FTL, Accelerated Aging, and Hypersleep

 

FTL

Invented in the mid 2030's the tachyon inflection drive. By exciting local tachyons the drive aligns the ship's mass with tachyon energy, fooling the ship's matter into acting as tachyons while retaining its normal properties. While in a state of tachyon excitement the starship can move no slower then the speed of light. Higher levels of tachyon excitement lower the mass of the starship, allowing for acceleration, while decreasing the level of excitement slows the ship instead.

Hypersleep

Soon after the development of the tachyon inflection drive it became apparent that the theorized causality violating effects of super-luminal travel simply did not happen. Instead of time dilating as speeds increased towards the speed of light, time expanded once the light barrier was reached.

To keep the crew of a starship from aging at an accelerated rate, they would be put into hypersleep before activation of the tachyon inflection drive. First the body is placed into a medically induced coma. Next the body is injected with a host of drugs and micro-robots which effectively freeze the occupants current biological state on hold. Lastly temperature is lowered and the hypersleep coffin is filled with a neutral liquid medium.

Upon the start of the awakening procedure, the neutral liquid is removed, and temperature is raised. The occupant is injected with a second set of drugs and micro-robots who move through the body restarting its vital functions to normal levels. Lastly the body awakened from the medically induced coma, and the occupant begins to awaken as if from a long dreamless sleep.

Aging

It might not sound like a problem that is likely to crop up in too many games, but a character not using a hypersleep bay when traveling at FTL speeds is subject to a form of accelerated aging brought on by the inverse relativistic effects of time expansion. The effects are minor for short slow jaunts, but the faster an FTL drive the more time is expanded from a human occupants point of view.

***TABLE***

time expansion FTL rating

1.25      1 (.1 light year per day)

1.5        2 (.25 light years per day)

2           3 (.5 light years per day)

10         4 (.75 light years per day)

20         5 (1 light year per day)

30         6 (1.25 light years per day)

40         7 (1.5 Light years per day)

+10       8+ (+.25 light years per day)

***END TABLE***