FTL drive creation follows purpose of starship

[Spacescifi]

 

FTL drives in fiction I think should be in harmony with what specific purpose the user has in mind for his ship. Namely what he is actually doing with his ship in space.

So here is your opportunity to make an FTL drive and post it and be creative.

It must be designed for only ONE of these purposes broadly.

1. Trade.

2. War.

3. Exploration

I think that covers the bases.

Each FTL drive is tailor made for its purpose with drawbacks that make it a poor choice for applications it was not intended for (like you could use a jet nozzle's exhaust plume as a plasma torch to cut a metal pipe, but it would be incredibly inefficient and would likely do more than you intended).

Here is mine for example, based on Trader.

Space Trader FTL drive: It is a jump drive designed specifically for finding and locating both other spaceships and asteroids. It works by sending out an FTL ping signal that reflects back to your vessel the distance and location of only objects that have as much mass as your spaceship or less. The smallest mass it can detect is a kilogram. The FTL ping travels a light year per minute, and takes equally long on the return ping reflected back to you. So for Alpha Centauri, supposing you pinged the various multitude of asteroids over there which would take about four minutes, you could get a return ping in about eight minutes.

Jumping radius: A ship can only jump near an object at a 30 kliometer radius. Likewise to jump out a ship must be past the 30 kilometer radius of only objects that have the same mass or less down to a kilogram.

Navigation: It is wise to ping at least twice, as that gives some indication of whether or not the object you are juming toward has a predictable orbit as well as it's velocity, which can be ascertained by the distance traveled between pings. That way when you do jump you won't have the object crashing into you at orbital speeds, as you can adjust your heading before you jump.

Advantages: Great at detecting objects in space, has a max range of 7 LY.

Disadvantages: You only know the mass, distance, and travel heading of a detected object, you have no way knowing what it is until you jump. Only that it has either the exact mass of your vessel or lower down to a kilogram. It also cannot detect planets or stars (unless you really do have a ship that massive LOL). Yet a planet might be inferred by a lot of orbting objects relatively close to one another. So you could jump and look. Especially with planets like Earth with a lot of orbital junk. Or Saturn, which has MUCH more.

Now your turn! You can make an FTL drive made with the specific purpose of either trade, war, or exploration.

Have fun!

 

Edited May 19, 2019 by Spacescifi

[Shpaget]

Convoluted and oddly specific arbitrary limitations.

FTL drive should not be designed around the role of the vessel. It should be technology driven and the type of vessel that employs it should work with what is available or it just doesn't work.

The parameters of the FTL travel should be defined by story - offer the capability needed for the story, but include some limitations, again for the reasons of story telling.

Options are:
Instant travel, but spool up/cool down time (Battlestar Galactica)
Instant start of the drive but finite speed (Star Trek)
Special training for piloting or similar limitation that makes it not available to everybody (Dune)
Natural wormholes or subspace lanes that put limitations on paths the ships can take (Andromeda).

These options are usually well balances, yet flexible enough to give the author some flexibility for future ideas.

 

Edited May 19, 2019 by Shpaget

[James Kerman]

Hello @Spacescifi.

I've moved your thread to the lounge as it is more a creative discussion about the implications of far future technology.

[KSK]

Hmmm. It seems a bit odd that your Trader drive can detect small masses but not large ones when intuitively you would think small ones are harder to detect. More hand waving required.

I’m also thinking that, as written, your drive would be rather useful for piracy. Lurk in the Oort cloud, ping for targets in-system of a suitable mass range, jump in to within 30km and take out your target. For battle tactics, it would allow for some very nasty ambushes using autonomous  FTL drones equipped with adequately large nukes. Sure, you’ve just lost an expensive FTL drive but your enemy is also down one drive plus the even more expensive warship wrapped around it.

It’s a nice idea but I think it would be quite difficult to design a drive for a specific role, whilst excluding others.

Edit. And from a writing perspective, I’d personally find it easier to start with a given drive technology and then figure out how trading, exploration and (if necessary) combat would work given the limitations of that technology. So - what @Shpaget said, effectively.

But that’s just me - there are as many ways to write as there are writers, so I can imagine your way around working for others.

Edited May 19, 2019 by KSK

[Spacescifi]

4 hours ago, James Kerman said:

Hello @Spacescifi.

I've moved your thread to the lounge as it is more a creative discussion about the implications of far future technology.

