Starship Design

Space/Time Warping
Starships resemble the great ships of the age of sails. But not in a Treasure Planet, steampunk, kind of way. The quarters, deck, operations and aesthetic feel like the ships of the line, frigates and sloops of the Napoleonic Age insofar as they have things that look ‘like’ sails and they use weapons that look ‘like’ cannons, etc... But, they are in space and conform to the rules of space: it is a vacuum, there is no gravity, rapid acceleration kills people, etc...

But unlike the ‘realistic’ space ships you see in 2001: A Space Odyssey and Babylon 5 which rely upon conventional understanding of general relativity, the starships in Orion’s Arm take advantage of unified field theory. By collapsing matter through quantum space manipulation, they can take objects the size of asteroids and condense them into a bar. This gravity bar core provides enough local gravity to keep people standing up right on a deck under near Earth weights in a cylinder around it. Since the artificial gravity decays quickly with distance, the extremities of the ship are very light. At the point of the ‘sails’, gravity is negligible and it is a zero-G environment. This allows a tremendous amount of matter to be supported for armoring and sailing at no increase to its weight.

However, the mass of the starship inversely effects the capacity to warp space. So the ‘fastest’ ships are the smallest and lightest given the same size of sail. Even though ships without any artificial gravity would increase their speed even further, they are not capable of long-term habitation and the weapons targeting technology is fast enough to make it not worth the trade off. There are thus no ‘fighters’ and ‘aircraft carriers’ in Orion’s Arm.

Ships do not really travel through space, as much warp space itself, so ships do not really accelerate or turn in a conventional sense. The ‘sails’ on the ship warp space in one direction or another, and the ship travels through the bubble. As a result, impacts with matter do not really collide with the ship as much as ‘pass through it’. But the warping effect of their mass can deform the relationship of matter in the ship. So, ships avoid traveling in all but the most vacuous parts of space. The lack of uniformity in an asteroid field would liquify a human body. So, people approach areas like this very carefully.

The technology of warping space does not allow for adjustments of power levels. So, when ships want to go faster or slower, they must adjust the size of their sails. And, when they want to change direction, they have to adjust the orientation of their sails. The larger the space contained by the sails, the greater the speed. However, each ship’s maximum sail volume is determined by the maximum power it can deliver uniformally across the sails. And, it’s maximum maneuverability is a function of how fast the sails can be realigned. In ship design and construction, for military as well as commercial purposes, shipwrights are called upon to balance the need for speed and firepower with armor and stability, with power generation generally proportional to size of the hull.

Cannons utilize a form of warping ammunition, with a very low mass to power/size ratio. The effect of which is to shoot out projectiles that travel faster than the ships themselves and have the capacity to kill crew or deform vital systems more often than destroy the structural integrity of the enemy ship. Some of the larger cannons however allow for larger munitions and thus larger masses for greater destructive capability. But the best tactic to destroy a ship is to get close enough that the warped spaces overlap. At that point extremely powerful but non-warp weapons can be fired at the enemy, or one party can attempt to board the other.

The larger ship will typically try to maneuver itself to get as close as it can to its quarry, while using its large warp cannons to prevent the smaller ship from attacking it from distance. The speed (and ultimately maneuverability) of the smaller ships on the other hand allows them to change their position quicker and thus choose their battles better and confound the enemy’s attempt to target them. But, strength in size and number generally rule the day, especially when relocation is not an option (such as when fighting in orbit around a planet). But a crafty captain has been know to engage in deception and unconventional tactics to overcome a superior adversary.

The negative relationship of mass to speed makes most merchant vessels easy prey to lightly armed, fast, raiders. But, such raiders are likely to confiscate only the most valuable cargo for fear of burdening their own ship. So, many merchants risk the possibility of piracy unless their cargoes are particularly valuable. In that case, they will often travel with escorts. However, it is the battles of enemy nations and their desire the destroy the vessels of their adversaries which has the most chilling effect on commerce. So, most merchants try to remain as neutral as they can.