"...no more need for jets and their horrible wastefulness..."
-The Fleet Of Stars, 3, p. 37.
See also the post on The Tahirian Field-Drive.
However, the field-drive is not to be confused with The Quantum Gate Field Drive, nicknamed the "zero-zero drive." See also here.
Although a c-ship is a small field-drive ship able to approach light-speed, it has to approach c by acceleration, unlike a "zero-zero" ship which jumps straight to light-speed, then back down to the normal state, without needing to accelerate, then decelerate.
When download Guthrie travels from Beta Hydri to Alpha Centauri in a c-ship, a laser beam transmitted shortly before his departure arrives three Earth-years before him whereas he makes the crossing from Alpha Centauri to Sol in a larger, therefore slower, field-drive cruiser, taking thirty five years to traverse four light-years.
Thinking about all this, it is very easy to get times and distances wrong.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
That's why I vastly prefer the zero/zero drive seen in STARFARERS as a means of STL space travel. It doesn't take as long for the crews of Kith ships to traverse interstellar distances as it does for NAFAL ships in the HARVEST books.
Ad astra! Sean
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