Terraship setting communication and transportation
Communication:
NIAN (Near Instantaneous Ansible Network) works on quantum fluctuation, you connect to an “address” that entangles a pair of hydrogen ions — one where you are, one at the destination — wiggle them to get a binary signal with like, an electromagnetic field, and turn that into data
The actual nian computers are fairly big but they’re not complicated to make. They’re also subsidized so basically every ship, satellite, and town has one
High-powered radio is regulated and significantly restricted: radio is generally the first form of communication that makes it off-planet, so leaving it uncluttered and encouraging use of physical (fibre optic and copper wires), short-range, and NIAN communication allows the space-eu to more easily find new spacefaring civilizations.
This has been 100% successful and every independently-spacefaring civilization on record (including humans) has been found through radio! ….it is possible this is a self-selecting sample.
Also “every independently-spacefaring civilization” is like, 5 times in two thousand years, spacefaring civilizations are extremely rare and most sentient species never even bother to develop significant amounts of industry.
Drives: there are only two known working methods of faster-than-light travel, both of which have been independently invented several times by different species and civilizations.
The Alcubierre drive (“longhaul” ships or “longhaulers”)
Functionally “travels” at light speed
Usually takes 3-50 years, depending on the distance between stars
Due to intense radiation caused by the subspace, requires several tens of metres of high-density shielding around habited and cargo areas: as a result, habitable alcubierre ships have a functional minimum size of very large (several km long)
No time dilation since the ship itself does not actually move
Uses a pinched-off subspace, “moves space around the ship”
The subspace takes a lot of energy to create, but takes very little to maintain. It takes the same amount of energy no matter the mass of the ship.
Ships are usually made out of variants of mixed silicon-carbon substrate AKA rocks. This can take the form of everything from 3D printed basalt foam to hollowed out asteroids.
Due to the long-duration typical transit times, most ships are self-sustaining, operating more like very small planets than traditional ideas of spaceships. Most use centrifugal gravity, have extensive farming practices, and very tight-knit communities
Due to the minimum size limits, as well as the tendency for many ships to be repurposed colony ships (the human exodus was the last mass departure from a planet, and many of the ships are still around), many ship communities accept passengers for free, or for nominal fares, with the expectation that they’ll be added to the work rota on board ship. It’s fairly common for young people to board a ship, take the travel time to gain a degree and job experience (either onboard or through online NIANet classes), and disembark directly into a job on the other side. There are a few ship organizations that do this intentionally, acting as mobile universities in service of colonies that have a scarcity of skilled labour or other professions, to varying degrees of success.
It’s not uncommon for 60% of a ship’s population to completely change every time it reaches a port. It’s also not uncommon for people to decide they like life shipboard, and decide to stay. Many people end up retiring to live on ships as well, enjoying the slow “rural” pace and the relatively low workload of, say, climate-controlled aquaponic greenhouse maintenance.
The level of common-use technology on ships varies wildly. Nearly all ships are fully connected to NIANet, but agriculture can vary from nearly entirely manual labour to traditional tractors to robotic drones to eclectic schizotech mixes depending on what’s available
Due to the extremely durable materials most ships are made out of (rocks), it’s very common to find ships that have been flying for centuries, with parts replaced or retrofit when needed.
The tesseract drive/jumpdrive (ships are referred to as “hoppers”, “jumpers”, or local equivalent)
Jump itself is instantaneous (+engine warmup time)
Requires a navbeacon at the destination system
Significantly more expensive and resource-intensive than the alcubierre drive
Hard on engines: requires on average 9-24 hours to cool down after each jump, full manual systems check, and frequent replacement of vital parts
Emits radiation wake equivalent to minor solar activity during every jump: intensity of wake increases with the distance travelled and the mass of ship.
Because of the radiation wake, jumps are prohibited within several weeks’ travel of many habited planets/stations, with the exception of emergencies and emergency vehicles. Local laws apply, usually depending on the shielding of stations and the distance to the nearest navbeacon system.
All jumpdrive ships are also equipped with short-range engines, ie. solar sails, ion drives, mass propulsion, EM recoilless drives, and so forth, as they have to travel 3-6 weeks away from habited areas to be able to safely jump
Due to how the size/distance variable increases the radiation wake’s intensity, most jumpdrive ships are small short-range ships used for personnel transport and shipping of delicate or time-sensitive cargo. Many ships will take a series of smaller jumps between nearby star systems to reduce the distance they have to travel in the departure system, as the initial trip away from habited areas can take up to a month or more, depending on the transit authority’s estimation of the severity of the radiation wake. This also allows the ships to resupply more frequently. It’s a matter of weighing the time spent on engine cooldown versus time saved in physical travel.
Because the radiation wake takes place 90% behind the ship in the departure system, jumpdrive ships are able to safely jump significantly closer to the habited zones of the destination system. Local laws apply, and the ships still have to deal with the inertia from their initial departure.
There are several organizations that do “pony express” style travel/transport with the jumpdrive, with many small jumpdrive tugs and canisters that are moved between them. It’s very fast and also expensive, allowing people and goods to move across the entire galactic arm in less than one (very stressful) standard day (plus travel time out of the initial system, if applicable)
On navbeacons
The tesseract drive/jumpdrive requires navigation beacons to jump, since it runs by a form of subspace that requires entangled particles on either end. Navigation beacons, primarily, are a NIAN transmitter with a cache of hydrogen. For each jump, it entangles a hydrogen ion with a hydrogen ion on the scheduled ship, then ejects the ion off in a safe direction.
The ship’s tesseract drive creates a subspace bubble around the ship, rendering the ship’s in-universe mass to be functionally zero, then hijacks the quantum entanglement to fluctuate the subspace bubble to the precise location of the destination ion, appearing with the particle inside the ship.
The inertia and relative orientation of the ship is maintained: when the ship heads out of habited space on the departure system, it’s the navigator’s job to make sure that the orientation and speed match the targeted system as best as possible.
Since no-one’s made it out of the Milky Way’s Orion arm yet, systems share the same galactic inertia, so the navigator only has to orient with the relative inertia of the targeted system/planet/station itself.