(To help settle a few things from the Misc board...)

Faster Than Light, or FTL: how fast you need to travel if you want to get to another planet within your lifetime.

There are quite a few means by which the speed of light can be exceeded, but putting a brick on the throttle isn't one of them. All of the known methods involve some sort of 'cheat' by which a ship can travel a distance faster than light could while never actually attaining lightspeed. Listed here are the methods you, as a hitchhiker, are most likely to encounter.

(1) HYPERDRIVE

Hyperdrive transit is the oldest known method of starfaring. The Transformers have had hyperdrive for so long that their records do not record who discovered the hyperspace shunt. The modern hyperdrive can be traced to Corellia, where designs for the engine were preserved after the final fall of the Santovasku and Atlantean civilizations. Even today, it is far and away the most common means of cheating the lightspeed barrier.

The basic principle behind hyperdrive is the use of hyperspace- a dimension of spacetime within our universe in which distances are shorter than within normal spacetime. The hyperdrive boosts a ship up from realspace into hyperspace and propels it to its destination. The main limitation to speed for hyperdrive is not engine power per se (although that is a consideration) but the hyperdrive's astrogation computer and the mapping of the space being travelled through. Realspace objects cast mass shadows into hyperspace, and crashing into a shadow is just as fatal as crashing into the realspace object in question. Well-mapped hyperspace routes, like the Corellian Run, can be traversed in hours; ill-mapped routes, or routes with multiple hazards like the Earth-Zeta Cygni route, usually take days.

One of the more unusual features of hyperdrive is that standard sensors do not operate there. Except for the highly sensitive gravitic sensors required to fly safely, the usual sensor package can't see outside the environmental field generated by the hyperdrive. This means that a vessel in hyperspace is practically untrackable, although it is possible to -extrapolate- a ship's course based on its entry vector into hyperspace.

It is very easy to get work as a hyperdrive engineer on a ship as a means of thumbing a ride. For more information on the care and feeding of hyperdrives, check the Hyperdrive chapter of the Guide.

(2) WARP DRIVE

Warp drive was first discovered by the Vulcans somewhere around the 10th Century Standard Calendar. Due to the overwhelming expense and hazards involved, however, only Vulcans made much use of the drive until the Wedge Defense Force began designing starships and even starfighters around the engine. Today, warp drive is used primarily by military starfleets or mass-transit carriers such as the warp-jet airline industry.

Warp drive works by using the natural effects of sending massive amounts of energy through dilithium crystals to form a complex wave in spacetime. The warp field bends spacetime around the ship- while causing no gravitational stress on the ship itself. The ship rides the wave, apparently at rest within the warp field while spacetime is pulled past it at hyperluminal speeds.

The major drawback behind warp drive is expense. Leaving aside the fact that dilithium crystals fracture or decrystallize under prolonged strain and require frequent replacement, warp speed itself is incredibly energy-intensive. Small ships, such as the warp jets almost ubiquitous within the Core Sectors, can sustain warp with only a fusion plant, but larger ships require the power of matter-antimatter reactors to overcome the greater inertia of the larger ship. (Warp jets lie close to the upper end of this equation, by the way, and no fusion-powered ship can exceed Warp Six in any case.) Antimatter is incredibly dangerous and expensive, even in the tiny amounts used by warp-powered vessels. There are also isolated cases of warp mishaps which have resulted in temporal or even dimensional displacement of the ships involved. As such, very few companies have offered warp vessels for private citizens to use, although such a vessel would allow a hitchhiker to travel across the Federation in slightly more than a day's flying.

(3) FOLD DRIVE

Possibly the most ballyhooed means of FTL transit, fold or jump drive is an order of magnitude more expensive than warp drive. As such, only the largest of warships use it, but these warships are the ones which make the news, the documentaries, the movies, and the toy stores.

In theory, fold drive is very simple, and its range is almost unlimited. The fold drive makes two points in spacetime coexistent, allowing the ship to travel from one to the other -instantly- and -without moving.- The power required to do this, however, is GIGANTIC, and the means used to generate it are hidden under so many levels of military security we couldn't find any engineers drunk enough to tell us how it's done.

The main problems with fold drive are that it takes a few minutes to make a jump, and that you -must- know where your destination is, -precisely.-

(4) METASPACE

Metaspace was discovered in 2386 as part of the ongoing effort to find faster and cheaper means of FTL transport. In the twenty years since, it has leaped into prominence as the new 'hot' method of travelling the galaxy. The core of its popularity is the fact that, unlike the other three methods mentioned above,
metaspace travel does -not- require a special engine; to quote the promotional brochure from the Federation Metaspace Council, "all you need is a thruster and a radio!"

Like hyperspace, metaspace is a parallel spatial dimension; unlike hyperspace, however, a special field is not required to support realspace physical laws. Also unlike hyperspace, metaspace does not map directly to the realspace universe, although as a general rule distances are -much- shorter between realspace points, shorter even than hyperspace.

Navigation in metaspace is accomplished through a combination of dead reckoning and navigational beacons. Aside from the artificial beacons, there are no landmarks whatsoever for navigating in metaspace, not even the gravitational shadows of hyperspace. Sensors can only reach about 5,000 km out at most, the signals absorbed by the ether which permeates metaspace. A vessel which loses its beacon fix or dead-reckoning vector is liable to be stranded forever in metaspace.

(5) WORMHOLES

In theory, wormholes can provide instantaneous transport from one point to another. However, no natural wormholes have been discovered in millenia of exploration, and the isolated reports of ships surviving within a black hole's event horizon to be hurled thousands of parsecs away may be discounted as freak interactions between the black holes' massive gravitational field, the ships' engines, and a couple of Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters.

(6) CROSSING METHODS

Don't. Really, don't.

The only two hyperluminal systems which can work together without some kind of massive explosion are hyperspace from within metaspace, -in that order.- Hyperdrive can be used as an emergency way to get out of metaspace if one becomes lost. Attempting to enter metaspace while in hyperspace, or attempting to enter either while in warp, will result in a spectacular light show which you won't be alive to appreciate.

In -theory- it is possible to engage warp while in hyperspace, but no computer is sensitive enough to configure the warp fields finely enough to prevent the explosive phenomenon observed on test vessels nicknamed the 'Technicolor Yawn.' Essentially, bringing warp engines online in hyperspace drops the ship back into realspace as a combination of energy, gases, and extremely tiny fragments of spaceship. Obviously, this is not something you want to try unless being reduced to your component atoms would improve your situation.

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Redneck

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