Lore24 Entry #1 – TK Drives
Category – Technology
The TK Drive is the standard use method by which starships traverse the galaxy, in use for over two thousand years. Though some of the history of the development of this technology is in doubt due to conflicting sources, the most commonly accepted version is that the original concept for the drives was developed by a kerryn scientist by the name of Tonzura Koite, upon the world of Arcavarlon, during a time of great global upheaval following a long period of waning magic and rising tensions over limited resources.
The TK drives would eventually lead to a wave of expansion into the depths of the galaxy, allowing the people of the Arcavarlon system to move beyond their own solar system for the first time in a way that wouldn’t require generation ships or lost spells to travel to other planes of existence. The early days of travel were wrought with danger as the navigation systems for hyperspace travel were further refined, but after the first few decades, the galaxy was well and truly open…aside from the massive area known as the “Demon Sector”, which could not be entered via realspace or hyperspace.
The current iteration of the TK drive manipulates space, allowing the ship it is mounted upon to enter an area of hyperspace between two points in known space, traversing the corridor, and coming out on the other end in a fraction of the time it would take using regular propulsion. There are different speed ratings for the drives, the higher the number, the less time it takes to reach your destination (for example: to travel between two particular systems, a TK-1 Drive could take about 170 hours, whereas a TK-3 TK Drive would take about 57 hours). Generally the larger the ship, the slower the drive, though this isn’t always the case, especially where military and corporate interests are concerned.
The TK Drives create their own gravity fields when they are active, and thanks to advances in the technology, this feature has been fine-tuned to allow for artificial gravity aboard ships equipped with the drives. As a consequence of this factor of the drives’ function, however, they cannot function to open a hyperspace tunnel inside strong gravity wells, such as those produced by a planet. This means that ships will need to depart the gravity of a planet before engaging the drive to enter hyperspace, and conversely, a ship can be brought out of hyperspace by the unexpected appearance of a strong gravity well in realspace in the area of the hyperspace tunnel they’re traversing.