FTL Travel

Sometime during the late 21st century,

the people of Earth reanimated their dormant space programs.

They were in desperate need of resources and also needed space for the ever growing population.

However most industrial nations quickly realized, that it was simply not possible to reach their goal on their own. And so the majority of the countries pooled their resources, most of them were at the brink of civil war and the prospect of a space colony gave new hope to the people.

It took 2 years for a new space station to be constructed, this one was larger and had more to offer than the former international space station ISS.

Nonetheless the ISS was vital to the completion of Eden 1, the first space station where people were supposed to live, instead of just being there to study space.

It took another 10 years before Eden 1 became operational.

A new spacecraft was introduced at that time, codenamed Sparrow which created the foundation for a whole series of civillian spacecrafts, even years after its offical decomission.

Now it was possible to transport people in to space without the training that was required prior to that. Effectively opening Eden 1 as Earths first Space Colony.

Another 5 years later, the first construction scaffold was finished. With this, it was possible to create ships in space, without having to deal with the problems of planetary flight and passing the gravimetric pull of Earth.

Explorer One was the first spacecraft assembled entirely in space and also was the first ship to reach Mars in less than 120 days.

It is not entirely clear how long it took the people of Earth to establish a colony on Mars, but it is assumed that it took about 10 years.

Somewhere in that time period a new isotope was discovered, now commonly known as the Mars Particle, its offical designation is Iso 923.

This discovery revolutionized space travel as a whole. It allowed the human race to manipulate Dark Matter and create Slipspace bubbles.

However even with this amazing new findings, it would take almost 50 years before the first FTL jump would take place.

The main reason for that was the, for the time, ridiculous amount of energy needed in order to manipulate Dark Matter in a way that would allow one to send something in a specific direction, without the bubble collapsing and incidentally crushing whatever is sent with it.

In order to deal with these problems humanity built a large construct, now commonly known as Slipspace Catapults. This enormous construct enabled them to send an exploration drone on its voyage. The calculated course should take it 4.22 lightyears far to the star of Proxima Centauri.

They had no idea how long it would take for it to actually arrive, though according to their calculations it would take about 2 weeks. It took only 9 days for it to arrive, wich established the FTL-SSTT the Faster Than Light Standard Travel Time.

According to the FT-SSTT, it takes about 2 days to travel 1 lightyear.