Difference between revisions of "Daedalus (ship)"

Revision as of 10:58, 5 February 2016

This page is about the ship class. For the game, see Daedalus.

The Daedalus is a special transport ship used by Wormhole Engineers, the purpose of which is to expand the inhabited universe. Daedalus ships embark from a human-inhabited region of space with a microwormhole and arrive in a new star system, usually containing a planet suitable for colonization. Upon arrival crew members will be awoken from stasis and land on the planet. It is there that they will expand the opening of the wormhole allowing for near-instantaneous travel between the ship's origin and its destination. Due to the speeds at which the ship travels, any crew members on board will age unusually slowly.

Development

The first microwormholes developed in particle accelerators were found to be highly unstable and collapsed instantaneously. The advent of the discovery of macroscopic negative energy production heralded sudden failures in wormhole production. These failures, which ended in runaway exothermic reactions, were thought to be caused in part by causality violations. By moving the wormholes away at high speeds, scientists were able to stabilize them with negative energy and communicate between them at faster-than-light speeds before euthanizing the wormholes. It was discovered that causality-based collapses could be prevented by disallowing looping, or Roman Ring configurations.

As the purpose of a Daedalus ship is bridging the long gap between stars, each ship carries one end of a stabilized microwormhole. The ship itself is built in a spheroid-like shape and accommodates a large negative energy core. This core gravitationally accelerates the ship in the intended direction by residing in either the aft or front of the ship. At rest and at its top speed, the core resides in the center of the ship. Gravity as experienced by any member of the crew is in the direction of this core. Daedalus ships are kept extremely light, as the energetic requirements increase quickly with additional mass. Most improvements to the ship over time have been focused on the forward hull, which must sustain small mass impacts stich as vacuum fluctuations at relativistic speeds, and software for predicting and avoiding more deadly collisions.

Use

It takes a Daedalus ship 1 year to reach its top speed of 2.8×10^8 m/s at which it experiences time more slowly than most human inhabitants of the universe. This top speed is the minimum safe adaptive speed for avoiding relativistic collisions with minor space debris. On board residents experience 4.40 m/s^2 of acceleration when accelerating, or 45% of earth gravity. Due to the weight-cost of equipment to maintain its human crew members, crews are usually kept in stasis for most of their trip as an alternative. During travel, only information can be exchanged with mission control through the wormhole due to its prohibitively small size. After arriving at their destination the onboard engineers land and isolate the wormhole from the destination atmosphere if necessary, then stabilize it to allow for human travel across the wormhole's mouth. Time dilations of on-board time pieces are recorded for use in future astrometrical calculations from the destination site, even though residents of the destination will likely use Earth Relative Time (ERT) in day-to-day activities.

List of Daedalus Missions

Daedalus 1

The first Daedalus mission was to Alpha Centauri, our sun's nearest neighboring star. It was here that the first extrasolar living space was created: the Alpha Centauri International Space Station (ACISS). While no longer in commission today, we still use the same wormhole used on the ACISS. The enduring legacy of the original space station is the astronomical data recorded that, in tandem with observations on Earth, furthered the understanding of our stellar neighborhood by explaining paradoxical phenomenon, refining the explanations of observed stellar behaviors, and even discovering new planets undetectable from Earth. Temporary residents of the ACISS use local time almost exclusively due to its relevance in astronomical calculations.

Daedalus 2

The first Daedalus mission was to Gliese 667 Cc, later colloquially known as [Bellona] due to its visual similarities to Mars including its ferrous surface and red sky. Approximately 23.6 light years away, the planet was the first planet outside the solar system. The closest known Earth-like planet (including Mars), travel to Bellona would allow scientists to inspect the planet for foreign life, explore the possibility of colonization, and aid in the examination of the Milky Way. While a small colony based on a mining economy became self-sufficient, Bellona's real value lay in its ability to triangulate celestial objects and discover exoplanets in orbits undetectable from Earth.