Transportation Technology

Transportation technology is a broad topic encompassing various branches of engineering. Warp drives are the only method for transportation between star systems, while interplanetary craft are designed to travel between the worlds within a single system. Other spacecraft are designed to travel only between locations within the orbit of a single body, or even just between adjacent stations in a shared orbit. Different planetary bodies require different technologies for travel between surface and orbit, or across the body’s surface.

The circumstances of these scenarios are extremely diverse, and each have their own set of unique design requirements and constraints. The vehicle most efficient for a given task is never suited for every situation, though in the more undeveloped regions of space efficiency must often be sacrificed for versatility.

Faster-than-light

Interstellar travel utilizes the warp drive, a technology that permits a craft to exceed universe-relative speeds greater than the speed of light. The warp drive is the core of interstellar civilization, though its main drawback is inherent instability near sources of strong gravitation, which limits the travel of faster than light craft to specific locations in space.

Read more: Warp Drive

Sub-light

To navigate space between points within a single system, sub-light craft of infinite variety perform all tasks required of an interplanetary civilization. These are the spacecraft which ferry people, haul goods, and perform infrastructure servicing. Many spacecraft in this category are entirely automated and have no internal traversable layout.

Read more: Sub-Light Spacecraft

Interplanetary

Interplanetary spacecraft are those which travel between different planets within a star system, and are typically the largest type of spacecraft. They carry extensive accommodations for prolonged isolation including backups of all critical systems and components, and their engines are designed to be more efficient for longer burns.

Interorbit

Short-range interorbit craft are those designed to travel between different points within the orbit of a planet or moon. This may be within the same orbital plane, or to different inclinations. These spacecraft are most efficient at higher impulses as they are often required to make rapid exchanges at faster timescales than ships traveling across a solar system. They also preferably utilize drives with less hazardous exhaust plumes due to the time they spend in more crowded space.

Long-range interorbit ships are those that transfer between the planet and moons of any given planetary system. These craft have their own distinct variety, as the transfer between two moons within a large gas-giant system is vastly different from the transfer between a low-mass planet-moon pair. These spacecraft will still on average be more efficient at higher impulses, but will often contain some interplanetary design features not found on shorter range craft.

Mass Drivers

Mass drivers offer a versatile range of uses, from surface operations to interplanetary ranges.

Read more: Mass Drivers

Surface operations

Surface-to-orbit and orbit-to-surface craft may be custom-designed to suit the features of the world they intend to service, but more versatile general-use craft are common as well. Single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) ships are often capable of both operations – the descent and ascent between orbit and surface – and are the most common craft for this purpose. However multi-stage rockets with reusable components may be utilized on planets with stronger gravity wells or for other reasons. In these cases, the most common approach is full reusability for all stages.

Mass drivers can be used to accelerate payloads to rapid velocities, to reach or change an orbit or perform interplanetary transfers. This is commonly used with inert payloads that can handle intense accelerations, such as the transfer of planetside cargo into space, but a long enough track can accommodate even unaltered humans.

Space elevators are stations bound to a world’s surface with one or more tethers. Though challenging to establish, they offer very energy-cheap surface transfers.

Read more: Space Elevators

Transportation along the surface of worlds is handled by wheeled vehicles or trains as infrastructure and terrain accommodate, along with aircraft designed for that body’s atmosphere. Worlds without atmospheres are likely to be of low-enough mass that SSTO spacecraft can fulfill this flight role.