 

Sorry my apologies, I will be sure to only mention creative scifi stuff that does not relate to known spaceflight here.

 

Actually regarding the trader drive, there are ways to make it not so effective for war. Some require no modifications to the story but others do.

No modifications: A small bomb equipped drone can never jump within a 30 kilometer radius of a much larger warship because trader drives require the same mass level as the jumper or less down to a kilogram. A drone will never ping a more massive ship, so it could not jump near one. Yes your trader ship if the mass was less (likely) you could detect it, yet you could only jump your entire ship into the combat zone, so FTL drone sniping is only possible on low mass stuff.

Changes with mods: Allow some warships to have antigravity field equipment that deflects pinging so they cannot be detected. Also allow devices that let ships know know they are being pinged. And allow 60 seconds for the trader drive to spool up after pinging, that way a ship that can detect pings has at least 60 seconds to alter their heading if the ping is inside a solar system.

Edited May 19, 2019 by Spacescifi
Fix

[steuben]

I'm seconding KSK on this one, and some of the old masters agree. Not to say some haven't done it the other way around, "The Void Captain's Tale" springs to mind. I think the drive in that one came after the plot. The danger of allowing multiple drive physics with only societal constraints is that they can and will be violated. I've only read it once, Brin's "Uplift" 'verse. There things were handwaved a fair bit.

'Building "The Mote in God's Eye" 'discusses the process of building such technology.

Now for my answer:

The drive is Phlebotinum based. It generates a field that reduces the effects of general relativity. The field size is relative to the cube root of the mass of the phlebotinum. The strength of the effect is inversely related to the square of the curvature of space, logarithmic to the amount of power applied, and linear to the mass. Generally larger ships increase the mass of phlebotinum. It is possible to synchronize multiple fields to allow for larger ships. However, the equipment required generally move expensive than just increasing the amount of phlebotinum. 

What this means is that a ship can go as fast as it wants as long as it has power available to pump into the field. The speed though is limited as well by how deep it is in a gravity well. Apply more power and you can hold a given speed deeper, but the amount of power goes up quickly the deeper you go. Generally commercial and civilian ships take the hit on speed rather than increase the mass or devote uneconomic amounts of volume to power generation. Of course military, certain policing, and some of questionable ethics vessels don't have to worry about such constraints.

 

Edited May 21, 2019 by steuben

[KSK]

Following on from @steuben‘s post, without knowing anything else about his worldbuilding (so this might be completely wrong), it looks like his drive would be pretty good for an interstellar trader, or an exploration vessel but probably less good for a combat vessel.

Basically, it’ll work well for any application where you’re either not spending a high percentage of your flight time in a substantial gravity well, or if the stuff you’re doing in that gravity well isn’t time critical.

A trading vessel might be slower than molasses near a planet but most of its time is spent in interstellar space where its speed is far less restricted. Likewise for an explorer - depending on their sensor tech, they might be able to do most of their exploring at an acceptable range from the system star, only heading in-system (and taking the speed hit) if they find a particularly notable planet. Even then, slower in-system travel isn’t necessarily a problem if you can be gathering data on the way in and out.

Whereas the drive might not be as useful for combat vessels, if those vessels spend most of their time in-system, in relatively deep gravity wells.

Trying to outright prevent a particular drive from being used for particular role is difficult, without tying yourself in increasingly complex knots. Making a drive a sufficiently poor fit for a particular role that other factors (such as economics) mostly prevent it from being used is far easier and less prone to introducing plot loopholes.

Even better, the workarounds needed to compensate for an imperfect FTL system can drive a lot of plot. Battletech is an excellent example - it’s FTL drive basically doesn’t work at all unless it’s in locally flat space and worse - doesn’t play well with standard fusion drives. Net result - extensive use of dropships to ferry stuff to and from the FTL vessels and pretty severe limits on transit time (even though this is a point-to-point instantaneous jump drive) due to the need to recharge the drive core using solar arrays after each jump.

Incidentally, my slightly snarky response to @Spacescifi‘s reply to my post is ‘stuff the drones with concrete’. Bulk up their mass to the point where they can be used against larger ships. Heck, if you want a relatively compact drone, stuff it with tungsten rods and make your primary weapon even nastier.

Now I’m sure you could find a reason for that not to work either but I’m also fairly sure I could figure out a counter to those reasons too.  I’m not trying to be mean to @Spacescifi - just pointing out the problem with trying to have a single purpose FTL drive.

