The Ivanov Drive, Spatial Distortion, and FTL Travel

In the real world, going faster than light is impossible, but that's boring. So, despite this RP's hard sci-fi roots, liberties have been taken with this concept for your enjoyment and sanity. References made to and names stolen from the Descent: Freespace series of games, which you really ought to play if you haven't already. They're free, too! Download them! Use that Google-fu!

But onward...

The reason that FTL travel is impossible in real life is due to Einstein and his pesky Theory of Relativity. I'm not going to lie; it mostly goes over my head, but the gist of it is that it takes more and more energy to accelerate as you go faster and faster, until you need infinite energy to go at lightspeed. As you can't provide infinite energy, you cannot move at lightspeed or above. Simple.

However, in the CH universe, Vladimir Ivanov of the Soviet Union discovered the Ivanov Effect (science is good at naming things, isn't it?) and from this various engineers produced the Ivanov Drive. Using the Realspace-Subspace Relations Theory, colloquially known as the "Screw You, Einstien" Theory of Own, the Drive can exploit abnormalities in space known as Jump Nodes.

A Jump Node is a sphere in space roughly nine hundred kilometres in diameter, inside of which it is possible to use an Ivanov Drive to enter Subspace. Nodes act as the entry and exit points of subspace lanes, which take you from one node to another almost instantly. Note that you can only enter and exit at predetermined points; this means that you can only travel between particular systems, and that you have to trek the long way across a system to get to the next node. In layman's terms, an Ivanov entry-exit through subspace is known as a "zap".

When it comes to starship design, it must be emphasized that faster-than-light travel is expensive due to the gigantic, intricate, and expensive systems involved. These must be exposed to space, and are therefore vulnerable to, say, enemy fire. The practical mechanics of the drive consist of very complex devices that are vulnerable to enemy fire. All of this adds up to FTL drives only being present on the largest of ships, meaning that only rare dreadnoughts and mega-freighters are capable of independent travel between systems.

The Ivanov Drive projects a sphere of three hundred kilometres across; the entirety of this sphere must be within the Jump Node to zap between systems. All material inside of the sphere is zapped to the next system along with the ship instigating the jump, irrespective of type or allegiance. If Asian Prosperity Sphere ships are present inside of a Commonwealth dreadnought's Ivanov Sphere when it zaps, they get dragged along--and a French ship with half of its structure inside of the Sphere would find itself sheared in two. However, the more material that the Commonwealth ship has to move, the more energy it expends; this provides an upper limit.

The Node system has military ramifications, in that Nodes become points of blockade and defence, and that the size of an FTL-capable fleet is kept to roughly fifteen vessels. As well, communications in-system go faster than ships, but between systems, the fastest message is one carried on a ship.

The other military ramification of the Ivanov Drive is that, at the edge of its sphere, it generates a spatial distortion known colloquially as a Gradient. This has become the cornerstone of fleet combat, as objects moving too quickly through this distortion are torn apart and redirected--lasers are dissipated, shells and missiles disassembled, and ships rendered crumpled masses of shrapnel. When two spheres contact one another, however, this gradient disappears as the spheres "cancel out", opening the door for conflict. This restricts warfare to relatively short ranges.

Phew! That's done too!

Any comments or questions may be posted.

Hooray for Ivanov!

*goes off to make the Millennium Falcon*