnel of mottled high-speed blur, reflecting the plane's other-dimensional existence. A ship is effectively blocked off from all regular scanning and detecting procedures in the Ascension Plane. There are numerous hazards while traveling at velocities far exceeding the speed of light. While any collision or disturbance at this point may well be catastrophic, the effects of gravitational influence on a spacecraft could be particularly damaging, therefore a trajectory must be plotted outside of the "mass shadow" or gravity well of huge celestial bodies. Strangely, collision with the shadows of small-mass bodies that are under a thousand kilometers in size do not seem to affect the travelling ship in any way, as if they were not there.

Ascension Plane routes are frequently plotted using the mass of an average-sized planet as a backstop, with the Quantum Shift Drive's safety mechanisms halting the vessel when it approaches the furthest point of feasible passage. Gravity generators can be used to create an artificial interdiction field that hinders Ascension Plane travel inside a specific area by replicating the outer edges of a celestial body's gravitational attraction, which is useful for both pulling ships out of Ascension Plane en route and preventing enemies from jumping during combat.

The Ascension Plane is a deadly environment for all living beings beyond the confines of a ship's protection. Absolutely any living organism subjected to the environment of Asncension Plane without protection will begin to show signs of various mental issues such as extreme schizophrenia. An individual could survive in an Ascension Plane-ejected escape pod, but reentry to Realspace would be impossible if the capsule lacks its own Quantum Shift Drive.

Karidas Radiation

A ship radiates Karidas Radiation whenever it enters or exits the Ascension Plane, which could be identified with specialized sensor systems termed as Ascension Sensors. Many populous worlds have a large number of these sensors to track and log ships entering and leaving the planet or moon. Militaries in the United Confederacy of Nations have also made use of these sensors, detecting enemy ships entering their vicinity. Long-range Ascension Senors, however, were made possible nearly a thousand years ago. More recently made and more expensive long-range Ascension Sensors can stretch within the vicinity of a whole star system.

Operation

Entering Ascension Plane

To enter Ascension Plane, a starship pilot would have to select a logged world with the use of the Ascension Navigation Computer. This on-board computer would then-on automatically input the coordinates into the Quantum Shift Drive. In some cases, the pilot has to manually input coordinates throughout the Ascension Navigation Computer, as to reach uncharted worlds or a highly specific point in space.

When coordinates are processed, the Supercruise Engine starts to engage, and accelerates the spacecraft to a speed of twice the speed of light to escape the gravity well of a large celestial body. This process is usually done by a small Alcubierre Drive integrated into the Quantum Shift Drive. This process can be skipped entirely if the pilot is far enough from a large gravity well.

After reaching outside the gravity of a large celestial body, the process of an Ascension Plane jump would begin with the small amounts Beta Radiation being collected be collected with the use of the numerous Beta Collectors. Then on, the Quantum Motivator would next use many kilometers of charge planes, effect channels, or looping superconducting wire deep within the spaceship to alter the gathered radiation in a fusion generator. This process also requires a specific fuel named Quantum Photonic Hypermatter to help modify the radiation. The Quantum Shift Drive's Ascension Initiators would supply energy to the motivator's ionization chamber to spark ignition, which would unleash the radiation via the engines. The energy discharge would produce disturbances in the space-time continuum, allowing the ship to thrust itself into the Ascension Plane by riding on these generated ripples.

Safety Mechanisms

The ship, crew, and cargo are all shielded from being squashed by the enormous velocity of the initial jump by a range of gravity generators. An Ascension Field Stabilizer helps stabilize the vessel in Ascension Plane and prevents it from prematurely emerging from the alternate plane, which can happen without one. All Quantum Shift Drives include Dilation Shields to protect them from the severe effects of time dilation on the Ascension Plane. Quantum Shift Drives employ an overheat failsafe device called the Overheating Failsafe to avoid overheating.

A Quantum Shift Drive can only initiate a jump into the Ascension Plane after it is out of the gravitational influence of a large astronomical body. Small alcubierre drives implanted within the spaceship are used to relieve the starship from a body's gravitational attraction before it can leap. Quantum Shift Drives include an integrated protection system that cuts out the drive when a gravity well is detected on the navigational path. Engineers have utilized the safeguard system to create artificial gravity wells to either draw starships out of the Ascension Plane or prevent them from withdrawing into the Ascension Plane, avoiding a crash in the event of a navigational failure. This approach, of course, necessitates either knowledge of a starship's travel schedule or proximity to a well-traveled Ascension Plane route. The failsafe can be circumvented in some Quantum Shift Drive models, although this has been known to have disastrous results.

Components

Dilation Shield

While entering the Ascension Plane, a spaceship would be be traveling at such high speeds that time dilation will be noticeable. Furthermore, time dilation is much more severe in the Ascension Plane, with a hour in the Ascension Plane without Dilation Shielding potentially taking a thousand years in the real universe. The VMC Void Beam, for instance, traversed five thousand years into the future in only two hours. The sabotage and removal of the Dilation Shield was owing to this strange phenomenon.

A spacecraft is able to protect itself and it's crew from time dilation with a Dilation Shield, an advanced component of every constructed Quantum Shift Drive. A Dilation Shield effectively utilizes various advanced and artificially produced particles to stop the curvature in a way for time dilation to have no effect while gravitational attraction still takes place. As the space-time fabric of Ascension Plane is fairly similar to that of Realspace, Dilation Shields have the ability to operate within this mysterious plane of existence.

Travel with a faulty Dilation Shield is plausible, with minimal to no time dilation actually happening with a moderately faulty Dilation Shield. Only a nonexistent or a near-broken Dilation Shield could have serious time dilation. The ship's onboard computers would automatically disengage the Quantum Shift Drive if the Dilation Shield was operating below 25% capacity.

Classification

A Quantum Shift Drive's superluminal speed is measured on a reverse scale: the faster the Quantum Shift Drive, the lower the rating. These classifications, referred to as "Classes," provide a fast, albeit sometimes inaccurate, estimate of a ship's Quantum Shift Drive speed. For a given base travel time of 10 ly/s, the Quantum Shift Drive class serves as a multiplier. Thus, a Class 4 Quantum Shift Drive takes fourfold the base time to travel a given route, while a more expensive Class 2.0 takes only twice the base time.

Currently, most militaries in the United Confederacy of Nations equip their spacecraft with Class 1 or Class 2 Quantum Shift Drives. Quantum Shift Drives of Class 2 or 3 are commonplace on industrial freighters and haulers, while civilian starships have Class 3 or higher. Many ships possess backup Quantum Shift Drives that are significantly less powerful than their primary Quantum Shift Drives.

Although tampering with the generally stable technology of a Quantum Shift Drive is considered a risky and dangerous activity, some starships have undergone black market modifications to achieve ratings that are below Class 1. A prominent example of this is the Phantom Dragonfly, a Venixen-Class Fighter owned by the famous Human mercenary of Tybus Corell. The Phantom Dragonfly reached a rating of Class 0.4 after several illegal modifications have been made to it's Quantum Shift Drive.