 

[kerbiloid]

These ones.
 

Spoiler

The red is for war, the blue is for trade, the green is for exploration. Please, don't confuse them.

 

[Spacescifi]

20 hours ago, KSK said:

Following on from @steuben‘s post, without knowing anything else about his worldbuilding (so this might be completely wrong), it looks like his drive would be pretty good for an interstellar trader, or an exploration vessel but probably less good for a combat vessel.

Basically, it’ll work well for any application where you’re either not spending a high percentage of your flight time in a substantial gravity well, or if the stuff you’re doing in that gravity well isn’t time critical.

A trading vessel might be slower than molasses near a planet but most of its time is spent in interstellar space where its speed is far less restricted. Likewise for an explorer - depending on their sensor tech, they might be able to do most of their exploring at an acceptable range from the system star, only heading in-system (and taking the speed hit) if they find a particularly notable planet. Even then, slower in-system travel isn’t necessarily a problem if you can be gathering data on the way in and out.

Whereas the drive might not be as useful for combat vessels, if those vessels spend most of their time in-system, in relatively deep gravity wells.

Trying to outright prevent a particular drive from being used for particular role is difficult, without tying yourself in increasingly complex knots. Making a drive a sufficiently poor fit for a particular role that other factors (such as economics) mostly prevent it from being used is far easier and less prone to introducing plot loopholes.

Even better, the workarounds needed to compensate for an imperfect FTL system can drive a lot of plot. Battletech is an excellent example - it’s FTL drive basically doesn’t work at all unless it’s in locally flat space and worse - doesn’t play well with standard fusion drives. Net result - extensive use of dropships to ferry stuff to and from the FTL vessels and pretty severe limits on transit time (even though this is a point-to-point instantaneous jump drive) due to the need to recharge the drive core using solar arrays after each jump.

Incidentally, my slightly snarky response to @Spacescifi‘s reply to my post is ‘stuff the drones with concrete’. Bulk up their mass to the point where they can be used against larger ships. Heck, if you want a relatively compact drone, stuff it with tungsten rods and make your primary weapon even nastier.

Now I’m sure you could find a reason for that not to work either but I’m also fairly sure I could figure out a counter to those reasons too.  I’m not trying to be mean to @Spacescifi - just pointing out the problem with trying to have a single purpose FTL drive.

 

No offense taken. I am not one that needs to be right about everything so if you can beat my fictional tech by being clever more power to you. It only gives me more writing fodder.

Yet it does not address the various modification counters I already added to the drive, and I have no intention of adding more. 

Also, I did not mention this originally but spaceships in my verse will use sublight drives that allow constant acceleration at 1g for an hour before needing to be recharged at a charging station. You can get greater accelerations at the expense of reduced usage time and risking crew comfort or life. Or you could get longer than an hour accelerations if you did below 1g.

To reach earth orbit you could do 3g acceleration but that only can be kept up for 20 min (fortunately it only takes about 8 min to teach orbit). You can also do ridiculous accellerations like 20 g for about a min, but that would surely kill your crew. No inertial dampers here. Would work for a missile though. Yet it is also worth noting that the really massive vessels take longer to get up to speed unless your engine nozzle is scaled up to match it.

On 5/19/2019 at 6:05 PM, steuben said:

I'm seconding KSK on this one, and some of the old masters agree. Not to say some haven't done it the other way around, "The Void Captain's Tale" springs to mind. I think the drive in that one came after the plot. The danger of allowing multiple drive physics with only societal constraints is that they can and will be violated. I've only read it once, Brin's "Uplift" 'verse. There things were handwaved a fair bit.

'Building "The Mote in God's Eye" ' discusses the process of building such technology.

Now for my answer:

The drive is Phlebotinum based. It generates a field that reduces the effects of general relativity. The field size is relative to the cube root of the mass of the phlebotinum. The strength of the effect is inversely related to the square of the curvature of space, logarithmic to the amount of power applied, and linear to the mass. Generally larger ships increase the mass of phlebotinum. It is possible to synchronize multiple fields to allow for larger ships. However, the equipment required generally move expensive than just increasing the amount of phlebotinum. 

