FCAD

FCAD stands for Frisch Corrected Alcubierre Drive.

The Frisch Corrected Alcubierre Metric Drive (also known as a Hyperlight or Booster Drive) is the main supraluminal method of travel and communication. The drive is based on "shrinking" spacetime in front of a stable sublight "bubble" and "expanding" spacetime behind via Exotic Matter. The sloppy analogy of a slow walker on an incredibly fast conveyor belt is often told to space jockey's in training, but there are several problematic deficiencies in this description.

Through the use of a FCAM Drive, a ship can propel itself at incredible velocities, decreasing the time of transit between two neighboring stars from years to hours. Unfortunately, the technology does have it's limitations, especially when in the proximity of gravity wells of planets. Advanced sensors are needed to prevent collisions, however because the ships are sub-luminal within the warp bubble, crashes never have the risk of becoming planet ending catastrophes. These advanced sensors also allow FTL sensor also have the capability of more mundane readings.

Communication can be conducted via a Hyperlight Carrier Wave, allowing far reaching ship-to-ship communication. However, the signals degrade over distance, preventing anything more than interplanetary communication. By sending local signals through Zero Point Repeaters, interplanetary ship to ship communications are feasible, although the established communications channels can be rather crowded.