Jumpships |
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Jumpships are what make interstellar exploration, colonization, and warfare possible. Dropships dock to the Jumpship, which is almost always positioned either at the nadir or zenith points above or below a star, where gravitational influence is negligible and FTL travel is possible. To jump, the Jumpship calculates the correct course and field strength and fires the Kearny-Fuschida drive, which instantly transports the ship to the projected star system, up to 30 light-years away.
It is possible for a jumpship to use "pirate points" which are closer to the planets--and are caused as the planetary bodies of a system orbit, cancelling one another's gravitational influence--but these points are much harder to navigate to compared to the traditional nadir and zenith points around a star.
Instantaneous interstellar travel would make warfare extremely volatile were it not for the limitations of the Kearny-Fuschida FTL drive. The jump, or teleportation of a very large mass, cannot be triggered at will. It must be preceded by a number of days spent collecting copious amounts of energy from the nearby star, which is done by means of a solar collector with a span of many miles. The immense energy is accumulated in storage pools/banks/batteries/capacitors, and dumped into the drive system wholesale to achieve the jump.
During the time of the Star League and before, there were massive armed and armored jumpships called WarShips. At the height of Star League, fleets of thousands of these behemoths roamed the stars, enforcing the League's will. The majority of these, and those belonging to the Inner Sphere's Houses, were destroyed during the fall of the League, or disappeared along with Aleksandr Kerensky and the SLDF, and most of their shipyards were heavily damaged or obliterated. It has only been in the later part of the 31st century that technology has risen to a point where building fleets of new WarShips is even somewhat feasible.
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