What this means is that a ship can go as fast as it wants as long as it has power available to pump into the field. The speed though is limited as well by how deep it is in a gravity well. Apply more power and you can hold a given speed deeper, but the amount of power goes up quickly the deeper you go. Generally commercial and civilian ships take the hit on speed rather than increase the mass or devote uneconomic amounts of volume to power generation. Of course military, certain policing, and some of questionable ethics vessels don't have to worry about such constraints.

 

?????? Is this drive more for war, trade, or exploration? 

Also, could you explain it in plain, simple english, so anyone and everyone can grasp plainly what your drive can and cannot do?

Edited May 21, 2019 by Spacescifi
Fix

[kerbiloid]

If this is about a sci-fi settings, just use the Aether. They usually do it in sci-fi, just don't call it by its name.

Let them discover some kind of field (or use the existing one), or let the Dark Matter be it.
Then you can define any reason of your ships behaviour. Say, the cross-section area of the ship limits available acceleration due to the field drag.

[Spacescifi]

 

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

If this is about a sci-fi settings, just use the Aether. They usually do it in sci-fi, just don't call it by its name.

Let them discover some kind of field (or use the existing one), or let the Dark Matter be it.
Then you can define any reason of your ships behaviour. Say, the cross-section area of the ship limits available acceleration due to the field drag.

 

I create. Why imitate when I can create?

17 hours ago, KSK said:

Following on from @steuben‘s post, without knowing anything else about his worldbuilding (so this might be completely wrong), it looks like his drive would be pretty good for an interstellar trader, or an exploration vessel but probably less good for a combat vessel.

Basically, it’ll work well for any application where you’re either not spending a high percentage of your flight time in a substantial gravity well, or if the stuff you’re doing in that gravity well isn’t time critical.

A trading vessel might be slower than molasses near a planet but most of its time is spent in interstellar space where its speed is far less restricted. Likewise for an explorer - depending on their sensor tech, they might be able to do most of their exploring at an acceptable range from the system star, only heading in-system (and taking the speed hit) if they find a particularly notable planet. Even then, slower in-system travel isn’t necessarily a problem if you can be gathering data on the way in and out.

Whereas the drive might not be as useful for combat vessels, if those vessels spend most of their time in-system, in relatively deep gravity wells.

Trying to outright prevent a particular drive from being used for particular role is difficult, without tying yourself in increasingly complex knots. Making a drive a sufficiently poor fit for a particular role that other factors (such as economics) mostly prevent it from being used is far easier and less prone to introducing plot loopholes.

Even better, the workarounds needed to compensate for an imperfect FTL system can drive a lot of plot. Battletech is an excellent example - it’s FTL drive basically doesn’t work at all unless it’s in locally flat space and worse - doesn’t play well with standard fusion drives. Net result - extensive use of dropships to ferry stuff to and from the FTL vessels and pretty severe limits on transit time (even though this is a point-to-point instantaneous jump drive) due to the need to recharge the drive core using solar arrays after each jump.

Incidentally, my slightly snarky response to @Spacescifi‘s reply to my post is ‘stuff the drones with concrete’. Bulk up their mass to the point where they can be used against larger ships. Heck, if you want a relatively compact drone, stuff it with tungsten rods and make your primary weapon even nastier.

Now I’m sure you could find a reason for that not to work either but I’m also fairly sure I could figure out a counter to those reasons too.  I’m not trying to be mean to @Spacescifi - just pointing out the problem with trying to have a single purpose FTL drive.

 

One more thing I just realized. Any race able to build a trader jump drive is able to make well traveled areas quite reachable, even planets. The first ship out to a new solar system will have a long haul, unless it comes across a near planetary astetoid to jump near.

That said, all a ship has to do is drop out small satelites like breadcrumbs wherever the ship coasts to, preferably in orbit of somewhere of interest like a habital world.

From there your computer only needs to log and calculate their predictable orbits and you will always know and have places to jump to that are near places of interest.

Once that work is done, all it has to do is upload the data to fleet HQ on the homeworld. Periodically every ship should return for a fresh upload of jump satelites to jump to.

So yeah, it is a decent exploratory FTL drive, but I could easily make a drive that was better suited to explore anywhere... including the interstellar meduim, which a trader drive could never jump to unless it found something a kilogram or greater in mass up to the ship's actual mass.

Edited May 21, 2019 by Spacescifi

[steuben]

8 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

?????? Is this drive more for war, trade, or exploration? 

