Faster than Light

Faster Than Light (FTL) technology, developed in the mid 21st century and brought into service after the formation of the United Earth Space Agency allows Starships to travel in excess of 300 000 m/s - the speed of light. This is achieved by slightly distorting space-time using resonant gravitational oscillations controlled by a complex magnetic confinement field. State of the art FTL drives installed in United Earth vessels are capable of sustaining roughly 600-700 times the speed of Light for prolonged times.

Theoretically, a ship traveling at this velocity could traverse the Milky Way Galaxy in 200 years. In practice, typical UESA and UESC vessels have to refuel hydrogen for their fusion reactors every few hundred lightyears (ly) by extracting it from Interstellar Medium.

FTL index
The FTL index was introduced to make operating FTL drives more manageable by expressing the velocity on a logarithmic scale. By definition, the speed of light c0 corresponds to FTL1 while FTL10 is faster by a factor of 600.

FTL Navigation
FTL travel in "busy" areas is coordinated by relay beacons that define dedicated FTL corridors reminiscent of airplane flight corridors. In uncharted, open space starships are able navigate on their own with the added risk to encounter gravitational anomalies interfering with their FTL drive.