I've always wondered, what technology do you other writers consider with travel between stars? There is of course the Faster Than Light travel, made famous by Star Trek and Star Wars. And then there are also the theories regarding "subspace" where one rips a whole into some other dimension and pops out somewhere else, used by Halo and Freespace. And then the system of "star gates" used by, well, Stargate. So what do you use in your stories?

i can't wrap my imagination around how FTL would work, so i stick to more old-fashioned stuff. usually ion-propulsion engines or gravity push-pull drives, where the space-ship occupants need a version of cryogenic sleep to skive off the long transit times

I suppose my form of travel is similar to that of Star Trek and Star Wars. There is no disappearing and reappearing somewhere else instantly. However long it takes to get to the next place, we go the whole distance and hope the boredom does not kill us :) Or, we can always resort to hypersleep.

I either take it as a given (I mean, I can't explain to you how an internal combustion engine works, do I expect my characters to?), or I don't even bother with it at all and I keep it on one planet. It depends upon what kind of story I'm going for, but unless it has a purpose in the plot, I'll just say "Yeah! Faster than light travel, yeah sure. Let's get to the deep themes and rediculousness!" Though I did have one story where Earth was going to explode for some reason that I still have to make up, and then a gazillionaire eccentric designed a ship that would contain the DNA and chip with previous memories for everyone on Earth. And then when it reached a planet suitable for colonization, a bunch of nanites would cover this planet with a great big huge city, and then begin the process of getting everyone's DNA out and repopulating the new Earth. For some reason I'm rather proud of that, since I avoid cryogenic cliches, and add a bit of a WTF factor to it, since everyone on that ship is technically dead. Or maybe not and this is all a ruse for the Supreme Dictator For Life to RULE THE WORLD! DUN DUN DAAA! Of course, that story was in first person present tense about fifty years after they arrived, and the main character didn't give a crap about those things because she wasn't around, since she was too busy chasing boys and getting into arguments and drinking large amounts of coffee and witnessing UFO landings to care.

I rather like the idea of Solar Sails myself, but I have my own, lesser known methods of space travel in my mind... The Iskavarians have simple, rudimentary hyperdrive. Since they never sought to expand beyond their solar system, they concentrated on normal-space propulsion engines, which led them to having ships that are much faster in normal space. They use what can only be conventionally called 'plasma propulsion'. By using the heat generated from matter in its fourth state they produce forward propulsion which can let them cross normal space incredibly quickly. The plasma engines propel the ship by timed explosions. As a result, when they travel through atmospheric conditions, they tend to be incredibly noisy and increadibly easy to find if you use heat detectors.

I've been thinking about this quite a lot, and since I'm a physics student, I tend to assess all that stuff from a scientific point of view... even if it is fairly pseudo-scientific at this point, heh. Speculating is great, and so's this [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Propulsion_Physics_Program#Diametric_drive]Wikipedia list of a few nice ideas of faster-than-light travel[/url]. The idea of negative mass and that it would have speed greater than that of light is pretty appealing at the moment, and I think I'll incorporate that into some story of mine somehow. Before that I've pretty much thought about wormholes and hyperspace for an option for interstellar travel.

Actually, my main race for most of my stories, The Tominoseians, Have several forms of FTL travel FTL Travel list: 1. Warp: Much like star trek's theory this one is more advanced and is capable of reaching a maximum ammount of warp 12 before the engines overload. The warp engines use the vulan theory of a ring based warp drive but to a much better extent by making a sort of hyperspatial field which instead of bending normal space to reach warp space it burrows into hyperspace directly and bends the plain that is inbetween dimensions. 2. Slipstream: Based on the vedran technology this achieves FTL travel by an unexpected view. It communicates with a creature that lives in the hyper spatial dimension known as the slip stream beast. The beast grabs hold of the ship and flings it to the asked destination, it requires hardly any fuel to do this form. 3. Hyperspace: Much like other theories this form of hyper space uses the same inter dimensional theory. But the Tominoseian ships use a differnt approach using their plasma pulse engines to make ripples in normal space time. Much like sending two pebbles into water, the plasma pulse engine makes entrance into hyperspace easier by allowing the ship to enter the ripple the engine made. 4. Fold space: Using multi string technology, fold engines are the ultimate of all the FTL engines. The fold sphere generated from the engine makes the ship entering fold space the size of a particle of dust before carrying it through several dimensions at once untill it makes a loop back into the home dimension at the coordinates wanted. Most mistakes seem to happen with fold engines by safety routines are but into the engine to achieve safety. Yes its allot to take in, but it took me a while to think it.