Yes. Or to swap out the item in question for a different one, Is the steam engine used more for war, trade, or exploration? The drive is just how it gets there. What it takes and what it does when it gets there is arbitrary... and the point of the story, almost. The thing to remember, it has to be internally consistent within the story. It's all Minovsky Physics.

Quote

Also, could you explain it in plain, simple english, so anyone and everyone can grasp plainly what your drive can and cannot do?

What it can't do... make a decent espresso, though the cappuccinos are pretty good. Oh, and  julienne potatoes, it can't do that, oddly it can julienne onions. And while it can make them, its Manhattans are flat and flavourless. It's no interocitor.

The "rules":

1. More Phlebotinum means more volume can be carried.

2. More Phlebotinum means it can move <Daft Punk riff> faster, longer, deeper</Daft Punk riff> in a gravity well.

3. More power into the Phlebotinum means it can move <Daft Punk riff> faster, longer, deeper</Daft Punk riff> in a gravity well.

4. You can use multiple Phlebotinum units instead of more Phlebotinum. But, as one designer involved said it's like driving a wagon with a team of four horses... except the traces are cut, you're blindfolded, and you aren't sure you have all the reins.

Since the unit only plays with relativistic effects you still need a "conventional"  drive of some sort to actually get some where. Though as KSK has noted in the flatter space of the interstellar voids it does have nice a Highway L/100ly. As always it is the City driving that eats your gas.

Some theorists researching the physics behind it figure there maybe a reactionless drive buried somewhere in the math. However, they say "it's a ball of wibbly-wobbly... mathy-wathy...  stuff..." Apparently the analogy got away from him. I can't say I followed  much of it but it did involve trying to cancel out three different sizes of infinity and getting negative numbers when calculating the absolute value. Though, some of the equations are similar to when you are trying to operate it at or near the bottom of a black hole.

 

Quote

[The] spaceships in my verse will use sublight drives that allow constant acceleration at 1g for an hour before needing to be recharged at a charging station.

Now to delve, and yes this can be a pretty deep rabbit hole, into some of the Minovsky Physics of your sublight drive. This will help with developing your FTL drive.

Why a limit 3600 gs? (hmm... that translates to velocity. Let's call, for the sake of ease of typing, the unit of measurement a mino: one g of acceleration for one second). Is it a power/fuel thing? So why not just double the amount of fuel and get 7.2 kilo-minos. Or maybe a diminishing returns kind of thing, double the about of fuel and you only get forty percent (roughly the square root of two) more minos, so only 5.04 kilo-minos for... <hand wave>reasons</hand wave>.

Alternately you could keep the drive the same size, and cut the mass of the ship in half and still get 7.2 kilo-minos, since you're pushing around half as much stuff.

The other thing to keep at the top left of your keyboard, or top right if you use the mouse of the left side, is space is eldritchly big. You can only burn for thirty minutes. Aero-lithobraking at 35 km/s tends to be bit hard on ships. It would take roughly six hours to go from the earth to the moon. Not too bad. Now let's take one of the favoured golden age planetary destinations, Venus. That's roughly 27 days. And the ringed jewel Saturn... my math might be a bit off, 2 years and 3 months.

 

Quote

I create. Why imitate when I can create?

To create like the masters first you must first imitate them. Then you must copy from them. Then you will be able to create like them.

 

 

[Spacescifi]

4 hours ago, steuben said:

Yes. Or to swap out the item in question for a different one, Is the steam engine used more for war, trade, or exploration? The drive is just how it gets there. What it takes and what it does when it gets there is arbitrary... and the point of the story, almost. The thing to remember, it has to be internally consistent within the story. It's all Minovsky Physics.

What it can't do... make a decent espresso, though the cappuccinos are pretty good. Oh, and  julienne potatoes, it can't do that, oddly it can julienne onions. And while it can make them, its Manhattans are flat and flavourless. It's no interocitor.

The "rules":

1. More Phlebotinum means more volume can be carried.

2. More Phlebotinum means it can move <Daft Punk riff> faster, longer, deeper</Daft Punk riff> in a gravity well.

3. More power into the Phlebotinum means it can move <Daft Punk riff> faster, longer, deeper</Daft Punk riff> in a gravity well.

4. You can use multiple Phlebotinum units instead of more Phlebotinum. But, as one designer involved said it's like driving a wagon with a team of four horses... except the traces are cut, you're blindfolded, and you aren't sure you have all the reins.

