Category: Interstellar Travel

Each governing body or ruler owns the gates personally. The tax revenues generated from gate travel provide a major source of income for many rulers.

The intersteller gates used to create wormholes between systems. (See Interstellar Travel Basics)

Mass bending is a means of manipulating the higgs bozon in such a way that an object acts as if it has less mass than it actually does. For instance this manipulation allows starships to accelerate at rates greater than allowed for the amount of force created by their engines. Mass bending is an essential component of all in system travel, dramatically reducing the fuel needed to travel between destinations and shortening the time of travel.

Interstellar travel in the Pax Imperium is facilitated by giant gates that create wormholes that exit through other gates in other systems. These gates pull a given point in space/time to its event horizon and connect the two. It can be very difficult to tell that a gate has been activated because the only difference is a change in the visible stars behind the gate. There is no flash or bang when a gate activates.

Due to the huge cost in their construction, most systems only have one or at most two gates. They also have a large gravitational effect when activated so they tend to be kept at a distance from planets and other large bodies where that effect could cause a cumulative change over time. This means that they are often placed far out in a system, necessitating several days or weeks of travel from the inhabitable planets of the inner system out to the gate.

Gates are taken to a star system for placement by relativistic means. The gates are accelerated to near the speed of light and then flown to their destination. So a gate placed at a star some eight light years away will take nine years or more to arrive and be activated. Once activated however, gates essentially pull the two systems together in space/time and connect them, allowing information and goods to travel between the two gates at speeds effectively faster than light. Most gate missions are crewed by two people who through time dilation essentially travel into the future during the time they travel near the speed of light.

A standard gate is a two kilometers in diameter and usually accompanied by a space station to manage traffic at the gate. Any gate can connect with almost any other gate that is within a set distance. The furthest distance possible is usually between seven and fifteen light years. (Although, there are rumors that one state has found a way to extend a gate connection much further.)

Ships queue up to travel between these gates.  If they are willing to pay they may use a method called continuous transit in which they travel through a gate and immediately reverse course and travel onward through the next gate. In this way they can cover a large number of light years in just a few hours. However, the cost of continuous transit can be prohibitive, so most travel takes place by passing through a gate, circling around and queueing up for the next gate.