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Starships employ artificially generated wormholes to travel to different locations. Because the travel time through the wormhole is near instantaneous, this gives an effective faster than light drive. However, opening and controlling the artificial wormdrive requires a hideous amount of energy, and this puts an effective ceiling on:-
These devices are known as 'Worm Drives' in the Republic, although a variety of other terms are used, such as 'Jump Drive' or 'Star Drive' to name few.
The early Worm Drive starships were capable of maintaining an average speed of a few times the speed of light (C), since those early days the technology has progressed through several design generations, such that a typical average speed for a modern ship is around 230 C.
By way of comparison this enables travel across inhabited space (a 100 Light Year diameter sphere) in a little over 5 months. Whilst these are typical speeds, it is possible for very small ships to travel significantly faster. In order to do so, severe design compromises have to be made in terms of payload, so the usual use for such vessels is as unmanned communications drones. The Republic employs a standard drone of 5 tonne displacement, colloquially known as a 'Pony' (after the old earth 'pony express'). The Pony network stretches through inhabited space, moving at a speed of around 600C, which means that news generally propagates across known space in a maximum of 2 months.
The drive power required to create a wormhole is strongly related to the local gravitational field, hence drive operation is not possible in the vicinity of a planet or star. To move in and out from a planet to a distance suitable for wormdrive operation, thrusters based on contra-grav technology are employed.
Read about contra-grav technology in chapter 2.