Warp drive
The concept of warp drive is to create a displacement field, or a 'bubble', around the vessel, that contracts space in front of it and expands space behind it. Inside the bubble, space-time remains unaltered. By doing this, the vessel can reach its destination a lot faster, still not surpassing the speed of light relatively, but effectively, in the sense that a distance of one light year is travelled in less time than allowed by the speed of light.

To generate this displacement field, enormous amounts of energy is required. One way of generating such amounts is to let normal matter collide with anti-matter. Anti-matter is extremely volatile and must be delicately contained; a breach of containment may have fatal consequences. However, a reactor that runs on anti-matter can generate energy to be used by other systems on board the vessel.

To generate a stable and large enough displacement field many ships use warp nacelles, like the Treecu ship below.


Known users:

• Treecu Star Empire