To travel through space, the nations of the ULE use two methods: wormhole travel, and Harrawarp (or ‘FTL’) travel. Each of these methods has its own benefits and limitations.
Wormhole travel is extremely useful in concept, but much less practical in use.
By establishing a doorway between two points in spacetime, wormholes allow people to travel virtually instantaneously across entire galaxies.
However, the amount of energy required to open up a wormhole increases exponentially based on the size of the wormhole.
At larger sizes, the energy required to open a wormhole is too much to store practically on a spacecraft, and eventually the energy needed becomes too great to be financially viable to store in any space. This puts an upper limit on the size of spaceships that can travel via wormholes.
Thus, ships that can generate their own wormholes cannot seat more than four people, and ships that travel through wormholes generated by satellites cannot provide adequate space for more than twelve people.
Another limit on wormhole travel is the exchanging of matter between two points in space. When a wormhole is opened up, anything from atmospheric gasses and plant spores to pollution and airborne bacteria can freely travel through to the other side. To prevent this, it’s agreed upon by most nations that wormholes should only be opened up in an irradiated vacuum, like space.
Though there are many limitations on wormhole travel, it still has many uses. For instance, governments often use wormholes to quickly check on all planets in their nation or to convene with each other. Medical emergencies require speed, and so there are many groups of flying doctors who use wormholes to quickly transport patients from rural space stations to large hospitals on planets. Larger ships that travel in-between star systems often have life-rafts fitted with wormhole technology in the event of a disaster.
The most common use for wormholes, though, is for communication. While true interplanetary internet cannot be established because of the time it takes for information to travel from one star system to another, data can instead be beamed directly through small wormholes.
It would be too costly for this to be kept up all the time, and not all information can be transferred, so usually only the most popular or influential things are transferred from one global internet to another. However, it can give people of one planet a decent idea of what’s happening on another.
Harrawarp travel, also known as FTL (faster-than-light) travel, is a method of space travel that involves speeding up a ship to speeds much faster than light, so that the vast distances of space can be crossed in a relatively short time. Using this method, the entire Milky Way galaxy can be crossed in a mere six years. Travel between closer star systems takes only a few days or weeks.
The engines needed for Harrawarp travel are essentially huge. This means there is a lower size limit for practical FTL spaceships. To get more worth from a single engine, FTL ships tend to be built as big as possible. Many are so big that it is impractical or impossible for them to land, and so ‘intermediate’ ships are often built with the purpose of ferrying people from a planet’s surface to a huge ship.
Harrawarp ships are most often used for transporting large amounts of people or cargo. The smallest carry a few dozen people or some mined metals from one end of a star system to another; the largest can carry tens of thousands of people, the resources to feed them, and entertainment for their journey across the galaxy, or huge parts for smaller ships and space stations.
There are many types of ship in the ULE. Ships are made for different purposes, are produced by different companies adopting different architectural styles, and even have slight differences between them based on their year of production. There are also many different ways of classifying these types of ships.
Here, we will go over a common system of classification in the Local Systems; the Ave-Class Method, which identifies seven of the most common types of ships in the ULE.
Kingfishers
Kingfisher-class ships are tiny ships outfitted with their own wormhole engines. They can also take off from or land on a planet’s surface- they are ‘inter-orbital’.
Kingfishers are used for a variety of purposes, including quickly transporting important figures or people who need urgent medical care, rescuing people from disasters, reporting on news, filming for documentaries, spying- and much more. They tend to have the shape of small planes.
Terns
Tern-class ships are small ships used for a variety of purposes. They are inter-orbital, and are most commonly used for ferrying passengers or resources from the surface of a planet to an orbiting ship that is too large to land.
They are usually small enough to travel through wormholes, though not small enough to generate them by themselves. Because of this, they are also used to transport small amounts of people along a strict route- for instance, for transporting mined goods or giving space tours to tourists. These ships also tend to resemble small planes.
Toucans
Toucan-class ships are medium-sized ships used for transporting passengers and resources. At this size and above, ships are too large to use wormhole travel, but are large enough to use FTL travel.
Toucans are inter-orbital, and are used to transport several hundred people from one planet to another in the same star system- though, they can travel to other star systems in an emergency. Because they are inter-orbital, they require wings and an aerodynamic shape, but they are certainly more bizarre than planes.
Herons
Heron-class ships are essentially toucans outfitted for exploration instead of transportation. They use FTL travel to move across different planets and star systems, and are also inter-orbital. However, they have a much greater capacity for landing on rough ground than other ships, because they often land in remote places with no established space stations.
While toucans are created to have a large hold for cargo and/or space to accommodate passengers for less than an hour, herons are instead outfitted with everything required for a research mission- room and supplies for a small crew, generators, farms, scientific equipment, and more. Herons’ ability to both land on a planet’s surface and sustain semi-permanent inhabitants mean they are sometimes used for large-scale rescue missions.
Kites
Kite-class ships are large ships sometimes used for traveling from planet to planet, but more commonly used for moving from one star system to another. Travel between star systems can take several whole days, and so kites have to be equipped not with the seat rows standard of smaller ships and airlines, but with entirely furnished rooms for passengers.
Depending on what class passengers can afford, conditions can range from a small room and a communal cafeteria, to an apartment-like area with room service.
Since kites and larger ships are too big to safely enter and exit a planet’s atmosphere, they are built, maintained, and eventually decommissioned entirely in orbit. Passengers have to be ferried on and off these space-locked ships in smaller, tern-class ships.
Because ships this large spend their whole lifetime in the vacuum of space, they have no need for wings or an aerodynamic shape, which means their exterior shapes are usually built with aesthetics in mind.
Condors
Condor-class ships are huge ships used for traveling from one star system to another- but usually much, much further than kites.
Condors are one of two ship classes able to travel from the Local Systems to star systems beyond the stellar pacific. However, beyond trade, there is not much demand for this long journey. Only three spaceports exist in the Local Systems that can comfortably house, stock, and repair condor-class ships.
Condors often travel for weeks or months at a time, and though they can stop to resupply, it is a slow, tedious process. To minimise the need for extra supplies, along with the regular passenger cabins, condors usually have huge storage holds, as well as high-density farms or farmable food bacteria. They will also have some sort of on-board entertainment- theatres, social centres, ornamental gardens, and the likes.
Carnotaurs
The largest ships in the ULE are carnotaur-class ships. These are massive ships that make multi-year journeys across the galaxy.
Only one spaceport in the Local Systems can accommodate these titan ships, though even seeing one there is a once-in-a-decade event.
Carnotaurs are most often used to transport cargo. They can take incredible amounts of minerals, metals, items, plants, animals, and more from one side of the galaxy to the other. Their interior floors and walls can also be removed to accommodate everything from entire condor- or kite-class ships, to inhabited space stations, to meteors.
When they are used for transporting passengers, the multi-year timeframe means that they must become self-sustaining small cities.
With farms, parks, apartment complexes, restaurants, theatres, and more, carnotaurs can become a temporary home to hundreds of thousands of passengers, as well as a semi-permanent home for all required staff.