Ancient Technology in Stargate - Transportation - Starship Drives - FTL Drive

FTL Drive

The Ancient starship Destiny and its Seed ships use an unidentified form of faster-than-light propulsion which must remain active for at least 4 hours uninterrupted to prevent damage, this indicates it undergoes considerable strain from entering and exiting FTL. This FTL is described primarily as being distinct from hyperspace, an example of this is that hyperspace is depicted as a tunnel, the Destiny FTL drive is depicted as if the ship is pushing through something, creating a trailing energy effect along the hull, similar to St. Elmo's fire. The FTL-drive itself spans the entire breadth of the stern of the vessel. In contrast to a hyperdrive, which opens a window in subspace upon activation, the FTL-drive rapidly accelerates the vessel to faster-than-light speeds. Due to the inertial dampeners, the only visible effects of the drive is a stretched, blurry sensation felt when the drive is accelerating. When active, the ships shields must remain active in order to protect it from objects the ship may encounter in its path and the speed of the ship itself. If the shield were to fail mid-flight, the ship would disintegrate. The drive is apparently extremely resilient (a characteristic of all Ancient technology), having remained in operation well over fifty million years. Following a sabotage attempt by an enemy alien faction, the crew determined that removing one of the drive's modules would actually improve overall drive efficiency, also indicating that the drive can continue to function unhindered without all of its components operational.