Well Drive

The FTL drive that makes Alliance ships go.

History

The development of the Well repeater and the Well drive made the Alliance's expansion, and its coherence as a political nation, possible, something understood by the early Pelted because research on possible faster-than-light technologies began during the century the Pelted spent in flight from Earth. Initial focus was on communication technologies, since "we're going to need a way to talk to one another once we land." 89 years into the Exodus, the first Well repeaters were finally successfully developed. It wasn't until 12 years later, after the settlement of Selnor, that the Well Drive was tested successfully.

The man responsible for the Well Drive (and who was the first to volunteer for that first test flight) was Roneld Don Cattus, a member of what would become the Asanii. Their target was Sector Gamma, where they'd identified a potential new planet for colonization. When the successful test flight deposited them there, Don Cattus claimed Asanao for his new race.

The early Well drive could only take ships to the Lip of the Well. Don Cattus stayed on Asanao to continue work on the technology, which is one of the only significant technologies to have its home research in Asanii hands. Once the Sector Gamma starbase was completed, the research center for Well technology moved there, to what is formally known as the Don Cattus Research Center, located in a sphere set aside specifically for it, and which later sprouted the Gamma Shipyard facility, dedicated to the manufacture of Fleet ships, as well as the largest Academe campus.

Timeline

• 2460: Well repeaters developed
• 2472 (1 BA): Well Drive developed

Technology

Parts

Supported by pylons (different numbers depending on ship class) and glow during operation.

Has a bleed-off system, and overload of that system causes enough damage to cripple a ship.

Located in engineering on Fleet ships: an "enormous central chamber with its pulsing Well capsule."

Speed

Has five "speeds":

• 1 (The Cusp of the Well)
• 2 (The Lip of the Well)
• 3 (The Lip of the Well); most civilian ships stop here.
• 4 Civilian courier ships occasionally go this speed.
• 5 (The Well's Deep) This speed is only typical of Fleet vessels pushing things.

For civilian ship, anything past Well 4 tends to diminishing returns when the increased cost of maintenance, repair and energy usage were factored against the time saved. For vital military or political reasons, military vessels can safely drop deeper in the Well but even those hit the limits of technology, especially material strength and propulsion systems, before whatever may be at the theoretical "bottom" of the Well. . Well factors beyond this limit are collectively known as the Abyss and cannot be withstood by modern materials and artificial Well shields.

For now, I am assuming speed increases logarithmically, with a base of 2.65. Rolling the dice, there, a distance that can be traveled in 1 day at Well 5 would go over this way:

• Well 5 (fastest): 1 day
• Well 4: 3 days
• Well 3: 7 days
• Well 2: 19 days
• Well 1: 49 days

Historically, the fastest of Fleet vessels could not reliably hit Well 5 until later in Alliance history, so sectors were originally drawn up based on the assumption that Well 4 was the emergency speed, and Well 2 and 3 the normal Fleet cruising speeds, with Wells 1 and 2 reserved to civilian ships. Modern civilian ships rarely go over Well 2, still, but Fleet ships can now use Well 5, and 3 and 4 are now their norms.

Ships operating at Wells 4 and 5 have what engineers call "flutter"--periods where the engines downcycle to avoid overheating--and this introduces fluctuations in expected speeds. Better engines have less flutter and can maintain their top speeds more consistently. Two ships traveling at Well 5, starting from the same location and heading for the same destination, may arrive at different times if one install is higher quality or better maintained (or both) than the other. When Fleet has speed trials, particularly as competitions between ships, what they're testing is how well Engineering maintains the drive, not whether the drive can hit the required speed.

Other Species

Chatcaavan military vessels are designed to oscillate between Well speeds, a process they call tsar zim, or "soar and surge." This gives them a higher average speed, at the cost of increased maintenance needs. Fleet vessels can do this manually ("interval cruising") but tend to do so only when damaged or if they don't want to risk a constant maximum Well speed.

Trivia

Until I find a better place to put these.

• It takes about a week to repair a well drive.
• Few ships capable of landing on a planet have Well drives, and those that do are expensive.
• The computer can and usually does superimpose images of stars moving when in Well for crew comfort, even though one doesn't actually pass stars in the Well.
• There's a way to "bounce" a slow-moving ship out of Well if you know its vector and engine harmonies, but it's a 'bit of a gamble.' Fleet personnel call it a tripwire. This is more of a pirate technique than a Chatcaavan one.

Distances in the Alliance

It's never clearly explained how much faster each well speed is from the next tier, how large distances are in the Alliance, the average size of a sector, etc. Some guesses:

• The "border station" that Levy greets Lisinthir in during Wingless is never named, not in Wingless or later in Transcend when Jahir and Vasiht'h go through it. I assume it's in Sector Fe. In Transcend, Jahir notes that the trip from Veta to that station took a day at Well 5. But traveling into the Empire to find Lisinthir's vessel took them "days." (Probably because they had to run search patterns while traveling).
• I took a swing at how sector sizes are calculated in Known Space. Given the multipliers, Jahir's ship in the previous bullet point should be able to reach Sector Fe from Sector Veta within 27 hours--about the day he mentioned, since AMT defines a day as 25 hours.
• Guesstimating again, it looks like the distance Surela and crew travel from Escutcheon to Starbase Psi is 4 laps, which gives us a distance of 12 days at Well 3.