Since the unit only plays with relativistic effects you still need a "conventional"  drive of some sort to actually get some where. Though as KSK has noted in the flatter space of the interstellar voids it does have nice a Highway L/100ly. As always it is the City driving that eats your gas.

Some theorists researching the physics behind it figure there maybe a reactionless drive buried somewhere in the math. However, they say "it's a ball of wibbly-wobbly... mathy-wathy...  stuff..." Apparently the analogy got away from him. I can't say I followed  much of it but it did involve trying to cancel out three different sizes of infinity and getting negative numbers when calculating the absolute value. Though, some of the equations are similar to when you are trying to operate it at or near the bottom of a black hole.

 

Now to delve, and yes this can be a pretty deep rabbit hole, into some of the Minovsky Physics of your sublight drive. This will help with developing your FTL drive.

Why a limit 3600 gs? (hmm... that translates to velocity. Let's call, for the sake of ease of typing, the unit of measurement a mino: one g of acceleration for one second). Is it a power/fuel thing? So why not just double the amount of fuel and get 7.2 kilo-minos. Or maybe a diminishing returns kind of thing, double the about of fuel and you only get forty percent (roughly the square root of two) more minos, so only 5.04 kilo-minos for... <hand wave>reasons</hand wave>.

Alternately you could keep the drive the same size, and cut the mass of the ship in half and still get 7.2 kilo-minos, since you're pushing around half as much stuff.

The other thing to keep at the top left of your keyboard, or top right if you use the mouse of the left side, is space is eldritchly big. You can only burn for thirty minutes. Aero-lithobraking at 35 km/s tends to be bit hard on ships. It would take roughly six hours to go from the earth to the moon. Not too bad. Now let's take one of the favoured golden age planetary destinations, Venus. That's roughly 27 days. And the ringed jewel Saturn... my math might be a bit off, 2 years and 3 months.

 

To create like the masters first you must first imitate them. Then you must copy from them. Then you will be able to create like them.

 

 

I mentioned once before, but you can do lower accelerations with my sublight drive and therefore get longer travel time out of it.

For example, moon gravity is 17% of 1g.so using only moon acceleration you get 352 minutes of acceleration.

Not bad. Not to say you need to do a constant burn anyway.

[steuben]

3 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

I mentioned once before, but you can do lower accelerations with my sublight drive and therefore get longer travel time out of it.

For example, moon gravity is 17% of 1g.so using only moon acceleration you get 352 minutes of acceleration.

Not bad. Not to say you need to do a constant burn anyway.

*winces* Delta-v is the  currency of space not acceleration. (Heard that somewhere... not sure where.) Sure you can burn half as hard for twice as long but you still end up going the same speed. You'll have read through projectrho.com . It will cover a lot of what you're working with.

[Spacescifi]

38 minutes ago, steuben said:

*winces* Delta-v is the  currency of space not acceleration. (Heard that somewhere... not sure where.) Sure you can burn half as hard for twice as long but you still end up going the same speed. You'll have read through projectrho.com . It will cover a lot of what you're working with.

 

Yes I know, I am aware of Winchell Chung. But I tend to like Scott Manley much more since he does not come off as arrogant, making assiming a lot about his viewers and readers like Winchell or whoever writes the text on his website does.

Speed is not too important. Usually.

I mean, the logical thing to do for an exploratory mission is to send a scout ship and lay out some satelites to serve as jump points later.

You do not send a crewed ship to unexplored regions, it just makes no sense. First you send the scout, seed the solar system at strategic orbits of interest, THEN send a trader drive ship to jump in and explore.

Since sublight engines have limited delta v, this would conserve it. Before jumping back home or near a jump recharging station, a ship will auto calculate how much charge it needs to reach the nearest recharging station in a reasonable amount (hours or less) of time.

The ship will request to jump back before it crosses into the red (the charge it needs to reach the nearest recharging station).

So ship captains have to be judicious about how they thrust, even though fuel us unlimited so long they recharge at a station. Stations get their power from the sun, but they use exotic matter fields on the charge given to ship engines.

At any rate, stations have a breaking in period of 300 earth days before the exotic matter fields finish properly synching with the solar converters.

Once turned on it can not be turned off, only destroyed, and the 300 day wait is a given.

Edited May 22, 2019 by Spacescifi