Technologies

Bluespace

Bluespace, a defining technology of the 24th century, freed from the shackles of FTL technology, near-instantaneous transit across vast quantities of space became possible. breaking the excruciatingly slow speeds of FTL and plunging the galaxy into a state where the measure of a parsec became a reasonable unit of measure for travel.

Furthermore, the subjugation of colonies became far easier for superpowers. No longer would fleets take weeks, or months of real time to cover the space, but mere hours or days to cover the space. Furthermore, Bluespace transit was simply more comfortable, and the terrors and insanity brought on by FTL exposure were nullified due to the complete alternate means of travel.

Bluespace, at its core, is the unlocking of another dimension of travel, though often simply put as "folding space" to contend with curious minds. The true inner workings of Bluespace drives often confuse even their own maintainers. A scant few researchers have spent enough time researching all the aspects of Bluespace travel to understand exactly the calculations and procedures taken to complete a full jump, start to finish.

Onboard ships, most engineers simply know how to operate the computers and examine statistics to ensure the drive is in good working order, as well as confirm jump calculations are accurate. The complex computations of 4th dimensional travel take drive computers much time, as well as multiple runs to confirm the math checks out. Once completed the complex process of jumping starts, As a pathway through another dimension is formed before the ship, it will accelerate past the point of no return and enter the Bluespace tunnel.

While in fourth-dimensional space, nothing unusual is able to be noted, save for the complete and utter warping of all visual aspects outside of the carefully calculated and formed route. For this reason most of the crew are completely barred from looking outside of a ship during Bluespace travel. Those that have, report, at best, no effect, while other cases result in complete and irrecoverable mental insanity.

In the early days Bluespace travel was dangerous, taking near a year of research for acceptable levels of loss of vessel percentages to be achieved. Even at its height of use though, Bluespace travel was never 100% safe, with the rare occasional ship being lost to the void. Often blamed on failed maintenance of the drive or improperly calculated jump routes, on rare occasions, ships have returned in varying states of decay or intactness.

Around 2638, the Mar’Qua Alliance posted a bulletin to the galaxy at large, warning of a statistical increase in vessels lost to Bluespace. The margin of increase was deemed too low to be of concern to most, even to some of the Mar’Qua Nest worlds. This bulletin would be the only warning sign of the impending Bluespace crash.

In the year 2645, on October 19th, at 06:26 and 15 seconds SET (Sol Event Time), Bluespace, as it was known to work, ceased. Ships traveling in groups and arriving one after another around this time would note that any ship arriving before that exact moment would arrive, but anything after the 15th second would never arrive. All ships in Bluespace at this time were lost to the void; further ships wouldn't receive notice of the crash and would jump into the warp, never to be seen again. By 06:38, SolFed announced the galaxy-wide crash of Bluespace and warned all ships to cease Bluespace travel. From this moment on, Bluespace travel has never worked for long-distance travel, and short-distance teleportation has taken great effort to make work in any meaningful way.

FTL

WIPFTL - The Alcubierre drive, in conjunction with long-term cyrosleep, set the stage for the first steps into FTL travel and primed the galaxy for an age of expansion from the core of Sol in the year 2139. At long last, man had overcome one of the fundamental laws of the universe; the stars, oh so distant, were now within grasp. 

The effect on the Terra-Martian relationship was instant; the original 9-month flight to the red plant could now be completed in just 3 minutes by the simplest of FTL drives. The entire system of Sol was now easily capable of being unified with this new transit technology. 

In the coming years, the means of FTL travel would be developed further, speeds would slowly increase to make long distance travel more and more reasonable, and soon, other stars were in reach as FTL drives reached 500c. However, issues slowly made themselves more and more present as speeds continued to increase.

While moving faster than light, a whole new plethora of particles that only exist at speeds faster than light were found. The colloquial term "tachyon" now applies, as these particles only exist and can only exist at speeds faster than light. At low intensities, these particles had no noticeable effect, but as FTL drives accelerated faster and faster, more and more crews began to report abnormalities in both electronic systems and, more worryingly, in their own thoughts.

Further studies concluded that the particles, while mostly harmless, did impose electronic interference on an atomic level; thus, computers needed to be shielded as best as possible, have redundancies set up, error checking, and self-correction. Through technology, the machines were able to go faster; it was merely the people that could not. 

The first known incident of "Starlight Madness" as it was dubbed, was recorded in 2146, when a high-speed FTL test platform, the BlueStar, experienced a sudden and fatal incident when the ship's engineer appeared to enter a state of psychosis despite having no mental issues on record. After suddenly assaulting and overpowering his two additional crew members, he piloted the test ship into Jupiter's 17th moon. After a few weeks of searching, a black box was found, revealing the nature of the engineer's sudden onset of madness as recorded by his microphone.

While concerning, those in cryostorage fared far better at high FTL, oblivious in their unconscious states; at worst, people would awaken with headaches. In time, though, lasting effects were found from FTL travel, even for those in cyro. Permanent damage will impact all who used FTL, in cryo or awake, with the new effect titled "Sudden Sleep Disorder." SSD, a byproduct of using FTL, impacted previous travelers at random times, causing a sudden, complete catatonic state for seemingly random durations.

In the end FTL remained a viable option despite these drawbacks, however its speed was forever limited by the human and electronic factor. In later testing, it was found that positronic brains offered no extra resilience, making AI-crewed FTL ships worthless. Instead, the standard was to travel at safe speeds and rotate crews in and out of cyrosleep for long journeys, as well as using crew-administered drugs, body modification, and simply picking people less emotional to be crew at higher speeds.

Subspace

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AI

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Cyrosleep

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Bio-revival

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Prosthetics

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