Archimedes Transit

MEDIA: Digital art in Adobe Photoshop 7 and Adobe Illustrator 9

WHEN: January and November, 2004

STORY:

The DSP Archimedes prepares to exit the Seyyan system on a pair-gate surveying mission. Its destination is the outskirts of the Drosi cluster visible at the far left of the image. Seyya orbits a hot blue binary star system, seen partially eclipsed in this view. The planet and several minor satellites were colonized 125 earth-years earlier. Seyya has become a hub of galactic exploration and pair-gate building. It lies at the center of a loose cluster of hot, massive stars that are gradually nearing the end of their brilliant lives. It's estimated that Seyya's binary still won't exhaust its fuel for several million years--more than enough time for its new inhabitants to fulfill their initial charter of establishing interstellar routes. The Archimedes current mission will last a decade, and will open up hundreds of world's to exploration and colonization in the rich open cluster in the distance.

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Even nerdier stuff, y'all:

The Deep Space Pathfinder Archimedes is a one-of-a-kind design, of a dying breed of interstellar craft. For its time, it was revolutionary. Using two very new technologies to propel itself across space at speeds forbidden by universal constants. Constants that don't necessarily apply in any of several neighboring universes--none of whose conditions would support human life, but whose physics could be borrowed to violate certain burdensome speed limits in ours. By isolating and extracting the boundless energies of the quantum foam permeating empty space, those same energies could be directed to bend space in unseen directions. Correctly tuned, this bending could be aligned with nearby universes that favor expedient travel. As the boundaries between universes thin in the vicinity of the vessel, it was found that a critical point could be reached that resulted in a merging of the physical properties of each. An averaging of sorts. The end result was like a greasing of our own space. Inertial properties could be decreased, mass and time dilation could be cheated and maximum velocities pushed vastly forward. The only thing left to do was to find an efficient and powerful means of propulsion to take advantage of the slick flume extending in the direction of travel.

At the time of Archimedes construction, that propulsion initially came in the form of a tractor drive system. This drive pulled itself along the same extractions of quantum foamings that also provided the energy for the ship's operations. No stored propellant was required to drive the ship forward--it was extracted and then dissipated back into the vacuum. When pushed to the limits, the vessel could accelerate to 1c in 3 days, meaning speeds of 123c could be achieved after a year of constant acceleration. While still limiting on a galactic scale over the course of a human lifetime, the colonization of nearby star systems finally became possible.

Over time, it was realized that this form of travel wasn't without its costs. As certain routes became well-travelled, it was found that the physical properties of space in the vicinity began to change in a permanent way. It was also noted that whatever exotic life might exist in the universes from which physics were being leeched might be adversely effected by inexplicably changing fields racing through their space. As a result, research was accelerated in finding additional means of travel.

With time, technologies utilizing the properties of quantum entanglement made faster than light communication and travel possible--speeds that weren't just fast, but instantaneous, and without the aforementioned hazards to our space and that of other universes. These forms of instantaneous travel required the installation of destination gates keyed with unique quantum signatures that could be dialed in by a new generation of interstellar vessels. These gates had to be installed somehow, and so it was that the older generation of space ships found continued, but much more restricted use, as pathfinders and gate builders.