Jump Drive

A jump drive is a device, typically installed onboard spacecraft, which achieves faster than light travel through either the creation and subsequent collapse of an artificial wormhole, or travel through another dimension of space. This method of FTL propulsion is by far the most common in the Milky Way galaxy, with some more primitive spacefaring races making use of warp (Alcubierre) drives. Nyctosians are the only significantly advanced race native to the Milky Way that do not use wormhole-based jump drives, preferring the vastly more effective slipspace jump drive, the technology of which they hold with great secrecy.

Principle of operation
A wormhole-based jump drive, referred to simply as a jump drive in most contexts, uses matter with negative energy density to tear open and stabilize a wormhole between two points in space. Once the spacecraft has maneuvered into the wormhole using its thrusters or other method of sublight propulsion, it will become immobile, trapped at the mouth of the wormhole, as no propulsion system has yet been devised which is capable of changing an object's velocity within artificial wormhole space. In order to escape a slow and unpleasant death, the spacecraft will destabilize the wormhole at its mouth, with the shockwave caused by the destabilization pushing the spacecraft forward and towards the other end of the corridor. Depending on the distance between the corridor's mouth and its outlet, the time to reach the outlet may be anywhere from an imperceptibly small fraction of a second to several days or weeks.

The more powerful the drive is, the more space it is capable of covering in a single jump. The unit used to measure the effectiveness of a wormhole jump drive is a Lulot, defined by the distance between wormhole mouth and outlet in realspace divided by the length of the wormhole-space corridor. Most Laputan-made wormhole jump drives operate at around 60 millilulots.

Principle of operation
Very little knowledge exists in the general galactic community regarding the Nyctosian method of jump propulsion. Based on the residual radiation observed after a Nyctosian vessel jumps to FTL, they appear to use Slipspace, an ancient artifically-created dimension of space in which the laws of physics can be manipulated easily, as a method of travel between points in realspace. If the Nyctosians do indeed travel through Slipspace, they place themselves in extreme danger by doing so, as both the unpredictable nature of space within the dimension itself and the godlike abilities of its inhabitants pose a significant threat to any potential visitors from realspace.